Chalkbeat

Q&A: Why teacher pay stagnated, while school spending rose

2026-09-15T21:32:11+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

There’s been a puzzling trend over the last few decades: Adjusted for inflation, school funding has increased substantially, but teacher salaries have not. In recent years, real teacher pay has actually dipped as inflation surged.

Pay matters for every profession, including teaching, for obvious reasons. It shapes who enters and stays in the work. Talented people might not consider teaching or might leave after a few years because they’re not happy with their salary.

Teachers have never been paid especially well, but the pay gap between teaching and other college-educated professionals has grown in recent decades. And now there’s a new challenge: Many other white-collar jobs offer remote work perks that aren’t available to educators.

Meanwhile, more teachers have left the classroom in recent years and fewer young people aspire to become teachers.

So why has teacher pay been stagnant?

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Parents worry about ed tech. Most still see a place for it, polls suggest.

2026-09-14T12:00:00+00:00

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Some parents are organizing campaigns to opt their kids out of classroom tech. Others are suing education software companies. But there may be a quieter majority: Parents who support some screen time in schools.

That’s according to recent polling, which also indicates parents might welcome students’ exposure to tech like artificial intelligence in order to prepare them for the job market.

Two polls of parents conducted this year — one from the National Parents Union and another from EdChoice, a conservative-leaning school choice group — showed that parents overwhelmingly support some degree of technology in the classroom. More than 80% of parents in the EdChoice poll conducted by Morning Consult said they either somewhat or strongly supported using laptops in school. And of the majority of parents who supported screen time limits in the National Parents Union’s poll, just 1% said they thought students should have zero screen time at all in school.

The National Parents Union also found that a majority of parents — 53% — said it was important for students to learn how to use AI tools for future career opportunities.

The polling adds complexity to the vigorous debate about technology in education, in which those opposed to laptops and other devices have often attracted the most attention. But more moderate parents who support some screen time — depending on what it’s used for — could be important people to consider, as big school districts like Los Angeles and New York City start to pass limits on screen time and some uses of student-facing AI.

That doesn’t mean the public doesn’t have any concerns about the prevalence of technology in education. A May poll of registered voters also conducted by Morning Consult for The Century Foundation found that 73% said too much reliance on devices, phones, and AI in the classroom posed either a “major problem” or “somewhat of a problem” for public schools.

Parents want guardrails, but not wholesale bans on devices, said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union. That balancing act with technology that schools are confronting includes artificial intelligence: Parents don’t want low-quality AI-generated material in front of their kids, but they do want students to know how to use it for their future.

“Do they want their kid parked in front of a screen all day? No,” she said. “But do they want them prepared for what work is going to look like in the future? Absolutely … we’re having a very hysterical, knee-jerk conversation around this whole tech-lash thing.”

Meanwhile, groups representing less-affluent families have also argued that they’re being left out of the conversation around the backlash to technology.

Maya Martin Cadogan, founder and director of Parents Amplifying Voices in Education in D.C., a group that represents many low-income families of color, described how another group of parents argued against ed tech in district schools earlier this year. They focused on “how they limit their child’s technology use at home because they have lots of devices,” she said. “Our parents know that so many kids in their communities don’t have any device at home whatsoever.”

The polling isn’t necessarily as clear on that point. About 80% of low-income parents reported strongly or somewhat supporting laptops in schools, compared with 93% of higher income families, EdChoice found. But 12% of disadvantaged parents also reported being undecided about laptops, compared with 1% of affluent parents.

Many parents support education technology, with limits

Education technology is a broad term. There are many different ways screens, devices and software show up in the classroom, and the nuances are important, Rodrigues and others said.

For instance, parents want to know that any data captured digitally is secure, Martin Cadogan said. That aligns with some of the concerns Bridie Lee and Schools Beyond Screens — a grassroots group in cities like Los Angeles and D.C. — has about technology in education.

But the same groups may diverge on other issues.

For instance, Schools Beyond Screens in D.C. has argued against the use of i-Ready, an individualized learning platform that critics say improperly gamifies learning without sufficient evidence that it works.

Martin Cadogan said while her group also wants to know that education software is backed up by research, some parents like i-Ready. They appreciate, for example, that it offers extra practice on math problems without creating extra tasks for a parent who might not have the time to challenge their child academically, she said.

The EdChoice poll shows broad support for gamified learning. About 3 in 4 parents said they either strongly or somewhat support online learning games used in school. The poll listed Kahoot!, MobyMax, and Prodigy as examples of game-based learning software. These gamified learning tools are exactly the type of ed tech that the American Psychological Association expressed strong reservations about in a recent report.

Still, the type of technology is one thing, but the amount of time kids spend with it is another. Nearly half of parents supportive of limits said any activity on screens should be limited to one to two hours, according to the National Parents Union poll.

Lee said Schools Beyond Screens has gained momentum not because parents are completely against technology in the classroom, but as a counter to unchecked technology in education.

“What has happened is that, especially since the pandemic, tech infiltrated absolutely everything,” she said. “All of a sudden, everything was on a screen. Reading was on a screen. Math was on a screen.”

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org. Lily is on Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook.

The rise, fall — and possible future — of high-dosage tutoring

2026-09-10T18:56:26+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

In 2020, a wonky but buzzy new phrase entered the common educational lexicon: “high-dosage tutoring.”

Academics, policymakers, and journalists, myself included, began describing the idea as a potential solution to the moment’s unfolding learning loss crisis. After all, an average student might vault to the 65th percentile of performance when regularly tutored during the school day, according to widely circulated research summaries.

Education is usually beset with intense political divides — not here. “Tutoring was a shockingly broadly supported policy,” says Matthew Kraft, a Brown University professor who has studied and touted the benefits of tutoring.

At first the barrier seemed to be money — school budgets were tight at that moment — but then in early 2021 schools received a windfall of federal funds.

Among many others, then Education Secretary Miguel Cardona began evangelizing the new strategy. Students who are behind should get “at least 30 minutes per day, three times a week, with a well-trained tutor,” he said in January 2022. If learning loss was the problem, high-dosage tutoring was the research-backed, expert-sanctioned, federally funded answer.

Did it live up to the hopes and hype?

Complications soon emerged as schools sought to build out tutoring. Third-party companies rushed to fill demand, branding themselves as “high-dosage” and “high-impact.” In reality, many companies offered only remote homework help for students who sought it — nothing like the vision of a tutor regularly sitting with a student throughout the school year. These companies often had trouble engaging students, according to reporting from Chalkbeat, other news outlets, and external researchers.

Even when schools kept tutoring in-house, they faced their own issues. In Nashville, Tennessee, district officials initially looked for volunteers, retired teachers, college students, and others to serve as tutors. But these people proved difficult to find and train, according to a study coauthored by Kraft. Nashville schools ended up largely relying on their own teachers and staff. Yet teachers had little free time during the school day, so many tutoring sessions were done before or after school — rather than during the school day, a key tenet of the high-dosage tutoring model.

Denver schools contracted with two external companies to conduct tutoring. One company struggled to find qualified tutors. The other conducted tutoring virtually, which made staffing easier, but students often missed tutoring sessions. Many students in the district didn’t get the recommended hours of tutoring. “It’s great if you can do it with fidelity and if you have qualified tutors,” a district official previously told Chalkbeat. “There are just a lot of components that go into it that make it effective or ineffective.”

The timing was tough in many ways. Schools were still reeling from the pandemic and its consequences, making it tough to stand up a complex new initiative. And a hot labor market made it hard to find would-be tutors.

Meanwhile, the $190 billion in federal money for schools was dwindling quickly. Tutoring was competing with a variety of other needs and demands. Some districts were wary of using one-time funds for staffing so poured much of it into building upgrades. Others used part of the money to lower property tax rates rather than expand education programs.

One widely missed complication was with the underlying research base. When Kraft and colleagues recently re-analyzed prior tutoring studies they found a striking pattern: Larger programs tended to produce meaningful but notably smaller gains. Kraft theorized that as tutoring efforts scaled they skimped on costs and quality. This implied that widely touted effect sizes were unrealistic.

Indeed, studies began to emerge showing only modest gains from tutoring — far smaller than initial research suggested. In Nashville, tutoring produced moderate improvements in reading scores, but null results in math, according to the study by Kraft and colleagues.

A paper released by the University of Chicago Education Lab also found modest gains from tutoring and described the results as both encouraging and “sobering.” These findings kicked off a post-mortem among policy wonks, including in a piece in the Hechinger Report and an extended discussion on the Substack Schooled. Some even suggested the money going into tutoring had largely been wasted.

To Monica Bhatt, coauthor of the University of Chicago research, there’s a ready explanation for the smaller effects of tutoring seen in recent studies. Prior research had focused on deluxe programs that cost multiple thousands of dollars per student to ensure they received regular tutoring.

In contrast, the pandemic-era tutoring was often spread thin. “You spend less, you get less dosage, you get less learning gains,” Bhatt says. In other words, despite its name, high-dosage tutoring was often not high-dosage. Bhatt has been studying ways to keep tutoring costs down while maintaining dosage and effects.

Like many hyped initiatives before it, tutoring produced some gains but fell short of initial hopes. That is disappointing but in some ways was inevitable. The real shame will be if the idea is simply cast aside as another failure, rather than a complicated story with both setbacks and successes that we can continue to learn from.

“An effort to increase personalized and individualized instruction in school, in my view, is following the right North Star,” Kraft says. “But if I had to go back and make the pitch, I would be more conservative about the effects that we might expect and far more vocal about the challenges.”

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

School vaccine data can expose hidden outbreak risks. But access depends on where you live.

2026-09-09T14:08:00+00:00

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As Pennsylvania’s growing measles outbreak gets closer to her community on the west side of the state, Amanda Clear is taking actions to assess the risks to her son Dylan.

One of her first stops: A new state website that lets anyone look up the student vaccination rates at individual Pennsylvania schools. That’s how she learned that about 86% of the students at Dylan’s school are vaccinated against measles. That’s well below the 95% that’s considered necessary to prevent an outbreak of the highly contagious virus.

“Having that data point is very informative to help parents decide what they need to do,” Clear told me. Even though Dylan, 9, is vaccinated, he has an immune disorder that makes her worry he could be at increased risk for a breakthrough infection.

But across the country, not all parents can easily get access to this information. In some states, even public health officials don’t routinely know the vaccination rates at individual schools.

That’s despite research highlighting the importance of this data nationally in assessing the risks of outbreaks of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases within local communities.

Here’s what I found.

What the research shows

Since measles was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, CDC scientists have found that outbreaks involving more than 50 people have largely involved close-knit communities that for varying reasons have chosen not to get vaccinated. In the past few years, declining vaccination rates have contributed to these outbreaks spreading further within communities.

A prime example was the recent record-setting measles outbreak in South Carolina, which centered on a vaccine-hesitant Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking community in Spartanburg County and resulted in 997 documented infections by the time it ended in April. Most of those infected were school-age children and teens, and measles exposures that occurred at 33 schools resulted in 874 students being asked to quarantine at home for up to 21 days.

Yet across the country, data about childhood vaccination rates is often reported at a county or state level – averaging the vaccination status of kids over a broad geographic area.

It’s an approach that obscures localized pockets of unvaccinated people who live near each other, send their children to the same schools, and often share the same cultures, traditions, and beliefs, including about whether to vaccinate their children. In some cases these clusters may indicate shared barriers to accessing healthcare, such as transportation or language.

By analyzing South Carolina’s school-level immunization data, Clemson University researchers have identified clusters of undervaccinated students and their geographic relationship to measles exposures during the state’s recent outbreak.

As Clemson research associate Emily Serman mapped the data, it revealed that the risk from measles wasn’t spread evenly across Spartanburg County, which has one of the state’s lowest childhood vaccination rates.

Inside the largest U.S. measles outbreak in decades: Records reveal spread in vaccine-hesitant community

“It’s really concentrated in the northern half of Spartanburg County,” she told Healthbeat. The Clemson team’s findings suggest that the geographic clustering of undervaccinated students may pave the way for outbreaks.

At the national level, researchers from Cornell University warned in the journal Nature Medicine last month that county-level vaccination averages can appear high enough to protect against measles spreading, yet still hide dense clusters of unvaccinated children that can fuel outbreaks.

How states compare

Knowing how many children are — and are not — vaccinated at individual schools is a powerful indicator of local outbreak risks, these researchers say. Yet whether parents, researchers, or even health departments have routine access to that information varies significantly by state.

Some states post easily accessible, up-to-date maps and data. Others require a public records request or suggest the public seek the information from school districts, which might also require a public records request. Some don’t collect it until an outbreak strikes.

Texas: Neither the public nor the state’s health department have routine access to school-level vaccination data. State law only requires school districts to report student vaccination rates at an aggregated district-wide level, said Chris Van Deusen, spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services, which posts an annual report of the information it receives. The report includes some information about individual private schools. Legislation to require reporting at the individual school level failed amid concerns from some legislators that it could result in students and families being harassed.

“In the event of an outbreak in a particular school or area, public health can get campus-level data from schools,” Van Deusen said.

Minnesota: The state’s health department has posted vaccination rates for individual schools and school districts since 2014, said Ben Christianson, senior epidemiologist in the department’s vaccine preventable disease section. The department uses the data to identify at-risk areas and its public availability has helped make school and childcare leaders better aware of immunization coverage in their local areas, Christianson said. It’s also reduced the department’s workload responding to data requests, he said.

Florida: Obtaining school-level data doesn’t appear to be easy. The Florida Department of Health — which last month announced a proposed rule that would reduce the number of required school vaccines — only posts aggregated county-level data for the state’s kindergartners and seventh graders on its website.

Isabella White, the department’s press secretary, said by email that “school-specific rates are not publicly available unless requested directly from the relevant health department or school district.” Does the state collect school-level data so it can prepare for and respond to outbreaks? White wouldn’t say. Two school districts — Broward County Public Schools and Miami-Dade County Public Schools — told Healthbeat they only submit aggregated district-wide data to the state health department. Neither district makes its school-level data public without a public records request.

South Carolina: During the state’s recent measles outbreak, the state health department began posting school-level data on its website that shows the percentage of children who were up-to-date on all of their required school shots, but not by individual vaccines. The department told Healthbeat that the data helps it prioritize outreach to schools with low vaccine coverage and that it plans to continue posting updated data online each winter. Previously the state had only published school vaccination data at the county and regional level.

During South Carolina’s recent measles outbreak, exposures occurred at 33 schools, including Boiling Springs Elementary School in Spartanburg County.

California: While the state health department posts school-level vaccination data on its website, it’s outdated — in some cases by several years, Healthbeat found. The most recent data displayed by the state’s interactive database and map is from the 2021-2022 school year. Elsewhere, the department posts some more recent, but still outdated, spreadsheets with school-level data for kindergarteners during the 2024-25 school year, plus some older data for seventh graders. Health officials have access to current data, the department told Healthbeat, and the 2025-26 school reports and data will be posted online over the next year.

“In the meantime, parents and members of the public may check with their school or local health department about coverage,” a department spokesperson said by email. School-level data can be found on at least some county health department websites, such as these for Los Angeles County and San Diego County.

Pennsylvania: This summer, the state’s health and education departments launched a new interactive website that details vaccination rates in key grades at individual schools. “Pennsylvania parents deserve clear, accessible data about the health of their children’s schools,” Dr. Debra Bogen, the state’s secretary of health, said in announcing the tool. The data will help families and local leaders work to reduce vaccine-preventable diseases, such as measles and whooping cough, she said.

Why it matters

Knowing the percentage of children immunized in individual schools can inform where and how health officials focus their resources, whether that’s for deploying staff to do contact tracing during an outbreak, assessing barriers to immunization, or conducting focused communication campaigns, the Clemson research team told Healthbeat.

“What the analysis did was it took a massive state-level problem and broke it down into several big, but more manageable, areas,” said Lior Rennert, a professor and director at the Clemson Center for Public Health Modeling and Response. “If you want to do an intervention, you now have targeted areas where you could do that.”

S.C. measles cases surged after holiday school closures delayed outbreak investigations

For the public, the data can provide a way to gauge outbreak risks in their immediate area. This can be especially useful for people at higher risk from certain diseases, such as pregnant women, infants, and young children who have not been vaccinated, and people with compromised immune systems, such as Dylan Clear.

After looking up Dylan’s school and learning not enough students were fully vaccinated against measles to prevent the virus spreading, his mother has begun working with school officials on a specialized plan in case he needs to miss school should Pennsylvania’s measles outbreak reach their area.

“If you have the knowledge,” Amanda Clear said, “you know how to respond appropriately rather than out of fear.”

What to watch

With the U.S. experiencing another record-breaking year for measles and outbreaks becoming a new norm, Pennsylvania and South Carolina this year made school-level vaccination data more transparent. We’re watching whether:

The resurgence in measles prompts other states to reconsider what information they make visible about vaccination coverage in local schools.
Parents and communities push for greater access to information about the outbreak risks at individual schools.

Alison Young is Healthbeat’s senior national reporter. Sign up to receive her free national newsletter here. You can reach her at ayoung@healthbeat.org or through the messaging app Signal at alisonyoungreports.48.

Credit recovery enrollment rose 13% since 2017, raising questions about graduation rigor

2026-09-08T21:37:30+00:00

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Data analysis by Kae Petrin.

The number of students taking courses designed to help them pass after failing a class — classes often compressed to just a few weeks administered online — rose significantly since before the pandemic.

The increase in credit recovery enrollment nationally was likely fueled by more students failing classes during the COVID pandemic and the rise of virtual education. Credit recovery encompasses a broad range of programs, but generally allows students to earn missed course credits so they can graduate from high school on time.

High school credit recovery has long been a controversial stop on the way to graduation for some of America’s struggling students. Champions of these programs say they help vulnerable students graduate when they otherwise wouldn’t, and some superintendents say they’re an important tool. But while the programs may help more students cross the finish line, skeptics say they also allow students to skate through while accomplishing little academically.

The number of students enrolled in credit recovery courses increased by 13% following the pandemic, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of federal data comparing the 2017-18 and 2023-24 school years, the most recent data available. The 2017-18 data reflects the closest collection taken prior to the 2020 COVID-19 school shutdowns.

In North Carolina, the number of students enrolled increased by 173%, from 16,882 to 46,133 in the 2023-24 school year. In Maryland, enrollment increased by 75%.

Samantha Viano, an education professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies credit recovery, said she was not surprised by the rise. Students struggled and failed more courses when schools halted in-person classes during the pandemic.

Research provides strong evidence that schools are using credit recovery programs to increase four-year graduation rates, she said, an important metric used to judge a high school’s success. But the trade-off might be that students aren’t learning what they were supposed to in the classes they failed and are instead simply checking off a box.

“They are pushing students into credit recovery sometimes in the middle of the school year when they haven’t even failed the class yet,” she said.

The new data comes from the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection, which includes a vast array of information from every public school in the country. The data is self-reported by school districts and then processed by the Education Department, which has laid off staff members in the Office for Civil Rights. There have been ongoing questions about data quality under the second Trump administration.

Some of the nation’s largest school districts showed substantial increases in credit recovery enrollment. In Houston’s school district, the number of students enrolled in credit recovery rose by 122%, from 12,202 students to 27,074, even as total district enrollment fell during the same time period.

Houston has been under state takeover since 2023. The superintendent installed by the state, Mike Miles, has been praised for improved school ratings under the state’s accountability system. But a recent Houston Chronicle investigation examining the increase in students taking controversial online college prep courses — Miles disputed the newspaper’s analysis — has cast doubt on those improvements. The state accountability ratings also take graduation rates into account, which may be affected by an increase in credit recovery enrollment.

Houston’s press office did not respond to multiple requests for comments about credit recovery numbers.

In Philadelphia, district leaders have not been shy about using credit recovery as a strategy to get students to graduation. Credit recovery enrollment more than doubled from 1,459 to 3,624 students, a 148% rise, the data shows. The district has promoted summer credit recovery programs for students deemed academically off-track.

At a credit recovery program this summer, Superintendent Tony Watlington said getting students to graduate saves “young people’s lives.”

“When kids graduate and don’t drop out of school, we save the taxpayer in the city of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania $405,000 right off the bat,” Watlington said. “Dropping out of school really is a life or death issue in Philadelphia, as well as many other places around the country.”

One study found that every dropout costs the city $357,000 over their lifetime, while graduates have a positive economic impact of $48,000. Another 2019 report found that more homicides occur in census tracts with low proportions of high school graduates. Officials in that report identified increasing graduation rates as one strategy to reduce violence.

While national test scores have largely stagnated or declined in key subjects like math and reading, graduation rates continue to creep up nationally. The use of credit recovery to help students graduate could be playing a role.

But there’s also evidence that online credit recovery courses could hurt students down the line: It’s associated with lower wages after high school. Online credit recovery is also not heavily regulated by states.

While graduation is important, Viano said it is also vital to consider those other outcomes.

“Honestly, I have found schools and districts to be very blasé about their credit recovery enrollment and not really understand who’s in those classes, what they’re doing in those classes, how long it takes them to work on them,” Viano said. “Which is part of the reason why we’re concerned about other kinds of outcomes other than high school graduation, because it’s such a wild west.”

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Chalkbeat Philadelphia reporter Rebecca Redelmeier contributed reporting for this story.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org. Lily is on Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook.

U.S. moves up in PISA test score rankings because other countries are doing worse

2026-09-08T07:31:00+00:00

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In the early 2000s, politicians and pundits were swept up in anxiety about U.S. performance on a key international test known as PISA. Delegations traveled to learn from high-achieving countries like Finland. Journalists and researchers wrote books on the topic. Leaders like President Obama bemoaned the country’s dire results.

The good news from the latest PISA results, released Tuesday, is that the U.S. has gained relative standing in recent decades. Today, U.S. students score well above average in science and reading. Math scores, long America’s weakest subject, are now on par with other developed countries.

The bad news is how this happened. The U.S. has steadily moved up largely because other countries’ scores have deteriorated faster than ours over the last decade. A bevy of data points show American students are learning less than they used to. Even U.S. PISA scores in math and reading are at or near their lowest level.

Tuesday’s international release suggests student achievement is not something that only the U.S. is struggling with. Whatever factors are driving down scores here — and academics aren’t sure what those are — might also be affecting children elsewhere.

“There’s an ongoing global decline, and it seems like the pandemic has a long, long tail,” said Tracey Burns, chief of global strategy and research at the National Center on Education and the Economy, an organization that studies education systems globally.

The declines in reading proficiency are particularly concerning, Burns said, due to the role reading plays “not just in scholastic and later life success, but also democracy and civic participation.”

Scores have declined across the globe with smaller dips in U.S.

PISA is an international test administered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to 15-year-olds from countries across the world. Thousands of American students from dozens of schools sat for the exam last year. PISA tests problem solving skills in math, reading, and science.

U.S. scores were reported with an asterisk — literally. OECD chose to report the U.S. results but warned that because of incomplete responses from schools, it “is not possible to rule out bias in PISA performance results, nor to determine its most likely direction.” That means U.S. students might be doing better or worse than the test results suggest.

While many countries have some issues with sampling, only Albania’s results were flagged with a similar level of uncertainty this year.

In most countries, math and reading scores fell sharply between 2022 and 2025, which follows similar drops between 2018 and 2022.

“Learning outcomes have stagnated or declined in many countries, in some cases for well over a decade, and gaps in achievement persist across socioeconomic groups,” wrote OECD’s Andreas Schleicher.

Singapore, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Canada were among a handful of countries that scored better than average on all four tests.

In the U.S., reading scores fell, but math and science results were essentially flat between 2022 and 2025. Seventy-four percent of American 15-year-olds reached basic proficiency in reading, compared to 69% among 38 relatively affluent countries that are part of the OECD. In math, U.S. proficiency was 65%, the same as the OECD average.

These are more encouraging proficiency rates than those reported by the U.S. federal government on the widely cited NAEP test. This reflects the subjective nature of measuring mastery.

U.S. students scored above average on a new test measuring computational problem solving skills in the digital age. American students were also less likely than those in other countries to hastily respond to questions, indicating that most 15-year-olds here took the exam seriously.

By some measures, the U.S. has unusually unequal educational results. The gap between the top and bottom performers in science and reading was larger in the U.S. than most other countries.

U.S. results were not broken out by race and family poverty, key drivers of academic gaps, because more than 40% of U.S. students who took the tests did not take an accompanying questionnaire. The Education Department acknowledged a “month-long pause in PISA activity in spring 2025” resulting in some questionnaires not being administered.

This was also when the U.S. DOGE Service was cutting contracts and staff at the Education Department research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences. Matthew Soldner, acting director of IES, did not respond to questions about whether these cuts were related to the data gaps.

PISA scores effectively measure not only countries’ educational systems, but also cultural and economic factors that contribute to — or detract from — success in schools. Researchers have repeatedly linked countries’ scores on PISA to future economic growth.

NCEE officials said that despite the “good story” of the nation’s rise relative to other countries, the PISA results still raise serious questions about how well the U.S. is serving its most disadvantaged students.

“Is it able to deliver on the aspirations that the U.S. holds as the world’s major economic power?” Burns said. “That’s where the story becomes less clear.”

On a different international test of fourth and eighth graders’ math skills, U.S. scores between 2019 and 2023 fell faster than most other countries.

There are no definitive answers for why test scores have fallen in so many countries. What’s clear is that this was not just a pandemic-era blip. In many places, scores dropped just as sharply — if not more so — after the pandemic ended.

OECD officials offered a number of hypotheses: heightened student absenteeism, greater classroom disruptions, and the proliferation of phones and screens. Educators and researchers in the U.S. have raised similar theories.

Burns noted that U.S. students report relatively positive relationships with teachers, higher growth mindset, and more access to peer-to-peer tutoring. They also are less likely to learn in schools with teacher or material shortages. These factors may contribute to American students declining less than those in other countries.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

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

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.”

RSVP for Chalkbeat's virtual event on the two tech debates shaping schools this year: AI and screen time.

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.

States urge schools to use AI, but leave teachers on their own to stop cheating

2026-09-02T12:00:00+00:00

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Paige Wyatt heard plenty from administrators about using AI to generate lesson plans at the school where she taught high school English.

Her students used AI to cheat so frequently she resorted to spending her own money on detection tools. Yet she never got help with what she really wanted: how to effectively catch and stop the cheaters, some of whom were very clearly just copying and pasting from Google’s AI summaries.

Teachers like Wyatt consistently identify cheating as a major concern in the AI era, and 70% of teens report using AI for schoolwork, a Common Sense Media survey published last month found. But that concern is getting little recognition from states. While at least 13 states have passed laws about AI in education, the laws most often direct state agencies and districts to create their own AI guidance, meaning lawmakers have frequently absolved themselves from making tough decisions.

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Meanwhile, roughly three out of four states have published information to help guide AI use in education. But a Chalkbeat review found these documents tend to skirt the issue of cheating, offering little in the way of concrete steps to halt or deter students from offloading work to AI. Instead, they dedicate more real estate to AI literacy and ways teachers can use AI for efficiency.

All of that beating around the bush has left educators and districts to their own devices to come up with ways to deter and catch AI-enabled cheaters. It’s become an exhausting endeavor that hasn’t turned up any definitive solutions, educators and researchers said.

There’s no surefire way to detect AI-generated content. Nor is there an agreed-upon definition for cheating: Can students use AI to outline an essay but not write it? Can they use it to copy edit? Some states have crafted acceptable use policies which make some, but not all, of these distinctions.

Wyatt quit her teaching job last year. She didn’t leave solely due to AI, but its impact on her work was a factor.

“We really need real consequences,” she said. “We need workshops for teachers to detect cheating. We need workshops for kids.”

Most of the nation’s 10 largest school districts are developing or have developed more specific policies to try to prevent using generative AI to cheat. But it hasn’t always been easy: New York City delayed the rollout of its AI guidance for months amid fierce backlash, before announcing a new policy this week. Half of those districts explicitly discourage using AI detection tools.

Many of the official responses might underscore the urgency of the problem without helping to address it, which could only increase teachers’ anxiety.

“I think the situation teachers are in feels bad, and feels like they ought to have a solution now that they don’t have,” said Justin Reich, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the host of a podcast about how AI is shaping K-12 education.

Letting AI ‘run amok’ could ruin student learning

Historically, state policymakers haven’t rushed to create laws governing new technology and education.

States didn’t really start to adopt computer science requirements until the 2010s. And while the iPhone launched a smartphone revolution in 2007, the first state restrictions on cell phone use in schools didn’t come until 16 years later, in 2023.

States may be moving faster when it comes to mainstream generative AI, which took off with the advent of ChatGPT in late 2022.

“Folks can’t just hope this will pass. This is a major change, and students are already using it,” said John King, former U.S. education secretary and current chancellor of the State University of New York system. “This isn’t tomorrow’s problem. This is today’s problem.”

The District of Columbia and at least 37 states have issued recommendations for public schools about AI. Their documents range from short webpages to Illinois’ 400-page behemoth. Many define different types of AI, stress that any AI use should still be led by humans, and link to outside resources — some of which have been developed with the support of big AI companies.

But they often devote just a page or a few paragraphs to academic integrity.The documents also seem light on actual guidance and don’t include many citations, Reich said. That’s because there’s little evidence to show how effective AI tools are in the classroom, or what policies would effectively stop cheating.

“If you just let this run amok in secondary schools, all kinds of learning activities will stop,” he said. “We do not know what to do. There’s no evidence-based policy. There’s no basis for development and professional development. Like we’re just making stuff up.”

More than a third of states urge schools not to rely solely on tools that promise to detect the use of AI, citing studies showing they are not effective and incorrectly flag genuine student writing as AI.

But many states then offer little else other than acceptable use policies. In California’s case, the state offers a list of questions for districts to mull when making policies around integrity in addition to an acceptable use policy.

In the absence of hard and fast rules, teachers have reported requiring students to complete more graded work in class, using pencil and paper.

Christopher Harris, the director of the school library system for the Genesee Valley BOCES, a regional district in western New York, wants educators to go further than that and reconsider how they measure learning. Writing may be less of a valid tool to assess if students are learning, now that AI “can suddenly write anything.”

He said students could submit an oral assignment, or teachers could focus on the learning process more than the product by asking students to explain how they respond to feedback when developing a project or presentation.

New York is one of the 13 states that hasn’t published AI resources for educators. Harris’ library system has been developing resources about AI for the state’s educators using grant money.

“I really wanted to help teachers understand they can’t control what kids do with AI,” he said. “The only control they have is their agency in developing assignments.”

Adopting AI policies not straightforward for school districts

Sara Brescia thought she had a no-brainer policy proposal for her fellow Manassas City Public Schools board members: adding AI misuse to the district’s code of student conduct.

The policy she proposed for the district in northern Virginia — a hotbed for the data centers AI relies on — would prohibit students from trying to pass off AI-generated content as their own. It specified that AI could only be used with a teacher’s permission, and required students to cite AI use. Students would be punished, up to and including with expulsion, for violating any of those provisions.

But other board members voted her idea down in late July. Lisa Stevens, another school board member who is also a teacher according to her LinkedIn page, worried the policy would add a burden onto teachers without giving them any tools to identify AI-generated work.

Brescia is skeptical about the value of those tools.

“We do not have a comprehensive approach,’’ she said. “We have the student code of conduct that says nothing.”

Wyatt said when she left the classroom, students were only becoming more fluent in methods to cheat. They were finding tools like QuillBot to disguise AI-generated writing and make it sound more like student writing.

She’s open to going back to the classroom, if she gets more administrative support to help detect the kind of AI misconduct that felt out of control when she left.

“As a community, we need a support network,” she said.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org. Lily is on Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook.

One measles case could upend a campus for weeks. Colleges urge faculty to locate proof of immunity now.

2026-09-02T09:53:00+00:00

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While reporting a recent story on the surge in older adults seeking measles immunity tests, I kept coming across something I hadn’t expected. Colleges and universities were encouraging faculty and staff to gather proof of their immunity to measles before an exposure ever occurred on campus.

The more universities I spoke with, I realized there was another story unfolding. It wasn’t just that individuals were taking a personal interest in knowing their immunity. Some educational institutions also were preparing for the growing threat of measles, including looking for ways to prevent the disruption a single case could bring.

Here’s what I learned.

The lead signal

When a measles outbreak hit a suburban Denver school district earlier this year, it sent 80 exposed students and employees into home quarantine for weeks. It also spurred officials at the University of Northern Colorado to start preparing for the disease to arrive on their campus.

“This is going to be a problem that more and more educational entities are dealing with, both K-12 and higher ed, so we’re trying to be proactive about it,” Blaine Nickeson, the university’s associate vice president for administration, told Healthbeat.

The university has begun alerting students, faculty, and staff about the importance of having documentation of measles vaccination or immunity.

The push is not only to protect against the disease, but to help individuals avoid the significant disruptions that could result from just a single case of measles on campus — even for those who aren’t known to be infected.

“If even a single measles case is confirmed at UNC, state and county public health officials will collaborate with the university to orchestrate a significant public health response. This may include exclusion from campus for 21 days or more … Having a vaccine exemption on file will not prevent exclusion,” the university’s new measles awareness web page warns.

Students and their parents might not fully realize how a decision not to get vaccinated against measles could result in their exclusion from campus — including campus housing — during an extended quarantine period, Nickeson said.

Faculty and staff might not have thought about their measles immunization status in many years, but would face missing work if they are exposed to measles and lacked proof of vaccination or immunity, he said.

Unlike students, faculty and staff at colleges and universities generally don’t have campus vaccination requirements unless they work in certain hospital or health sciences settings.

The university highlights that measles shots and titer tests to check for immunity are available at the campus health center. The vaccine is typically covered by insurance, and the out-of-pocket cost of the titer test at the center is about $20 if insurance won’t cover it.

Where else we’re seeing this

University of Colorado Boulder: The university’s measles web page says: “To prevent unnecessary absences, faculty and staff are encouraged to have their immunization records or other evidence of immunity readily available for review if requested.” Faculty and staff can receive walk-up measles immunity testing on the Boulder campus for an out-of-pocket cost of $5.

University of Tennessee Chattanooga: The school’s measles preparedness efforts and recommendations for having proof of immunity were spurred in part by watching South Carolina’s Clemson University deal with measles earlier this year, said Jordan Jacobs, a UTC infectious disease nurse practitioner.

“For the majority of our faculty and staff, it is a new concept,” Jordan said. Their main question: How do they find their old immunization records? If their shots aren’t in state immunization registries, Jordan advises checking with past healthcare providers and schools. “Some staff do ask about titers and vaccinations,” she said.

University of Massachusetts Amherst: “Knowing and documenting your immunity status is critical as it determines whether you may continue working in the event of a confirmed exposure,” says the university’s measles web page, which was launched last year in response to the West Texas measles outbreak and continues to be updated. Dr. Khama Ennis, associate medical director for university health services, said there has been little feedback from faculty and staff, but the campus plans to do additional outreach this fall.

The national playbook

On the national level, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has created a checklist for higher education institutions to help prepare to respond to measles cases on campus.

The checklist notes the importance of maintaining records in accordance with legal requirements for privacy and confidentiality. Some university officials told Healthbeat that navigating privacy issues and the continued fallout from COVID vaccine mandates are among the reasons they are only advising faculty and staff to have their measles immunity documentation readily available, but not asking them to turn it in.

Some state health departments also are providing guidance: Among the proactive steps recommended by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, colleges and universities should create a list of students who do not have appropriate documentation of immunity and recommend that faculty and staff have their evidence of immunity readily available.

“Obviously quarantining can have a significant impact,” said Dr. Emma Doran, medical director of the department’s Vaccine Preventable and Respiratory Diseases Medical Consultation Unit.

“Health systems and local health departments and the state health department have been preparing for this for a while, but I think we’re getting a little bit more traction in terms of preparing school systems and universities to think about it.”

How we got here

Historically, school vaccination laws and requirements were created as conditions of student enrollment as a way to combat childhood diseases — not usually as conditions for employment. So faculty and staff pose different challenges.

Many older faculty and staff don’t have easy access to records from shots given decades ago, before the creation of electronic medical records and state immunization registries. Unless they work in healthcare or laboratory settings, universities don’t generally require or track employee immunizations.

And in fact, the American College Health Association’s vaccination recommendations are specific to students and do not provide guidance related to faculty and staff.

JoLynn Montgomery, chair of the ACHA’s vaccine-preventable diseases committee, said the focus is on students because of their unique risk factors. “Many are navigating the healthcare system on their own for the first time,” she said.

But with measles cases at high levels, Montgomery said that generally it’s a good idea for all individuals, including faculty and staff, to be ready.

“Personally, I don’t have documentation for my doses, and I just went and got revaccinated,” said Montgomery, who is the senior manager for applied public health at the University of Michigan. She said her husband decided to get a measles titer test to check his immunity.

Why it matters

A single measles infection on campus can impact far more people than just the person who becomes sick.

As the infected person moves about campus, hundreds more can be exposed — and required to quarantine for up to 21 days — if they don’t have proof of vaccination or immunity.

“It’s not only disruptive to the patient, to the person who’s quarantined, but it’s disruptive to the school, the university. It’s very disruptive to have people out of work,” said Dr. Alan Melnick, the public health director in Clark County, Washington, and a board member of the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

The virus is highly contagious and spreads through the air. It can linger in a room for up to two hours. People can spread the disease in lecture halls, cafeterias, and communal housing beginning four days before the telltale measles rash appears.

What to watch

With U.S. measles cases so far this year already surpassing last year’s record number — the worst since 1991 — we’re watching whether:

More colleges and universities take measles preparedness actions.
Faculty and staff become a larger focus of campus communications, and how they respond.
More health departments and public health organizations issue guidance about having readily available documentation of measles immunity to avoid quarantine.

The bottom line

By urging faculty, staff, and students to gather proof of measles immunity before an exposure occurs, some colleges and universities hope to reduce weeks of disruption if measles reaches their campuses. It’s another example of how the return of measles across the United States is changing how we live.

Alison Young is Healthbeat’s senior national reporter. You can reach her at ayoung@healthbeat.org or through the messaging app Signal at alisonyoungreports.48

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The promise and limits of career and technical education

2026-09-01T21:32:25+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Career and technical education may be the last bipartisan issue in America.

From President Donald Trump to various Democratic governors, like Maryland’s Wes Moore, there’s wide consensus that U.S. high schools should do more to prepare students for the workforce. Often this is contrasted with promoting college, as more Americans and politicians question the value of a four-year degree.

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Virtual school enrollment has doubled in recent years, following pandemic-era surge

2026-08-27T20:29:44+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Data analysis by Kae Petrin.

Remote learning during the pandemic was a nightmare for some students, but others have stuck with it, new data shows.

Just over 600,000 public school students attended fully virtual schools in the 2024-25 school year, the most recent data available. That’s about 1 in 80 public school children — a twofold increase since before the pandemic.

This reflects the growth of school choice: In more places, families who want to opt their children out of traditional schooling can and are doing so with public funding. Many families seek out online education because traditional schooling isn’t working for a variety of reasons. Yet prior research has raised pointed questions about the quality of virtual schooling. These concerns once drew significant attention, but ironically they have faded from the national discourse even as digital schooling has rapidly grown.

Virtual school enrollment spiked in the 2020-21 school year in the midst of the pandemic. Some families may have believed that a stand-alone virtual school would be better than the makeshift online programs that many school districts were standing up. This was not just a one-year blip, however, as the new data shows.

A majority of fully virtual students are in charter schools. Two companies that run online schools, Stride and Pearson, account for a large chunk of virtual enrollment. A recent earnings report from Stride said its virtual schools, known as K12, now enroll over 240,000 students in public and private schools. “Demand for educational choices remains strong,” the report said. In recent years, more school districts have also launched their own online options.

Among high school students, 1.6% were in fully virtual public schools, compared to 0.8% of students in grades 1-8.

The Education Department used to regularly report on the number of virtual school students, but like many other statistics, it has not updated these figures recently. Chalkbeat calculated up-to-date numbers, which had not been previously reported.

An additional 195,000 students were enrolled in schools that are categorized as primarily online with some in-person opportunities.

The federal numbers may undercount online school enrollment. For example, according to that data, 1% of Indiana students were in fully virtual schools in the fall of 2024. A Chalkbeat analysis using more detailed state data pegged enrollment at virtual schools at about 3% that year. States vary in the share of students in virtual schools, though differences in response rates and program structures mean cross-state comparisons should be interpreted with caution.

Several studies, based on data from before the pandemic, have found that students tend to make much less academic progress and graduate at lower rates in virtual charters. In 2016, prompted by concerns about quality, a trio of pro-charter school groups issued a high-profile call to close low-performing online charters. Reporting in states including Indiana and Colorado has raised concerns about misspending and inflated student enrollment in certain virtual charters.

Patrick Wolf, a University of Arkansas professor, noted that existing research may not be able to adequately account for the type of students who opt into virtual schools when assessing the quality of the education in these settings.

“Students who learn remotely may also perform somewhat lower than expected on in-person state assessments, not because of instruction quality, but because the testing environment itself is unfamiliar,” said Brooke Gabbert, a spokesperson for K12 virtual schools. “These students typically learn and test at home.”

A teacher at New York City’s district-run online school previously told Chalkbeat that students go virtual for a variety of reasons, such as disabilities that make attending a regular school challenging; flexibility for students who are caregivers; and difficulties in a prior school.

“Many of our students face social and personal challenges, so our work extends beyond delivering content,” said the teacher, Jude Julien.

Wolf says if test scores are a priority, online schooling is probably not a good option for most. “Parents should be informed about that reality and factor it into their decision making,” he says. The growth of virtual schooling is a sign of the times, though: The priority in education policy in recent years has been responding to parent demand rather than raising test scores.

Since online schools have grown rapidly, up-to-date and better research about the quality of education they’re providing seems like an urgent priority.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

The problem with an AI tutor: Students don’t want to use it

2026-08-25T23:25:23+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

If you build it, they may not use it.

This is the emerging problem with artificial intelligence tools designed to help students learn. The latest evidence is a new study finding that middle school students rarely used an AI-powered tutor when given the option to do so.

The study examined Khanmigo, an AI chatbot associated with the popular Khan Academy program. The findings confirm the sentiment of founder Sal Khan, who previously told me that the AI tutor was a “non-event” for most students.

“If a keen, engaged student wants to use the technology as a good tutor, it’s ready to go,” said University of Toronto researcher Philip Oreopoulos. “The issue is that most students don’t use it that way.”

In the study, Oreopoulos worked with a Tennessee school district to randomly assign low-performing students from 18 middle schools to use Khan Academy during the school day. Khan Academy provides online lessons and practice that students work through at their own speed. Khanmigo is programmed to respond to questions without giving away the answers, though students had to actively seek its help.

The study compared Khan students with another group of students who instead used a combination of other digital math programs and small-group teacher-led instruction.

By year two of the study, the researchers found some promising results. Students using Khan Academy made faster math gains than the comparison group. This suggests that Khan Academy has value — a notable finding at a moment of intense backlash to ed-tech.

But the researchers say the benefits of Khan didn’t seem to come from AI. Most of the Khan Academy middle schoolers simply weren’t engaging with Khanmigo productively or at all.

Students only used Khanmigo about a third of the days they were working in Khan Academy. When interactions did occur, many students just sent off-topic messages or tried to convince Khanmigo to provide the correct answers. “Access was nearly universal but engagement was thin,” the researchers wrote. “It may be that human attention is the key ingredient for realizing the full benefits of personalized learning.”

Here are some examples of students’ interactions with Khanmigo from the new study:

Paraphrased examples of students' conversations with Khanmigo from the study "One Click Away: AI Tutoring with Khanmigo in a Two-Year School Experiment."

“What this has put in huge spotlight — not that it’s a shock to educators — is how much motivation matters,” said Sal Khan in an interview.

The more AI can mirror a human tutor, the better it might become, Oreopoulos says. Right now, it’s not there. Maybe that’s a good thing: It’s not clear that we would want children to experience an AI chatbot as too human-like.

Since the study period, Khan Academy has redesigned its interface to better integrate Khanmigo and encourage more students to use it. “The AI could not just sit next to the content. It had to be woven into it. We had to make productive struggle harder to sidestep,” Khan wrote recently of the changes. The goal, he says, is not AI for its own sake, but to hopefully drive larger learning gains.

Overall, research on AI in education is nascent, but an early theme is that students often won’t use it for learning. “When given AI tutors, many students do not engage,” concluded a recent summary.

In another study released last week, Oreopoulos and colleagues sought to test a solution to this problem. In the same Tennessee school district, the researchers designed their own online math program. Some students were given access to an AI chatbot to help them work through problems. Students could only move on if they answered the questions correctly. In contrast to Khanmigo, the AI chatbot popped up without student prompting.

The students with access to AI moved less quickly through problems, but were more accurate in their answers. A week later when they were quizzed again on similar problems without access to AI, they were slightly more likely to respond correctly compared with a control group. This is preliminary evidence that in tightly controlled settings students can be coaxed into using AI well.

Of course, the challenge is that students spend most of their time outside of tightly controlled settings, and adolescents by their nature often seek the path of least resistance.

“The same technology that can be used as a good tutor, can also be used to make your life easier. But making your life easier equals less effort, less learning,” said Oreopoulos.

This story has been updated with a comment from Sal Khan.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Arizona court kills voucher ballot measure, leaving a national school choice debate unresolved

2026-08-18T23:19:16+00:00

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The Arizona Supreme Court effectively killed a ballot measure that would have brought significant oversight and an income cap to the state’s school voucher-like program in a ruling Tuesday.

The battle over the measure brought high drama to the desert — and exposed cracks forming between conservatives over oversight of the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, which families can use like vouchers on homeschooling, private school, and other expenses.

Those divisions are still in play: In the state superintendent’s race, Arizona voters will choose between two candidates who disagree sharply about whether the ESAs need more regulations. Yet the ballot measure’s failure demonstrates that enacting new rules for longstanding universal school choice programs can be a difficult task in the current climate — even if some voucher supporters express qualified support for those limits.

Arizona has long been a proving ground for the school choice movement. ESAs became open to all families four years ago. Some say the program represents a huge victory for families and triggered a much-needed explosion in new education models. To others, the accounts have become a boondoggle ripe for abuse.

Voucher opponents had hoped to tap those concerns about misspending and ask voters directly whether to impose new regulations. Conservative school choice supporters treated the proposal like an existential threat to educational freedom, and used every tool from competing ballot measures to signature petition challenges to thwart the effort.

The signature challenge ultimately carried the day. The state Supreme Court invalidated enough signatures that it appears impossible for the measure, known as the Protect Education Act, to make the ballot. The state teachers union, one of the measure’s key supporters, conceded defeat Tuesday.

While a large contingent of notable Republicans, including former Gov. Doug Ducey, cheered the demise of the Protect Education Act, officials behind it wrote that the court’s ruling “does not reflect what Arizona voters want” in a statement to The Arizona Republic.

Polling from late last year indicated that voters had an appetite for better management of the ESA program. What to do with that public sentiment divided school choice supporters.

The American Federation for Children — a staunchly conservative organization once chaired by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — backed a compromise measure intended to defang the Protect Education Act. It accused other pro-voucher groups of “playing Russian roulette” with Arizona children’s futures. Critics of the federation shot back that the group “burned a lot of bridges locally and nationally” through its efforts in Arizona.

Brian Jodice, a spokesperson for the organization, said in a statement after the state Supreme Court’s Tuesday ruling that the American Federation for Children would “continue working for real solutions.”

“It is wrong and reckless to risk 100,000 scholarships, every year, to keep this program unchanged and out of step with all other similar programs across the country,” he wrote.

But with the Supreme Court ruling, that gamble appears to have paid off, at least for now.

Robert Enlow, the president and CEO of EdChoice, said Arizona has led the way in “true parental autonomy.” Imposing any guardrails risks reversing that progress for the school choice movement, he said.

“Arizona is way out in front of everyone else,” he said. “That’s where it has the real national impact.”

The court’s ruling comes just weeks after the question of whether and how much to regulate ESAs emerged as a key issue in the election for the top education job in the state.

Arizona Superintendent Tom Horne, a strong school choice supporter, lost his reelection bid in the July Republican primary to state Treasurer Kimberly Yee.

Yee accused Horne of overstepping his authority because his office rejected some Empowerment Scholarship Account purchases by parents because it deemed them not educational expenses. Such decisions should be up to state lawmakers, she said. Horne shot back that Yee’s logic would allow people to use the accounts for suspect items, like Rolex watches.

Republican primary voters favored Yee in a race that became the most expensive election to date for state superintendent, according to The Beam, an investigative news outlet.

In an email to Chalkbeat, Yee wrote that she’d protect taxpayer dollars “with transparency and accountability.” She did not answer questions about whether she feels the program needs more oversight or specific new guardrails.

Yee will now face Democrat Teresa Ruiz — a former community college president — in November.

Ruiz, who wants to build up oversight of the program if elected, told Chalkbeat that management of the ESA program is the “number one” topic that’s come up when talking to prospective constituents.

“While there are, I’m sure, some appropriate educational expenses, we also know that the un-educational things have gone through,” she said.

With the ballot measure essentially dead, the superintendents’ race could become the next test for how voters feel about regulating school choice.

Passing such regulations through Republican-dominated legislatures has proved challenging. And at least one recent election suggests GOP politicians could pay a price for indicating interest in them.

In 2025, Florida Republicans considered legislation that would address financial mismanagement of the state’s voucher program, after an audit flagged millions of dollars that weren’t accounted for. They ultimately abandoned the effort. This year, lawmakers in West Virginia considered but did not advance legislation to try to contain the costs of vouchers.

In this year’s Iowa GOP gubernatorial race, U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra expressed concerns about private schools not accepting all students using the state’s education savings accounts — only for fellow Republicans to accuse him of betrayal. He lost his June primary election, despite getting President Donald Trump’s endorsement.

Meanwhile, the Democratic nominee in that election, Rob Sand, believes that calling for more regulations for vouchers is a winning issue.

He has conceded, however, that there’s “no chance” Iowa will repeal the program, since Republicans have firm control of the legislature.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org. Lily is on Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook.

The most advantaged students attend the best-funded colleges. Does it have to be this way?

2026-08-18T14:28:17+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

The prevailing philosophy of American higher education is simple enough: The best-funded universities ought to be reserved for the best-qualified students, who are largely from advantaged backgrounds.

Such is the reality described in a new study set to be released through the National Bureau of Economic Research in the coming weeks. The paper documents the all-encompassing stratification of American higher education. It is not simply that top students go to more selective colleges; it’s that those colleges spend far more on their students’ education. This is not just true of elite private universities; it applies to public colleges as well.

In practice, higher education’s pyramid-like structure means that the rich — both academically and financially — get richer through a well-funded college education. At the moment, higher education is under fire for what critics describe as equity and DEI efforts run amok. Yet its intensely unequal structure remains solidly in place.

The basic facts described in this new study — by Princeton’s Zachary Bleemer and UC Berkeley’s Jesse Rothstein — are not terribly surprising, but they are rarely laid out so starkly from top to bottom.

At hyper-elite private colleges, there are more students from the top 1% of family income than from the bottom 40%. At public flagship universities, students from the top 20% outnumber those from the bottom 80%. “The more selective the college, the higher-income are its students,” the study says. Those schools also, of course, enroll students with much higher test scores.

Young adults who don’t enroll in college at all tend to come from the least-advantaged families.

This income and academic stratification correlates neatly with the money spent on students’ education, Bleemer and Rothstein show. Elite private schools spend by far the most — often well over $50,000 per student on instruction — but the public system is also highly unequal. Selective public four-year colleges spend more than twice as much per student as community colleges.

This resource gap was not always so extreme; it grew substantially between 1980 and 2010.

The study relies on detailed data to connect students’ family income to their college about a decade and a half ago; there is little evidence this relationship has weakened in the intervening years.

Bleemer and Rothstein say this current arrangement reflects a “meritocratic consensus” — the belief that the quality of students’ college education should depend on their success in high school. This is strangely uncontroversial. In K-12 schools, educators and policymakers often make efforts to drive more support and resources to struggling students. In higher education, the prevailing, albeit usually unstated, belief is that such students deserve less support.

The result is that American higher education widens the inequality of opportunity that begins in childhood. This system is not simply the result of free choices in a free market; it is supported, subsidized, and, in the case of public universities, created by the government.

The study is descriptive in nature, but Bleemer and Rothstein eventually acknowledge their own thinking. “There is little economic evidence justifying the status quo on efficiency grounds, and substantial room for skepticism,” they conclude.

Rothstein tells me that he would like to see more funding for community colleges. Bleemer notes that selective schools can exist without such massive resource differences.

Some adherents to higher ed’s “meritocratic consensus” have insisted that less academically prepared students do not benefit from the better-funded education that more selective colleges have to offer. Yet research suggests this is simply not the case, and it would be rather strange if it were.

When choosing a school, “the one number that you want to look up is what is being spent on a student in the college or university,” Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby recently advised. This is a key reason why equity advocates in higher education have been desperate to get more low-income students into elite schools, albeit with limited success.

The result of the current system is not simply that some students don’t get to attend their dream colleges. It’s that their fallback options often provide a worse-quality education.

Yet efforts to break the “meritocratic consensus” have drawn fierce pushback. At the University of California system, faculty have complained about underprepared students slipping through the admissions sieve since standardized tests were dropped from consideration. The response, faculty and others insist, should be to keep such students out. Little attention is paid to where they would go instead.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

School funding’s surprising U-shape, the future of work, digital tests, and more: A Chalkbeat Ideas roundup

2026-08-11T15:04:09+00:00

Welcome to Chalkbeat Ideas. This is our semi-monthly roundup of interesting takes, tidbits, and links. Feel free to send along links and ideas for the next one.

America’s strange U-shaped school funding system

Conventional wisdom holds that property taxes create deep inequities in school funding between rich and poor school systems. Across the country as a whole, this is not true and hasn’t been for some time, concludes a recent Brookings Institution analysis.

In reality, American school funding is U-shaped, with high- and low-poverty school systems tending to spend more money than those in the middle. In the below graphic from the report, funding per student is broken down by poverty rates from low to high.

Click here to continue reading.

Q&A: The case against blanket screen-time limits in schools

2026-08-06T14:20:59+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

It’s a tough time to be an education technology enthusiast.

Ed-tech was once widely touted as key to improving learning, but these days many state officials, school leaders, teachers, and parents want to get students off screens in class.

Richard Culatta, the CEO of ISTE, a nonprofit that convenes and trains educators on using tech, has watched this furor grow with a combination of sympathy and alarm. In his telling, the tech backlash is understandable, but the solutions — blanket restrictions in some cases — are not. Echoing many advocates and companies, Culatta insists that schools not throw the ed-tech baby out with the bathwater. Yet he readily concedes there’s a lot of bathwater.

Incidentally, ISTE recently rebranded from the International Society for Technology in Education to the International Society for Transforming Education. Culatta, who’s led the organization for nearly a decade, says the name shift has been in the works for some time and is not a response to ed-tech’s brand crisis.

I’ve heard a lot recently from skeptics of ed-tech, which is why I wanted to talk to Culatta, who has emerged as a leading defender of the value of tech in schools. I was interested in Culatta’s take on why this backlash happened, how to tell good ed-tech from bad, and what role screens should play in early grades.

Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Photo of Richard Culatta

Why do you think there has been such an intense backlash to ed-tech in recent months?

You know, in some ways I’m surprised it’s taken this long. I was watching how we were managing technology in the wake of COVID, and we were not doing it very thoughtfully. When you start handing out devices very quickly without preparing teachers, without carefully selecting the tools, without monitoring them for quality, stuff starts to go off the rails.

The implication is that there has been a lot of bad ed-tech use, right? What does that look like?

People very quickly want to focus on the tools, on the screens, and it just doesn’t line up with what we see. It’s almost entirely about how the technology is used. In some cases, we have kids just clicking next through PowerPoint, and that’s terrible learning. That’s just the equivalent of a worksheet on a screen.

So I think we just need to have a moment where we go back and say ‘we did things wrong.’ Unfortunately, what we’re hearing are far less effective strategies. I mean, our friends in L.A. are doing the worst possible approach to trying to course correct.

[The Los Angeles school board recently approved limits on screen time, set by grade level. For instance, in fourth and fifth grades, students will be limited to 30 minutes per day. Before second grade, devices will generally not be used. School board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin recently explained the rationale behind this shift to me.]

What do you object to about what Los Angeles is doing?

If you have a technology that is not supporting learning, zero minutes should be used. And if you have cases where technology is being used in thoughtful ways, it should have more flexibility. It’s going to mean that all of the energy is spent on clocking and timing as opposed to actually training teachers.

Do you think first graders and kindergartners should be spending any amount of time on screens?

It depends. All technology use should be aligned to student needs and learning goals. The use cases where that makes sense for young students are fewer and far between. Banning rarely is a good strategy.

I saw, ironically, in L.A. a number of years ago, a great example of kindergartners practicing reading. Instead of doing these traditional book reports — that were just painful and boring — they were making videos explaining the words they were using. So lots of vocabulary repetition, lots of good use of words in context. Should it have been done for a very long time? No, but in this case it wasn’t.

I’m old enough to remember when there was incredible hype about the possibility of ed-tech driving substantial learning gains. Was ed-tech oversold?

I don’t think it was oversold. It was oversimplified, and so this idea that you could just put some software in front of a kid with no need for a teacher anymore — I mean, we’d hear stuff like that. What happens is when there are big sweeping statements like ‘oh technology will solve everything’ and then it doesn’t — of course it doesn’t — then people think technology is garbage, and we should ban it.

My colleague did a story recently about the sheer number of sales pitches from tech companies that a school district leader gets. And I’m sure every sales pitch came with, ‘oh we’re curriculum-aligned, we’re evidence-based.’

Why would we ever trust the company selling you the thing to tell you that?

Well, right, but then who do you trust? How do you know?

That is the job of education leaders. That is the job of teachers to know when it’s effective. In fairness, we do need to make it easier for schools to make those decisions. We have something that we’re piloting right now, which is called the EdTech Index. It is a database where we are collecting trusted third-party validations of tools and apps.

Do you think the growth of technology in schools over, say, the last decade has had a net positive effect on students?

In the cases where it’s been used in appropriate ways, the answer is yes. The challenge is that for every two schools that are doing this thoughtfully, there are two schools that are doing it in all the wrong ways. What you end up getting is results that are like, eh, doesn’t really make much of a difference. If you aren’t using it in a way that makes a significant difference, you’re guaranteed that it’s going to be distracting and limiting effective learning.

We have well-intentioned schools and educators, and if your theory is true, so many of them are using tech for ill rather than good — that’s a profound challenge.

Totally. I mean, you’re spot on. A follow-up question that you might ask is, well, even if it does make a difference in some places, just to avoid the risk, let’s just not use technology. And that would be reasonable if we didn’t care about our kids being able to get a job in the global economy.

But is it necessary to introduce those tools in, say, elementary school to prepare kids for a global economy?

100%. It’s not about the tools; it’s about behaviors. The behaviors need to happen over a long time. Being a healthy, contributing member of a digital world — that is a complex skill, just like learning to read and write, play an instrument, or play sports.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Who should go to college? More students may benefit than we think

2026-08-04T20:40:26+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

It’s well known that college-educated workers earn more money, on average, than those with just a high school diploma. And there are few middle-class jobs available for workers without a degree, as I found in a recent data analysis.

So does that mean more people should go to college?

The Fordham Institute’s Mike Petrilli is skeptical. Many people who don’t attend college “were nowhere near college ready at the end of high school,” he wrote in response to my piece. Sending academically underprepared students to college does them no favors, Petrilli continues. Only 40% or so of high school students have demonstrated college readiness, he says. Pushing the other 60% to college could just lead them to debt without a degree.

I was curious about this myself. Should college be limited to those who do relatively well in high school? To get a better sense, I dug into the research. The findings surprised me.

It is genuinely complicated to determine the value of college and who should attend. While degreed workers make more money, we don’t know if that’s because they went to college.

Fortunately, researchers have developed a clever strategy to see whether four-year college makes a difference: tracking students who just managed to get into college and comparing them to similar peers who didn’t get that opportunity.

An influential 2014 study by Yale University economist Seth Zimmerman focused on Florida International University, a large four-year public college that provided a sharp admissions advantage to students whose GPAs were above 3.0. Zimmerman compared students right above and right below that threshold. The intuition is that someone with a 3.01 GPA is essentially identical to someone with a 2.99 average, except one person receives an admissions edge and the other doesn’t. This creates a natural experiment.

The students who just managed to get into FIU were not academic standouts — far from it. Their SAT scores, just over 800 out of 1600, were at the 21st percentile of high school seniors planning to attend college. For many, if they didn’t get into FIU, they wouldn’t have gone to a four-year college at all.

Zimmerman found a clear advantage for students who got the opportunity to attend FIU. Roughly a decade later, those students earned 22% more than similar students who didn’t get in. These earnings gains were well worth the cost of tuition.

Only about half of these marginal FIU students went on to earn a bachelor’s degree within six years. By comparison, the national graduation rate for four-year nonprofit colleges is roughly two-thirds. The study isn’t able to distinguish the effects on graduates versus non-graduates. It can only speak to the average effect. It’s possible that many non-graduates did not benefit or were even harmed. But they may have developed skills in college that helped them in the future, even though they didn’t earn a degree.

This was one paper in one particular setting, but the findings have shown up in other contexts too.

A Georgia study found students who just got into the state’s four-year public university system eventually earned 17% more annually by age 30 than similar non-admitted students. These were students at about the 30th percentile of SAT performance.
Research in Massachusetts found that low-income students who just got into state colleges there received large economic benefits years later. In high school, these students’ test scores were slightly below the average for high school graduates.
A Texas paper, using test-score admissions cutoffs across 35 public colleges, found a clear economic edge for students who won admission to a four-year school.

These studies generally look at students who otherwise would have attended a two-year college rather than no college at all. A different Texas study showed a clear hierarchy: Students fared better in four-year colleges than two-year schools, but a two-year program was better than no college at all. The two-year college advantage was for students at roughly the 30th percentile of high school test performance in the state. (One wrinkle: Another recent study in the state found marginal students didn’t seem to benefit from transferring to a four-year college from a two-year school.)

This body of research should be interpreted with some degree of caution. It looks at specific places and specific groups of students, who typically entered college decades ago. The papers find positive effects on average, but they don’t imply that everyone benefited. The studies can’t speak to whether AI will change the value of a degree, as some predict. The research also doesn’t show whether students are developing skills in college that help them succeed or whether they are getting hired because employers use a college education as a signal of skill.

Still, these papers find that even students who don’t excel in high school often stand to gain from attending college. Many, perhaps most, of these students would not have been categorized as “college ready” by traditional benchmarks. If anything, the research suggests that some states have set college admissions cutoffs that are too high, not too low.

“Given the population of people who want to go, we would benefit from helping more of them go, at least somewhat,” says Zimmerman, the Yale professor.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

An alphabet without an F: AI slop seeps into Teachers Pay Teachers curriculum marketplace

2026-08-03T18:32:12+00:00

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The poster depicting famous inventions by Black figures throughout history should show the invention George Crum is widely credited with: the potato chip.

Instead, the picture labeled with Crum’s name shows a firefighter in an ominous gas mask next to a stop light. There are no potato chips to be found.

But there is a typo-ridden description of Crum that reads: “Created the popular crispy snack when a customer is polated thinner fried potatees.”

For $4, teachers can have the privilege of downloading that poster, a slideshow about Black inventors, and a seven-minute video from Teachers Pay Teachers, a marketplace for teachers to find lesson plans, classroom decor, activities, and more. The site, which rebranded as TPT in 2022, is education’s answer to Etsy.

For $1.99, they could also download an alphabet coloring worksheet missing the letter F. And for just $1.50, they could get a poster of U.S. presidents that uses an asteroid hurtling toward anti-slavery demonstrators to illustrate the idea that Martin Van Buren was resilient.

Teachers Pay Teachers is a platform used by 85% of pre-K-12 educators in the U.S., its parent company said in a 2023 press release. It has long been controversial, with some educators and curriculum developers casting doubt on the quality of resources up for sale. But it inspired trust in other teachers due to the premise baked into its name. Now that trust is eroding, and it’s because of something educators have noticed while shopping. Increasingly, some of Teachers Pay Teachers’ resources appear to be AI-generated.

Moreover, some of the AI-generated content that hasn’t been vetted very well includes obvious errors, slipshod graphics, and questionable information, according to a Chalkbeat review of material on Teachers Pay Teachers.

It’s the type of low-quality content commonly known as “AI slop.” And teachers say it’s turning up on TPT, which means some of it could end up in the classroom.

In an emailed statement, Paul Mishkin, CEO of IXL Learning, TPT’s parent company, wrote that the company uses “algorithmic tools to identify and demote stores associated with low-quality, AI-generated content.”

“These measures are already highly effective, such that AI-generated products account for a minuscule fraction of a percent of TPT’s sales,” Mishkin wrote.

TPT’s two decades in existence, some argue, is a sign that many school districts still aren’t arming educators with high-quality instructional material. The flood of what appears to be low-quality AI content may just further poison the well.

Teachers are expected to create a lot of material, sometimes on a time crunch or during the summer when they’re not paid, said Jeff Carpenter, an education professor at Elon University. That pressure to create instructional material leads them to turn to Teachers Pay Teachers or similar sites.

“They don’t have the time and energy to assess the quality,” Carpenter said. “They’re sort of drowning under the load of expectations on them, and so they think, ‘Well, this is a highly rated resource, and so I’m going to print it off and give it to my students without really looking at it.’”

AI fuels cottage industry of curriculum creators

Some of the tells of AI-generated content are relatively subtle.

When Elisa Greb, an eighth grade English teacher outside of Pittsburgh, is on the lookout for material made by AI, she watches for bulleted lists with bolded headings, for example.

Greb said she started noticing the proliferation of AI content about a year ago. Greb rarely turns to TPT for class content, but occasionally turns to it for grammar content, which can be one of the hardest topics to hook students’ interest.

“One of the greatest joys for me as a teacher is the creativity,” she said. “What really bothers me on something like TPT, where people are monetizing, is that they’re asking for your money for something that they didn’t actually create.”

Chalkbeat also spotted what look to be AI suggestions for titles that might help the resource appear prominently in search results, price suggestions, and even disclosures that content had been generated by AI.

But if AI-generated content on TPT sets off algorithmic red flags, it seems no one has told the cottage industry of content creators who advertise themselves as coaches for folks wanting to start a TPT shop.

In one YouTube video, a creator said that leveraging AI isn’t about replacing creativity, but “multiplying our efforts” to supply teacher resources online. Many of the coaches encouraging AI use also caution TPT creators to edit and watch for quality issues in AI-generated content.

Catharyn Shelton, a professor with Northern Arizona University, said teachers sharing content with other teachers is in principle a good idea — when the content is of good quality. But scaling up the model into a marketplace is often where the problems come in, incentivizing creators to build shops with thousands of pages of material and sacrifice quality in the process.

It’s easy to turn “to slop because AI is so good at making things sound really good,” she said. “Even if the actual content or ideas aren’t really there.”

‘I do use AI-assisted tools’

Chalkbeat reached out to a few TPT vendors selling what appeared to be AI-generated materials.

Jade Désautels, the creator behind The Garden of Art, the store that sold the Black inventors posters featuring George Crum, wrote that she became an educational resource creator after 15 years as a full-time teacher.

She declined an interview and did not directly acknowledge using AI, but wrote that she uses a “variety of digital tools as part of my creative process.” Désautels also wrote she reviews resources before publishing them.

In another instance, a set of posters about musical instruments in Black history included an image of a traditional African drum and the words “add a performer playing it in a lively village setting.” There is no performer or village in the image.

A user wrote in a review that the $4.28 posters were “poorly made” and “it was very obvious that AI was used.”

The creator of that resource, Achraf Zenmrouni, said over email that they had adjusted and improved the graphics after Chalkbeat inquired about the work. Zenmrouni wrote that “I use AI-assisted tools as part of my design and creative process,” but added they personally reviewed the material before it goes live.

A Chalkbeat reporter asked ChatGPT to respond to inquiries about supposed low-quality, AI-generated teacher resources as if it were a creator of those resources. In part, the AI wrote, “I do use AI-assisted tools as one part of my creative process.”

ChatGPT then added: It reviews the content before it’s published.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org. Lily is on Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook.

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.

How a years-long rise in teacher turnover reshaped American classrooms

2026-07-30T19:08:33+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

There was no single reason why Ryan Higgins decided to leave teaching.

It was a job he loved: invigorating, unpredictable, a chance to make the world a bit better. But several years into his career, Higgins, who taught high school social studies in the Fort Worth, Texas area, was increasingly frustrated.

For one, his salary — decent when he was fresh out of college in 2016 — felt stagnant and mediocre. He coached basketball and football, so his days often stretched from early morning to late evening. And “teacher appreciation week” began to feel borderline demeaning: You can wear jeans all week! There’s free pizza in the teachers’ lounge!

Then there was the time a parent complained after he chewed out and benched a member of the basketball team who was slacking off. The school’s assistant principal didn’t back Higgins up. Yes, maybe he had been a bit too tough, but he was also giving up his Saturdays, doing students’ laundry, and even driving the bus.

Ryan Higgins, during his teaching days, with a colleague.

“You’re running around like crazy trying to solve problems, and yet people who aren’t with you are always telling you what you need to do better,” Higgins says.

What finally pushed him out was the aftermath of the pandemic. Trying to effectively teach students over Zoom was all but impossible. Then when students returned to classrooms, they were breathtakingly behind academically and socially. Behavior was out of control. Parents, it seemed, were less trusting of teachers, too. “It felt like the walls were closing in,” he says.

Higgins left teaching in the summer of 2022. A member of the Army Reserve, he soon took an assignment overseas. Today, he’s going into his third year of law school. He sees himself as part of a “lost generation” of teachers.

The year Higgins left, more teachers departed public school classrooms in Texas than at any point since at least 2007, the earliest year with state data. This was not just a blip: From 2020 to 2025, the state lost 35,000 teachers who would have stayed in the classroom if the state had maintained its pre-pandemic turnover figures. That’s equivalent to nearly 10% of the current teacher workforce.

The pattern in Texas has repeated to varying degrees in states across the country, according to an extensive Chalkbeat analysis of data since 2019 spanning 21 states. Most of those states have experienced four to five straight years of elevated teacher turnover, compounding the losses year after year. High-poverty schools in particular were already having a hard time keeping teachers.

Even though turnover finally appears to be trending down, the consequences persist. Research has linked teacher churn to declines in test scores. At a moment when policymakers are seeking to understand America’s sluggish learning recovery, the loss of teachers and instability in schools deserves to be on the list of plausible contributors.

[See our entire analysis of teacher turnover across 21 states including detailed data from each state. You can also watch our online event about teacher turnover.]

A teacher turnover dip, then a sustained rise

There is no comprehensive national data on teacher exit rates. To fill this gap, I conducted an extensive state-by-state review, using a variety of sources.

Across most states, a pattern emerged: Compared with 2019, fewer teachers left the profession in the summer of 2020 when the economy was at a standstill due to the pandemic. But then teacher attrition began to rise sharply. Rates peaked in 2022 but typically remained elevated for the next couple years.

Only a couple of states in this analysis, Connecticut and Maryland, avoided any meaningful rise in turnover.

A spokesperson for the Texas Education Agency said the state has “experienced many of the workforce challenges seen nationwide, which is why teacher recruitment and retention remain a priority.” Texas, for instance, has expanded a merit pay program, which has helped retain effective teachers, according to a recent study.

High-poverty schools, which struggled with teacher churn before the pandemic, likely suffered the most from the turnover spike. In South Carolina, for instance, exit rates rose especially sharply at those schools. A number of states have reported increases in uncertified, emergency-certified, and inexperienced educators. Those teachers are typically concentrated in high-poverty schools.

It hasn’t just been teachers departing. In Alaska, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Texas, and Washington state principal attrition rose too. Turnover often has a cascading effect in schools. When a principal leaves, an assistant principal may take over, a teacher may become an assistant principal — and another classroom vacancy opens up.

Justin Wax became principal of a junior high school in southeast Louisiana in 2021. He was the third leader in three years. That made keeping staff harder since many were looking for stability at that moment. Most of the teachers who were at the school when he started are now gone. “You’re scraping the cream off of the top of all of the most veteran people,” Wax says. “There ends up being a vacuum.”

Turnover appears to be finally coming back down. In the 12 states with figures through last summer, rates were below post-pandemic highs, although some places have not fully returned to pre-pandemic levels.

Wax says he’s had his best year of retention recently and is well staffed going into this coming school year. He’s prioritized making his school a supportive community where teachers are given professional autonomy and backed up on student discipline issues. Today, surveys show that teacher stress has subsided from pandemic-era spikes. Most teachers are at least somewhat satisfied with their jobs.

More comprehensive recent data on turnover is not available because many states report figures with a significant lag. Other states don’t report numbers at all. And no state appears to have data yet for the share of teachers who have left this summer.

Teachers face worse behavior, stagnant pay, fewer perks

What drove the sharp increase in teacher exits?

Meghann Seril has been teaching elementary school in Los Angeles for 18 years. These days, she finds students’ behavior more challenging and their attention spans more limited. She’s seen many colleagues who struggled with classroom management leave in recent years.

“It has such a ripple effect because the administrator is focused on supporting those new teachers,” she says. “You’re working on putting out little fires all of the time.” In surveys, teachers often say that student behavior is their top source of stress, and many reported that behavioral issues spiked after school buildings reopened.

Meanwhile, many other professionals have received a valuable new perk since the pandemic: the ability to work from home. “Being a teacher is arguably the least flexible job around,” says Alex Baron, principal of a charter middle school in Washington, D.C. He suspects that’s made it difficult to recruit and retain teachers in his school.

At the same time, teacher salaries, never particularly high, have fallen in real dollars, as inflation soared and school officials used new funds to hire more staff rather than give teachers a raise. The salary gap between teachers and other college-educated professionals has grown in recent years.

Tyra Damm’s decision to leave teaching came down to money. Some of her colleagues with higher-earning spouses saw teaching as a nice-to-have second income. One called it “fun money.” Damm, who lives in the Dallas suburbs, did not have that luxury. She took up teaching in 2013, soon after her husband died of brain cancer. She figured it would provide a stable income with a parent-friendly schedule as she raised two young children.

She loved the job. Damm most recently taught middle school reading and writing to gifted and talented students and was named secondary teacher of the year in her district in 2019. But with only anemic raises and the price of everything rising, “I just couldn’t pay the bills anymore,” she says.

When the American Heart Association, which she had done freelance writing for, offered her a full-time job with remote work and higher pay, Damm felt like she had no choice but to take it. She left teaching in 2024.

“I miss it every day,” she says.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

As more teen boys turn to sports betting, financial literacy teachers rush to show gambling’s real odds

2026-07-29T19:17:45+00:00

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Teenage boys are coming to school with new vocabulary words: over-under, parlay, and prediction markets.

They’re not just talking about gambling. They’re placing bets and hanging their hopes on the outcomes of football games.

Data obtained by Chalkbeat from GoGuardian, an education software company that provides institutions tools to block and restrict certain webpages, shows that the rate of sites blocked in its gambling, betting and fantasy sports category has increased nearly 30% since the company started tracking in 2022, from a low of 13.48 blocks per 1,000 students to 17.4 this year.

The company blocks roughly 140,000 attempts to access such sites on average every month — although that’s still a tiny fraction of the 86 million monthly attempts to access blocked content.

Teachers said they have seen a fixation with gambling take hold in their students, who show little awareness of gambling’s risks.

This surge in gambling has prompted some educators to bring in new concepts like sports betting to financial literacy classrooms. Massachusetts is developing a sports betting curriculum, and other states have added gambling awareness to their academic standards. But teachers also said they are still trying to get a handle on a growing problem.

“I don’t think anybody has a grasp on this problem,” said Matt Pierson, associate director with the Nebraska Council on Economic Education. “Now that we can gamify it with an app and make it so incredibly easy, the barrier to entry is gone.”

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for sports betting to become widely legal in 2018. A Siena University poll found 27% of Americans in February reported that they had an active online sportsbook account, up from 19% in 2024.

Though gambling is banned in most states for anyone under 21, teens have also found their way into sportsbooks, teachers said.

Richard Bryant, executive director of the Kentucky Financial Empowerment Commission, a nonprofit that offers financial literacy education across the state, said some students believe sports betting is equivalent to making a smart investment. In a 2025 NerdWallet survey, 31% of sports bettors said they viewed gambling as an investment.

“This is so detrimental to these kids’ financial literacy, where they’re trying to start out in the world, get a job, start earning money,” Bryant said.

Pierson said he can tell right away that teenagers, especially boys, are betting. In classroom visits where he makes financial literacy presentations, “they have the vocabulary of someone who’s very into sports betting,” he said. To students seeking instant money, sports betting can seem like a feasible option: If they monitor scores and watch enough, they can win.

And that’s where financial literacy education around gambling often starts: teaching students that life is unpredictable, Pierson said.

In one game, Pierson has students guess how many paper balls a student can throw into a trash can in 30 seconds over several rounds, to show the unpredictable nature of sports betting.

“These are human beings you’re betting on,” he said. “Have any of you had a bad day?”

Pierson and his colleagues have authored a three-lesson unit on sports betting and gambling for Federal Reserve Education, a collaborative among economics educators.

But like sex education, teachers are walking a fine line between stressing abstinence or a more moderate position — that it’s OK to gamble if you understand the risks and do so in moderation.

In Diane Thole’s financial literacy class at School of the Future in New York City, students have looked at the toll gambling stress can take on the body and mind — consequences as dramatic as heart and sleep problems. And she tries to get students thinking about wise investing, saving for retirement, and repaying student loans.

But she doesn’t say it’s not OK to gamble.

“I’m not going to be like, ‘hey, let’s all download an app and bet together,’” she said. “But you do have to think about the realism of the situation.”

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org. Lily is on Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook.

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.

When teachers lack confidence in math, their students fall behind, a new study shows

2026-07-28T14:22:02+00:00

Last call to sign up for our next Chalkbeat Ideas online event, which will feature new data on the number of teachers leaving the profession over the last several years. We’ll also have a rich conversation about what to make of this data. Hope to see you Thursday at noon ET.

Plenty of students have math anxiety. It turns out some educators have their own anxiety about teaching the subject, a new study finds. And that appears to affect their students — especially those already struggling in the subject.

The recently published paper draws on an unusually detailed survey of teachers in Indiana. They were asked how much they agreed with statements like “Teaching mathematics does not intimidate me at all” and “Of all the subjects, mathematics is the one I worry about teaching.”

Based on those answers, the researchers created a “math teaching anxiety” score for over 3,000 educators who taught math in grades three through eight. Those grades are when state testing occurs, allowing the researchers to link teachers to their students’ progress.

The good news: Math anxiety was not all that prevalent among elementary and middle school teachers in Indiana. Just over half were highly confident teaching the subject, and nearly 40% reported middling confidence. That left 11% of teachers with significant apprehension about teaching math.

New teachers were especially likely to lack confidence, perhaps reflecting broader struggles in the classroom, the researchers found. Early-grade educators also tended to have a bit less assurance in math. This makes sense since the study included middle school teachers, many of whom specialize in the subject.

Math-anxious teachers were not evenly spread across classrooms. Students with disabilities, low-achieving students, and students from lower-income families were more likely to have such teachers. It’s also possible that teachers became less confident in their ability because they taught more students who struggled in math.

Then the researchers asked the next obvious question: Do students learn less when they’re taught by anxious math teachers? In short, yes.

The differences in learning rates were real but modest. An average student’s scores dipped by about one percentile when taught by a less confident math teacher, the researchers found. The harm could grow if students had multiple anxious math teachers in a row, the study speculated. Girls, Asian American students, and English learners seemed to be affected a bit more severely by having an anxious math teacher.

The study paints a particularly troubling picture of math instruction for students already struggling in the subject. They were more likely to have an anxious teacher, and when they did, their learning suffered more. In other words, the students who needed the most help in math were often taught by teachers least equipped to provide it.

NaYoung Hwang, the study’s lead author and a professor at the University of New Hampshire, said there are a number of potential explanations for the results. Math-anxious teachers may have spent less time on the subject, explained math concepts less clearly, or even made their own math errors. Perhaps their own ambivalence and anxiety came through.

“When teachers are genuinely excited about the content, students tend to engage much more,” Hwang said.

The study partially validates the long-standing concern that elementary school teachers, at least some of them, are not sufficiently equipped to teach math. A National Council on Teacher Quality report concluded that most elementary teacher preparation programs don’t spend enough time on core math content.

The study also offers an insight relevant beyond math instruction.

Teachers who lacked confidence teaching math had correctly self-diagnosed their own weakness. School administrators should keep that in mind when planning professional development and support for educators. Perhaps they should start by asking teachers themselves what they need to get better.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Education Department limits civil rights investigations into racial disparities in schools

2026-07-23T21:19:12+00:00

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Schools that discipline students of color at higher rates than white students won’t be in violation of federal civil rights law for that disparity alone, the U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday.

The Education Department’s regulatory changes prohibit the agency’s civil rights investigators from using broad demographic statistics — such as data about discipline, Advanced Placement class enrollment, and school admissions — to demonstrate discrimination.

“A child is so much more than a number in a data set,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey wrote in a press release. “The left’s notion of ‘equity’ should never prevent teachers from keeping their classrooms and students safe.”

The change is part of a wider effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to eliminate what’s called disparate impact regulations across federal agencies. The Trump administration says President Barack Obama’s administration wielded such data improperly in discrimination investigations.

Experts and civil rights advocates decried the agency’s decision to abandon what they described as an important tool in civil rights investigations, one that they said can help illustrate more subtle and even unintentional systemic discrimination on the basis of race or national origin. Critics of the move also said the department’s announcement exaggerated the impact of data on such investigations.

“This kind of severs the guardrails that protect from those scenarios in which unjust, unnecessary burdens literally cause kids to face discrimination at school,” said Michael Pillera of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and a former civil rights attorney for the Education Department.

Civil rights advocates also rebuked the Education Department’s lack of process in making the regulatory change. The agency bypassed some rulemaking procedures, which let the public weigh in before adopting a rule, said Shiwali Patel, senior director of education justice at the National Women’s Law Center.

The department’s Office for Civil Rights, which investigates civil rights complaints about federally funded schools, has been at the center of a lot of upheaval. The office has been decimated by layoffs — some of which were then rescinded — and the agency announced earlier this summer that the Justice Department would play a role in some aspects of civil rights enforcement in schools.

Experts said civil rights investigations have often looked for unlawful discrimination through two lenses, either differential treatment or disparate impact. Differential treatment occurs if a student is intentionally subject to different treatment based on their race. Disparate impact applies to policies that may seem neutral, but impacts certain groups disproportionately.

“It helps us kind of shine a light on what are the hidden inequities in our systems that our public policy or our practices writ large might have inadvertently perpetuated,” said Amy Loyd, CEO at All4Ed, a nonprofit education advocacy group.

Discipline has often been central to arguments around disparate impact. In a 2014 letter to schools, the Obama administration laid out guidance that called statistical analysis of disciplinary data “an important indicator of potential violations.” The first Trump administration rescinded that letter in 2018.

Conservatives have argued the practice of linking disparate impact to civil rights violations or discrimination is flawed. In 2018, Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute said that in addition to legal questions, the approach outlined in the 2014 letter “will tie the hands of teachers and school administrators when it comes to maintaining discipline, possibly leading to greater disorder and even violence.”

Jonathan Butcher of the Heritage Foundation said just because statistics may show a certain policy disproportionately affects one group doesn’t make the policy wrong.

“I don’t think the answer to that is adjusting policies so that we get the numbers we want,” he said.

But civil rights investigations don’t solely hinge on data, said Robert Kim, an attorney and the executive director of the Education Law Center. The numbers often represented a starting point in an investigation, and schools had the opportunity to explain statistical differences.

“You would never lurch to a conclusion of discrimination subject to government-imposed remedy without looking further at all,” he said.

Discipline isn’t the only area where officials have used statistics to look for possible discrimination in education. The Office for Civil Rights, in previous administrations, had also cited disparate impact in the following investigations:

Advanced class access: In 2016, the Education Department cited a significant disparity between the proportion of white students and Black and Hispanic students identified as advanced learners in the Madison Metropolitan School District in Madison, Wisconsin. Nearly 40% of white middle school students were considered advanced, compared with 9% of Hispanic and 6% of Black middle schoolers. The district agreed to a settlement to review its advanced programs, among other changes.
Special education placement: A 2013 investigation letter noted that Black students were overrepresented in special education in the Iowa City Community School District. About 29% of students in special education programs were Black, even though they made up 17% of the district’s overall population in the 2012-13 school year. The district agreed to review its screening processes and get assistance from experts.
Admissions policies: A 2014 letter noted that some schools in a Texas charter school network enrolled a significantly lower proportion of English learners than local public schools. The charter school network, Harmony Public Schools, agreed to review and modify its enrollment processes.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org. Lily is on Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook.

70 years after Brown, schools remain separate by race and class. One advocate says integration still matters.

2026-07-21T21:33:12+00:00

Ary Amerikaner is on a mission to make America integrate schools again.

A lawyer and education policy advocate who worked in the Obama Education Department, Amerikaner cofounded and leads an organization called Brown’s Promise. The landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education prohibited legally mandated segregation.

The group is hoping to influence the national conversation, while also making direct change in a handful of specific states.

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New data reveals the depth of the teacher turnover crisis. Join Chalkbeat’s virtual event.

2026-07-17T17:22:57+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Teachers are the bedrock of schools, but the state of the profession remains fragile.

Chalkbeat dug into exclusive new data that shows teacher turnover was not just a short-lived disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic. In many places, more teachers have been leaving the classroom for the past four to five years, with real consequences for schools, students, and the educators who remain.

RSVP to join our virtual event on July 30, where we’ll share our data analysis for the first time.

The cumulative toll has been substantial: tens of thousands of lost educators above and beyond what was normal prior to the pandemic. When many teachers leave the classroom, the whole school community is affected, and student achievement often declines.

Still, the story is not all bleak. Many teachers who remain say they like their jobs and value their colleagues. In some places, turnover rates are beginning to come down.

So what does the latest data tell us about the teaching profession now? And what might help stabilize the teacher workforce?

Join Chalkbeat for a free virtual event, “A profession under pressure: Unpacking new data on teacher turnover,” on Thursday, July 30, from noon to 1 p.m. ET.

Chalkbeat editor Matt Barnum will share new data on teacher exit rates and lead a conversation with Los Angeles teacher Meghann Seril and Brown University researcher Matthew Kraft about what the numbers reveal, what teachers are experiencing, and what schools can do next.

RSVP to join the conversation and submit your questions for our panelists.

Caroline Bauman is the deputy managing editor for growth and community at Chalkbeat. Reach out at cbauman@chalkbeat.org.

Why digital tests are helping keep Chromebooks in classrooms

2026-07-16T20:40:07+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Even some educators skeptical of technology say they can’t go cold turkey on Chromebooks. Why? Because standardized testing is now widely done via computer.

“Third grade is the first year of testing, and we wouldn’t want that to be the first time kids are getting exposed to devices,” Los Angeles school board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin told me recently, explaining why the district isn’t banning screens after first grade.

Similarly, Baltimore cut back on tech in early grades, but will continue to provide devices to third graders because of testing, the Banner reported earlier this year. A North Carolina superintendent also said the district must maintain some tech to prepare students for assessments. “But if I had the choice, I’d say bubble sheets please,” Stan Winborne, the superintendent of Granville County Public Schools, told the Wall Street Journal.

In other words, digital testing has had the unintended consequence of promoting tech-powered instruction. This raises a pointed question that more schools and policymakers may soon have to grapple with: Should the mode of testing be driving key instructional decisions?

Scott Marion, a psychometrician at the Center for Assessment, isn’t convinced that there should be a broad tech rollback. But he says it’s concerning when assessment alone is shaping pedagogy. “I don’t like when people do things just for testing purposes,” he says.

Standardized testing has become increasingly digitized over the last couple decades for the same reason many things have: convenience. Instead of massive sheaves of paper shipped to and from schools, tests can be done on devices, which are plentiful these days. Online tests were also promoted as a way to more precisely measure student learning since questions can adapt to student skill level.

A downside, though, is that internet outages and other tech glitches can derail testing, as recently occurred in New York and has repeatedly happened in Tennessee.

Meanwhile, in the last several months, a remarkable backlash to tech in schools has swept the country. Some local school leaders and teachers have cut back on screen time. They’ve been able to move so quickly because there are few school tech mandates — except through testing. The federal government requires math and reading tests in grades three through eight; the format of those tests is set by states. Local leaders don’t control this.

Some research shows online testing can affect how well students perform. “There is a learning curve” to digital testing, says Marion, although he suspects that these days it’s not that steep.

Jared Cooney Horvath — a researcher, consultant, and ed-tech critic — argues that brief practice with online assessment is enough to prepare students. “Just because digital testing is the new norm, it does not follow that schooling needs to be redesigned around this format,” he wrote recently on his blog.

It’s an open question how much tech familiarity students need for such tests, especially in early grades. Regardless, perception appears to be holding some districts back from bigger tech reductions. “We want to limit screen time,” one Texas superintendent told a local news outlet. “We also know that we have to give students the opportunity to learn the skill of using technology, so that they can use it to demonstrate learning.”

States may also have an incentive to keep tech in their classrooms if officials think it can help boost scores on online tests. Although the federal NAEP exams don’t have formal stakes attached, state leaders are eager to use scores to claim success of their policies. In 2018, after NAEP tests went digital, Louisiana’s state chief complained that students there might have seen scores drop because they were unfamiliar with computers. (NAEP officials said then this was carefully accounted for.)

Could states go back to paper-and-pencil tests if they wanted? Sure, though it would add logistical challenges and perhaps costs. Whether it’s worth it depends on what you think of general tech use in the classroom. The evidence at this point is ambiguous and in the eye of the beholder.

But with the ed-tech backlash showing no signs of slowing down, digital testing could become the next target.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Iowa school districts quietly agreed to new limits on undocumented students’ course access

2026-07-15T18:31:12+00:00

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Most Iowa school districts have quietly agreed to exclude undocumented high school students from certain federally funded career and technical education programming, according to records obtained by Chalkbeat.

The move follows the Trump administration’s controversial interpretation of a 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Plyler v. Doe, guaranteeing children a free K-12 education regardless of immigration status. Trump officials argue that the ruling protects only a “basic public education,” but not “postsecondary” education. That distinction affects high school students as dual enrollment and career training programs have become increasingly common.

The Iowa records reveal how Trump has made notable headway limiting the educational rights of immigrants without legal permission to be in the country and in chipping away at Plyler. Iowa is at least the second state under Republican control to adopt such a policy — Virginia did so but then changed course after electing a new Democratic governor.

“There is a very strong argument that Plyler as written forbids what Iowa is doing,” said Aaron Tang, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. Yet, he said, there’s a plausible counterargument, and the conservative Supreme Court might well agree with this novel interpretation, if the issue were to reach the high court.

Tang said that if the Trump administration’s interpretation wins out it will be difficult to determine what constitutes a “basic public education.” Does calculus class? What about precalculus?

It’s not clear how many, if any, students in Iowa or elsewhere have been affected by this provision. Schools don’t typically ask students about their immigration status so there’s no simple way to know who to exclude.

Trump pushes limits on undocumented students’ educational rights

Last year, the Trump administration announced a sweeping new legal interpretation of a federal law on unauthorized immigrants’ access to public benefits. States were not immediately required to follow this interpretation, but the Education Department could take action to enforce it.

The Iowa Department of Education soon said that under the new rules undocumented students should be kept out of federally funded early college experiences and community college classes “even if the course occurs at the high school.” (This restriction does not apply to concurrent enrollment courses that high schools use to meet basic course offering requirements under state law.)

The state soon began requiring school systems and community colleges to agree to these new terms in order to access federal funding for career and technical education.

The vast majority of Iowa school districts have done so, either directly or through a CTE consortium that they are a part of, according to the records obtained by Chalkbeat. A handful of systems have not submitted reimbursement requests recently, so they have not agreed to those terms, the records indicate. Heather Doe, a spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Education, said the state has not denied any schools funding over the issue.

Among other things, Iowa schools have used CTE dollars, known as Perkins funding, to help students attain industry-recognized credentials in a variety of fields.

It is not clear how school systems could enforce these new restrictions on undocumented students or if they have any intention of doing so. “The Iowa Department of Education does not require the reporting of immigration status but rather confirms the institution’s awareness of federal funding restrictions,” Doe said.

Spokespeople for a number of Iowa-based immigration and Latino advocacy groups did not respond to inquiries about whether any student has been denied programming under this new rule. None of several large school districts in the state responded to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Iowa superintendents’ association said it has not heard concerns or questions from members about the new rule.

A federal judge has halted enforcement of the federal legal interpretation in a number of states where Democratic officials have challenged its legality. Iowa is not one of them.

A U.S. Department of Education spokesperson downplayed the likelihood of taking action against states or schools that didn’t comply, saying the agency was focused on “litigation developments rather than on patchwork enforcement” of the guidance.

Still, confusion remains about the policy. On a recent call hosted by the Trump administration for state CTE and adult education officials, at least two people asked for clarification about the current status of the immigration rule, according to an excerpt of the chat obtained by Chalkbeat.

Officials on the call did not respond to those questions, according to a transcript of the conversation.

The Trump administration’s actions here are a small part of a massive campaign to deport unauthorized immigrants and restrict the public benefits available to those who remain. For instance, Trump and a number of Republican governors have prevented undocumented students from receiving in-state tuition at public universities in a number of states.

At the same time, conservatives have been strategizing about how to undermine and reverse the Plyler ruling. Earlier this year, state legislators in Tennessee seriously considered a law meant to challenge the ruling, but the legislation ultimately died.

This story has been updated to clarify that Iowa’s restriction does not apply to courses used by schools to meet certain basic course offering requirements.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Test scores have plunged, but voters aren’t making schools a top political issue

2026-07-14T20:44:41+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

While running for governor of California, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan was eager to talk about the challenges in the state’s public schools. He even compared California unfavorably to Louisiana and Mississippi, which have recently made gains on national exams. “With all of our progressivism, all of our resources, we are failing far too many of our kids,” Mahan said at one point. Few other candidates prioritized education during the campaign.

But Mahan’s pitch didn’t seem to resonate much with California voters. He received less than 4% of the vote in last month’s primary.

Many factors go into election results, but the limited traction Mahan received is a neat encapsulation of a broader phenomenon. The unprecedented recent declines in American students’ test scores have barely registered politically.

“Most voters don’t really care very much,” says Vladimir Kogan, a political scientist at Ohio State University. Perhaps that’s why most politicians aren’t prioritizing the issue, at least during political campaigns.

A recent Gallup poll found that just 2% of Americans ranked education as the country’s most pressing challenge. While most people say they’re dissatisfied with the country’s public schools, a strong majority of parents are reasonably happy with their own child’s school.

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Democrat, has sought to make education a bigger political issue by arguing that his own party has not done enough to improve schools. This pitch has drawn a great deal of attention from journalists, including me, but so far has not drawn much interest from regular voters. In a potential presidential primary, Emanuel is polling between 0%-2%.

In Colorado, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet campaigned to be an “education governor.” The former superintendent of Denver Public Schools, Bennet presided over notable gains in student outcomes there. Tellingly, though, the campaign did not focus on education, and Bennet was upset in the primary by Attorney General Phil Weiser.

In Iowa, Democratic candidate for governor Rob Sand has successfully put education at the center of the race by offering a sharp critique of taxpayer funding for private schools. In a recent interview with me, he was less specific on how he would improve public schooling. Despite being a Democrat in a red state, Sand has led in a number of early polls.

In general, most nationally prominent Democrats don’t appear eager to talk about the state of learning in U.S. schools. Yet voters don’t seem to mind. The party has held a clear edge on education in most polling for the last few years, including several recent surveys.

On the other hand, President Donald Trump has been happy to talk about perceived failings of the country’s public schools, including falling test scores. Still, the energizing focus of Trump’s campaign and now presidency has not been to raise achievement but to limit DEI and close the Education Department. (Officials suggest this will help improve schools, but haven’t spelled out how moving the same programs to different federal agencies would do so.)

Unlike policy wonks, Americans may not be all that focused on test scores. In one poll, parents ranked test scores as the least important measure among several for judging their children’s success in school. In school board elections, researchers have found that voters don’t seem to weigh tests heavily when deciding whether to reelect incumbents.

In 2024, Massachusetts held a referendum on whether to allow students to graduate high school without passing a standardized test. Critics across the political spectrum argued this would exacerbate the achievement issues facing the state, yet voters still backed the measure overwhelmingly.

Americans’ seeming nonchalance has come despite the substantial media attention to the country’s achievement woes. Some news stories even offer a clear nudge to voters and politicians that they should care more. “What happened to learning as a national priority?” pointedly asked a New York Times essay last year.

There has also been no shortage of policy advocates, nonprofit executives, and educational researchers clamoring to make this a bigger issue.

Here at Chalkbeat we’ve published dozens of pieces on the state of learning. I’ve been writing about the potential and the reality of learning loss since March 2020. There’s a reason for this focus: Test scores aren’t perfect measures, but they tell us something meaningful about how well American students are learning basic skills.

To be clear, politicians have not been entirely indifferent to the learning challenges. Some governors and legislators have made a number of moves designed to bolster achievement. In particular, they’ve banned cellphones in school and promoted the science of reading, often on a bipartisan basis.

But it’s certainly true that the quality of American education is no longer the center of national political debates in the way it once was. The 1983 report, “A Nation at Risk,” turned school performance into a national issue for the next few decades. In 2000, voters ranked education as the number one issue in some polls. Nearly one third of all presidential ads that cycle were about education, according to a recent study.

By contrast, a quarter century later, “federal education politics is now increasingly detached from the widely recognized challenge that helped sustain bipartisan action: improving student outcomes,” wrote political scientists in the study. They find that both parties’ platforms have in recent years steered away from a focus on standards and accountability, which were once staples.

What’s changed? Political polarization may have given politicians less of an incentive to appeal to moderate voters, which a commitment to education reform once served to do. Media fragmentation and distrust might have limited the influence of alarming news stories describing learning declines. Grade inflation could have reduced parents’ demand for reform. Perhaps other pressing issues have simply overtaken education.

There may also be a chicken and the egg issue. If more politicians were talking about learning, maybe more voters would care. Or perhaps those who have talked about it have failed to offer solutions that most voters find compelling.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Anthropic unveils Claude for Teachers, joining OpenAI and Google in race to dominate classroom AI

2026-07-14T15:00:00+00:00

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Anthropic, one of the world’s most prominent artificial intelligence companies, is launching a version of its AI-powered assistant Claude for teachers, entering a race by technology companies to infuse AI into education.

Anthropic boasts that its product can incorporate academic standards from all 50 states, and teachers can use it to help devise lesson plans, personalize instructional materials to students, and harness data to improve instruction, according to a company news release.

Claude for Teachers joins Google, OpenAI, and Khan Academy — among others — in marketing AI products specifically to K-12 educators. The new product launched Tuesday and is available for free for verified educators in the U.S. It will also be piloted in Detroit Public Schools Community District for a study on educator well-being and practice.

Claude’s formal arrival into the classroom comes during a complicated moment at the intersection of technology and education. The American Federation of Teachers, the Trump administration, and Bill Gates have all encouraged educators to adopt AI. But a parent-led uprising against technology’s classroom presence is simultaneously gaining momentum, prompting some of the nation’s largest school districts to rethink how much time students spend in front of screens, as well as the contracts they’ve signed with huge players in ed tech.

Drew Bent, education lead for Anthropic, said that teachers using Claude’s educator product could, for example, pull in a student’s past assessment data and assignment data, along with past lesson plans, and ask Claude to build lesson plans for individual students based on that data — all while they’re sleeping.

In developing Claude for Teachers, Bent said Anthropic staff often heard that while teachers are already using AI to generate lesson plans, the plans generated were often detached from the content teachers actually needed to address. Anthropic’s tool will help teachers save time and toil less to improve student outcomes, he said.

“There’s a lot of evidence of what works well for teachers in terms of aligning with high-quality instructional materials, formative assessments, differentiated instruction,” he said. “But of course, if you have 30 students in your class, you’re not able to do all of that.”

Bent said Detroit was already using other Claude products, and in a “human-centric” way that impressed Anthropic, leading to the pilot program in the district that will start next school year. Anthropic will train teachers at a handful of schools in Claude for Teachers, and evaluate how the product may shape teaching practices in the district.

While AI companies have been eager to cement the technology’s status as a classroom staple, tech giants likely have a long way to go to quiet skeptics. Student-facing AI has raised questions about cheating and so-called cognitive offloading, a reference to the reliance on AI to complete tasks instead of using critical thinking skills.

Bent emphasized that Anthropic is focusing largely on teachers, and that most K-12 students can’t access the company’s Claude assistant, due to an age restriction for anyone under 18.

Daniel Buck, a research fellow at the right-leaning think tank American Enterprise Institute, argued in a March blog post that if teachers outsource work to AI, “don’t be surprised when classroom community and academic outcomes rapidly deteriorate.”

Skeptics have also raised questions about student privacy in using AI, such as the risks they run when entering personal information into large language models such as Claude.

Anthropic is working with the American Federation for Teachers on aligning the product’s privacy practices with what the labor union has said will become a “gold standard” in best practices around safety, according to the news release.

Among the privacy features in Claude for Teachers: It won’t use conversations between the AI assistant and teacher accounts to train its AI, student information will be protected in a manner built to comply with the federal law governing student privacy, and privacy terms of service are written without jargon so teachers can understand what they’re signing up to use.

“It’s important that Anthropic is committing to these principles in their new Claude for Teachers — a tool designed by and for educators to assist them instructionally and hopefully give them more time for the human relationships at the heart of learning,” wrote AFT President Randi Weingarten in the company’s press release.

Weingarten has been walking a tightrope when it comes to AI. She’s called for a complete ban on student-facing AI in elementary grades while promoting teacher training in the technology. Just a day before calling for the ban, she toured a Newark school to witness Khanmigo, an AI chatbot from Khan Academy, in action.

While AFT is working with OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic on privacy standards and AI training for educators, it is notably not working with Google, which has also developed its own AI training geared to teachers.

Utah’s state education board recently made a deal with the tech giant to bring Google’s AI, Gemini, to every K-12 school in the state, promising personalized instruction tools for educators.

It’s not yet clear whether one AI product reigns supreme in schools, but more teachers overall are using AI. Around 61% of teachers surveyed by Education Week reported in 2025 that they use the technology in some capacity, compared with 32% in 2024.

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

Trump administration: Long-delayed data crucial to understanding America’s schools is coming soon

2026-07-10T18:58:56+00:00

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Did student behavioral issues worsen after the pandemic? How many students have been suspended or expelled in recent years, and what proportion of those students have disabilities? How many enroll in Advanced Placement courses — and where?

The federal data that could help answer these questions is now six months late. It’s not entirely clear what the hold up is, but it’s one of many data sets that the federal government hasn’t updated amid widespread layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education.

Researchers, advocates, and civil rights attorneys say the Office for Civil Rights data for the 2023-24 school year is critical, not only because it provides a national picture around pressing education issues such as discipline, but because it also digs into district by district data in a consistent way.

The Education Department estimated it would be available to the public by December 2025. In an interview with Chalkbeat reporters in late June, Assistant Secretary Kimberly Richey, said the release of the national civil rights data will come “later this summer.”

And the department appears to have already reviewed the data. A press release Friday cited the unreleased 2023-24 numbers as reason to open more than a dozen investigations into school districts, because their submissions to the data collection “contained responses that suggest that districts might not be addressing staff on student sexual misconduct appropriately.”

That’s just one possible use for the Civil Rights Data Collection, or CRDC, which the department typically conducts every two school years.

The information represents a wellspring of statistics about a variety of important topics. The CRDC has long been a tool for proponents of school equity to understand how well students of color, students with disabilities and other historically disadvantaged groups are faring in schools across the country, particularly when it comes to expulsions, suspensions and arrests.

While some states collect some of this data, it’s not always consistent or readily accessible to the public. Jennifer Rainville, an education attorney with the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center, said in her state, disciplinary data isn’t publicly broken down by disability status. Parents can make a public records request, but few might take that extra step.

Rainville often cites statistics from the last batch of data, including that South Carolina suspends more preschool students than any other state, based on the most recent CRDC. Seeing disciplinary actions broken down by race and disability status helps inform broader policy and bolster arguments for reform, she said.

The last time the data was released was by the Biden administration in 2023, with numbers from the 2020-21 school year.

“We are disciplining kids at a high rate, and so it’s important to know what those kids look like,” she said. “Having the breakdown of that is important to know exactly where we’re falling short, right, because we are falling short.”

Academics also rely on the data due to its consistency. It is “the only source of information” covering every school and district in the nation using the same definitions, said Daniel Losen, senior director for education at the National Center for Youth Law.

“It’s vitally important,” he said. “It really gives you a good sense of what’s going on.”

A lot has changed in education since the last data collection, including the aftermath of the pandemic, a rise in school cell phone bans, and a continued plunge in academic achievement. Researchers are particularly interested in disciplinary data from the years immediately after students returned in-person, in which teachers reported a surge in disruptive behavior.

While the 2020-21 data showed suspensions and bullying had plunged, it reflected a time when about 88% of schools were providing a combination of in-person and remote instruction due to the pandemic. In 2020, the Education Department delayed the CRDC scheduled for the 2019-20 and moved it to 2020-21.

“There are lots of really basic questions that we have limited insight into, because we haven’t gotten any data since really the times that schools were, you know, deep in the weeds of the pandemic,” said Erica Frankenberg, an education professor at Penn State.

Advocates are watching not only for the data’s release but for how the administration might interpret the numbers. In an executive order last year, President Donald Trump discouraged schools from considering whether students of color are subjected to disproportionate levels of discipline.

The Office for Civil Rights, which administers the data, has been at the center of a flurry of action. The department announced in June that some of the work in that office would be shifted to the Department of Justice, as part of an interagency agreement. The agency has been slowly shifting more and more work out of the department.

However, in announcing the agreement, a senior department official said civil rights data collection would continue under the Education Department.

Erica Meltzer and Matt Barnum contributed reporting.

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

Teachers in Michigan school district can pick from 32 phrases or face legal review over classroom posters

2026-07-08T16:04:07+00:00

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Teachers in Michigan’s Romeo Community Schools have 32 motivational phrases they’ll be able to display in their classrooms next school year.

And if they want to display another motivational phrase? It could take four layers of review, including sign-off from legal counsel.

The approved messages are inoffensive: “Everyone is welcome.” “Be Yourself.” “We value all voices.” But a few phrases missing from the list, like “Hate has no home here” or “All are welcome here,” have become synonymous with LGBTQ acceptance — along with lawsuits and disputes in school board meetings across America.

Teachers and parents in Romeo Community Schools, about 40 miles north of Detroit, said the approved phrases themselves aren’t what they find offensive. But they said the list grew out of what they describe as an effort by the school board to root out signs and symbols associated with LGBTQ pride, and a policy the school board passed last year banning displays of political ideology.

That a “Hang In There, Baby” poster or a sign with an Albert Einstein quote could be subjected to legal review before making it onto a classroom wall might just be a sign of the times. The dispute in Romeo reflects a broader fight ensuing over what belongs in America’s classrooms, with school districts and states exerting more control over what’s plastered on classroom walls, what’s said in the classroom, and what books students read.

“A picture is worth 1,000 words,” said one Romeo teacher, who like other teachers spoke to Chalkbeat on the condition of anonymity due to fears about losing their jobs. She said the board is unsettled by “the depiction of your multicultural learner, your LGBTQ (students) — that they’re still not okay with, and that’s a problem.”

A growing number of state policymakers have proposed and enacted bans on LGBTQ topics in classrooms since 2021, according to a PEN America analysis. But a few lawsuits in federal court are testing those limits by challenging the removal of posters featuring rainbow colors or the phrase “Hate has no home here.” In one Ohio case, for example, a teacher sued his district after it ordered the removal of a rainbow poster from his classroom.

Romeo Schools officials have argued their policy is intended to remove symbolism and displays that aren’t aligned with district curriculum, and to create consistency between classrooms.

Legal experts told Chalkbeat that school districts are within their rights to nix classroom displays and even LGBTQ Pride flags, although Romeo’s policy could represent a relatively prescriptive approach.

Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor with the South Texas College of Law, said as long as districts are applying a fair and equal standard when they create these limits, teachers don’t have much free speech to exercise within the classroom.

“I think the school has pretty broad control over what is said in the classroom,” he said.

Romeo Community Schools cracks down on classroom displays

The Romeo school district’s human resources department sent teachers a memo June 8, two days before the last day of the school year, listing 32 approved phrases for classroom signs and displays on district-provided materials.

The memo was the result of an effort to regulate “the display of ideological and political symbols,” spokeswoman MaryAnne Brush wrote in an emailed statement to Chalkbeat.

Romeo Community Schools in Michigan approved these 32 phrases for classroom displays as part of a policy forbidding any signs considered political.

It came after the school board for the district, which educates about 5,400 students, passed a policy in April 2025 banning “political and ideological symbols” in materials displayed by teachers, unless directly related to curriculum. The policy was passed almost unanimously — only one board member opposed it — with little commentary by the board, even after a public commenter asked members to clarify what would be considered forbidden under the policy.

Several Romeo teachers told Chalkbeat that after the board adopted the policy, administrators instructed teachers to remove certain displays. They said Pride flags and signs with rainbow colors were singled out for removal.

One teacher said patriotic slogans, posters featuring President Donald Trump, and “thin blue line” messages supporting law enforcement remained in the classroom.

“I really feel especially for our marginalized communities, our LGBTQ kids, who already feel a bit like they’re in the minority,” said another teacher. “They are seeing something about them that is being erased.”

In response to questions about alleged disparate treatment of classroom posters, Brush wrote that specific building administrators weren’t available to answer questions about those messages.

She added that the district stood by the policy “as a joint effort to keep non-curricular ideologies and partisan politics out of the classroom.”

Romeo Community Schools' policy on political and ideological symbols lays out a four-step review process for any slogans or symbols that are not on the pre-approved list.

Some experts said it seemed unusual for a district to limit classroom displays as narrowly as Romeo did.

Emily Gold Waldman, a Pace University law professor who has written about free speech in schools, said she hasn’t seen another example of a district limiting displays like Romeo. But in general, she said, the policy is an example of attempts by districts across the country to try to ward off discussions of controversial topics.

That might be a good idea, said Samuel Abrams, a senior fellow with the right-leaning think tank the American Enterprise Institute. That’s because teachers aren’t just raising LGBTQ issues in classrooms, he said, but also sharing strongly-held opinions about political topics including the Israel-Hamas war. Those views aren’t appropriate to share with students, according to Abrams.

“Teachers are not supposed to be activists in the classroom in any direction,” he said. “We’re supposed to be educators and lift up everyone across the board.”

Brad Wenz, president of the district’s labor union, told Chalkbeat that the union filed a grievance last fall over how the signs policy would be implemented. The district’s pre-approved statements and review process are the resolution to the union’s grievance, he wrote.

But there’s something lost in the impulse to scrub the American classroom of symbols representing different identities, said John Rogers, an education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Districts feel somewhat caught and want to avoid being at the center of national media, but at the same time I think it’s very important for district leadership to give educators the space to communicate in meaningful and authentic ways with their students,” he said.

Christy Seitz believes Romeo’s policy is a mistake. A politically active parent with two children in Romeo schools, Seitz said she’s seen conservative board members attack imagery that would represent LGBTQ students, including Pride flags.

Back when she was a fourth grader in the district in 1996, Seitz recalled that there was a poster with a rainbow declaring that “Kindness matters” in her classroom, and that such sentiments have been an important part of the community’s ethos.

“That has always been a part of Romeo’s messaging,” she said, “that we are a community and everybody here belongs, and now it feels like if you don’t fall in line to this messaging … then you don’t belong here.”

Legal battles over classroom posters brewing

A few fights over classroom displays are winding through federal court.

Earlier this year, Idaho teacher Sarah Inama sued the state and her school district over a state law prohibiting “flags or banners that represent political, religious, or ideological views, including but not limited to political parties, race, gender, sexual orientation, or political ideologies” in public schools.

Inama resigned and drew national attention after refusing to take down a poster reading “Everyone is welcome here” and featuring drawings of hands of different skin tones. Her lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Idaho.

In April, Ohio high school social studies teacher George McIntyre sued his school district after the Little Miami school board voted 4-1 to force him to take down a “Hate has no home here” poster featuring the American flag, transgender flag, and Pride flag colors.

An Ohio teacher is suing the Little Miami School District in federal court after he claims the district removed a "Hate has no home here" poster from his classroom. This screen grab from federal court records shows the poster as it appeared in his classroom.

The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio alleges the decision violated McIntyre’s free speech rights. McIntyre’s lawsuit also argues that by displaying the poster — alongside family photos and posters featuring Batman, Rosie the Riveter, and the film “A Christmas Story” — he sought to represent his students’ identities proudly.

Board members said they objected not to the message itself but to the rainbow and transgender flag colors.

One of the board members, Diane Horvath, argued that the diversity of public education means everyone needs to “veil certain parts” of their identities to come together in classrooms.

“If you could just have the message without bringing in certain aspects and certain values that not everyone else has, that it would be more acceptable,” Horvath said during a February meeting where the board deliberated over the poster.

In an email included in the lawsuit, a district attorney suggested McIntyre search for a “more neutral” version of the poster. McIntyre rejected that suggestion.

“My concern is that attempting to find a different, ‘neutral’ image may inadvertently lead to the erasure of LGBTQ+ representation,” he wrote in his response to the attorney.

McIntyre suggested finding ways to represent additional groups, rather than subtract.

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

Why a new federal school choice program may require a massive marketing budget

2026-06-30T20:48:41+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

A new federal tax credit is designed to unleash a spigot of funding for school choice, particularly private schools. But getting those dollars may, ironically, require spending a great deal of money. That’s because individual taxpayers must be convinced, one by one, to redirect a portion of their tax bill toward this effort.

Staff at American Federation for Children, a school choice group, have said that it could cost $300 or more in marketing to persuade each taxpayer to donate, according to three school choice supporters who described this estimate to me.

If accurate at a national scale, these figures suggest that billions of dollars could be required to get a large swath of Americans to participate. In other words, it could be harder and pricier to grow the program than many realize.

This new tax provision, adopted in the Trump-backed tax-and-spending bill passed last year, serves as a complicated way to subsidize school choice.

Starting next year, the federal government will reimburse taxpayers who donate to nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations, or SGOs, which issue educational stipends for students. Both private and public schools can receive these grants, although the uses in public schools are more limited since they don’t typically charge tuition.

States must opt in for SGOs within their boundaries to receive the tax-credit subsidy. Virtually all Republican-led states have done so, while most Democratic governors have not made a decision either way.

“Donations” of up to $1,700 — for people who owe at least that amount in income taxes — cost nothing on net to the taxpayer. The federal government effectively foots the whole bill.

But most Americans don’t know much about this obscure new tax provision. And even if they learn about it, some will be wary of handing an SGO what amounts to an interest-free loan. That’s why SGOs and their allies are preparing marketing efforts to educate people about the program and persuade them to participate.

The American Federation for Children, which was co-founded by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, was an advocate for the tax credit and recently started its own SGO. The group said it has already raised over $10 million for an “ambitious national awareness campaign.”

Brian Jodice, a spokesperson for AFC, declined to comment on the organization’s internal estimate of $300-plus per donor. But he said that AFC is aiming to match “industry standards” of $1 in spending to generate $5 in donations. For a $1,700 donation that would be $340. Jodice emphasized that “it’s too early to pinpoint donor acquisition costs.”

Estimates vary widely on how much money will be raised via the tax credit. The Trump administration recently pegged the figure at $24 billion, based on the assumption that 30% of eligible taxpayers, about 14 million people, will donate. If each donor requires $300 in marketing, then it would cost over $4.2 billion to reach that benchmark — roughly twice what the state of Wyoming spends on its public schools.

Marketing costs may come down over time as awareness grows about the program.

By law, SGOs are limited to spending 10% of the money they raise through the tax credit — or $170 on a $1,700 donation — on expenses outside of scholarships. This indicates that the AFC figure of $300 or more could not be supported through tax credit money alone. Organizations may be able to raise separate dollars for marketing.

Some in the school choice community believe that will be necessary. “Ten percent is not a lot to do what people would imagine it would take to scale the program up a ton quickly,” said Derrell Bradford, president of 50CAN and an advocate of school choice.

Some public school districts and their allies are also considering raising money through the tax credit to support after-school and tutoring programs, among other things. They may also find that this requires a significant up-front investment.

Darla Romfo, president of the Children’s Scholarship Fund, an SGO, said she’s looking at a variety of approaches to share information about the tax credit without a large marketing budget. She wants to keep overhead low to ensure as much money goes to scholarships as possible.

Jim Blew, an adviser to a coalition working to implement the tax credit, thinks it may cost more like $100 in marketing per donor.

Blew and Romfo have heard the AFC acquisition cost estimate. So did a third school choice advocate who did not want to be named to share a private conversation.

An obvious concern is that SGOs’ marketing efforts will amount to time and resources that detract from the main purpose of the scholarship program and drive up overhead costs.

Blew doesn’t see it that way. In his mind, a marketing campaign is a way to cultivate political support for school choice and the tax credit. “I don’t think we look at it as wasted money,” he said. “This is part of a larger effort to change the culture around education in this country.”

The marketing cost is also the price of trying to avoid government regulation.

That’s why school choice supporters and Congressional allies favored the more convoluted tax-credit over a voucher program in which the federal government issues grants to parents and schools.

Schools that receive direct federal funding must comply with various rules including civil rights laws. School choice supporters say this shouldn’t apply to private schools that receive tax credit scholarships, even though they are 100% subsidized by the federal government.

This argument may prevail. But the upside of direct government funding is that money doesn’t need to be spent persuading individual taxpayers to participate.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

4 numbers that show how chronic absenteeism is becoming a long-term crisis

2026-06-30T04:01:00+00:00

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Chronic absenteeism rates have barely improved over the past year, signaling that school attendance problems that grew during the pandemic have remained a stubborn challenge, according to a new report.

The analysis released Tuesday by the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute shows 22.6% of students in 44 states and the District of Columbia were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year. That’s down from 23.5% in the 2023-24 school year, but it’s still much higher than before the pandemic — a decade ago, the federal government considered a significantly lower rate to constitute an emergency.

Nat Malkus, a senior fellow with AEI and the author of the report, likened persistently high chronic absenteeism to a nationwide tax, in which states are spending the same or more on education than before the pandemic, but kids are getting less from education because they’re showing up less.

“If we accept that, then we’re just going to become comfortable with a school system that functions at lower productivity for the same cost, and what we need here is people to be fully engaged in schools,” he said.

Below are four numbers that show just how common chronic absenteeism has become, the states where it’s highest, and what parents think about it:

0.9

That’s how much chronic absenteeism declined from 2024 to 2025 in terms of percentage points.

After reaching a high of 28.3% in 2022, chronic absenteeism started improving in the 44 states tracked by AEI. But now even that incremental progress is slowing, while the rate remains well above the prepandemic baseline.

In 2016, the U.S. Department of Education called a chronic absenteeism rate of 15% — based on the Civil Rights Data Collection for 2013-14 — a “hidden educational crisis.”

Malkus said the numbers indicate that both schools and parents need to re-establish a “culture of regular attendance” for all students.

“There’s just some acceptance that this is kind of the way it’s going to be,” he said. “It seems very dangerous.”

AEI, along with the left-leaning Education Trust and absenteeism organization Attendance Works, developed a challenge for districts to cut their 2022 chronic absenteeism rates in half by 2027. The new report estimates that fewer than half of students are in districts on track to meet that goal.

48%

That’s how much higher chronic absenteeism rates were among kindergartners in 2025 compared with 2019.

Even though many kindergartners were not yet born or were newborns in 2020, they are still chronically absent at rates higher than their counterparts were in 2019. Malkus found similar conclusions for first, second and third graders, all of whom did not attend school during the first two school years of the pandemic.

Researchers recently were buoyed by increases in long-term test scores among 9-year-olds, indicating students who were largely not affected by pandemic school closures are showing promising achievement in reading and math. But chronic absenteeism numbers don’t seem to have followed the same pattern, Malkus said.

41%

That’s the chronic absenteeism rate for Alaska, the highest of any state in AEI’s analysis, though it has still declined from from 2022, when it reached 46%. Absenteeism remains stubbornly high in Michigan, Colorado, New York, and Illinois, among other states.

School districts pouring resources into fighting absenteeism have had attendance numbers go up.

Although nearly 61% of the Detroit district’s students were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year, the district has outpaced the rest of Michigan in reducing absenteeism since the pandemic. Officials believe that health hubs across the district that help families get to the root causes of problems that keep students from showing up to school are crucial. In May, researchers who studied Michigan schools found that strengthening relationships between families and schools through regular home visits or family engagement initiatives were effective.

Indiana, New Jersey, and Tennessee are among the states with some of the lowest chronic absenteeism rates. All three had rates of 18% or lower. In Memphis, the largest school district in Tennessee, leaders say a door-knocking campaign and more outreach has helped.

28%

That’s the share of parents who think absenteeism is a problem in their own children’s schools. But 60% think it’s a problem in other schools.

Malkus said the nature of absences in recent years point to a cultural shift in how families view attendance, with parents more apt to let kids stay home for a variety of reasons. And it’s easier for parents to view chronic absenteeism in the abstract than for parents to view it as their own responsibility, he said, citing survey data from the University of Southern California.

“Everyone agrees it’s a problem, and they seem to agree that it’s somebody else’s problem,” he said. “That’s oftentimes what cultural shifts look like, where people are like, ‘It’s bad, but it’s somewhere else.’”

Similarly, students said that they were most likely to miss school for illness, but thought other students missed school because it was too stressful or too boring. Even so, 32% of students reported “family vacation or event” as a reason to miss school and 16% reported “just didn’t want to go.”

Separate research this month from Brown University’s Annenberg Institute found immigration enforcement activity caused a “substantial and persistent” increase in absences among foreign-born students.

Younger students were potentially less affected than students in higher grades, researchers speculated, because the older students “exercise considerably more individual discretion” in the decision to miss school.

Schools have struggled to put families at ease when it comes to immigration enforcement, particularly in areas where federal agents have detained parents and students around school property, areas that used to be regarded as off-limits by the Department of Homeland Security.

Malkus acknowledged that immigration enforcement actions can drive attendance numbers down, but said the broad decline in attendance over the past decade can’t be explained by immigration enforcement alone.

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

Does teacher merit pay work? Programs in South Carolina and Texas show results

2026-06-25T21:04:08+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Performance pay is a fraught topic among teachers. Many are dubious about competing with each other for cash and question prevailing methods for awarding bonuses. To some, merit pay has often been tried and usually failed.

These sorts of policies remain relatively rare, but two new studies suggest performance pay may deserve a second look, particularly when paired with additional resources. The papers, one from South Carolina and another from Texas, both find evidence that salary incentives for teachers benefit students.

In the South Carolina paper, University of Michigan researcher Sarah Cohodes and colleagues studied a comprehensive teacher improvement program funded by the federal government. This effort included pay incentives linked to student test scores, career advancement opportunities, and additional professional development.

The researchers compared students in middle schools that adopted this program, starting in 2007, against similar schools that didn’t participate. They found benefits that carried on into high school. Students’ 10th grade test scores rose and their chances of graduating high school increased, by about 4 percentage points.

Cohodes notes that when a similar program was adopted in Chicago without individual performance pay based on test scores, there were not clear gains for students. But she also believes that the comprehensive nature of the program made a difference in South Carolina. Teachers reported a more positive school climate, perhaps because the initiative raised some of their salaries and created a schoolwide focus on boosting student achievement.

“The merit pay is a key component. I just think it’s not the only thing,” Cohodes says.

In Texas, Jacob Kirksey, a professor at Texas Tech University, studied an ongoing initiative that offers extra money to school districts that participate in a merit-pay plan. Teachers designated as high performing earn salary increases of several thousand dollars or more, paid for by the state.

Kirksey, who consults with some districts on implementing the program, found that test scores rose. Small benefits of the program emerged soon after it was adopted and then grew in the following few years. Teacher retention also increased, and effective teachers in particular were more likely to stay.

This is a key point: While merit pay has sometimes been framed as a way of getting teachers to work harder, the biggest effect may come from reshaping who enters, remains in, and exits the profession.

With some notable exceptions, prior research has also found benefits of teacher performance pay. Yet these schemes sometimes fizzle. President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative encouraged merit pay as part of a broader effort to reform how teachers were evaluated and paid. This garnered intense pushback, proved difficult to implement, and had no clear effect on student learning, according to later research. It also came in the context of significant budget cuts to schools.

It’s not clear what precisely made the South Carolina and Texas programs succeed. One possibility: They both came with meaningful amounts of new money, which may have made the programs easier to implement and to sustain.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@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.

Blending algebra and geometry: An approach to high school math slowly gains favor

2026-06-23T10:16:00+00:00

This story about integrated math was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

In James Bell’s math class at Chapman High School, sophomores are trying to pinpoint exactly where two lines cross.

The students in this rural Kansas high school already solved for that meeting point in previous lessons, using graphs and other techniques. But this recent lesson shows them how to use a matrix: a box made up of rows and columns representing a system of equations. Matrices are often used in engineering or video game design to calculate the locations of two objects moving through space.

Traditionally, this kind of complex linear algebra would be taught in the third year of high school math, when many students would take Algebra II. But a decade ago, the Chapman Unified School District, a rural district about 80 miles west of Topeka, Kansas, decided to drop the traditional high school math pathway — Algebra I for a year, followed by a year of geometry and then a year of Algebra II — in favor of what is called “integrated math.”

Integrated math takes concepts from both algebras and geometry, plus a little from trigonometry — the study of triangles and angles — and blends them over multiple years instead of teaching them separately, a year at a time. That means students can move from lessons in geometry to algebra and back again within the same year.

Bell, who helped write the math curriculum that Chapman High School uses, said he has seen how practicing both algebra and geometry throughout the year keeps them fresh in students’ minds.

Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

“You’re going to have the opportunity to change course and change direction and see different things,” Bell said. “Students even do a little trig, which is a scary word for kids, but when it’s integrated into every year of math, it doesn’t sound as scary. It doesn’t make it as overwhelming.”

He added: “This is better for students. This is the best of both worlds.”

Chapman is part of a small group of districts and states moving to integrated math — all part of a larger movement to reimagine secondary math, give high schoolers more choice in courses, and modernize what some say are outdated ideas about what constitutes rigorous, college-level math by expanding course options beyond just calculus to include data science and statistics.

Some experts say blending algebra and geometry gives more students a shot at learning high-level math later on in high school and college, touting high-achieving European and Asian countries that have taught integrated math for decades.

But others say the integrated approach creates new problems. Some teachers have objected, saying they prefer to focus solely on algebra or geometry. Georgia mandated an integrated math approach in 2008 but made it optional in 2015 after teachers and parents complained.

Others worry that integrated courses sometimes have to drop concepts that would be taught in the traditional math progression of Algebra I, geometry, and Algebra II. That might leave some students unprepared for college calculus, because the integrated approach doesn’t stick with one subject for long enough for students to fully digest it.

In Chapman, where integrated math was installed along with other reforms, students went from 11% proficient to 41% proficient on the state math test the first year it was introduced, in 2015. In 2025, 67% scored proficient.

James Bell says integrated math seems to help his students understand math concepts better as they prepare for higher levels and the statewide tests.

Kate Thornton, Chapman High’s principal, said the decision to move to integrated math had a lot to do with the Kansas state high school math test, which is administered in 10th grade. Many of the test questions were based on concepts from both Algebra I and II.

Advanced students who took Algebra I in eighth grade and geometry the following year did well on the test, she said, but “regular students were not getting those concepts because they were taking geometry as sophomores. So they were having a whole year with no algebraic involvement.”

Workforce focus drives adoption of integrated math

Integrated math still makes up only a fraction of high school math courses nationwide. A 2023 report from the Center for Education Market Dynamics noted that about 16% of districts offer integrated math either alone or as an option alongside the traditional Algebra I-geometry Algebra II progression, often referred to as A-G-A. California and other Western states were seeing the most growth at the time of the report, based on the organization’s sample of over 900 districts around the country.

But more districts have adopted integrated math since that report, said Lora Kaiser, the executive director of the center. “From 22-23 to 25-26, we’ve seen growth in every region outside of the Midwest, which showed a very modest decline. The West region, and California specifically, show most growth,” said Lora Kaiser, the executive director of the center. She also noted that fewer districts are offering a choice between the AGA and integrated models — instead, they are only offering integrated math to their students.

This state tried to overhaul math instruction. It didn’t go as planned

One factor driving the move to integrated math is the nationwide push to update high school mathematics for postsecondary education and the modern workforce. The Launch Years Initiative at the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin, for example, is helping 27 states rework their transition from high school to postsecondary mathematics, mainly through offering more math options to students than the algebra, geometry, precalculus, and calculus courses that have dominated high school math for decades.

Blending algebra and geometry courses can give students more room in their schedules to take other courses like data science or statistics, concepts that are very present in people’s everyday lives. Students take integrated math in ninth and 10th grade and then have the option of pursuing different math paths in 11th and 12th grades.

Lya Snell, director of building capacity for innovation at the Dana Center, said the A-G-A sequence is familiar to many and people are used to that framework. However, “where we are right now with tech and innovation is a lot different than where we’ve been before. We have to look at how we are preparing students for life today and in the future, and it requires us to create a more relevant experience.”

One state tried algebra for all eighth graders. It hasn’t gone well

Maryland, one of the states working with the Dana Center, is rolling out a two-year course of integrated algebra and geometry that will be required statewide beginning in the fall of 2027.

State leaders hope integrated math bolsters student achievement — only 30% of high schoolers scored proficient in math on the most recent state exam.

Lyndsey Brightful, the director of mathematics in the division of instructional programs at the Maryland State Department of Education, said the previous math progression didn’t align with the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the 2021 state law providing extra funding to accelerate flagging student achievement.

Maryland now expects students to be ready for college-level math by 11th grade, which means condensing “the most essential content and concepts” from Algebra I, geometry, and Algebra II into the first two years of high school, she said.

“We had sort of a mismatch in our math progression,” Brightful said. “If we wanted students to be ready for an entry-level college math course by grade 11, then we needed students to be finished with their foundational math skills by the end of 10th grade. With the traditional Algebra I-geometry-Algebra I progression, that was not true for on-grade-level students. It required acceleration.”

After students have completed two years of integrated math, Maryland will offer them multiple pathways of what it calls rigorous, college-level math courses beginning in 11th grade, including calculus, college algebra, data science, and statistics. Students will also have access to high school data science, discrete mathematics, and AP and IB math courses. For decades, the calculus pathway was considered the only choice for advanced and STEM students, but even top universities are now saying it’s “not the only advanced math,” she said.

“Higher-level statistics is advanced math. Data science is advanced math,” Brightful said. “For students who are going into humanities majors, or even in some cases students who are going into nursing or business majors, they need to have strong math application skills or statistics skills, so pursuing other math pathways is still advanced.”

Talk nerdy to me: Teachers who use math vocabulary help students do better in math

Brightful said the state is currently working with community colleges and the University of Maryland system to align admission requirements with the revised pathways. Currently, the state system requires four years of math for admissions, including Algebra I, geometry, and Algebra II. Ideally, the state’s university system would accept the two-year integrated math course in place of the three years of A-G-A, Brightful said.

Because integrated math can cover a range of math topics over different time frames — states like Maryland are only offering two years, while districts like Chapman offer three or four years, depending on whether students choose to take calculus — it’s hard to determine whether the approach makes a difference in student achievement or helps more students with other goals, like succeeding at college-level math.

Some states reconsidering integrated math approach

Some states have seen gains they believe are tied to the integrated approach. Mike Spencer, secondary math specialist at the Utah State Board of Education, cites the state’s move to three years of integrated math a decade ago as one factor among many contributing to Utah students’ consistently strong math performance on both the National Assessment of Educational Progress and the ACT.

“Some of the value in integrated math is you see things come up each year, versus having gaps in some of that content knowledge,” Spencer said. “And when it’s done well, you make connections” between topics.

In integrated math courses like the one taught at Chapman High School, students typically learn a blend of algebra and geometry concepts in the same class, rather than separately.

California, on the other hand, hasn’t seen the same testing improvement. Even after more than a decade of districts using integrated math, only 37% of California students are proficient in math according to state tests, lagging behind most states.

Research on implementing integrated math — at least in the complicated U.S. context — is relatively limited, said University of Florida education policy researcher Elizabeth Huffaker. A 2015 study, for example, showed that teacher effectiveness may improve while teaching integrated math.

Huffaker recently examined California districts to compare students who took integrated math to students in the traditional math pathway. Her just-published study showed a “small and positive” effect on 11th grade test scores among students who took integrated math, but she said this has to be taken with a grain of salt: Districts were also implementing Common Core math at the same time. The gains were equivalent to two to three months of high school math learning, about the same effect as Common Core implementation, Huffaker’s study showed.

“I would not make this change expecting giant, transformative, high-impact-tutoring-type impacts,” Huffaker said. The costs of switching to integrated math may well outweigh the benefits, she said, “but I do think that the idea of creating more coherence and more opportunities to revisit key topics is sensible.”

Is AP Calculus pointless? A teacher defends his subject.

But many educators find aspects of integrated math frustrating. Students may not be getting the message that higher-level traditional math like trigonometry and calculus is still essential for college STEM majors, especially at selective schools. David Merryman, a professor of biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, said the handful of students he’s advised over the years who arrived at Vanderbilt without high school calculus were completely lost in their first-year math courses.

And even if integrated math courses promise they are covering trigonometry woven in with geometry and algebra concepts, Merryman is not sure it’s enough to really prepare students for the rigors of college engineering courses.

“The kids who come to my class and are weak in trig, they struggle,” Merryman said. “For the non-STEM students, integrated math is probably great — you get a better understanding of how everything relates to each other. I don’t think it serves kids who’re going into STEM.”

Ben Kitchl, a first-year global studies major at Loyola University in Chicago, briefly thought about being a STEM major early in high school. But his eighth grade Algebra I credit wouldn’t transfer to his new high school that only offered integrated math, and he had to start over, putting him behind.

“I had to take Integrated Math II and III, even though I already knew a lot of it,” he said. He would have had to take two math courses in one year in order to make it to calculus his senior year.

It’s some of these tensions that are causing some states, including high-performing Utah, to revisit their integrated math requirement. Even some teachers are questioning it.

“A lot of our veteran teachers, they’re the ones who say, ‘Oh, I miss teaching the A-G-A format, of being compartmentalized a little bit,” Spencer said. The state education agency plans to survey secondary teachers for their thoughts on the integrated model compared to the traditional math sequence and report back to the board of education on its findings.

In North Carolina, which like Utah has a three-year progression, the state board of education is also revisiting integrated math, looking into a possible two years of choice like Maryland to make more time for statistics and data science. Emily Hare, the director of pre-K-12 math at Guilford County Schools, said attitudes are slowly shifting away from what she called the “race to calculus.”

“I think that we have proven that the integrated pathway can work. I also think that sometimes folks think that it’s a little more different than what it is,” Hare said. “Sometimes, yes, you have the opportunity to mix algebra and geometry, but it’s not like we’re teaching different math. It’s just teaching it in a different order.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct Emily Hare’s affiliation. She works for Guilford County Schools, not the North Carolina State Board of Education.

Contact editor Christina Samuels at 212-678-3635 or samuels@hechingerreport.org.

Non-college career pathways have a math problem

2026-06-23T09:56:46+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

For much of the last few decades, some young people have heard a simple mantra: bachelor’s or bust. That is, the best and perhaps only path to economic prosperity is through a four-year college education. Now a wide swath of politicians, educators, and philanthropists are rethinking this. Some even suggest that there are numerous lucrative jobs that don’t require a degree.

A New York Times video explained that “Job demand in fields like construction, along with the allure of potential six-figure salaries, have some high schools investing in hands-on classes that are redefining what success looks like for the Class of 2026.”

At the recent Education Writers Association conference, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore suggested high schools are too focused on getting students into college. If a student chooses a different route “and they find something that’s going to make them have economic mobility for them and their family, then right on,” he said.

Amidst this enthusiasm I wanted to take a look at the data to answer a simple but contested question: How likely is it that students can skip a four-year degree and make a good living or achieve “economic mobility?”

The short answer is it’s certainly possible, but the odds are stacked against workers without degrees. “We all want the $70,000 job that a student can access right outside of high school,” says Dom McKoy, executive director of the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project. But those opportunities are rare. “We have to be really clear-eyed about what is a true pathway at scale for young people.”

Some non-college occupations offer solidly middle-class salaries — but the largest ones typically don’t

To analyze this issue, I used federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data on pay by occupation, organized by the share of workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

On average, jobs where degrees are required or encouraged pay more. Notably, though, a handful of jobs in the blue-collar trades also make slightly above the national median. Those include plumbers, machinists, HVAC installers, and carpenters, among others. Although these jobs typically require some form of postsecondary training, and in some cases students take on debt, they don’t demand four-year degrees.

Still, the most common non-college jobs make far below the median. For instance, there are over 4 million people who work as home health and personal care aides in America, the largest single occupation. That’s more than the number of plumbers, electricians, carpenters, HVAC specialists, welders, car mechanics, roofers, and power-line installers combined. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts more growth in jobs for home health aides than any other occupation. The median salary is about $35,000 a year.

Other large non-college vocations — each encompassing millions of people — include retail sales workers, cashiers, order stockers, waiters and waitresses, fast-food workers, and janitors. All of these pay substantially below the median. One exception is truck driving, a position that pays relatively well and employs millions of people. But many fear the job is at particularly high risk of automation.

All this maps onto other data showing that college-educated workers have a large wage advantage, on average, compared to those without a degree.

Better-paid, non-college occupations employ few women

Most of these relatively well-paid blue-collar jobs are dominated by men. In some cases, fewer than 10% of the positions are filled by women. Many of the large, lower-paid occupations, including home health aides, have a high share of women.

Some of the lower-paid careers where college degrees are required — including teaching and social work — are also largely staffed by women. Their salaries still outstrip the vast majority of non-college options, though. This suggests that forgoing college is particularly risky for girls and women.

Despite the headlines, six-figure salaries are rare in non-college jobs

The vast majority of non-college roles, including blue collar trades, earn below-average wages. This is different from median wages, which captures the typical worker’s experience. The average salary is usually higher than the median because it includes more of the upside for top earners within a profession.

This data indicates that non-college occupations have relatively low pay ceilings. The slew of headlines and viral social media videos about six-figure jobs in the trades appear to be outliers. In many cases, only the top 10%, or fewer, of those workers make such salaries.

Many occupations have a combination of workers with and without four-year degrees.

So far, I’ve been focusing on the distinction between college and non-college pathways, but as the data makes clear, this is not a simple binary.

In many cases, degree-holders likely have an edge within an occupation. But in other cases, the degree may have little, if any, value. A significant minority of lower-paid jobs are held by college graduates; even more are held by those who attended college but didn’t earn a degree. For instance, nearly half of home health aides spent at least some time in college.

Will AI change all of this?

This data cannot answer whether a particular student should attend college. That depends on what profession they want to pursue, their chances of graduating, the debt they may have to take on, and the quality of college they would attend. It also depends on an unknown future. The economy is always changing and may shift rapidly in the coming decades.

A recent Wall Street Journal survey found some economists predicting that AI will reduce demand for white-collar work. But others predicted no change or even said that there would be more demand for knowledge work.

The bottom line: Considering how the economy is currently structured, it’s risky to bet against the value of a bachelor’s degree.

Methodological note: The data we used here extrapolates hourly pay rates into estimated annual salaries for full-time workers. These figures, including the national median and average, do not count overtime pay, certain bonuses, and some other forms of compensation. We categorized the largest 250 occupations — encompassing the vast majority of workers — by the share of workers who have attained at least a bachelor’s degree. Other forms of postsecondary education are not included in this analysis. Keep in mind that there is substantial variation among workers in the same occupation, including by region, educational level, experience, union status, and more.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

The rhetoric and reality of ‘returning education to the states’

2026-06-18T10:31:12+00:00

The Trump administration’s big idea for American education is to “return” it to the states.

In practice, though, these efforts have been limited and contradictory — limited because there’s not all that much to return and contradicted by the administration’s own expansion of federal power. This became clear at a recent Chalkbeat Ideas event that I moderated with two state education leaders.

Indiana Education Secretary Katie Jenner praised the Trump administration’s effort to reduce strings attached to certain federal dollars. But she noted that “our states have always had control of standards, curriculum, [and] assessment.”

Rhode Island commissioner Angélica Infante-Green was more pointed: “Returning it to the states? It’s always been here.” She’s faced more roadblocks from the federal government under this administration, she said.

Here’s why state and local school leaders have seen, at best, only a modest increase in control over their schools.

Click here to continue reading.

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.

Students are often told to go to college. What if they need ‘career navigation’ first?

2026-06-16T04:01:00+00:00

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What should come first for students: concrete plans for college or concrete plans for career?

Finding the best answer to that question is part of a huge reckoning in education right now.

More states and the federal government are rolling out workforce readiness programs, and in some cases they’re placing less emphasis on having K-12 education prepare kids to go directly to college. At the same time, a 2025 survey found that nearly half of Gen Z respondents aspired to be “professional content creators.” That suggests many don’t see a diverse set of career pathways they could pursue as they reach adulthood.

A new report out Tuesday argues that those less-varied ambitions among young people signal schools need to play a bigger role in helping students navigate an often confusing and chaotic postsecondary landscape.

The report from FutureEd, a think tank based at Georgetown University, finds that K-12 schools haven’t focused enough on helping students plan for and navigate future careers. That failure has meant that students graduate without a real idea of what to do next beyond just college. The reasons behind this shortcoming include a persistent school counselor shortage, an inadequate system to help lead students to information about potential careers, a crowded credential market, and the widely adopted “college for all” mindset in public schools, the report found.

“The assumption kind of has been that kids will figure out in college what they’re going to do with the rest of their lives,” said Anne Kim, the author of the report and a senior fellow at FutureEd. “Students really need to have a better idea of what they’re going to do in college before they even get there.”

Even with education increasingly focusing on workforce development, the FutureEd report found a “confusing and chaotic” marketplace of certification programs, and other short-term credential programs, with 1.8 million credentials offered by 134,000 providers nationwide. Changes from the Trump administration are also prioritizing workforce development over college for some federally funded programs, although some members of Congress have questioned that approach.

These shifts are taking place as students frequently say they feel adrift in navigating the world after high school. For example, 75% of recent graduates surveyed in 2022 by YouScience — an education company — said that they felt “moderately, slightly, or not at all prepared” for college and career. That vacuum can lead students to aspire to what are often unrealistic expectations, like becoming a professional athlete or social media influencer.

Kim said that instead, students need to hear that “there are other careers in your neighborhood, in your community that are much more reliable paths to a solid middle-class life that will get you places.”

The FutureEd report identifies wind turbine service technicians, solar panel installers, nurse practitioners, and actuaries as some of the fastest growing professions in the country.

Kim said a shortage of school counselors to shepherd students to career paths doesn’t help. Nationwide, there are 372 students for every one counselor, a far cry from the American School Counselors Association recommended ratio of 250:1.

Solutions range from embedding career coaches in middle and high schools to incorporating career education into curriculum, even for kindergarten-age students.

The report highlights one California school district’s “World of Work” curriculum as an example of a district integrating career prep into students’ lives. In the Cajon Valley Union School district, first graders learn about civil engineering by planning a virtual city. And one high school’s students spend 40% of their time doing work-based learning.

Kika Gutierrez, a first grade teacher in the district who is quoted in FutureEd’s report, said activities like starting a student-run flower help students understand how education can prepare for their future career.

“Exposing them at an early age gets them interested and makes the connection that there’s a reason behind all of this,” she said. “There’s a reason why my teacher is asking me to share with a buddy who I might not necessarily gel with because that’s real life.”

Some advocacy organizations have feared that shifting efforts away from preparing students for college could disproportionately limit the ability of students of color or other historically disadvantaged students’ will enroll in college. Schools sometimes have tracked these students into vocational education, limiting their opportunities.

Kim said the fear of tracking is a legitimate one. But career navigation doesn’t have to conflict with college enrollment, she said. And the broader problem is that people believe college is a one-and-done experience meant to happen right after high school, instead of embracing education as a lifelong pursuit, FutureEd’s report argues.

“We have to get away from this assumption that there is a lesser-than path, and that lesser-than path is not going to college, because it’s pretty clear at this point also that work and higher education are blending and blurring,” Kim said.

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

Girls’ test scores have fallen faster than boys’. No one knows exactly why.

2026-06-11T14:36:06+00:00

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New results from a long-running set of federal exams show a striking, persistent, and unexplained duality: Girls’ scores have fallen more sharply than boys’ and then have been slower to recover. In some cases, they haven’t recovered at all.

In math, among both 9- and 13-year-olds, boys’ advantage over girls is higher than at any point since 1978, which is as far back as the data goes. In reading, 9-year-old boys have reached parity with their female peers for the first time on record, largely because girls’ scores have declined.

This pattern has also emerged on a battery of other assessments. To date, researchers have not reached any consensus on what explains this. The latest results suggest this gender gap in learning is not simply a pandemic-induced blip.

To be clear, we should not see this as a battle of the sexes, but as a warning sign that something is going wrong academically for girls. In other words, America’s “learning recession” has hit girls hardest. Understanding why may be a key part of addressing this national challenge.

Soon after the pandemic upended American schooling and life, researchers began showing that learning rates fell most sharply among children whose school buildings were closed longer. Students from low-income families and those who started at lower levels academically were also particularly affected.

Few experts predicted or even noticed the gender disparities that were beginning to emerge. If anything, in recent years there has been growing attention to boys’ struggles in school. There are good reasons for this: Boys as a group are more likely to be suspended and less likely to finish high school or college.

I first noticed the gender gap in learning loss in late 2024 when it showed up on an international math and science exam. I assumed this was a fluke, but just in case I started looking into it. Sure enough, on virtually every U.S. test, girls’ scores had fallen faster than boys. This has occurred in other countries too, at least on certain exams.

The latest federal NAEP results, which track scores all the way back to the ‘70s, confirm that this gender gap in learning has persisted through at least last year.

(One caveat worth keeping in mind: We’re talking about averages across a massive population here. This doesn’t tell us much of anything about an individual girl or boy.)

Experts I’ve talked to have offered a handful of hypotheses to explain these surprising gender disparities:

Girls have previously performed better in school by some metrics, so removing typical school structures, as occurred during the pandemic, may have harmed them more.
As children spent more time at home during the pandemic, girls might have borne more responsibility including caregiving for younger children. This could have limited their attention to schoolwork.
The growth of social media and screens might have harmed girls more than boys.
Even post-pandemic, girls may have been more likely to quietly internalize their academic struggles, which could have caused teachers to overlook their needs.

None of these strikes me as terribly satisfying, though. The pandemic is in the rearview mirror, and if anything the gender gap has continued to widen. Social media is unlikely to explain trends that are affecting 9-year-olds.

Broader theories meant to elucidate disappointing test scores don’t seem especially helpful here either. Less accountability for schools, for instance, wouldn’t obviously affect girls more than boys.

Officials at the Education Department, who released the latest scores, are loath to speculate about what’s driving trends, including the emergent gender gap. “Researchers, policy leaders can do that digging under the hood,” said Matthew Soldner, head of the department’s research arm. Such digging is indeed necessary here.

For the moment, though, there’s no end in sight for the remarkable and unexplained gender divide in learning loss and recovery.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@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.

New NAEP scores offer optimism for younger students but warning signs for teens

2026-06-10T04:01:00+00:00

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The nation’s 9-year-olds, children who were on the cusp of kindergarten when COVID shut down in-person public education, are now performing nearly as well in reading and math as their counterparts did before the pandemic.

But 13-year-olds, who experienced serious disruptions during their elementary years, are still struggling, with their performance in reading on a key national test essentially the same as children 50 years ago.

These findings released Wednesday come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ long-term trend assessment test. Taken together, they suggest two very different outcomes, with one set of results offering hope that younger students now may have less academic baggage from the pandemic, and another set indicating that young high schoolers continue to suffer the effects of the pandemic.

The results come amid worrying trends in NAEP and other test scores. The data shows a slow, consistent rise in scores for both reading and math for both ages starting around 2004 up until about 2012, followed by a downturn that’s bedeviled policymakers. The decline has given rise to debates and speculation about its cause. One result has been a backlash to technology, and especially screens, in schools.

“The results raise important questions about what’s fueling these upward trends in the elementary years and why they’re not happening among the older students,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, the board that sets policy around NAEP testing.

The long-term assessment is a paper and pencil test that’s been given to a representative sample of students since the 1970s to measure achievement over decades. It’s typically administered every four years. A sample of 15,000 9-year-olds and 16,400 13-year-olds took the test on paper and pencil in the 2024-25 school year.

The performance by the third and fourth graders shows “growth can happen again,” said Matthew Soldner, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, or NCES, in a press release.

But there’s a different story for the nation’s 13-year-olds, who are scoring just ahead of their 1970s counterparts in reading and just a little bit further ahead in math. That inertia may signal that learning struggles among those students — who were around 9 years old when the pandemic began — are more stubborn. And educators could be running out of time to intervene, warned Muldoon.

“The 13-year-olds who took this assessment last year are headed to high school now, or are already enrolled,” she said during a news conference. “Schools won’t have them much longer.”

A NAEP slide that goes back a decade

Ebony Walton, a statistician with NCES, said the differences between the two age groups may come down to the fact that the older students’ early school years “really took the bulk of a lot of this disruption.” The younger students experienced little disruption in comparison.

“These nine year olds who were in preschool at the outbreak of COVID 19, they were still able to get their fundamental skills taught in an in-class setting pretty much undisturbed,” she said.

Students averaging the lowest scores have shown the most precipitous declines on assessments in recent years. But this year, in the younger cohort, they’ve shown the most growth in both reading and math. Older students in the lowest percentiles, however, did not significantly increase their average scores in reading or math.

During a news conference this week, Soldner contrasted record high average scores from 2012 with far lower scores in every category from the latest test, particularly for 13-year-olds, where the average score between 2012 and 2025 has declined by 7 points in reading and 15 in math.

The NAEP long-term trend tests are scored on a 0-500 scale. Changes in scores over time are not necessarily statistically significant, and average scale scores aren’t comparable between different subjects.

Nine year-olds have made some significant progress over more than 50 years and in 15 separate long-term trend tests. Students with higher scores on the long-term test can typically take in more complex material and contextualize ideas less familiar to them. Students scoring on the lower end can follow brief instructions and demonstrate more basic skills.

The younger students in every percentile, from those scoring the highest to those scoring the lowest, have increased their average scores from the 1970s in both reading and math, the data shows. For instance, the average math score for 9-year-olds in the the lowest percentile has risen from 171 in the 1970s to 186 in 2025.

But struggling students also remain the furthest away from their 2012 highs. While 9-year-olds who scored the highest on the reading test averaged the same score in 2025 as they did in 2012, those who scored the lowest averaged 7 points behind their 2012 score.

The new NAEP scores represent just the latest data illustrating a nosedive in math and reading scores over the past decade.

The Education Scorecard, which relies on state test scores and released updated data in May, found the country’s students are in a “learning recession” with scores declining since 2013. Reading and math scores on the NAEP test, which students generally take every two years, have also persistently declined.

Speculation over why scores have fallen recently has run the gamut. Some say smartphones and Chromebooks have wrought havoc in classrooms. Others point to diminished federal accountability laws as the culprit.

Soldner pointed out that survey results from the test about students’ experience show that fewer than half — 37% — of nine-year-olds reported they read for fun almost every day, compared with 53% in 2012. A smaller proportion, 14% of 13-year-olds reported reading for fun almost every day, compared with 27% in 2012.

Soldner cautioned that a decline in reading for pleasure didn’t necessarily cause a decline in math and reading scores, but added: “Students’ experiences are at the very least context for the scores that we observe.”

More 9-year-olds than ever — 39% — also reported that they were not assigned homework the day before the test, compared with 24% in 2004. But researchers also noted that in 2025, students who indicated that they spent less than an hour on homework the day before scored higher than peers not assigned any homework at all and students who spent more than an hour on homework.

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

Can states run schools better than local boards?

2026-06-09T14:52:55+00:00

Welcome to Chalkbeat Ideas, a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here.

This is our monthly roundup of interesting takes, tidbits, and links. Feel free to send along links and ideas for the next one.

Do state takeovers of school districts work?

This question is increasingly relevant at a moment when more states are taking over or weakening traditionally elected school boards, as Chalkbeat’s Lily Altavena has reported. Recent examples include Houston, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, and Memphis.

There’s good evidence that prior takeovers have not improved students’ performance, on average. A detailed study examining 45 takeovers undertaken between 2010 and 2018 found that, if anything, test scores inched slightly downward afterwards. “I find no evidence that state takeover improves student academic achievement over the long run,” wrote Stanford professor Beth Schueler.

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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.

For generations, more schooling meant better jobs. Could generative AI upend that bargain?

2026-06-04T20:45:44+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

For more than a century, American education has been transformed by technology.

Various technological shifts have created the modern “knowledge economy,” in which workers with the most years of formal schooling tend to be the best-paid. Economists refer to this dynamic as the race between education and technology, and it’s why each generation of Americans has remained in school longer than the last. Our current education system has been built around this reality.

Enter generative AI, which is not like the technologies that automated parts of farm or factory work, and might not be like the computer or the internet. Instead, AI threatens to upend a paradigm that has existed for generations, in which the economy adapts to new technologies by demanding more education. In theory, AI could do the opposite by replacing large swaths of white-collar workers. That’s why this moment feels so perilous for students and schools.

To be clear, no one really knows how AI will change the economy. But at this moment of uncertainty it’s worth looking back at the historical interplay between technology, the economy, and schooling. Understanding how technology has already transformed education can help understand how it might do so again and why the onset of the AI era feels so different.

For the last century plus, technology in various forms has laid waste to certain farm, manufacturing, blue-collar, and other middle-income jobs. Instead, demand has grown for highly educated white-collar workers.

During this time, American schools and universities have raced to keep up with technology by expanding access. High school education opened up to most teenagers in the early 20th century. The growth of college education followed in later decades. During this time, the U.S. was far ahead of other countries in making schooling broadly accessible, which helped turn the country into an economic powerhouse.

“Because the American people were the most educated in the world, they were in the best position to invent, be entrepreneurial, and produce goods and services using advanced technologies,” wrote Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, in their classic 2008 book “The Race Between Education and Technology.”

The pressure for a more educated workforce continued apace in the following decades. In the 1990s, President Bill Clinton liked to quip, “what you earn depends on what you learn.” This was a neat encapsulation of the new economic order.

In response, politicians of various stripes advanced policies aimed at preparing students for postsecondary education and knowledge-intensive work. Kindergarten classes reduced a focus on play and began emphasizing academic content. Schools were held accountable for test scores and graduation rates. High schools expanded college prep programs. Colleges began recruiting more students who wouldn’t have considered higher education previously.

Graphic shows the average years spent in school for 30-year olds, based on when they were born.

Ironically, during this time, there was little indication that technology itself was dramatically improving teaching and learning. In fact, there’s been a cycle of hype followed by disappointment when the radio, the TV, various “teaching machines,” and the computer fail to revolutionize schooling for the better.

Meanwhile, the economy’s voracious appetite for highly educated workers was not fully sated. For the last half century, Americans’ years of education have increased, but at a slower pace than in prior decades. Meanwhile, the relative wages of college-educated workers rose steadily through the early 2000s. This college wage premium — the advantage those with a degree have over other workers — has stopped growing recently but remains at historically high levels.

This has left a modern economy that is fairly polarized. There are many jobs that only require a high school education — like home health aides, retail clerks, warehouse stockers — but their wages are relatively low. Most well-paid professions typically demand a college degree or more: nurses, doctors, lawyers, college professors, business managers, accountants, and engineers.

This economic and educational revolution of the last several decades has led to vastly increased productivity and has benefited well-credentialed workers and the educational institutions that provide those skills and degrees. But it has not been kind to less-educated Americans and has likely contributed to growing income inequality.

The existential question now is whether generative artificial intelligence will change this economic paradigm. AI can already produce research, writing, and analysis previously assumed to be only doable by well-educated workers. One recent study had both educated and less-educated people complete a workplace-like problem-solving exercise. Without AI, the highly educated group did much better. With AI, that edge shrank substantially. That’s why some commentators prophesy a great “deskilling,” in which many well-paid white-collar workers get replaced by AI.

Education has value beyond its economic return. But if that return erodes, demand for the current offerings of American schooling, especially higher education, would likely decline — potentially leading to unprecedented disruption in an industry that has long assumed a growing customer base.

Yet this is hardly an inevitability. Maybe educated workers will be best able to avail themselves of AI. Or maybe the technology will wipe out some white-collar jobs, but expand and create others. Perhaps AI will mostly supplement rather than replace office work or it will prove less useful than some think.

While some claim that AI has already decimated the job prospects of young college graduates, the weight of the data does not support this narrative.

At this point, then, we simply don’t know how AI will reshape the economy and the jobs available to Americans. This leaves students and educators in the profoundly difficult position of preparing for an economic future that feels more uncertain than ever before.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

The red-state Democrat upending the politics of school vouchers

2026-06-02T14:11:10+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Over the last several years, Republicans have offered a fairly unified message on education. They want to expand school choice, eliminate certain liberal ideas from school curriculum, and close the U.S. Education Department.

Democrats, on the other hand, have been casting about for an educational vision. A vocal contingent within the party has said they need to embrace school choice, perhaps even vouchers for private schools. This perspective has received much ink in major publications.

In Iowa, however, State Auditor Rob Sand is taking a different tack in his run for governor. A Democrat in an increasingly red state, Sand is aggressively campaigning against the state’s education savings account, or ESA, program, which passed in 2023. The state now provides publicly funded vouchers for families to pay for private-school tuition and expenses.

“We’re talking about this everywhere we go,” Sand said at an event in April hosted by the Iowa state teachers union. “This is just basically a siphon of hundreds of millions of dollars away from public schools.”

Co-opting the language of conservatives, Sand is fashioning himself as a fiscal hawk — “the taxpayers’ watchdog” — who will rein in wasteful spending, including in the state’s ESA program. Republican candidates for governor are arguing with each other about the program, which suggests Sand has landed on an effective wedge issue.

Sand’s campaign is hardly quixotic: He’s leading in some early polling. Nationally, his strategy is significant because it shows the different ways that various Democrats are approaching K-12 education — and the divide within the party on how to do so.

I spoke with Sand via Zoom. I wanted to hear why he’s putting the ESA program at the center of his campaign. Beyond that, I was interested in what ideas he had for improving public schools in the state.

Heather Doe, a spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Education, declined to make anyone available for an interview but said Sand’s critique of ESAs is partisan and without merit. “It is regrettable that the Auditor has used his official capacity to waste time and taxpayer money in an effort to run for governor by targeting a program that is helping Iowa families exercise their statutory right to school choice,” Doe said in a statement.

My conversation with Sand has been edited for length and clarity.

Why is the ESA program an important part of your campaign?

I believe that the vast majority of Iowans think that oversight is important, and we should want public oversight of public money.

We should have income limits on the program. It shouldn’t be going to the wealthiest Iowans. We shouldn’t be allowing private schools to take 7,500 bucks from the state and then just jack up tuition by $7,500, leaving it equally unaffordable. We ought to be able to audit the program.

[Earlier this year, Sand’s office released an audit of the ESA program that did not identify any significant problems. He said then that the governor’s office failed to provide sufficient time for a thorough audit. Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican and ESA champion, countered that Sand’s comments were “just another manufactured opportunity for the auditor to use his official office to advance his political agenda in his run for governor.” Doe said in her statement that the department provided Sand’s office with extensive information. “The politicization of what’s meant to be the Department’s independent, unbiased annual audit is deeply concerning,” she said.]

What would you say to Iowa parents who are using this program and appreciate it?

Everything that I have proposed is reasonable, and I hear from parents literally every week who say, ‘Yeah, I’m glad we have the program, but geez, I want to make sure this money is spent responsibly.’

Do you ultimately want to repeal the ESA program?

[shrugs] There’s no chance of that happening. I mean, we’re talking about a legislature where it’s near supermajorities of Republicans.

Well, I’m asking what you would want in your ideal world.

I hear you asking me, and I’m answering you. I don’t deal with hypotheticals. If we can work really hard and get it to a better place, we’ll see where we are.

Some will hear the various rules you’re proposing and say that’s a stealth way of making it so private schools won’t participate.

If you’re telling me you don’t want tax dollars unless you can have them without oversight, that’s your problem, not mine.

What is your positive vision for Iowa’s public schools?

When I was growing up in Decorah, way up in Northeast Iowa, we were always in the top for public education. I want our schools to be at the top again, and I’m open-minded about how we get there. I’m not ideological about that.

We’ve got to have competitive teacher pay, not just for beginning teachers but also for teachers who have three, four, or five years’ experience, when studies show they are beginning to get very good at their craft. I think that we could be using AI one-on-one tutors right now to help kids learn to read more effectively. I’m a believer in phonics. Iowa did a requirement for phonics, so I think that that’s a good change. I was never bought into the whole language idea.

But the vast majority of our conversations around education are about how that ESA program works. What’s so interesting to me is the people who are advocates for it, say, ‘Oh, we want school choice.’ Well, I want public oversight of public money, and when you allow private schools to take public money but reject students, then you actually haven’t promoted school choice because the school is the one that gets to make the choice.

There are a number of national Democrats who are pushing your party to embrace school choice, even vouchers, and to distance itself from teachers unions. What do you think of that advice?

I know there are people out there like that. I haven’t been paying much attention to it. Specifics matter. Each program is different. I will continue to talk about the ways in which I think Iowa’s program is an invitation to fraud and doesn’t actually promote school choice. [Doe, the Iowa education spokesperson, said Sand’s office’s audit “identified zero financial discrepancies, once again affirming the Department’s responsible stewardship of taxpayer funds.”]

I’m proud to have the [Iowa teachers union’s] endorsement. But I’d say what I say to every other group: I’m independent-minded. You’re not going to get 100% of what you want from me, because there’s nobody that I agree with 100% of the time.

What do you disagree with teachers unions on?

That’s a better question for a different time. I’d have to go through what their wish list would be here in the state. I’m just making a point in general.

If you were governor, would you participate in the federal tax-credit school scholarship program?

I don’t think I have been following that one.

Do you consider yourself a fiscal conservative?

Yeah, I mean to me the phrase that’s more important is fiscal responsibility. But I’m open-minded to the importance of making investments that are going to pay off. Oh — you asked about what else we want to do for public education. I want universal early childhood education. If you just did income restrictions in the school vouchers program, you could fund early childhood education [for more students]. To me, that’s money that is well invested.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Virtual event: Has the Trump administration returned education to the states?

2026-05-29T15:21:27+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

President Donald Trump and his Education Secretary Linda McMahon have made returning education to the states — including closing the Education Department — the centerpiece of their education agenda.

What does that actually look like? To find out, Chalkbeat ideas editor Matt Barnum will be in conversation with two state education leaders: Rhode Island Commissioner of Education Angélica Infante-Green and Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner.

RSVP to join us on June 11.

We’ll discuss how they see the convulsive changes at the federal level affecting schools in their states. Does it matter if education programs are run out of the Department of Labor? Should parents and teachers be concerned about cuts to federal programs? What will happen to testing and accountability? How has civil rights enforcement changed? What new opportunities exist for state leaders?

RSVP for this virtual Chalkbeat Ideas conversation from 1-1:45 ET on Thursday. There will be time for audience-submitted questions. Please share yours upon registering.

Our panelists:

Matt Barnum is editor and columnist for Chalkbeat Ideas, a section devoted to explaining and examining the ideas and debates shaping American schools. Before launching this section, he covered K-12 education for the Wall Street Journal.

Katie Jenner, Indiana’s first secretary of education and the state’s top education official, leads a unified, student-centered vision from K-12 to college. Jenner oversees eight state agencies/boards, including leading the Indiana Department of Education and the Indiana Commission for Higher Education and chairing the State Board of Education.

Angélica Infante-Green has served as Rhode Island’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education since April 2019, leading major statewide efforts to improve PK–12 education. She guided the education system through COVID-19 recovery and school reopening, advanced readiness-based graduation requirements to reimagine high school, earned national recognition for reducing chronic absenteeism, and is overseeing the state intervention in the Providence Public School District to address long-standing challenges.

Catch up on Chalkbeat coverage before the event:

Caroline Bauman is the deputy managing editor for growth and community at Chalkbeat. Email her at cbauman@chalkbeat.org.

In the era of AI, schools want students to think critically. Experts say they need knowledge to do so.

2026-05-28T20:40:02+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

On a recent Tuesday morning, dozens of New York City educators gathered in lower Manhattan to discuss an existential issue facing many schools: “Navigating Critical Thinking and Cognitive Offloading in the Age of AI,” as the session’s title put it.

As the training began, nearly everyone raised their hand when asked if they agreed that “critical thinking is an essential skill that we need to teach our students.” Over the course of the day, the teachers considered how to prompt an AI chatbot to get better responses and assess its accuracy. They discussed the risks that students would outsource their thinking to the technology. And they learned about classroom practices to bolster critical thinking, including peer tutoring, socratic discussions, and live journaling.

The professional development was put on by the National Academy for AI Instruction, a multimillion-dollar initiative launched by the American Federation of Teachers and backed by AI companies Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI.

I sat in on this training, and many teachers I spoke with said they appreciated its message and strategies. But one important idea was largely missing: that critical thinking is directly connected to the content in math, history, and science classes. This is an essential reality often absent from discussions about how schools should respond to the spread of generative AI.

Indeed, the common refrain that teachers should focus on abstract critical thinking skills, disconnected from content, risks de-emphasizing the very thing — fluency with a broad set of facts — that supports critical thinking.

“Domain knowledge is a crucial driver of thinking skill,” wrote University of Virginia cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham in 2020 for the American Educator, a publication of the American Federation of Teachers. “Critical thinking for open-ended problems is enabled by extensive stores of knowledge.”

As technology has made knowledge more accessible — through books, Google, and now generative AI — some observers have said that schools should place less of an emphasis on basic facts that are easy to look up. “Education in the 21st century must go beyond imparting knowledge,” says the World Economic Forum. Instead, schools must impart “future-ready skills” like critical thinking and creativity.

This isn’t a new idea. Over a decade ago, a panel of academics at the National Research Council convened to consider how schools could inculcate “deeper learning” and “21st century skills,” the buzzwords of that moment. Tellingly, though, the experts reframed this assignment. “The committee views 21st century skills as dimensions of expertise that are specific to — and intertwined with — knowledge within a particular domain,” their 2012 report concluded.

To be sure, there are some skills — communication, personal organization, teamwork — that are useful in many settings and subjects. And decontextualized facts — say, memorizing the presidents without a sense of their place in history — aren’t sufficient for critical thinking.

Yet to solve math problems, students must know their times tables. To infer the causes of historical events, they need familiarity with dates and historical figures. To read and analyze complex texts, they need a wide vocabulary. To think critically, say cognitive scientists, people need to be able to seamlessly access and synthesize a large number of basic facts.

Students can look up some missing information, but when people turn to external sources too frequently, the brain struggles to keep track of all the new facts at once. Imagine reading a book and pausing every few sentences to search for an unfamiliar word or idea.

There’s not yet good reason to assume any of this will change with AI. The technology can help find new information, but knowledge is still necessary to prompt AI appropriately, to assess the accuracy of its output, and to apply it to specific tasks.

When I spoke with American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, she said that knowledge certainly matters but that “what [AI] compels is that kids really have to learn how to think and how to solve problems.” She offered a similar formulation in a major speech earlier this week.

For example, elementary school students should engage in civics by researching a topic and then figuring out how to push local politicians to make change, Weingarten told me. “Maybe there are other issues or other facts within social studies curriculum that are going to have to be dropped,” she said.

Maria Elena Guzman, one of the AFT Academy instructors, said that the role of knowledge was not foregrounded in the training because teachers already know they have to teach their content-focused standards. “It’s a given. This is part of the work that they do every single day,” she said.

But if teachers are not taught explicitly about the connection between knowledge and critical thinking, some may leave with the impression that factual content matters less than it used to, especially since this remains an evergreen take of popular education commentators.

Jessie Roeder, a high school robotics and computer science teacher in New York City, appreciates the AFT’s effort to help members navigate the complexities of using AI. He’s already attended four trainings put on by the Academy. During the critical thinking session, he raised the importance of knowledge for using AI effectively.

“You have to know enough to be able to say, wait a second, this is BS,” he later told me.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

School budgets are under pressure nationwide. Here’s what’s driving the cuts.

2026-05-28T19:32:33+00:00

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School districts are under pressure this year.

Some of the largest in the country are handing out pink slips. Cancelling technology contracts. And even slashing specific medications from employee health plans.

As many school boards debate their budgets for the upcoming school year, a Chalkbeat analysis found a common thread: More than half of the country’s 50 largest school districts are poised to or already have made cuts, or are facing a reported deficit.

Budget timelines vary from state to state. And it’s not fully clear if this year amounts to the “big shrink” that some in school finance have predicted. But experts say schools are facing a daunting combination of financial roadblocks. Some of them are wildly specific to the times in which we live: rising healthcare costs linked with GLP-1 weight loss medications, immigration fears keeping some students out of school, and rising gas prices.

“There are a lot of expenses that are out there that are increasing and the districts don’t have a lot of control over them,” said Michael Griffith, an analyst at the Learning Policy Institute who studies school finance.

But districts are also feeling the impact of yearslong declines in enrollment.

Nearly 30 of the 50 largest districts have recently cited declining enrollment. Most school districts are funded based on how many students they have, so lower enrollment makes it harder to keep up with rising costs.

The result: school closures, beloved staff members losing their jobs, and higher class sizes.

Some districts, like Broward County in south Florida, say they have little choice. Enrollment in Broward County Public Schools — the sixth-largest in the country — has declined by nearly 40,000 students, or 17%, over the past decade.

In what the district has billed to the community as a “realignment,” Broward is cutting its staff by 1,000 positions. The district is also closing six schools, with more closures possible. Superintendent Howard Hepburn said these are the toughest decisions he’s had to make in his two years leading Broward.

“It costs us a lot of money on the operation side, so we’re spending more money on operating the school rather than spending a lot of money on actually educating kids in that school and providing all the bells and whistles that come with a school that’s at capacity,” he said.

Why are school districts cutting staff and programs?

Griffith and other experts say there’s not one overarching cause hurting school budgets.

Decades-long enrollment decline is one driving force. This year appears to be a year for reckoning over enrollment for a lot of big school districts.

Take Los Angeles Unified, the second-biggest district in the country. Like Broward, the district has hemorrhaged students over the last decade, with a 28% enrollment decline, according to state data. In February, L.A. Unified took steps to lay off as many as 3,200 people, though about 650 actual layoffs are expected, due to attrition and other strategies.

Julien Lafortune, a senior fellow with the Public Policy Institute of California, said districts in his state this year are confronting enrollment declines of as much as 20%, in the case of some districts in the Los Angeles area. So even while total per student funding has increased in California — a fact politicians often tout — district administrators still have to cut, because they have fewer students.

“You can have a situation where funding is going up, but districts are in deficits, are trying to find ways to cut, because the overall student count is going down, and so the total pie of funding is going down,” he said.

Enrollment declines themselves have different causes in different districts. For example, the Trump administration’s intensified immigration enforcement has led some families to keep their children home or move away.

But there are several other reasons districts and outside experts have cited for cuts or potential budget cuts.

Rising inflation, including food and fuel costs, has hit schools “across the board,” Griffith said. Many districts also agreed to teacher pay raises in recent years that are now hard to pay for at their current staffing levels.
While states may be funding education at higher levels, federal pandemic relief funding has ended. Some districts still have employees and programs once funded by that money, a fact cited by Philadelphia’s school superintendent in explaining planned budget cuts this year. The same is true in Chicago, where leaders say they are facing a deficit of more than $730 million.
Many school districts have not been able to find new local money to offset their rising costs. In Montgomery County, Maryland, the nation’s 14th-largest school district, county officials are balking at raising taxes to cover the school district’s budget request. A Michigan study found voters are rejecting property increases at the ballot at higher rates than in the past.
Healthcare costs are also rising, Griffith said. While overall the costs of employer-sponsored plans are going up, the increased use of GLP-1 medications for weight loss is a notable factor. Some districts, including Broward County, are cutting employee coverage of these medications.

Regardless of causes, some say that reductions are appropriate. They’ve pointed out that overall, schools are receiving more public funding than ever, even as the country’s test scores have declined.

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, has been an outspoken supporter of legislation passed last year to merge school districts into bigger, more efficient systems with class-size minimums, in order to cut costs.

“In the last five years alone, property taxes have increased by over 40% with fewer kids in our schools, fewer opportunities in the classroom, and more inequities from town to town,” he said in a press conference in December.

But Griffith said those critiques ignore the difficult reality of budgeting. For example, enrollment declines usually don’t happen evenly, so district officials may have to employ the same number of teachers to maintain state class size standards, even with fewer students.

“Can there be efficiencies? Probably, you know, there can be efficiencies just about anywhere, right?” he said. “But the main driver right now is just inflation and the loss of students.”

Painful school budget cuts in south Florida

There may be no better region than south Florida that illustrates the complications of school budgeting this year.

Overall the population of the state is increasing, including the number of people under 18. But school enrollment in several big districts like Broward and Miami-Dade Counties has declined. That’s likely due to declining birth rates, immigration policy, and an array of school choice measures giving families options outside of district schools.

“I love competition,” Hepburn said. “I support parents’ rights to choose. So as a system, what we have to do to react is actually compete better and market ourselves.”

Broward faces a $90 million budget deficit. The district’s budget for the current school year is $5 billion.To try to close the budget gap, district officials are cutting 1,000 positions. Of those, 700 are already vacant — the other 300 will be layoffs.

Included in those layoffs are nearly 40 student support instructional specialists, who among other things identify students who may need help with their mental health.

Slater Pauff, 14, an eighth grader at Westglades Middle School in Parkland, said the cuts mean he and his classmates will lose an adult he trusts enough to come to with sensitive problems.

“It’s just important to have her, because a lot of kids know her, no one else really knows anyone else in the school board ... it’s important to have someone that actually helps,” he said.

As the district grapples with layoffs that will go into effect at the end of the school year, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School media specialist Diana Haneski said some of the decisions board members are signing off on don’t make sense at the school level.

“It feels like they don’t really understand what it’s like working at school,” she said.

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

Randi Weingarten backs crackdown on classroom technology, AI restrictions, and a tax on Big Tech

2026-05-27T15:58:44+00:00

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Calling for classroom screen time limits, a tax on big tech companies, and a ban on student-facing artificial intelligence in elementary schools, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten urged a unified, nationwide strategy to curb technology use in schools.

Labeling technology as a “major reason” young people “are drowning,” Weingarten said the Trump administration has turned away from its core responsibilities in American education.

In a nearly hour-long speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Weingarten also laid out a 10-point plan she said would boost learning in an “age of AI.”

“What I’m calling for is getting the balance right to harness the benefits of technology while mitigating the harms,” she said.

Like many education leaders and officials, Weingarten is walking a tightrope when it comes to AI and education. She’s simultaneously encouraging its use by teachers while lamenting how it may encourage students to rely on AI for thinking and tasks they’d otherwise do in school, a process she called “cognitive offloading.”

The warning from Weingarten that unleashing AI in the classroom without intention will have disruptive effects comes a year after the AFT announced a partnership with OpenAI and Microsoft to provide training to its members. At the time, Weingarten said in a press conference that teachers faced “huge challenges” in navigating AI “wisely, ethically and safely.”

“The question was whether we would be chasing it or whether we would be trying to harness it,” she said in July 2025.

Weingarten described concerns over AI’s effects on learning and the recent backlash to screen time in schools as common causes.

In calling for a complete ban on screens in classrooms from prekindergarten to second grade as well as on the use of student-facing AI for young students, Weingarten cited research from neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath, who has become one of the most prominent voices in the movement to ban software he’s deemed harmful to learning.

Even so, Weingarten said the technology likely has a place in education.

“I’m wary of the dangers of AI, but it is here to stay. We need enforceable guardrails, and we need to question the destruction to people’s lives, but that’s not enough,” she said. “It is equally essential to make sure educators understand AI and have a say in its use in education and in our profession.”

Just a day before Weingarten’s remarks calling for a ban on student-facing AI in elementary schools, Newark Public Schools issued a press release about her visit to the school district to see how elementary students were using Khanmigo, an AI-powered chatbot.

Although the creator of Khanmigo has expressed disappointment with the chatbot’s performance in schools, Newark students praised the technology, and Weingarten in the release said she spent time learning how schools were integrating the technology into their classrooms.

On Wednesday, she used a much more negative tone about AI.

“Students need their teachers, real human beings, not robots, and not chatbots,” she said.

One of the elements of her 10-point plan is a tax on the earnings of big tech companies to “ensure they pay their fair share for the adverse and disruptive consequences” on Americans, including workers displaced because of AI.

The AFT leader said that Microsoft and OpenAI have agreed “in principle to our overarching tenets and standards.” But Andrew Crook, a spokesperson for AFT, said Wednesday after her speech that did not mean they’d agreed to the tax part of the plan — the labor union did not ask the corporations about that, he said.

Other parts of her 10-point plan include:

A redesign of schooling to prioritize active learning, including project-based and more career-oriented education. Weingarten specifically said that should include redesigning accountability systems to measure student progress to match this priority.
“A new gold standard for safety and privacy” in the use of AI. Weingarten said providers who don’t meet such standards shouldn’t be eligible to be used in K-12 classrooms.
An independent research consortium to examine AI’s effects on education and technology’s effects on students. Weingarten suggested that the consortium should be funded through public and philanthropic dollars.

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

Tom Kane has tracked years of U.S. test scores. Here’s what he’s learned — and still can’t explain.

2026-05-21T09:46:23+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Just about everyone in education is trying to figure out why student achievement has been declining and how to raise it back up.

If anyone would know the answer it might be Tom Kane, a Harvard University professor who has been poring over data on student learning for the last several years. Kane and several colleagues recently released an extensive database of test scores from most states in the country.

The takeaway: Schools have made some progress recovering from steep learning declines in math, but scores in both math and reading are still far below where they were over a decade ago.

“The U.S. has been in a learning recession since at least around 2013 and that’s especially true in reading,” says Kane. “The challenges we face didn’t start or end with the pandemic.” The implications are alarming. In other work, Kane has found that test scores are linked to a variety of economic outcomes.

The research out of Kane’s center has been so comprehensive that many of its interesting findings have flown under the radar. I wanted to highlight a few of them. And I also wanted to unpack theories to explain poor academic results. What’s striking is that even Kane, a leading expert, doesn’t have clear answers or solutions.

Here are some takeaways from the work of Kane and his colleagues.

There are hypotheses, but no decisive evidence, for why learning stalled before the pandemic

Kane offers two theories. “The slowdown in learning coincided with a dismantling of test-based accountability and a rise in social media use,” his study says. The evidence for both is circumstantial, Kane acknowledges. Other countries have also seen test scores deteriorate, which could be consistent with a rise in social media everywhere. Federal accountability helped drive learning gains in the past, according to some research, so easing the pressure may explain recent declines.

Yet both theories have holes. Test scores have dropped even in early grades where social media use is not prevalent (although general screen use has accelerated for young kids). And accountability policies seemed most effective in raising math scores, but the most persistent recent declines have been in reading.

“We don’t have a definitive answer,” Kane says.

The highest- and lowest-poverty school systems have recovered faster than those in the middle

Kane calls this a U-shaped recovery. You can see it in the graph below, from his recent study. The dark blue and orange lines show learning trends by district poverty rates between 2022 and 2025. In math, the highest- and lowest-need school systems have seen the most progress. In reading, scores in middle-income districts fell the most.

Kane says policymakers should keep in mind those middle-income districts, which are sometimes overlooked in policy and funding formulas.

Federal COVID relief money helped, but it might have gone further

Part of the explanation for this U-shaped recovery is the $190 billion or so in federal COVID relief funding. In the same graph, the line below the actual recovery shows Kane’s estimate of what scores would have been without the money. Scores in high-poverty districts would have been significantly worse, he finds. Those schools benefited more from the money simply because they got more of it.

Kane rejects the commonly heard argument that the federal relief money was largely wasted. But he thinks the test score effect might have been larger had districts been required to spend more on academic recovery.

One caveat: Kane acknowledges he may be underestimating the effect of each dollar of federal aid because he doesn’t have data on how much extra money schools actually spent, just how much they were supposed to receive.

Absenteeism is limiting recovery, at least a bit

Attendance issues have exploded in recent years. Schools have made some progress in getting students back to class, but absence rates remain elevated. Kane and team estimate that this is dragging down learning. The other gray lines in the graphic — above the blue and orange lines — are Kane’s predictions of what scores would be if students were attending school at the same rate as before the pandemic.

The effects are real but fairly modest, indicating absence rates are not the main drivers of sluggish recovery. In reading, for instance, most districts would still have lost ground even with pre-pandemic attendance.

State test scores paint a more optimistic picture of recovery than the main federal test

Kane and colleagues use a combination of state tests and federal NAEP exams to construct their learning estimates. To produce the main trends they rely on NAEP, except for score changes from 2024 to 2025 since NAEP scores aren’t yet available. This matters because state tests tend to produce more positive trends. For instance, NAEP has shown reading scores declining in recent years, even while many states’ results have inched up. It’s not that one set of scores is right and the other is wrong. But this discrepancy is worth keeping in mind.

It’s not clear whether science-of-reading laws are working

Kane doesn’t find a strong correlation between states’ reading gains since 2022 and the number of science-of-reading elements they’ve incorporated. Yet he notes that the states with very few of these tenets have not made progress. Kane emphasizes that this is not especially rigorous evidence, and should be taken as only “suggestive.” More research is needed on whether these laws are changing school practices and improving outcomes.

Progress has happened before and is happening in some places

Kane marvels at the substantial gains in test scores in the 1990s and early 2000s — which went largely unremarked upon at the time. If anything, the prevailing narrative was that nothing in education was working. But if we made progress before, we can do it again, he suggests. That’s also why his report highlights a number of school systems, like Detroit, that are relative bright spots.

“It’s a reminder that improvement is possible,” Kane says.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Teens are sleeping less than ever. Experts say schools can help by pushing back start times.

2026-05-20T20:28:52+00:00

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Madi Watkins, 16, usually goes to bed around midnight and wakes up around 8:15 a.m. Her friends who attend school a few towns over have to wake up over three hours earlier.

There’s a good reason for the difference. Watkins and her classmates at Mount Desert Island High School start school at an unusual time much later than a lot of high school students: 8:50 a.m.

It wasn’t always that way at their school, which is on a little island in Bar Harbor, Maine, on the edge of Acadia National Park. But in the fall of 2020, Principal Matt Haney saw an opportunity to push back his school’s previous start time of 7:57 a.m. — something he’d wanted to do for a long time.

“There’s so much evidence to suggest they perform better, their mental health is better, they’re safer drivers, and everything works better with their lives if they don’t have to get up at that really, really uncomfortable hour,” he said.

A pair of studies out this month have rung alarm bells around the declining quality and quantity of adolescent sleep, finding young people are getting less sleep on average than in decades before. Experts say just pushing back a school’s schedule could help teens get more sleep and therefore improve their overall health, attendance and even academic achievement.

Researchers in a study published this month in the journal Pediatrics found that just 37% of 12- and 13-year-olds and 22% of 18- and 19-year-olds reported getting seven or more hours of sleep at night, representing the lowest rates in 30 years. Rachel Widome, one of the study’s authors and professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, said the impacts of declining sleep on teen health are grave, including a greater risk of chronic disease.

“Adolescents who aren’t getting enough sleep are at greater risk for injury, from accidents, from a variety of mental health concerns,” she said.

Efforts to convince schools to change when they start classes go back many years. The reasons why students are getting less sleep range from how busy today’s teens are to social unrest. But another study published this week in the journal JAMA Pediatrics also points the finger at smartphone usage.

Looking at the data from phones of 657 young people, researchers found adolescents spent a mean of 50 minutes on their phones between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m.

School administrators can’t control student scrolling habits or societal unrest, but Widome’s study suggests there is one action they can take: push school start times back. Other research suggests doing so would help teens especially get more sleep.

Federal data shows average start time for high schools by state varies widely, ranging from 7:30 a.m. in Louisiana to 8:34 a.m. in South Carolina. One analysis found that start times between 8:30 a.m. and 8:59 a.m. were associated with better developmental outcomes, more sleep, and less negative moods among adolescents.

Some states are moving in this direction. A California law went into effect in 2022 mandating classes begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m. for public high schools and 8 a.m. for middle schools.

Changing school start times can come with unintended consequences, however, and resistance. Parents, for instance, also have to get to work in many cases. And teachers may have to shift their schedules. At Haney’s school, the day still ends at 2:15 p.m., so educators have to pack a lot of instruction into one day.

But Widome said the trade-offs are worth it. She recalled that years ago, while administering a survey about sleep to students early in the morning, she observed a teen falling asleep at their desk, head resting on her survey.

“I wish schools could embrace a culture of sleep where they’re no longer acting like it’s this super macho thing to just do a million things and stay up late to do all your homework,” she said.

In Maine, Haney said that change has brought dividends for his students. Teachers say the teens come to their first class ready to engage, and Haney believes they didn’t suffer as much academically as many others did following the pandemic.

Watkins and her schoolmate Bree Yarborough, 17, said they like their school’s start time because they find they have energy for their first class of the day. For Yarborough, that’s Spanish, which she said takes some zeal, because they dance and have animated conversations to practice the language.

“My brain does not work whenever I get little amounts of sleep,” Yarborough said.

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

Millions of students use i-Ready. But many parents view it as a villain in the ed tech fight.

2026-05-19T17:02:53+00:00

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If you talk to an American parent about technology in the classroom, one brand of software comes up again and again: i-Ready.

The software provides digital instruction that promises a “personalized” learning experience to identify students for intervention. It also has interim assessments that aim to monitor student progress. And to keep students engaged with instruction, it uses cutesy animations of cats and aliens to coax students along.

All of that might sound straightforward. But Stuart Day is exasperated with i-Ready — on behalf of himself and his kid.

“It’s just a bunch of digital busy work,” said Day, the father of an elementary-age student in northwestern Pennsylvania. “And he doesn’t like it. He gets really stressed out about it.”

The resistance to i-Ready mirrors a growing resistance to much of the technology that’s made it into American classrooms. It’s an easy target, from the “i” at the start of its name to its backing by private equity. But i-Ready is also widespread in classrooms; roughly one-third of American students use it, according to Curriculum Associates, the software company behind i-Ready. The software’s detractors argue it subjects kids to excruciatingly repetitive lessons and practice exercises. Some parents, educators, and researchers are now skeptical that there’s solid evidence to justify having their kids use i-Ready.

Parents in Los Angeles and the District of Columbia have fought against their districts’ contracts with Curriculum Associates. One parent has filed a lawsuit against the software, claiming Curriculum Associates improperly shares student data, a claim the company denies.

In response to these mounting criticisms, Curriculum Associates claims its products are backed up by a solid library of evidence. The company’s leaders also deny that it should be the villain it’s been made out to be, even as they acknowledge it might not always be used as intended.

“We believe student outcomes are the only metric that matters,” wrote Kelly Sia, the company’s CEO, in a widely shared LinkedIn post in April. “That means being clear-eyed about how our programs are used and whether that time is purposeful, connected to instruction, and supporting student growth.”

But such messages aren’t likely to halt complaints about ed tech that involve everything from a lack of independent research to data privacy and students’ grievances.

Beyond those concerns, Day believes i-Ready has helped turn the American school day into something unrecognizable.

“When I was in school, I remember there were student computers. We didn’t take them home, like they do now … you couldn’t surf the web with them or anything,” he said. “I guess in my mind, that’s what I thought student computers were today, but they’re not like that.”

Parents worry i-Ready leaves kids stuck academically

Some of i-Ready’s presence can be credited to the pandemic’s aftermath.

Though the software has been around since 2011, many schools adopted it during a push for more periodic assessment, in order to track how students were recovering academically after the disruptions caused by COVID. More than a dozen states list i-Ready as a state-approved assessment or instructional material.

But in Facebook groups and elsewhere, some parents have expressed at least two concerns about the software that might be related: its reliance on game-like experiences, and whether it accurately captures where students stand academically.

Kelly Clancy, a parent in New York City, thought it was odd when her 8-year-old tested two grades behind in math on i-Ready’s software. When she asked her daughter what was going on, the answer had nothing to do with math. Clancy’s daughter liked the noise an animated alien made when she got a problem wrong. So she intentionally botched the questions.

“My daughter was enjoying the process of making these aliens look sad and make this funny sad noise,” Clancy said.

That echoes complaints several other parents shared with Chalkbeat that they didn’t like i-Ready in part because their child tested below the level they thought their child would.

Those worries might speak to a broader issue in education in which parents overestimate their child’s academic performance. But Clancy and other parents and teachers also express frustration that they can’t control the sequence of instruction or questions the software generates. The i-Ready algorithm is meant to offer up more practice for students when they struggle, meeting them where they’re at academically. But parents said their students ended up getting the same problems over and over again.

In short, Clancy calls it a “blackbox” algorithm that makes kids frustrated.

Not every parent or kid hates i-Ready. On Facebook, some parents espouse the benefits of mandating their kids practice i-Ready to grow academically, akin to the way parents relied on Hooked on Phonics in the 1990s.

Ty Holmes, chief impact officer at Curriculum Associates, told Chalkbeat that criticisms that i-Ready improperly gamifies learning are overwrought. Holmes said i-Ready creates incentives to keep students engaged, just like teachers do when they give out gold stars to certain students.

“i-Ready is a tool that they use for very specific and targeted reasons, and the overall sort of design of the classroom is still a human endeavor,” he said.

Research debate highlights broader concerns about ed tech

Evaluations by Johns Hopkins University scholars of i-Ready’s personalized instruction programs highlight debates about the research basis for the software, as well as for ed tech in general.

The research, paid for by Curriculum Associates, found some promising results in math for students using i-Ready’s personalized instruction program compared with those just using the program’s diagnostic assessment. The results showed fewer benefits in reading.

“It provides some suggestion that there can be gains from i-Ready, but certainly not a sufficient evidence base to just blanket adopt i-Ready in school,” said Steven Ross, one of the 2022 evaluations’ authors and a professor at Johns Hopkins’ school of education.

The Johns Hopkins study is part of a body of research commissioned by Curriculum Associates. Critics say this research cannot be considered independent because the company paid for it, a common issue in the ed tech industry.

The amount of funding from the federal government available to study educational products with true independence would maybe cover 5% of all products, Ross said. The only alternative is for companies to commission independent parties for reviews, he added.

But Jared Cooney Horvath, one of ed tech’s biggest critics and a neuroscientist who runs LME Global, an education consulting firm, says the lack of peer-reviewed research or randomized controlled trials to measure i-Ready’s efficacy is a glaring concern.

“If one of the most widely used tools in American education operates without an evidential base, this signals a broader problem with how we evaluate EdTech,” Cooney Horvath wrote in a March blog post. “Somewhere along the way, we stopped asking, ‘Does this actually help students learn?’— or perhaps we never seriously considered this question in the first place.”

Pressure mounts on school boards to reconsider i-Ready

Scores of parents at big school districts across the country pressuring school boards to rethink school’s use of iReady.

In D.C., a councilmember has proposed legislation that would compel city leaders to reconsider the district’s $1.5 million contract for i-Ready. And the Los Angeles Unified School District will audit the software after local backlash.

Washoe County, Nevada’s school board recently considered renewing its contract for i-Ready for three years. But in May, the board reversed course and renewed it for just one after receiving about two dozen messages from parents and educators. Board members said they wanted to study student outcomes and screen time to see if they justified the cost of a longer contract.

Calen Evans, president of the district’s labor union, said teachers are frustrated that students spend roughly 30 minutes a week using i-Ready, according to district data.

“We need more instructional time,” Evans said. “We don’t have time for social studies. We don’t have time for science.”

Clancy said districts should drop i-Ready, instead of having individual parents opt their students out. And Clancy said many of the problems her and other parents have raised about i-Ready occur with other ed tech products.

“What we should do is think seriously about what it looks like to redesign our schools around what we know works,” she said.

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

What happened when Los Angeles parents got better school choice information?

2026-05-19T09:47:00+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

In the fall of 2019, thousands of parents in Los Angeles received letters in the mail designed to help them choose a high school for their eighth graders. Many of these letters included novel data on how effective different high schools were at helping students learn.

What the families probably didn’t realize is that they were part of an unusual experiment designed by University of Chicago economist Chris Campos, in partnership with the Los Angeles school system. Campos was looking to answer a long-discussed question: Can better information help families make better decisions about where to send their children to school?

At a moment when school choice is expanding, this is a crucial issue across the country.

Campos, who had previously studied school choice in Los Angeles, spent months working on how to communicate information about school performance. Many parents may assume that schools with the highest overall test scores are the ones where students make the most progress — but this often isn’t true.

Campos calculated measures of student learning himself, using a complex statistical model, while also conducting focus groups with parents on how to explain these numbers clearly. Such figures are often unavailable or hard to make sense of. Campos also designed a video, disseminated to families, describing the difference between student growth and the incoming test scores of schools’ student bodies.

The letter-sending experiment was remarkable. Such an undertaking is rare, especially at a large scale in a large school system. Yet it turned out the letters on their own didn’t make much of a difference. Parents and students selected schools as they always did, seemingly unmoved by this new information.

But Campos was also testing out an additional idea. What would happen if large numbers of families at a single school got letters with information on student growth? Campos’ theory was that choosing a school is fundamentally a social process, both for students and their parents.

The data bore this out. When a middle school was saturated with informational letters, more students tended to choose high schools with higher growth scores. That was even the case for families that did not get their own letter. In other words, what mattered more than individual information was a community-level shift in thinking. “There seems to be a tipping point,” Campos says.

He continued to track these students as they moved through high school. Those from middle schools where growth information was widely shared were more likely to enroll in college and to report more supportive high school environments. Campos’ theory for why is simple: They benefitted from choosing better high schools based on better information.

The high school choice system in Los Angeles is not a zero sum game since many schools are not filled to capacity. When one student chooses a school, that doesn’t necessarily mean another is bumped out of it. The letters seemed to have led to a modest migration toward more successful schools.

Campos is hopeful that if families prioritize growth measures, that will pressure struggling schools to improve. “They’re going to have an even stronger incentive to perform better on these metrics,” he says.

The findings offer two important, albeit still-tentative insights. First, families do seem to value data on student growth, but they often don’t have access to it. Second, to change parents’ thinking, information needs to be widely shared across a broad network of connected families, not just a handful of individuals.

Campos’ results are intriguing but limited. They should be taken as provisional until they are replicated by other researchers in different settings. Successful pilot experiments like this sometimes don’t work when brought to a larger scale. The study also comes in a context in which the vast majority of students are lower-income. Moving the preferences of advantaged families may be much harder.

Campos’ paper is currently going through the academic peer review process. He is still working with officials in Los Angeles to study and improve its choice system. Now, though, all parents are sent letters he’s designed providing information on student growth.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Should Congress spend big to rebuild schools? This $500 billion campaign proposal will be a tough sell.

2026-05-18T10:00:00+00:00

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America’s schools are crumbling.

There’s black mold in buildings in Alaska and Maine. Classrooms in New Jersey and Texas lack proper heating and cooling. And there are persistent plumbing problems in Idaho and Pennsylvania.

America’s aging school infrastructure is by one measure a nearly $90 billion problem. Federal leaders have acknowledged it since at least the 1980s but have declined to address it. Local school districts and state governments also haven’t solved it — in some cases, even after being ordered by a court to do so.

It’s a problem so big that one congressional candidate running to represent parts of Philadelphia — where the cost of repairing and upgrading public schools could cost up to $10 billion — is making it the centerpiece of his campaign. After struggling to find solutions in the Pennsylvania Legislature, state Sen. Sharif Street, a Democrat, believes only the federal government has the resources to tackle this issue. He thinks a $500 billion block grant proposal could find bipartisan support in a Congress and a country deeply divided on the federal government’s role in education.

“If we don’t address this at a federal level and come up with a massive amount of money to do so, we’re going to constantly be in a space of choosing all bad options,” Street said.

Those who lobby for the issue say Street’s proposal could put thousands of people to work, boost test scores, and strengthen communities. Street thinks it could — and must — be the nation’s next interstate highway project.

To make his case in Congress, Street must first get through a tough Democratic primary for the 3rd Congressional District on May 19. The winner of the primary is the heavy favorite to win the November election.

Regardless of whether Street wins the seat, advocates say it’s rare for a congressional candidate to make school infrastructure a key issue in a pitch to voters.

“It is absolutely viable, if Congress has the will to do it, and it would be transformative for America’s families and communities for decades to come,” said Ally Talcott, executive director of the Build America’s School Infrastructure Coalition, of Street’s proposal. “I think it is quite possibly one of the areas that could bring the country together.”

The centerpiece of Pennsylvania Sen. Sharif Street's congressional campaign is a $500 billion proposal to fund school construction and maintenance.

But Street is wading into a debate where others have previously failed to make progress. Convincing conservatives to support sending $500 billion for school facilities through a Department of Education the Trump administration is working to dismantle would be a tough sell, even if local bond measures for school infrastructure continue to do well at the ballot box.

R. Richard Geddes, a nonresident senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute specializing in infrastructure policy, said he thinks school construction and maintenance is “a huge sleeper issue” that few are paying close attention to.

Still, for a proposal like Street’s to succeed and that money be spent efficiently, Geddes there should be conditions. He suggested requiring municipalities to bundle projects like Pennsylvania did to build 550 bridges, or setting up a federal credit program like one that provides loans for highway and railroad projects.

Asking thousands of local education agencies to apply for some of the $500 billion pot would be “a mess,” and those districts wouldn’t reap the benefits of scale, Geddes said.

Cities and municipalities should also consider public-private partnerships, Geddes said. That could look like attaching a privately owned gym or coffee shop to a school building to generate revenue that could pay for a portion of the building maintenance.

Geddes said that could come with its own controversy, but “it would still be better than what we have, which is a lack of creative thinking.”

State and local funding lags for school infrastructure

To accommodate the baby boom generation, cities and towns built thousands of new schools. Since then, the fertility rate has declined, and post-pandemic K-12 enrollment has been shrinking. That’s left many school buildings half empty and costly to maintain.

State and local lawmakers typically patch up the worst infrastructure issues with small-dollar grants and emergency funds. But they haven’t come close to fully funding their school facilities’ needs. As of 2023, 13 states contributed less than 10% toward local district investments in school construction and capital improvements, according to the 21st Century School Fund’s State of the Schools report from last year. And 10 states made no contributions at all.

It’s estimated that the average annual gap between what districts are spending on their public school facilities and what is needed is nearly $90 billion nationally, according to the State of the Schools report.

It’s a crucial education issue that has been politically “orphaned,” despite recent history indicating it can be relatively popular with voters said Mary Filardo, a school construction finance expert and founder of the 21st Century School Fund. Voters approved nearly 80% of bond measures for school facilities in 2025, and they approved nearly 74% in 2024.

In May, Texas voters approved a $6.2 billion school bond — the largest in state history.

But local funding hasn’t been sufficient to meet all the needs. And in some places, like Philly, the school district lacks taxing authority altogether.

In Street’s hometown of Philadelphia, the school facilities crisis has become one of the most pressing political issues in the city. With a $300 million budget deficit and declining student population, the district is moving forward with a $3 billion plan to close 17 schools and modernize nearly 170 others.

But right now, the district can’t pay for it. The district’s annual budget is $4.5 billion, yet estimates for the total cost to repair and upgrade its schools range from $5 billion to nearly $10 billion.

“Philadelphia is one of the great American cities. And it’s like, how did you let this get this bad?” said Filardo.

Pennsylvania’s previous program to fund school repairs, known as PlanCon, stopped receiving funding in 2015. A new version has never received state funding.

“There’s no way that the city or the state at the local level can actually fully address those needs,” Street said. “We just can’t do it.”

Street said his proposal, which he acknowledged is a starting point and could end up being much smaller than $500 billion, would have the Department of Education send out funding through an as-yet-undeveloped formula that factors in local population and needs.

The Philadelphia school district spends about $770 million on facilities a year, mostly on debt service and emergency repairs when roofs collapse or boilers fail, Filardo said. Those emergency repairs can end up costing more than regular maintenance and upkeep.

Filardo says for districts like Philly it’s a bit of a paradox: “They’re not spending enough, but they’re spending a lot, and they’re not getting as good a value from what they are spending.”

Geddes said when cities and towns are faced with budget crises, “the easiest thing to do in the world is defer maintenance.” That goes for roads, sidewalks, and electrical grids as well as schools.

He suggested one condition of receiving federal funding could be locking in contracts that would commit municipalities to funding 10 or 12 years of proper maintenance in advance.

That maintenance will be critical, Filardo warned, as construction costs rise and the effects of climate change batter buildings and put extra pressure on electrical systems.

School infrastructure funded with ‘hodgepodge’ of federal policies

Talcott of the infrastructure coalition said the way the country currently treats school construction funding is via “a hodgepodge of federal policies.” Funding goes out piecemeal through several agencies and departments including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Education, and the Department of Energy.

A bill in Congress aims to take on the problem, but it’s a far cry from the $500 billion Street is seeking.

The Rebuild America’s Schools Act of 2026 co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, and U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat, would set aside $100 billion in direct grants and $30 billion in bonding authority over five years for school construction.

But Scott, the ranking member on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said gaining support for the legislation has felt like an uphill battle. The bill currently has no Republican cosponsors and hasn’t had a hearing. Scott and other lawmakers have introduced a version of the bill four times since 2019.

“If the locality can’t afford it and the state’s not doing it, then it’s either going to be the federal government or it won’t get done,” Scott said.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

A year ago, experts worried about NAEP’s future. Now, the test is expanding.

2026-05-15T21:15:44+00:00

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A year ago, there was speculation that the Nation’s Report Card was at risk under the Trump administration.

Testing experts at the Education Department had been laid off and the board in charge of the program canceled several optional tests. But now, expansion is coming in the form of additional results that could give the public more information about how students in their states are performing.

The National Assessment Governing Board approved a new testing schedule Friday that allows for state-level results in 12th grade math and reading, eighth and 12th grade civics, and eighth grade science.

The vote was 16-3.

NAGB, which sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, has long aspired to add more granular results, said Executive Director Lesley Muldoon.

“That’s what helps drive actual policy action at the state level,” she said.

The updated schedule would take effect in 2028 for eighth grade civics and 12th grade math and reading. The eighth grade science test would be administered in 2029 and 12th graders would take a civics exam in 2032. Participation is optional, but NAGB wants to know states’ intentions by this summer.

The governing board isn’t alone in wanting NAEP to be more useful to state policymakers. In its recent report on the future of the American workforce, the Bipartisan Policy Center, led by former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, called for more state-level data in the same three areas and a shorter, six-month timeline between the assessment and the release of the results.

Some observers say the board’s vote underscores the importance of NAEP.

“This suggests an acknowledgment that standardized testing, and comparable data across states, still matters,” said Dale Chu, an education consultant who frequently writes about assessment.

At the same time, in its fiscal year 2027 budget, the administration is requesting less for the program than Congress has appropriated in recent years, $137 million compared with $193 million.

Muldoon told The 74 that if Congress maintains $193 million for the program, no additional money would be needed to expand testing at the state level. But if all 50 states want to participate, they might need more resources.

State reactions to NAEP expansion could vary

The response from states, she said, has been positive, but she doesn’t expect all to sign up.

Board Member Julia Rafal-Baer, who voted against the plan, said while she agreed with the science and civics schedule, she’s concerned about whether enough states would participate in the 12th grade assessments. The announcement, she said, would also come in the midst of a “charged environment.”

“You can see it bubbling up now — public trust around testing, technology, AI, screens and student data,” she said during the meeting. “In this room, we understand all the differences. Parents right now do not understand the differences.”

Others noted that with 39 governors’ races this year, those who show interest now might be out of office by the time they have to formally commit. But Board Member Ron Reynolds, formerly head of a California private school organization, said the elections shouldn’t affect the board’s decision.

“I think we would cross a dangerous line if we began to anticipate what the political environment might be at a specific time and then make decisions in advance that might foreclose an opportunity to assess and report,” he said.

States would need to identify a sample ranging from 1,200 to 2,000 students in each of the categories for which they want new results.

U.S. Rep. Mark White, a Tennessee Republican and current NAGB chair, told The 74 that his state is among those that would likely “jump on the opportunity” to see how the state’s students are performing in science, civics and in their senior year.

“Tennessee realized that our K-12 standards were not adequate in 2011 when we compared our performance to NAEP data,” he said. “We got busy.”

In 2013, the state was the fastest improving in the nation, and this week earned recognition as a top performer in post-pandemic academic recovery.

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

Angélica Infante Green, Rhode Island’s education commissioner, wants her state to participate in all of the assessments, but is particularly enthusiastic about state-level civics. The state passed a law in 2021 requiring students to demonstrate proficiency in civics to graduate.

“It’s important, based on where we are as a country,” she said. “If our students don’t know how the government works and how our democracy works, that poses a challenge.”

Chu said he wouldn’t be surprised if Mike Morath, state chief in Texas, or Indiana Education Secretary Katie Jenner also take “a keen interest,” but predicted that “in many other places the reaction would amount to little more than a shrug.”

Former Florida Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. criticized the NAEP program after the 2024 fourth and eighth grade results were released. The state saw a sharp decline in reading scores, which he attributed to a sample of schools that he said was not representative of the state overall and included two of the lowest-performing schools. He also blamed the shift that year on the switch to a digital test on school district devices.

The Florida Department of Education did not respond to questions about whether the state might participate.

Revised NAEP could be ‘powerful source of information’

Chu and others, however, question whether state-level data on 12th graders would be that useful.

“Low student motivation has long been a cloud hanging over 12th grade,” he said. “I’m not sure bringing those results to the state level adds much unless that issue is addressed.”

Muldoon disagreed that motivation is a challenge, but said that getting a large enough national sample of 12th graders can be. Seniors, she said, are sometimes off campus for internships or college trips.

Some states, like Nevada, require students to take the ACT for graduation. But Jhone Ebert, superintendent of the Clark County School District, and former state chief, said a college entrance exam might not be the best way to measure the skills of students planning to go straight into the workforce. NAEP, she said, would offer a fuller view of students’ skills.

“Not everybody’s going to college,” said Ebert, also on the board. “That doesn’t mean that they’re not going to be successful participants in our society.”

National results from 2024’s 12th graders were discouraging. Twenty-two percent tested at the proficient level in math, a 2 percentage point decline since 2019. In reading, 35% were proficient, also a drop. As with fourth and eighth graders in recent years, the percentage of high school seniors scoring at the below basic level increased. But those results don’t tell states anything about their specific strengths and weaknesses.

State-level data could be a “really powerful source of information,” Muldoon said. “There is no other nationally representative assessment of high school students’ achievement.”

Broader interest in civics education drove NAEP updates

The same is true for civics. The last NAEP civics test was in 2022, and just in eighth grade.

Average scores on the 300-point scale fell by two points, the first-ever decline in the 25-year history of the test, which measures students’ knowledge of government, the founding documents and politics.

Twelfth grade results in civics haven’t been available since 2010. The 2032 civics test in 12th grade will also be an updated version. Patrick Kelly, chair of NAGB’s assessment development committee, told the members Friday that while the “bones are good,” the design of the civics assessment is old.

The last time the test was updated, “our president of the United States was playing saxophone on late night,” he said.

Shawn Healy, chief policy and advocacy officer at iCivics, a nonprofit that provides civics lesson plans and online games, called the state-level results and the update “a big win for our field.”

The results, he said, will offer insight into the success of civics education policies at the state level, such as requiring a dedicated course or completion of student projects, or offering diplomas that recognize achievements. This year, he’s tracked 240 civics education bills in 40 states.

“That speaks to the interest in this issue across blue and red states,” he said.

NAEP scores in 8th grade science drop, gender gap returns

In science, 2029 won’t be the first time state results will be available. Most states voluntarily participated in 2015. But now, under a new design, the questions will more closely match what states expect eighth graders to know in science, said Christine Cunningham, senior vice president of STEM learning at the Museum of Science in Boston and a NAGB member.

Large school systems, those in the Trial Urban District Assessment group, would also be able to opt in to that science exam. Currently, only national data is available for those subjects and grades.

“At a time when science and engineering are having such a profound impact on our lives, it’s important to understand how our students are doing,” she said. “Education leaders continue to see value in expanding opportunities for state-level reporting beyond reading and math.”

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Linda Jacobson is a senior writer at The 74. You can reach her at @lrj417 and at Linda@the74million.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.

Detroit schools are making real gains in reading and math: 4 strategies that are working

2026-05-13T04:01:00+00:00

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With five Detroit first graders peering up at her, Aja Penick repeated one word: “Same.” The students guessed the word’s spelling on mini white boards. One guessed “saym.” Another, “sam.”

Penick focused on Marvin, 7, who had written “sae” on his board.

“You need something else,” she said. A few students tried to whisper their guesses, but Penick trained her attention on the boy dressed in a blue-collared shirt. Marvin added the letter M: “Saem.” That wasn’t it either, Penick said. But he was close. She asked him: What do you know about where ‘e’ should go in a word when ‘e’ is silent?

Marvin erased one more time and wrote the word correctly, victorious.

Students like Marvin can get this kind of attention from interventionists like Penick because of the Detroit students who struggled to read — and didn’t get the help — a decade ago.

Aja Penick, an academic interventionist, works with first graders at Munger Elementary-Middle School on Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Detroit.

Penick is one of 18 academic interventionists at Munger Elementary-Middle School in Detroit. The school district has for three years paid the salaries of reading interventionists like Penick from a $94.4 million legal settlement. Michigan awarded the money to Detroit Public Schools Community District after a group of students sued the state in 2016, claiming they’d been denied the opportunity of a quality education, and the “right to read,” in particular.

The headlines about that lawsuit exposed deplorable conditions in Detroit schools. There were rodents in classrooms, a shortage of textbooks, and unqualified teachers. And students were graduating without basic literacy skills. These conditions had persisted for decades, and were especially acute while the district was under state control for long periods.

Administrators say after years of struggle, the district is finally moving the needle, and the data bears that out. The Education Scorecard, a new analysis from researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth that draws on state and national test scores, shows Detroit students are making faster improvement in reading and math compared with similar districts. Amid what these researchers are calling a “reading recession,” Detroit represents a bright spot, even as the district still has a long way to go.

Proficiency rates in Detroit are still much lower than many urban districts across the country. In reading, 15.4% of students scored proficient or higher in 2025 state tests. In math, 12.3% scored proficient or higher. But district leaders are hopeful those numbers are growing, too. District leaders attribute the success they’ve made so far to a consistent strategy focused on reducing student absenteeism, a reading curriculum attuned to the science of reading, and tracking of academic data.

Students pass between classes at Munger Elementary-Middle School on Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Detroit.

Superintendent Nikolai Vitti believes the district’s improvement should be celebrated and earn commendation, even if it is “incremental.” But Vitti, who has run the district since 2017, said the trend “shouldn’t create complacency.”

And the literacy lawsuit money that has helped fund the district’s efforts to improve will soon dry up.

Below are four strategies Detroit educators say have moved the needle.

1. A focus on literacy — and aides to help

Detroit’s installed both multilingual interventionists and reading interventionists like Penick across its schools — including 267 to work with K-2 students specifically. Their work ramps up during 120-minute literacy blocks instituted in Detroit schools every day.

Greg Burris, a multilingual interventionist at Munger, grew up in southwest Detroit. He comes from a family of Spanish speakers, and speaks Spanish himself. At Munger, 73% of students are English learners, and the neighborhood is largely Latino.

Kids are in a ‘reading recession’ as test scores continue to decline

Burris has been working as an interventionist with the district for more than a year, delivering reading and language help to its Spanish-speaking students like Marvin. Nearly 74% of Munger students showed average or above-average growth on the state’s assessment for English learners in 2025, up from 68% in 2023.

Some of his work involves helping students overcome the fear of messing up when they speak English.

“A lot of these kids, they kind of know the language, but I feel that they kind of had a fear of speaking,” he said.

2. Getting students to show up to school consistently

Chronic absenteeism — missing 10% or more of the school year — has been a persistent struggle for Detroit schools, although it is lower than a few years ago. Last school year, 61% of students were chronically absent, compared with 77% in the 2021-2022 school year.

Detroit’s chronic absenteeism rates are still much higher than statewide rates, but the district has put in a lot of work to change them. High school students can even earn up to $1,000 for perfect attendance in a controversial incentive program that officials say is working.

Samantha Ciaffone works with her first grade class at Munger Elementary-Middle School on Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Detroit.

First grade teacher Samantha Ciaffone has been teaching in Detroit for seven years. A few years ago, right after the pandemic, about seven to eight kids wouldn’t show up every day. Now, Ciaffone usually sees about one to two kids absent every day. When students are in class most days, she can help them make steady progress, instead of splitting her attention, trying to catch kids up.

“It allows us to be better educators to see kids consistently in the seat instead of once or twice a week,” she said. “It makes such a difference.”

Munger, like many Detroit district schools, has an attendance agent who is diligent about making calls to the homes of absent students, even showing up at their door. A parent engagement coordinator also works at Munger to try to encourage parents to show up for after-school events.

A kindergarten student hangs her assignment at Munger Elementary-Middle School.

3. Students take ownership of their academic performance

Detroit still has students who struggle in reading and math. But Lisa VanLandschoot, who teaches seventh grade English at Munger in Detroit, said she’s noticed a key change in students. They seem more confident, she’s noticed, and more eager to learn.

VanLandschoot thinks it’s because they have more ownership over their academic careers. That ownership is posted all over the classrooms in Munger. A first grade classroom’s bulletin board lists the names of students behind and ahead in certain reading skills. In kindergarten, assessment data is posted.

Hayley, 12, is one of the students who VanLandschoot said has made stunning progress this school year. She’s still learning English, after moving to the country from Mexico in 2024. Hayley likes that the teachers make it easy to ask questions when she’s unsure of something.

“We can ask, and Ms. V explains the best she can,” she said.

Educators and school leaders are also taking ownership of data, especially periodic school assessments and state testing results. School administrators set goals around key metrics every school year, and the district monitors for schools not seeing growth, to find out who may need more intervention.

4. Bringing students back to neighborhood schools

Detroit gives families a lot of choices: They can attend schools with more rigorous programs, language immersion schools, and African-centered education. Vitti wants to celebrate choice.

“But with choice comes responsibility,” he said.

And if families choose something other than their neighborhood school, that means they need to still get students to their desks on-time, every day. If not, Vitti said the district is starting to have conversations with parents about returning to neighborhood schools, particularly if a student has missed 45 or more days of school. That signals a student doesn’t have reliable transportation to get to school.

“The greatest improvement that we’ve had … is students going back to their neighborhood schools,” he said. At Munger, a neighborhood school, the slogan is: “We’re not a school house, we’re a school home,” according to Principal Donnell Burroughs.

Detroit school’s progress could be fragile

The end of the legal settlement money isn’t the only factor that could threaten the district’s work. The Munger school community is confronting increased immigration enforcement during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Burroughs said more students have been chronically absent this school year — out of fear, in some cases. Some Munger parents have been detained by immigration enforcement agents on their way to school, Burroughs said.

“I do find that a lot of my students don’t come to school just because their parents are scared about being picked up during the day,” he said.

But he thinks Munger’s staff is doing a good job sharing the message that students are safe.

Vitti knows Detroit has a long way to go to match or even exceed the achievement levels of other districts of its size across the country.

“That’s the next challenge … continuing to motivate, inspire, and change things, tweaking things,” he said. “Not wholesale changes — but to continue to expand proficiency and growth levels, and that’s what keeps me motivated every day.”

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

This story was produced in collaboration with the Associated Press’ Education Reporting Network.

Kids are in a ‘reading recession’ as test scores continue to decline

2026-05-13T04:01:00+00:00

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MODESTO, Calif. – Before every important test, teacher Nancy Barajas dims the lights, turns on a disco ball and blasts music from her playlist. Her sixth graders dance together as a “pre-celebration” to boost their confidence, then take their exam.

Lately, there’s been a lot to celebrate in elementary schools in Modesto, California. Both reading and math scores have increased consistently over the past several years.

But across the country, results are gloomier. Researchers warn that the U.S. is experiencing a reading recession — a slide predating the pandemic’s disruptions in schooling.

Scholars at Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth analyzed state test scores from third to eighth grade for over 5,000 school districts in 38 states, allowing comparisons across school districts and states in a national Education Scorecard.

What they found was sobering: Only five states plus the District of Columbia had meaningful growth in reading test scores from 2022 to 2025. Nationally, students remain nearly half a grade level behind pre-pandemic reading scores and only slightly better in math.

While schools have focused on catching kids up since the COVID-19 pandemic upended education, reading test scores have been falling since 2013 for eighth graders and 2015 for fourth graders, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

“The pandemic was the mudslide that had followed seven years of steady erosion in achievement,” said Thomas Kane, a Harvard professor who helped create the Education Scorecard.

Still, some states and school districts are making progress — largely by shifting toward phonics-based instruction and providing extra support for struggling readers.

The picture is also brighter in math.

Sixth graders read a passage and give constructive feedback to their partners during Nancy Barajas' class at Fairview Elementary School on Wednesday, May 6, 2026 in Modesto, California.

Almost every state in the analysis saw improvements in math test scores from 2022 to 2025. Student absenteeism also declined in most states. In over 400 U.S. school districts, including Modesto, reading or math growth outpaced demographically similar districts in the same state.

A shift toward phonics and extra reading support

Researchers are still debating the reading recession’s causes.

One possible factor, researchers say, is the rise of social media on smartphones and corresponding declines in kids’ recreational reading. States have also backed off on strict consequences for schools whose students fail to make progress on standardized tests, Kane said.

But the states that improved reading scores — notably Louisiana, Maryland, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana — all had one thing in common: They ordered schools to teach with a phonics-based approach known as the science of reading.

For years, schools taught reading using approaches that de-emphasized phonics and encouraged strategies such as guessing words based on context clues. As reading scores tumbled over the past decade, parents, scholars, and literacy advocates pushed for teaching methods that align with decades of research about how kids learn to read — largely by sounding out words.

Along with reforming teaching methods, states have also required schools to screen for learning disabilities such as dyslexia and hire coaches to help teachers improve their reading instruction.

That said, science of reading reforms did not guarantee success. Some states, including Florida, Arizona, and Nebraska, changed parts of their reading instruction but still saw test scores fall.

In Modesto, reading instruction was revamped during the pandemic, and math a couple years earlier. The district created a new department to help students who are still learning English. Schools also ramped up teacher training, paying educators $5,000 to complete an extensive science of reading program called LETRS, or Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling.

Aja Penick, an academic interventionist, works with first graders at Munger Elementary-Middle School on Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Detroit.

Modesto’s test scores grew enough to represent an extra 18 weeks of learning in math and 13 weeks in reading. Nevertheless, the district still has a way to go: Overall scores remain far below grade level.

Getting kids ‘consistently in the seat’ helps Detroit

A focus on reading has also improved scores in Detroit — but so have efforts to get kids in school more consistently. For years, the large urban district struggled with deplorable school conditions, leading to a 2016 lawsuit in which students argued they’d been denied the “right to read.”

The lawsuit ended in a settlement of over $94 million, money that helped move the needle. While the district is still far below the national average, student test scores have grown faster than in similar urban districts in Michigan.

“It took a lot to rebuild systems, and now kids are learning at higher levels, but I’m still not satisfied. And I think that’s the next challenge: continuing to motivate, inspire and change things,” said Detroit Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.

Detroit schools are making real gains in reading and math: 4 strategies that are working

The money has helped Munger Elementary-Middle School, located in a largely Latino neighborhood in Detroit, to employ 18 educators who give kids extra support in small groups. An attendance agent also makes calls to the homes of absent students, even showing up at their doors.

Fifth grader Bella Williams does a diagnostic test on her tablet at Oxmoor Valley Elementary School in Birmingham, Alabama, on Wednesday, May 6, 2026.

Just a few years ago, said first grade teacher Samantha Ciaffone, it was normal for about seven or eight kids to be absent from her class every day. Now it’s usually only one or two.

“It allows us to be better educators to see kids consistently in the seat instead of once or twice a week,” said Ciaffone. “It makes such a difference.”

A bright spot in the South

For the last decade, the South has stood out as a region leading the way on education reforms — bucking an established trend of landing at the bottom of education rankings. Southern states were quick to change to research-based teaching methods, and states have paid to train and coach teachers.

It’s paid off. Louisiana and Alabama were the only states where math scores were higher in 2025 than pre-pandemic. Louisiana is also the only state that beat its pre-pandemic average in reading, with 87% of traditional public school students attending a district where scores are higher than in 2019.

“I’ve used my pulpit to preach a back-to-the-basics approach to education,” said Cade Brumley, Louisiana’s superintendent of education. “We’re not trying to chase every new and shiny thing that’s out there that could distract students and teachers.”

Birmingham City Schools Superintendent, Dr. Mark A. Sullivan, takes a call as he enters the library at Oxmoor Valley Elementary School in Birmingham, Alabama, on Wednesday, May 6, 2026.

Alabama had standout gains in reading following the pandemic, driven by a state law requiring every school to use phonics-based instruction. The Legislature modeled math reforms in 2022 off Alabama’s reading successes. The state’s Numeracy Act standardized math instruction, required regular testing, and mandated intervention for kids who lacked adequate math skills.

Oxmoor Valley Elementary in Birmingham hired a full-time math specialist this year to help struggling kids. The school, which made the state’s “failing” list in 2016, has steadily improved math and reading scores, although a majority of kids still test below proficient in both subjects.

“We can provide all of these supports, but at the same time, hold kids to high expectations,” Birmingham Superintendent Mark Sullivan said.

A note from teacher Nancy Barajas encouraging students in her class at Fairview Elementary School on Wednesday, May 6, 2026 in Modesto, California.

Researchers stress such progress is possible across the U.S., because it’s been done before. Starting in the 1990s, the country saw decades of growth in test scores and graduation rates, while racial disparities declined. That progress continued until the mid-2010s.

“We made enormous progress as a country in terms of educational success from over a 30-year period. Test scores went up dramatically,” said Stanford professor Sean Reardon. “And so I think that says, as a country, we can improve education and educational opportunity.”

At Modesto’s Fairview Elementary, where Barajas teaches, students now practice their reading speed and fluency every day. After a dance break, the class reads a one-page text together in unison for one minute, then students split into pairs to read again. Students learning English are paired with native English speakers, and each child gets a turn reading with Barajas.

“Eventually, you get through the word like it’s water,” one boy said. “You just say it smooth.”

____

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

How parent pressure helped push Los Angeles schools to rein in classroom screen time

2026-05-12T22:02:38+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Los Angeles, home to the country’s second largest school system, has been at the center of the growth of ed-tech — and its backlash.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who is on leave following an FBI raid of his home, was an enthusiastic promoter of AI in education and i-Ready, a digital assessment and tutoring program. (Carvalho has not been charged with a crime and has denied wrongdoing.)

But parents in the city have grown wary about the proliferation of tech. They organized a group called Schools Beyond Screens to push the district to scale back tech use. Their message resonated with school board members, many of whom are parents themselves.

Continue reading the full story here.

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.

School data goes stale after Trump administration cuts Education Department research arm

2026-05-07T00:33:39+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

If there was one thing the Education Department did that seemed apolitical and effective, it was compiling basic facts about American schools.

But now the work of disseminating this information has effectively ground to a halt. Since the Trump administration decimated the research arm of the Education Department, it has not updated a large swath of data that is part of the Digest of Education Statistics. This means we no longer have easily accessible, relatively up-to-date information about the basic realities of American schools.

“The role of the national government is to collect statistics on K-12 [education],” said Amber Northern, the Fordham Institute’s vice president for research who is on contract with the Education Department to suggest ways to improve its statistical work. “Absolutely the Digest is integral to that. And we need to get it restarted.”

Ellen Keast, a department spokesperson, said in a statement that this process has begun and a new contract for the work will be awarded before the end of this fiscal year in September.

Until that happens, our shared knowledge about schools will continue to deteriorate.

Consider just a handful of examples of data tables that have not been updated since at least January 2025:

Spending and revenue per public school student
Federal funding for education
School enrollment among children ages 3-5
The share of students receiving special education services, qualifying as English learners, and participating in gifted and talented programs
The typical student-to-teacher ratio
The number of people enrolled in teacher prep programs
Teachers’ perceptions about the quality of their schools
Average teacher salary
How often school principals leave their jobs
How many students take the SAT and ACT
The number of homicides and suicides in schools
The rate of disciplinary incidents in public schools
The share of recent high school graduates immediately enrolling in college

The stale data is not surprising. DOGE canceled Education Department contracts for this work in February of last year. Most of the staff members at the research and statistics arm, the Institute of Education Sciences, were also laid off.

Keast, the department spokesperson, notes that key data collection about schools has continued. But since the raw data has often not been turned into accessible tables, it is difficult for the public to access or use it.

Tom Snyder, who oversaw the Digest and other annual reports until he retired in 2020, says this work has been widely used. Some tables might get thousands of citations in a single month. “This I would put as an inherent government responsibility to get information into the public’s hands,” Snyder said. “It needs to be accessible.”

Some of this information can still be found from other sources, like school spending figures in a different federal report or teacher salary numbers from the National Education Association. Even in these cases, the Digest serves two functions: It is a one-stop shop of reliable data, and it often features results over a long time horizon.

Still other information is no longer available to update at all. The Trump administration has canceled surveys about crime and safety in school, high school coursetaking, and the experiences of teachers and principals.

The federal government has been collecting and sharing basic facts about schools since 1870; the Digest of Education Statistics began in 1962. The Digest has marshaled a vast array of data to offer a comprehensive picture of the sprawling, decentralized American system of education.

This work forms the basis of what we know about schools in both the past and present. One widely cited department report, “120 Years of American Education: A Statistical Portrait,” documents the growth of high school education, the opening up of schooling to Black children, and reformulation of school funding systems.

Northern recently released a report defending the necessity of the Education Department’s research and statistics work but recommending a number of changes. Her report does not mention the Digest by name. Northern told me there’s clear value in it, although she would like the data released more quickly.

Meanwhile, a recent analysis estimated that nearly $300 million allocated by Congress for the Institute of Education Sciences is at risk of going unspent. “The Department is committed to using appropriated funds to meet our statutory obligations while supporting high-quality research,” said Keast, the spokesperson.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Most middle and high school teachers still assign full books — but only a few, study says

2026-05-06T13:00:00+00:00

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High school students are still reading full books in English classes — but not very many on average. And teachers working in more affluent school systems seem to assign more books than their counterparts in high-poverty communities.

That’s according to a new RAND Corporation study of survey data from nearly 1,600 middle and high school English teachers. RAND’s report found that about 90% of these teachers assign at least one book and nearly 60% assign three or more books throughout the school year. On average, teachers assigned four full books in secondary grades.

But the study also reveals stark inequities about who is reading whole books and how often. Teachers in schools that serve higher populations of students from low-income families and students of color are less likely to assign more than two books for the year than those working in wealthier, whiter schools. Teachers leading classrooms with more students with disabilities or multilingual students were also less likely to assign fewer full books.

The data offers a sharper picture of the reality in English classrooms across the country during a heated debate about whether students are reading enough full books. RAND’s report indicates that reading entire novels might be one of many activities inside schools influenced by socioeconomic circumstances.

In short, what was once a trademark of high school English class — the novel — is maybe only playing a supporting role now, said Ashley Woo, a RAND researcher and the report’s author.

“It does look like most teachers, most secondary ELA teachers, do assign full books in class,” she said. “It seems like a lot of them assign a relatively small number of books.”

Some of the debate around what students read in class has revolved around whether many of them have the stamina or attention span to read a full book, in an era when short-form videos and one-sentence captions take up so much attention. There’s criticism that too many modern reading curricula emphasize reading short passages from novels or short stories. Yet there’s no definitive evidence that English class should revolve around reading whole novels or a prescribed number of books a student should read a year.

The survey, which RAND conducted in 2025, found a possible connection between reading entire books and curriculums. Teachers who reported that they leaned more on publisher-developed curriculums said they taught fewer whole books than teachers who reported they relied more on lessons they developed or that their schools developed.

Woo said this might be because publisher-developed material often includes excerpts instead of full books. But she added that there needs to be more research about the role full books play in curriculums developed by publishing companies.

Other out-of-school factors like poverty might also play a role in how many books teachers assign. Teachers at schools with higher populations of students from low-income families were twice as likely to assign no books than schools with low poverty levels — 12% compared with 6%, according to the RAND report.

While the report’s analysis mostly focused on middle and high school data, the survey also included responses from more than 1,900 elementary educators. They reported a vast range in the number of books they assigned.

Nearly 20% of teachers in grades K-2 reported assigning no books, while 50% reported assigning 20 or more books, presumably shorter ones intended for early readers. Among teachers of grades 3-5, 14% reported assigning no books, 22% reported assigning three to four, and 20% reported assigning five to nine. Elementary teachers indicated that reading full books didn’t “crowd out” time spent on early literacy skills, the researchers also wrote.

The data suggests “there are a lot of teachers who are not prioritizing full book reading in elementary classrooms at all,” Woo said.

Woo said that more research is needed to fully understand how reading full books shapes students in the classroom.

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

She passed high school math with A’s and B’s. In college, she had to start over.

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

Chalkbeat Ideas is a section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Cecilia Lopez Alvarado was scrolling through Reddit one evening in her dorm room when she came across a thread about students at the University of California San Diego who struggled with basic math.

A report had warned of an alarming decline in students’ math skills at UCSD, a highly selective university. It drew international headlines because of what it seemed to say about the state of American education. Commentators blamed high school grade inflation, test-free college admissions, and even the students themselves.

Alvarado read these headlines with a growing sense of frustration. People didn’t understand the full story here, she thought. And she would know: Alvarado is a UCSD student who had to take remedial math at the school. She read Reddit comments about how students should have mastered these topics in high school. She wrote back in the comments that some schools — like hers, a high-poverty public high school in San Bernardino, California — don’t even offer calculus.

The consequences of Alvarado’s challenges in math have been significant. After taking the remedial course, she still fell short on a math exam, which covers high school topics like trigonometry and precalculus. Alvarado therefore couldn’t move on to calculus, which was required for her initial major, business economics. Because of this, she recently decided to pursue a degree in communications instead. She aspires to be an accountant and is minoring in accounting.

Students like Alvarado are at the center of a debate in American education. How do high schools ensure students graduate with sufficient math skills? Who should get access to the resources of an elite college education? What role do universities themselves have in helping students who are underprepared?

High school graduation photo of UCSD sophomore Cecilia Lopez Alvarado

The perspectives of these students have gotten strikingly little attention. That’s why I wanted to speak to Alvarado, a 19-year-old sophomore. Her story does not offer entirely simple answers, but it’s worth hearing. She looks back in frustration at her high school education, where she believes teachers were too lenient. But she’s also convinced she’s benefited from the education she’s received and the peers she’s met at UCSD.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What was your high school math experience like? How did you do in math classes?

I usually passed with A’s and B’s, but I feel like a lot of the information never really stuck with me, just because we were granted so many opportunities to redo exams and homework. It felt like as long as you retake the exam and get 100% it doesn’t matter if you really know what you’re doing or not.

Do you know why you were given so many opportunities?

I’m sure it’s because they wanted us to not have F’s and D’s on our transcripts. It was just wanting us to be able to move on to the next grade. It never really was to hold us accountable. Instead of being like, hey, you only get one retake, it was just, you can retake it as many times as you like, to get a grade that you’re comfortable with.

Did you feel like it would have been better if they held you accountable more?

I think so, because then you have to face the reality of not just your grades, but what you really know and what you’re really learning. You have to discipline yourself more to be like, hey, I need to start studying instead of doing not so well in class and then just retaking it at a later time.

What did you think about the big national backlash and all these articles about UCSD students like yourself?

I’m very involved on the UCSD social media communities like Reddit, Instagram, and when people are sharing the articles, a lot of it was very negative. A lot of people are saying these students shouldn’t be at the school, their spots should have gone to someone more qualified. It was kind of making me feel bad, like, hey, is something wrong with me because I can’t pass the exam?

I don’t think it’s necessarily an issue with the student. I feel like there’s a lot of things that go deeper than that, like the level of math they took in high school. I think there’s just so many factors that people miss.

What do you mean by the factors that so many people miss?

The culture here is that everyone kind of assumes everyone who’s enrolled comes from a very prestigious background — you know, perfect scores, they have easy access to tutoring. I don’t think a lot of people realize that some students here may have come from low-income communities, low-income schools, where they don’t have resources easily accessible.

I wouldn’t say it makes me envious, but I do wish I had that kind of abundance of resources when I was in high school. I was top of my class in high school, but that’s nothing compared to some of the other students here.

Do you think you’ve benefited from going to a school like UCSD?

I think so. It’s definitely exposed me to a lot of different cultures, a lot of different people. I think I’ve learned more soft skills here through a lot of the classes I’ve been taking. I’m more willing to try things and take courses that I would not have been interested in high school.

Do you feel like being surrounded by peers who maybe went to better high schools pushes you to do better at UCSD?

I think so. I’ve kind of noticed they have more independence. They feel more secure in their academics and what they’re doing, and I feel like I always second guess myself. Seeing how they operate, it makes me want to do better, work harder, especially after my first year. I wanted to make my own self-improvements.

One of the recommendations from the report that caused this whole blowup was that UCSD should reduce the number of students from high-poverty high schools. What do you think of that?

I do not think that should be an option. If they don’t go through the trial and error here, they’re just going to go through it somewhere else. College is a place where you learn new things. Sometimes you’ll fail and you just take the L and learn from it.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

How the AI-enabled race for taxpayer money starts in a superintendent’s inbox

2026-04-29T11:00:00+00:00

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Strange meetings keep appearing on Heidi Sipe’s Google calendar.

The superintendent for the Umatilla School District in eastern Oregon never requested these meetings. But sales representatives selling education technology have found their way onto her calendar anyway. Sipe says it’s the latest tactic from education technology companies racing for her district’s business.

Read the full story here.

Chalkbeat Ideas Roundup: Did education reform work? Plus research, reading, and politics

2026-04-28T21:50:33+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Earlier this month, I wrote about efforts to revive the bipartisan school reform coalition that dominated Washington circa 1996 to 2015. It was this coalition that ushered in No Child Left Behind, test-based teacher evaluations, the growth of charter schools, and the Common Core standards.

According to education historian Diane Ravitch, these efforts decisively failed. “The reformers look back to their glory days with nostalgia. Parents and students don’t,” she wrote in response to my piece. Mike Petrilli, of the Fordham Institute, offers a different gloss on the same history: “Reform did work, until we stopped doing it.”

Interpretations of the past can shape how people proceed in the future. That’s why this mini-debate matters. So, who’s right?

Click here to continue reading.

Trump administration push to change program’s focus from college to workforce meets bipartisan resistance

2026-04-24T10:00:01+00:00

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The Trump administration should abandon its push to dramatically revise a program that helps students from marginalized communities attend college, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators has told federal officials.

At the center of their request are the federal government’s Talent Search grants, which typically go to hundreds of colleges and community organizations focused on higher education. Talent Search falls under the umbrella of the federal TRIO programs, a $1.2 billion network. The Trump administration has cut TRIO grants as part of its anti-DEI purge and proposed eliminating the program entirely.

But the most recent grant applications posted by the Department of Labor, on behalf of the Department of Education, instead prioritize programs that focus on workforce development, including those that promote apprenticeships and job credential programs.

The change in grant priorities comes amid a larger debate about the value of higher education and how much help students should have in accessing and completing college. The Trump administration has emphasized preparation for the workforce as the primary purpose of education.

The 12 senators sent a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon on April 9, calling for the department to rescind the application and work with Congress to “protect the integrity of the Federal TRIO programs.”

In a statement, the Education Department showed no indication it plans to change its approach.

“We must break the cycle that assumes every student needs a four-year degree to succeed, and instead promote additional postsecondary alternatives that provide students and families with more choices,” spokesperson Ellen Keast said by email. “The Department is confident in our approach to this year’s competitions and encourages eligible entities to apply.”

The Labor Department posted the revised applications on March 17, giving programs less than two months to apply for these grants — not enough time to remake such a big program, policy advocates said. Existing Talent Search programs now risk losing their funding if they don’t align with the application’s new priorities.

In Talent Search programs, middle and high school students from low-income families attend college tours and receive tutoring and other counseling, part of the broader effort to encourage their journey to higher education.

Supporters of the changes to Talent Search argue that it’s time to widen TRIO’s net, and that the revisions are well within the Higher Education Act, the federal law that authorizes Talent Search. Backers of the new application raise a common refrain: Not every kid needs to go to college.

But others say that approach runs counter to TRIO’s core mission, which is to provide students with options they might otherwise not realize they have.

“We’re very concerned, very troubled, that the administration would take one of the foremost vehicles for helping low-income Americans move into higher education and to alter that mission,” said Kimberly Jones, president of the Council for Opportunity in Education, a TRIO advocacy center.

New priorities raise questions about Talent Search’s mission

Integrating workforce programs into TRIO’s program can help broaden and improve TRIO’s scope by helping more students, said Adam Kissel, a fellow in education policy at the right-leaning Heritage Foundation.

“The argument that TRIO is only for college-going students has a certain inequity built into that argument, whereas, if TRIO is helping people do any post-secondary ed … it’s a better way to help all students who may be qualified,” said Kissel, who worked at the Education Department on higher education programs during the first Trump administration.

But there’s some doubt that workforce development programs are the right path for the students Talent Search serves, said Wesley Whistle, student success project director for New America, a left-leaning think tank.

A 2025 report from the University of Chicago found students from low-income families attaining a bachelor’s degree or higher tended to earn the most among their demographics.

About 51% of students from low-income families go to college, according to the Brookings Institution, far below the rate for their wealthier peers. But 68.5% of Talent Search participants enrolled in a postsecondary education program immediately after high school in the 2022-2023 school year, according to an Education Department report.

“By narrowing TRIO’s focus to just workforce outcomes and programs, you are effectively closing doors rather than opening them,” Whistle said.

Still, a GAO report published in 2020 found the department needed to do more to assess if TRIO programs work.

The new application also prioritizes proposals from state agencies, intensifying fears from some TRIO supporters that hundreds of programs funded by Talent Search could be at risk.

The Higher Education Act says Talent Search should “identify qualified youths with potential for education at the postsecondary level and to encourage such youths to complete secondary school and to undertake a program of postsecondary education.”

It’s still unclear whether the revised applications will change Talent Search to the dramatic extent that advocates are fearing.

Curtis Blackwell founded Sound Mind Sound Body Foundation in Detroit, a community organization that runs a program funded with a Talent Search grant. The program includes mentoring, skills workshops, and college application help. Blackwell said he hopes broadening his program’s mission will reach more students.

Blackwell said they’re looking into partnering with a local vocational center to meet the new priorities.

“Sometimes I feel like we don’t do a good enough job of expanding, of exposing them to other options,” he said. “For me, our number one goal within our program is to meet students where they’re at. … So if they’re at vocational school, that’s great.”

Still, TRIO’s supporters worry that a new direction for Talent Search could portend bigger changes for the eight programs under the TRIO umbrella.

Matt Meyers is president of the Pennsylvania Institute of Technology, a private junior college attended by roughly 600 students. His college has a TRIO grant of $379,377 for student support services.

Meyers said these changes show the administration doesn’t understand TRIO. At his college, TRIO programs help get students from low-income backgrounds into the workforce. Sometimes that means taking them to a nice dinner so they can learn how to conduct a business lunch.

“It sounds silly, but giving them those experiences are the things that that expose them to to also want more and have more experiences, more positive experiences, and grow,” Meyers said.

The senators asking McMahon to rescind the application also requested that the department ensure there’s no lapse in Talent Search funding, which is set to expire at the end of August.

Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat who co-chairs the Congressional TRIO Caucus with Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, wrote in a statement to Chalkbeat that he believes the changes to Talent Search would “disenfranchise the exact students TRIO was created to uplift.” (Both Collins and Warnock signed the April 9 letter to McMahon.)

“The summers I spent on campus at Savannah State as a young man enrolled in Federal TRIO programs exposed me to new worlds and helped me see myself on a college campus as a real college student,” he wrote.

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

Here’s how the school choice tax credit could affect public schools

2026-04-23T19:27:35+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

In the last decade, enrollment in California’s public schools has fallen by about half a million students, or 8%. At the same time, funding for the students who have remained in public schools has shot up, as the state implemented a new funding formula. California once lagged behind the national average in education funding per student; now it’s above average.

These seemingly paradoxical trends are worth considering at a moment when many state governors, including California’s Gavin Newsom, are deciding whether to participate in a school choice program subsidized by a new federal tax credit.

Public education associations are urging states to stay away. They say that offering this voucher-like credit will drain students, and thus resources, away from public schools. That could happen, especially if political support for funding education falls.

But the California experience suggests it’s not inevitable. Fewer students in public schools doesn’t necessarily result in less funding. “As enrollments decline, we tend to see total spending at least stay constant and in many cases still increase,” says Bruce Baker, a school funding expert who has tracked school funding patterns for years.

The fiscal impact of the tax credit remains a source of intense debate, confusion — and uncertainty. Here’s how to think about this question.

The federal tax credit is effectively “free” money for states.

The federal school choice tax credit, passed by Congressional Republicans in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” works like this: Americans will soon be able to redirect up to $1,700 of their income tax bill to nonprofits that provide stipends for private school tuition or other educational expenses. This is similar, in many ways, to a government-funded voucher.

But the program includes a loophole. States have the option to participate or not. Nearly every Republican governor has said they will join the program, while most Democrats have not publicly made a decision, according to a tracker from Education Week. The undecided governors are currently facing an intense lobbying campaign from both sides.

A key selling point for advocates: The money comes entirely from federal taxes. States don’t have to put in any funding.

The tax credit could also be used to pay for certain extra programming offered in public schools, like after-school care or tutoring. Observers say it’s unclear how successful public school systems will be at tapping into this money.

Lower enrollment doesn’t necessarily mean less funding.

Even though it doesn’t cost the state money, public school advocates fear that the credit — a new subsidy for private education expenses — will induce some number of students to leave public schools.

It’s not clear this would result in less money for public education, though. Think of school funding as a pie that is divided among students. If there are fewer students, and the size of the pie remains the same, each remaining student could actually get a slightly bigger slice. In recent years, school funding in states like Illinois and Vermont have increased even as enrollment has fallen.

That’s not guaranteed, of course. A state could slash its overall education budget — shrink the pie — in response to declining enrollment. It’s possible that fewer students could weaken political support for public schools, although that may be less likely in the left-leaning states that are still considering whether to participate in the choice program.

In California, there’s an additional backstop: The state Constitution requires a certain amount of state funding to go toward education. “To the extent there actually is any measurable exodus from public schools it would mean more money per kid,” says Julien Lafortune, a school funding expert at the Public Policy Institute of California.

This doesn’t mean every district is financially secure. Even if the overall pie of funding holds steady, districts that lose an especially large swath of students might get a smaller slice. This can lead to layoffs or school closures.

Some critics of the tax credit also say there are other reasons to oppose it beyond its budget implications. “Significant growth of a voucher program could slowly dismantle public education, and I don’t think that’s what most voters want, even if it does save the state some money,” says David Knight, a professor at the University of Washington.

So far Congress hasn’t cut public school budgets either.

The tax credit critics have an additional concern. Every dollar spent on this program is a dollar less in federal tax revenue. The more states opt in, the larger the cost of the program. Estimates vary, but some predict this will amount to several billion dollars.

The money has to come from somewhere. This could leave federal funding for public schools “more vulnerable to cuts,” warns Education Trust’s Augustus Mays, who is urging states not to participate in the program.

But K-12 education is just a tiny fraction of federal spending, and the federal government can, and does, run budget deficits. Recently Congress rejected efforts by the Trump administration to cut school budgets. So while it’s true the tax credit will add a small hole to the federal budget, there’s little reason to assume it will be filled by cuts to public schools.

Correction: April 27, 2026. A prior version of this story misattributed a quote to Denise Forte of Education Trust. The comment was made by Education Trust’s Augustus Mays.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@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.

For children in poverty, the biggest resource gaps are outside of school

2026-04-21T19:19:55+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Children from low-income families have roughly $80,000 less invested in their development, well-being, and education relative to their peers from high-income households, according to a new study.

The research is significant because it puts a figure on what has long been known: Children do not have the same access to the resources that might help them flourish. While formal schooling is fairly equal, investments outside of school vary substantially, the researchers conclude.

“The findings of this are not surprising,” says David Blazar, the study’s lead author and a professor at the University of Maryland. “What’s most compelling is thinking about investments in kids as a bundle — it’s not just about housing, it’s not just about early childhood. It’s about the investments we make altogether.”

At a moment when there is intense discussion about declines and disparities in student learning, the study is a helpful reminder of the broad array of factors that shapes children’s academic success.

The paper, written by several researchers and published last month, examines “childhood human capital investments” — in other words, the various resources that help children thrive and develop.

This is defined broadly to include formal schooling, as well as informal education, nutrition, health care, and housing, among other things. The researchers rely on a number of recent national surveys and put every item on a common dollar scale, including things that are not paid for, like parental time helping with homework or going to the library.

Under the researchers’ measure, the typical child received about half a million dollars’ worth of investment in their development through childhood. The disparities were significant, though. In addition to gaps by family income, there were also racial gaps. Relative to white kids, Hispanic kids had $73,000, or 14%, less investment. Black children had $55,000, or 10%, less.

There were notable gaps in spending across a variety of domains including housing, nutrition, health care, child care, and college preparation.

The researchers also considered time as a form of investment. They converted parental activities into a standard hourly dollar rate. Here there were also some gaps by income and race, though they were not especially large. Low-income children were slightly less likely to be read to or taken to a museum, but were more likely to get homework help or visit a zoo. This indicates that parents of all types put large amounts of time into their children’s development.

The overall disparities would likely be far larger without government programs designed to equalize opportunity, the researchers say. Investments in formal schooling, largely through public education, were fairly equal. This echoes analyses showing that there are typically not large gaps in spending between high-poverty and affluent schools. If anything, children in poverty had a bit more money spent on their education, the recent study finds.

“We see that the sectors where the disparities are smallest are when government services are the largest,” says Blazar.

His study does not speak to whether particular investments are effective in helping children develop, but in some cases other research does. For instance, low-income children are more likely to be identified for special education; these services lead to large gains in learning, according to a recent study. Research has also found that certain anti-poverty programs can boost test scores.

The latest study likely underestimates gaps in resources between different groups of students, Blazar says. Because of data limitations, the paper does not attempt to parse the quality of school a child attends, the doctor they go to, or the food they eat. The researchers also do not consider the neighborhood a child lives in or whether they’ve been exposed to environmental hazards. Both of these factors have been linked to success in school.

And while the paper includes the striking finding that formal education investments are relatively equal, the study stops at age 18. If the study continued a few more years, though, the findings would almost certainly be different. Children from low-income families are less likely to go to college and if they do, they typically attend less well-resourced schools.

So while K-12 educational investments have been equalized to a meaningful extent, vast disparities emerge after high school.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@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.

Will bipartisan education reform make a comeback? 3 reasons it could — and 3 obstacles

2026-04-14T21:04:58+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

These days there’s a new energy around an old idea: bipartisan school reform.

Reviving this was the quaint but ascendant goal of a recent Washington D.C. event that I attended last month. The Bipartisan Policy Center convened a group of influential education leaders from both parties to sketch out a new agenda for school reform.

“The moment is now,” said former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings during the opening panel. “We have not recovered from COVID fully. We really need to light the fire of urgency.”

This was the sort of thinking that used to dominate Washington D.C. Presidents from both parties once insisted on a muscular federal role to hold schools and teachers accountable for raising test scores. These advocates have been on the outs politically for over a decade, but some see an opportunity to revive the old coalition. A flurry of reports, compacts, commissions, events, and essays have made the case that politicians of both parties need to come together to address the striking declines in student learning and center education as a national priority.

Whatever you think about this mini-resurgence, it’s worth paying attention to. Bipartisan school reform upended schools once before (with a much debated legacy). Could it happen again? Maybe. In many ways the ground is ripe, but it’s not clear advocates have a clear constituency or reform agenda.

Drawing from recent history, here are three reasons this particular brand of reform could return and three obstacles this effort faces.

Why bipartisan reform could be revived: There really is a learning crisis.

Modern bipartisan school reform has its roots in a 1983 report “A Nation at Risk,” which claimed (with disputed evidence) that the country’s schools were in dire shape. These days the data is clear: Test scores have been on an alarming trajectory for a decade. This has again led to widespread concerns among policymakers, academics, and journalists.

The aspiring reformers are driving the mainstream media narrative about education.

Centrist education advocates and politicians, like former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, have offered a clear theory to explain these recent learning declines. Emanuel argues that Democrats deserve blame for backing COVID-era school building closures, focusing on culture war issues, and downplaying the importance of test scores. He says Democrats should look to Republican-led states in the South, like Mississippi.

A remarkable slew of articles have endorsed versions of this narrative. That includes several pieces in the New York Times. Not many other prominent Democrats are echoing Emanuel, but we can be sure they are reading the Times. Crucially, those Democrats more sympathetic to teachers unions and public education have not articulated a clear alternative theory to explain recent learning declines.

Both parties may have political incentives for moving to the center on education.

The prior iteration of bipartisan reform came at a moment where both parties used education as a strategy to appeal to centrist independent voters. Bill Clinton promised to be a different type of liberal who would take a tough-minded approach to schools, while George W. Bush pitched himself as a “compassionate conservative” who would champion the education of disadvantaged children.

Once again Democratic reformers say the party faces a similar political imperative. Emanuel and many others have claimed the party has lost its edge on education with voters. This isn’t true, according to the vast majority of recent surveys, but the talking point has nevertheless proven deeply influential at a moment when Democrats have been casting about for answers following Trump’s election in 2024.

Republicans are not at this soul-searching stage — they’ve leaned into school choice and parents’ rights. But Trump is quite unpopular at the moment, and so is his effort to close the Education Department. Depending on the midterm results, it’s possible that the GOP will make efforts to tack away from Trump’s combative approach to education.

Why bipartisan reform might not happen: Reformers don’t have a clear bumper sticker.

Although the centrist reformers are aligned on what’s gone wrong, their solutions are a bit less clear. This was apparent during a Bipartisan Policy Center panel on education, which I moderated. The group released a number of recommendations about improving schools. These ranged from broad goals (“reimagine the high school years”) to very specific policies (“require transparent, consistent annual reporting” on teacher pension plans). But there wasn’t an overarching idea or takeaway, as best I could tell.

So I asked each participant on the panel what their bumper-sticker pitch for school reform would be.

“Responsive systems and better information,” responded Andy Rotherham, the co-founder of Bellwether, an education consulting firm, and a former Clinton White House staffer.

“Locals lead; feds fund, measure, and evaluate,” said Tom Kane, a Harvard education professor.

“Education is the way out of your parents’ basement,” said Katie Jenner, the Indiana education secretary.

This range of responses is in contrast with the relatively clear bumper stickers from the political right and the left. (“More choice, less wokeness, no U.S. Department of Education,” on the right. “More money,” on the left.)

Without a snappy message for what bipartisan reformers want to do, I suspect advocates will struggle to coalesce policy elites or regular people around their ideas.

There is little clear grassroots demand for this sort of reform.

Indeed, the push to address learning declines has seemingly not broken through to voters. While Americans have an increasingly negative view of the quality of K-12 schools, very few rate education as a top issue. This is quite different than in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. Remarkably, in the 2000 presidential campaign, voters sometimes ranked education as the top issue facing the country.

And despite years of headlines about bad test scores, most parents still give their child’s school relatively high marks.

Bipartisan reform may require presidential leadership.

Starting with George H. W. Bush and continuing through Barack Obama there were four straight presidents who championed an overlapping agenda of school accountability and school choice. Each made education a central national issue. In a number of cases, these presidents brought along reluctant members of their own parties. The bipartisan coalition crucially depended on this presidential leadership. In turn, bipartisan school reform has collapsed under Trump and Biden since neither bought into this agenda.

To succeed, the bipartisan reformers may need a like-minded president. That could, of course, be tough to get. Right now, Rahm Emanuel is polling at 0%-1%. The question for these aspiring reformers is whether they can find other presidential candidates to carry their mantle.

This piece was about whether bipartisan school reform will return. It’s a different question than whether it should. What do you think? Share your thoughts with me at mbarnum@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.

MAHA and school nutrition experts have a message for Trump: Don’t put kids on the carnivore diet

2026-04-13T15:33:01+00:00

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The Trump administration loves red meat, and could soon change what students eat in schools. But an unlikely collection of groups that includes key constituents for the president agree on one message: Don’t put kids on the carnivore diet.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a big, vocal believer in the power of beef, lamb, pork, and similar foods. And red meat has a starring role in a new food pyramid unveiled by the federal government in January that says Americans should prioritize foods rich in protein.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is expected to eventually align school meal nutrition standards to that new food pyramid. The agency’s proposal isn’t out yet. But those who believe fiber and not protein is a bigger priority — for Americans in general and kids in particular — are already expressing anxiety about it.

In March, a group of over 900 school districts and school nutrition professionals signed a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins urging her department to maintain existing meat requirements. They warned that increasing that requirement might crowd out fiber-rich foods, which the group wrote is “under-consumed” by students.

That argument from the nutrition professionals has backing from groups supportive of the Make America Healthy Again — or MAHA — movement. These groups generally believe that better nutrition will help fight chronic illness and have backed aspects of the president’s agenda. A coalition of these organizations, including Moms Across America, also urged the USDA to maintain the previous meat requirement, with fiber the “more urgent public health priority.”

The National School Lunch Program is a consistent source of nutrition for children from low-income families. And the federally subsidized program operates on a large scale: It serves about 4.8 billion meals annually, according to a School Nutrition Association analysis of recent federal data. But it’s also run by the Agriculture Department, an agency whose primary stakeholders are food producers. That means over the decades, school lunch nutrition standards have been in constant flux and reflected contemporary health trends.

Standards have been tweaked, overhauled and recalibrated over many administrations, from the infamous “pizza as a vegetable” controversy that pitted Congress against the Obama administration’s quest for healthier lunches to a more recent decree from the Biden administration for schools to gradually scale back added sugar. A week after his administration unveiled the new food pyramid, President Donald Trump signed a law reversing an Obama-era rule that outlawed whole milk in school lunches.

The current scramble for supremacy between fiber and protein is on display on grocery shelves, which feature fiber-rich probiotic sodas and Pop Tarts touting added protein. Nutrition experts say most kids are getting adequate levels of protein. Fiber is “the nutrient that tends to get neglected,” said Annette Schille, a clinical nutrition specialist at Boston Children’s Hospital.

“Kids having access to school meals, it can be really one of the most powerful tools that we have to improve children’s nutrition,” Schille said.

Fiber in the spotlight in school lunch debate

Current federal school meal standards regulate added sugar, fat, sodium and calories, but don’t set a specific fiber requirement. They do require lunches to include certain amounts of fruits and vegetables, including fiber-rich beans, peas and lentils. But generally, it can be difficult to get kids to go for those options, and upping a meat requirement could risk “crowding out” the fiber that does make it onto the plate, the group of school nutrition professionals argued.

Those who oversee school nutrition on a daily basis are under a lot of pressure, those experts say, to balance the requirements of making nutritionally balanced meals with the reality that students usually have a short window of time to eat lunch. And cafeterias are on a tight budget of roughly $4.60 a meal.

Liz Campbell, vice president of government affairs and media relations for the School Nutrition Association, said that economic realities look different from cafeteria to cafeteria. Some schools in North Dakota are running programs without adequate resources like functioning kitchens, while the Austin Independent School District in Texas — Kennedy Jr. recently visited to scope out school meals — has a dietitian on staff.

“We have to think about standards that are operationally feasible for everyone and so that folks can be financially solvent,” she said.

But food quality should be prioritized even under economic pressure, said Carrie Balkcom, executive director of the American Grassfed Association, a farm and ranching advocacy organization and one of the organizations that signed the letter from the MAHA-aligned coalition.

The letter argues that while meat requirements don’t need to go up, existing protein sources used in schools are often highly processed.

There’s not enough incentive for local, grassfed meat products to make it to a student’s lunch tray, Balkcom said. The administration last year cut several grant programs supporting local farm-to-school efforts. But Balkcom would like to see more collaboration.

“There are producers out there who are ready, willing and able to work with the school lunch program,” she said.

Michelle Saletan was a pastry chef in Charleston, South Carolina, before she moved over to managing school cafeterias. Meeting USDA requirements felt like a real challenge after working in the private sector for so long.

School kitchens have to be creative to include adequate nutrient levels in lunches that will appeal to children. For example, lunch periods tend to be short, so while oranges could be a source of fiber, students probably aren’t going to spend lunch peeling one.

Saletan now works as institutional support manager with Balanced.org, a nonprofit based in Kansas City that works with schools to help improve nutrition content — and especially fiber content — in their meals.

It’s disappointing to her that existing federal school lunch standards don’t include a fiber requirement. And the process for the USDA to finalize new standards, which includes taking public comment on proposed new federal rules, will likely take several months.

But schools don’t have to wait for them to incorporate more fiber, Saletan said. They also don’t have to wait for a budget increase, she said: It’s a misconception that plant proteins like black-bean burgers or plant-based nuggets are more expensive.

“It’s about how to serve them,” she said. “Take your existing spaghetti sauce and just put lentils in. Even if you’re doing 50% beef and 50% lentils, you’re increasing the fiber naturally, increasing the protein, and you’re cutting your cost.”

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

Why Sal Khan’s AI revolution hasn’t happened yet, according to Sal Khan

2026-04-09T21:11:13+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Three years ago, as Khan Academy founder Sal Khan rolled out an AI-powered tutoring chatbot, he predicted a revolution in learning.

So far, the revolution hasn’t happened, he acknowledges.

“For a lot of students, it was a non-event,” Khan told me recently about his eponymous chatbot, Khanmigo. “They just didn’t use it much.”

Khan gives this analogy: Imagine he walked into a class, sat in the back of the room, and waited for students to seek out help. “Some will; most won’t,” he said. That’s been the experience with AI tutoring, he said. It doesn’t necessarily make students motivated to learn or fill in gaps in knowledge needed to ask questions.

Khan’s comments are an acknowledgement that AI has not quickly allowed for the creation of an effective super-tutor, as some initially hoped. It’s an early indication of the limits of AI to drive massive learning gains, long an unrealized goal of various technologies. While Khan remains optimistic about various uses of AI in education, he’s also come to see its limits.

“I just view it as part of the solution; I don’t view it as the end-all and be-all,” Khan said in our interview.

In the summer of 2022, OpenAI leaders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman reached out to Sal Khan. They were months away from releasing ChatGPT, and were hoping Khan Academy — a large nonprofit that works with schools across the country — could showcase the technology’s potential benefits. “I didn’t realize it yet, but the world was about to be turned upside down,” Khan wrote in his 2024 book “Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing).”

OpenAI provided Khan Academy with early access to a more advanced AI model, GPT-4. With that the Khan Academy team then built a specialized chatbot, Khanmigo, designed to help students learn and restricted from simply giving them the answer. Khan himself quickly became an evangelist for the technology’s uses in schools.

“We’re at the cusp of using AI for probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen,” Khan said in a widely viewed TED Talk in 2023. “The way we’re going to do that is by giving every student on the planet an artificially intelligent but amazing personal tutor.”

He suggested that eventually AI could turn the average student into an academic standout, citing a seminal but controversial 1984 study on the value of individualized tutoring.

Khan also appeared in a “60 Minutes” segment that featured northwest Indiana’s Hobart High School, which was an early adopter of Khanmigo.

Kristen Musall, a geometry teacher at Hobart High, gave Khanmigo a try when it first rolled out. Musall appreciated its encouraging, teacher-like tone, but she found that students didn’t really care for the bot. They found it frustrating — Khanmigo sometimes made mistakes, but also wouldn’t give away the answer. “If students don’t engage with the material enough to know what they’re looking for, then an AI like Khanmigo doesn’t necessarily help,” she recently told me.

Musall no longer uses Khanmigo in her class. She says there’s been more enthusiasm for the product among administrators than teachers in her school.

A few of Musall’s most advanced students have taken advantage of AI to learn new topics. But, as far as she can tell, more students are using it to just find answers, which has created a massive headache for teachers. Nationally, a majority of teenagers say AI-powered cheating is at least somewhat prevalent in their schools, according to a recent Pew survey.

Peggy Buffington, Hobart’s superintendent, said there’s been a range of reactions from teachers and students to AI. There was initially a learning curve for students to ask Khanmigo questions, but that they’ve gotten a lot better, she said: “It’s like anything in education. You have to learn how to use the tool and use it appropriately.”

Buffington says that schools need to prepare students to use AI responsibly and Khanmigo is preferable to commercial products they would use on their own. Overall, she’s found the tool beneficial. “Our kids can log in at home and they can get help with their homework and it won’t give them the answer,” she said.

But Khan Academy officials have seen that many students won’t take advantage of that option or don’t know how to. Kristen DiCerbo, the organization’s chief learning officer, said AI can only respond to students based on what they ask. And it turns out, she said, “Students aren’t great at asking questions well.”

DiCerbo was initially hopeful that AI would be able to personalize instruction to students’ needs and interests. That hasn’t happened. “So far I am not seeing the revolution in education,” she said.

AI is still poised to shake up American education in many ways — by making cheating easier, reshaping how teachers approach their work, and changing the broader economy in ways that affect schools. So far the evidence base for AI in education remains “extremely limited,” according to an overview paper released last month.

Khan Academy officials say they’re learning from their experience with Khanmigo and pairing it with other offerings.

A recent study found that when teachers used Khan Academy to help students practice academic content, their classes made slightly faster learning gains. (Lower-performing students, though, saw few if any improvements from Khan Academy.) This was before Khanmigo.

Khan Academy recently announced an overhaul of its product that provides students additional academic practice. Now Khanmigo is incorporated directly as a way students can get advice as they’re working through specific problems. A spokesperson said the organization made this change because “students were not seeking out Khanmigo’s help as much as we had hoped.”

“AI is going to help,” said Khan of this reimagined Khan Academy. “But I think our biggest lever is really investing in the human systems.”

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

When a teacher ditched screens, class got harder. That may be why it worked.

2026-04-07T14:43:04+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Seventh-grade math teacher Dylan Kane decided to conduct an experiment in his classes by going cold turkey on ed-tech.

Kane, like just about every other teacher in the country, has seen the use of screens proliferate in his classroom — its own sort of accidental experiment. Then, last December, Kane read “The Digital Delusion,” a harsh critique of ed-tech. Although he was not entirely convinced by its arguments, the book made him pause.

“I had kept some of my technology routines the same for a bunch of years without really thinking twice,” says Kane, who teaches in Leadville, a rural mountain town in Colorado. “So I said, ‘Hey, why don’t I just throw it all out?’”

Kane, who writes a popular Substack about teaching and learning, decided to drop screens from his class for the month of January to see what would happen.

More educators and policymakers are also having second thoughts about the growth of ed-tech — sold as a way of personalizing learning but increasingly criticized for doing the opposite. Some school systems are scaling back the use of screens, and some state lawmakers are adding restrictions to how they can be used in class.

I wanted to talk to Kane to understand the classroom-level pros and cons of winding back the clock on ed-tech. So far his experiment has been a success, he says — so much so that he has not brought screens back. Dropping ed-tech has turned out to be a lot more work for him and his students. That might be why it’s succeeding.

Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.

More than three months since he began, Dylan Kane's classroom is still tech free.

How were you using tech previously?

All of my assessments were online. That was a shift I made during the pandemic, which most teachers made. And I just kept doing that. They were easier to grade. It was kind of on autopilot.

Number two, I used a math practice website called DeltaMath, which I liked a lot. I would have students at the end of pretty much every class spend five to 10 minutes working through a short online practice assignment.

And third, I would about once a week use part of a Desmos activity. These are free online activities that are interactive, that students do on their Chromebooks. They often give an interesting insight into some mathematical idea, or let students manipulate math in a different way than we often do on pencil and paper.

So how’d your experiment of dropping tech go?

I’m still tech free. I don’t find myself saying, ‘Wow, these things I used to do with technology are totally irreplaceable.’

A couple things I’ve liked. The biggest is just so many fewer little logistical challenges. No more ‘I forgot my charger, my Chromebook’s dead. My screen’s cracked. The internet’s not working.’ All those things are just out the window. We have pencil, we have paper, we have whiteboards, we have markers.

A lot of stuff that I had students doing on their own, I’m now doing interactively in front of the class, like asking questions, having them answer on mini-whiteboards. That has been better than I expected. I feel much more nimble, like I don’t have to get them to put their screens away — we can just talk about it.

I’m seeing a slight increase in effort across the board. Some students, especially students who are less confident in math, can sometimes hide behind their screens. Screens can just separate us into our own little worlds and be really easy to appear like you’re busy behind a screen.

The last thing is I feel more in touch with student thinking. Part of the premise of education technology is that we can see all this stuff about what students are doing, what they know, what they don’t know. My experience is the data is often overwhelming. And with pencil and paper, I just feel much more connected to what students are confused about, what I need to respond to, where I need to adjust.

What do students think of this?

I surveyed them, and they were mixed. The averages were honestly right down the middle. I have some students say they love it. They either just don’t like a lot of the stuff we do on Chromebooks, or they feel fatigued by the amount of screen time across their classes, or they feel frustrated with all the little logistical issues.

One interesting thing is some students say the work is easier on a Chromebook. One reason is handwriting involves more effort. The effort that goes into handwriting might lead to more durable learning — that might be a good type of effort. Another is working on screens often gives instant feedback, and so not having that feedback can feel a little more frustrating for students.

The loss of feedback feels like it could be a downside.

There’s good and bad here. Instant feedback can be really helpful, but students can also become reliant on it, or it can lead to guessing and checking that’s unproductive. In a lot of situations, delayed feedback works better than immediate feedback.

Is there any part of tech that you miss?

All of this is more work. It’s way easier to click a few buttons and assign a couple math problems for students to do online than it is to prepare a piece of paper, and have all that ready for students in class.

I also find that students are a little bit more self-reliant when they’re on technology. I think again, this is good and bad. They need less teacher interaction, because they’re getting that immediate feedback. But also the way that screens kind of divide people into their own world. Sometimes a student is really confused, but doesn’t quite know how to ask for help. There’s definitely higher energy in my class without screens, and I think that’s a good thing, but it can be exhausting as a teacher.

I’m giving quizzes and tests with pencil and paper now, and it’s a lot more work to grade. I’ve loved that because it’s helped me get students to engage more with their mistakes, but again, it’s more work.

Did you run into any sort of difficulties with school policies that made it hard to unwind tech, because it’s just so integrated in so many schools?

I had my formal observation a few weeks ago, and there are a number of items on the state rubric around using technology that were left blank. I am personally not very worried about my score on one very small subset of the state rubric. But that’s built into Colorado law that teachers should integrate technology in their classroom.

So is your plan for the foreseeable future to continue to be no-tech?

Yeah. I don’t want to be someone who just says, ‘Hey, no technology ever again.’ I plan on being a paper-and-pencil first teacher as much as possible. But if some new tools do come along that I think are doing a much better job than what I had access to before, I’m open to it.

Anything else you want to add?

A big belief of mine is that teachers can do their best work when we set clear expectations for what we think great teaching and learning look like, and within reasonable constraints give teachers some freedom. And I think in some cases, technological tools can be a crutch to take away some teacher autonomy. I don’t think it’s a path to a profession where teachers want to stay in the classroom and where teachers can be responsive to student needs.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

New study finds special education changes students’ academic trajectories for the better

2026-03-30T11:04:55+00:00

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act turned 50 last year. Many advocates and politicians heralded the anniversary. At the same time, some observers have been wondering how well the law has succeeded in helping students.

A study released Monday sheds new light on this question, offering among the most comprehensive and rigorous answers to date. The findings were strikingly positive. Across three states, access to special education services changed students’ academic trajectories for the better.

The gains were “immediate, quite large, and sustained,” says Marcus Winters, lead author of the paper and a professor at Boston University.

The results indicate that special education is working to a meaningful extent for many students who are gaining access to additional services. What the study doesn’t answer, however, is whether special education can work even better, considering the significant costs involved.

To continue reading, click here.

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

2026-03-27T15:51:45+00:00

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At least three states have taken steps to restrict undocumented high school students’ access to dual enrollment and career-technical education programs, according to documents reviewed by Chalkbeat. In one state, the policy was reversed following Chalkbeat inquiries.

These moves come as efforts to limit educational funding for undocumented immigrants ramp up nationwide. They build on controversial guidance from the Trump administration that restricted federally funded preschool and adult education programs to citizens and legal residents.

But these state actions are particularly striking because they chip away at protections based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Plyler v. Doe decision, which requires public schools to serve all students, including those who lack legal permission to be in the country. They suggest the Trump administration has made more progress than previously reported in eroding the protections enshrined in the ruling, long a conservative target.

In Virginia, nearly every school district quietly agreed to exclude undocumented students from participating in certain federally funded career-and-technical education programs, according to records obtained by Chalkbeat.

It is not clear how many undocumented students actually lost access to programming. But at least one school district in Virginia was denied $150,000 in federal funding because it didn’t agree to exclude those students.

On Thursday, after repeated Chalkbeat questions, the state education department said it was abandoning the policy. School districts will no longer be required to restrict undocumented students’ access. The original policy came under the state’s previous Republican administration. The department is now led by a Democratic appointee.

Other Republican-led states have maintained similar policies. The Iowa Department of Education said it expects schools not to offer college-credit courses to undocumented students with federal funds. Georgia recently announced new restrictions on undocumented students’ access to dual enrollment courses paid for with state money.

It is not clear how many other states have taken similar actions. In response to an ongoing lawsuit, a federal judge blocked Trump’s legal guidance in 20 states with Democratic attorneys general.

A U.S. Education Department spokesperson told Chalkbeat this week that the department is not focused on “patchwork enforcement” while litigation is ongoing. But the initial notice has already had a significant effect on state policy.

Conservative activists have argued that undocumented immigrant students use resources that by right should go to Americans.

The presence of large numbers of English learners “impacts the entire school and American citizens who are losing out on resources,” Mandy Drogin of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, told a U.S. House Judiciary subcommittee during a recent hearing devoted to criticizing the Plyler decision. “The taxpayers are left holding the bag for it.”

Immigrant and civil rights advocates have strongly defended the value of educating undocumented students. Not doing so, they say, would carry far greater social costs.

“Denial is not just a denial of equal access,” said Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “Denial is an injury to the whole community because you are then taking away the investment in kids who could make very strong contributions.”

Districts agreed to exclude undocumented students despite concerns

In July of last year, the Trump administration issued new interpretations of a 1996 federal law that restricted certain immigrants’ access to welfare programs. Trump’s changes sought to go further, by blocking undocumented immigrants from enrolling in Head Start, adult education, and postsecondary education programs.

In its legal notice, the administration also said it believes Plyler does not protect programming that goes “beyond providing a basic public education,” suggesting that undocumented students might not have access to the full slate of services offered in many public schools. The change targeted career-technical education programs that often involve partnerships between school districts and community colleges, sometimes blurring the lines between higher ed and K-12.

The next month, an email from Virginia’s then-Superintendent of Public Instruction Emily Anne Gullickson, arrived in the inboxes of school leaders across the commonwealth. It was labeled “URGENT READ.”

To continue to receive federal career-and-technical education funding, known as Perkins, school districts would have to promptly sign an “attestation” that “non-qualified aliens” are “not provided or receiving services funded by the program.” Virginia was allocated $32.5 million in Perkins funding this school year.

Some district leaders were wary of signing. Scott Worner, the superintendent of Mecklenburg County Public Schools in southern Virginia, wrote in an email obtained by Chalkbeat that he had “big concerns.” In Virginia Beach, school board member Melinda Rogers told local media that “it has always been the right of all students to have access to education.”

The Virginia school superintendents association quickly provided legal guidance in a webinar, which warned schools they could lose funding if they didn’t sign, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by Chalkbeat. Scott Braband, the group’s executive director, said during the meeting that there was some legal argument against signing but recommended that districts do so, according to meeting notes obtained by Chalkbeat. He emphasized the funding that was at stake.

In an interview, Braband suggested that districts were unlikely to actually exclude students based on their immigration status. “We don’t have knowledge that we have undocumented kids because we don’t check,” he said. ”It’s a compliance exercise.” He declined to speak about his comments from the legal webinar.

Ultimately, over 120 school districts, including Mecklenburg County and Virginia Beach, signed the attestation form, according to information obtained through a public records request. Most school districts signed the document months ago, but their decision to do so has not been previously reported.

Chalkbeat sought comment from every school district in the state. Virtually all declined to comment or did not respond.

Rogers, the Virginia Beach board member, said she was not aware that her district signed. “It is a concern,” she said. “I would ask why the federal government would impose that kind of restriction on a child when it is not our responsibility to get involved.”

Only seven Virginia school districts did not sign, according to state records and Chalkbeat reporting. “We can’t attest to that because we don’t collect that information,” Loudoun County Superintendent Aaron Spence said in an interview, referring to students’ immigration status.

In January of this year, the district was denied $150,000 in Perkins funding, including for a program promoting entrepreneurship to students. An email to Loudoun from the Virginia Department of Education, obtained by Chalkbeat, said funding requests would be rejected for school systems that had not signed. The district’s loss of funding was initially reported by local news outlet Loudoun Now.

Gullickson, who served as state superintendent during Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration, wrote in a statement to Chalkbeat, “Schools should only spend taxpayer money on students as intended.” She added, “Virginia was unwilling to put federal funds at risk.”

This week, Holly Coy, chief of staff at the Virginia Department of Education, said the agency “has determined that submitting the attestation is no longer a necessary requirement.” She said the state was still determining the logistics for releasing money to districts that had not signed.

The chain of events in Virginia shows the compromises school districts were willing to make to keep federal money flowing, as well as the ways in which student rights are dependent on states’ partisan make-up.

The U.S. Education Department did not explicitly require states to get assurances from districts, but warned it “may conduct a review” to ensure federal funding doesn’t go to “serve illegal aliens.” The department acknowledged that “this guidance is not binding.”

Organizations that represent career education and community colleges sent a letter to the department in August with urgent questions about how to comply, since Perkins funds often go to program costs that benefit large groups of students. They have not received a response, according to two groups who signed the letter.

Meanwhile, the Iowa Department of Education told districts that they cannot use Perkins dollars to pay for undocumented high school students to take college-credit classes “even if the course occurs at the high school.” Although schools are not required to report students’ immigration status, districts “should be prepared to demonstrate that ineligible students are not being served using Perkins funds,” the agency said.

A spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Education did not offer comment.

In Georgia, the state announced that beginning this summer, high school students participating in a state-funded dual college enrollment program must prove that they are citizens or legal residents. The state did not provide a public rationale for this move. According to a memo obtained by Chalkbeat, the Georgia Department of Law cited the recent Trump administration guidance as reason to exclude undocumented students.

A spokesperson for the Georgia Student Finance Commission, which administers the dual enrollment program, did not respond to a request for comment.

One high school in the Atlanta area noted that undocumented students may still participate, but now “must self-pay for courses.”

National Editor Erica Meltzer contributed reporting.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

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

This elementary school banned screens in the middle of the year. Will it solve their reading crisis?

2026-03-25T21:08:17+00:00

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Chromebooks are scattered all around the classrooms of Floyd M. Jewett Elementary School in Mesick, Michigan.

Towers of them are teetering atop bookshelves. They’re piled up in corners of classrooms. They’ve even cropped up in one classroom’s dish rack.

But there’s one place you won’t find them: in students’ hands.

Last month, Mesick Consolidated Schools banned digital devices in its elementary school of about 250 students. The decision wasn’t an agonizing one. The ban came at astonishing speed, almost overnight, after a conversation between Mesick Superintendent Jack Ledford and Jewett Principal Elizabeth Kastl.

Ledford recalled asking Kastl how much teachers read to students in grades K-5. And he recalled her reply: “That has almost vanished.” Kastl’s response helped seal the deal.

Teachers had to have students off devices by the end of the week. School printers went into overdrive. Then the district went cold turkey.

Tablets are seen in first grade teacher Hope Parrish's classroom at Floyd M. Jewett Elementary School on Friday, March 20, 2026 in Mesick, Michigan. The school recently banned screens in a bid to improve students' reading skill.

Mesick’s midyear ban underscores a growing backlash against screen time in school, a battle that parents and educators are taking up nationwide. Fears about digital devices’ impact on learning have fused with ongoing concerns about a multi-year decline in national test scores that predates the pandemic. A stream of government hearings, op-eds, and social media posts have only magnified the sense of urgency.

Ledford and Kastl think the need for drastic action is warranted. About 18% of Jewett’s third graders scored proficient or higher on the state reading test last spring — half the state average and half what it was a decade ago.

In Mesick, a rural town known for its annual mushroom festival, 66% of students are economically disadvantaged. The district has done all the “normal things” to improve persistently low reading scores, Ledford said, like switching to an evidence-based curriculum. But he now views screens as an adversary to learning.

Jack Ledford, superindendent of Mesick Consolidated Schools, outside of Floyd M. Jewett Elementary School.

“When we’re competing with screens, we’re going to lose,” he said.

But blanket bans at school won’t affect kids’ screen time at home. And research about how screens affect students is inconclusive, although it does suggest that teachers should exercise caution. Not everyone is convinced that a complete prohibition on screens is the best way to help struggling learners.

Morgan Polikoff, a professor at the University of Southern California’s education school, said he understands the appeal of an all-or-nothing approach, but it avoids the reality that some technology does have a place in the classroom.

“It’s like taking a hammer when you need a scalpel,” he said. “A lot of the use of technology in schools is not appropriate. But rather than sitting down and thinking about, ‘What are appropriate uses of technology in classrooms serving young children,’ this approach would just obliterate all uses.”

A third grade student reads a book in Hanna Brechenser's classroom at Floyd M. Jewett Elementary.

Lawmakers in at least 16 states are have proposed bills that would limit education technology in public schools, following a spate of state-approved cellphone bans for schools.

Ledford said he’s been influenced by writers like Jonathan Haidt, a New York University psychologist who is a prominent supporter of school cellphone restrictions and has more recently criticized the proliferation of tech in education. At the same time, a mid-March visit to Mesick’s classrooms shows the ed-tech backlash can be somewhat divorced from the reality of a school day.

For some at Jewett, the school day doesn’t feel that different. A few teachers said they hadn’t used screens very much. For others, the routine has changed substantially — and for the better, they believe, with students more engaged and learning less “gamified.”

Hanna Brechenser teaches a lesson to her third grade students.

When asked about her school’s screen ban, a girl wearing a “Lilo & Stitch” shirt in an intervention class for struggling readers, just growls. But her intervention instructor, Julie Kearns, said the students are simply adjusting.

The student “definitely seems like she enjoys” reading a book more than wearing headphones and peering at a screen, Kearns said.

As Kearns watched, the girl bounced in her chair while reading a passage about soccer.

Why a school banished screens and bought books

In classrooms, a screen ban for students doesn’t mean all screens are gone.

One Friday in March, third grade teacher Hanna Brechenser presented images on the Smartboard — the modern day version of a projector — of Indigenous communities to help foster a classroom conversation. Teachers also still have desktop computers.

This is Brechenser’s fifth year teaching and her second in Mesick. She said she had already tried to limit screentime in the classroom before the ban. Her class mostly used their Chromebooks a few times a week for a math fluency exercise and digital library access.

Elizabeth Kastl, elementary principal for Mesick Consolidated Schools, in her office.

Both Kastl and Ledford believe teachers may not have been aware of just how much of a crutch screens were in some classes.

Mesick went 1:1 with students and devices around 2015, Ledford said, when schools were under pressure by tech evangelists and politicians to add more technology so students would be prepared for jobs in the digital world. That was the argument at the time, anyway.

“I had started in my walkthroughs just noting, what are the students doing?” Kastl said. “More often than not, I was coming back with a list of students on devices. So the perception of how your day actually looks versus what we were seeing on the data piece are probably disjointed.”

Mesick’s new policy has been helpful for Brechenser because she doesn’t have to police students so much on their devices.

A selection of books are available in teacher Hanna Brechenser's classroom at Mesick Consolidated Schools.

Brechenser’s students have physical books from the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series, “Twilight”, and “The Baby-sitter’s Club” stacked on their desks. That’s the other side of Mesick’s new screen ban: The district has set aside $30,000 for physical books to bulk up classroom libraries, along with beanbag chairs so students will have special spaces to read.

Students adjusted quickly, Brechenser said. “At first, they were kind of shocked, but we just have a lot more silent reading time.”

Still, it’s hard to miss signs of the amount of time students spend on screens outside of school: A “K-Pop Demon Hunters” water bottle. A Sonic the Hedgehog T-shirt. The image of a snake Brechenser put on the Smartboard prompted one student, Alaric, to say it reminded him of one in a “Harry Potter” movie he watched before school.

Alaric, who’s 9, said he doesn’t really miss his Chromebook, though he’d been reading something on the online library he can no longer access thanks to the screen ban.

He gets plenty of screen time at home playing Xbox, he said. He hasn’t thought about cutting down on that.

“Because I love Fortnight,” he giggled.

In reading instruction, students get a digital detox

Where Mesick’s screen-free initiative feels most significant is in the 30-minute small group sessions for Jewett’s struggling readers.

Mesick uses Read Naturally, an intervention program designed to build fluency. Before the screen ban, students would read a short passage aloud from a computer, then listen through bulky headphones as the software read the passage back to them. Students would then read the passage to themselves three times before reading it aloud again. Paraprofessionals would go from student to student to assist.

Now, Sharon Brown and other literacy aides sit with their students, and work through printed reading passages together. Brown can more easily point out when students stop tracking words with their fingers. She can help sound out words. Though she closely helped students on the computers, she finds herself more thrilled to engage this way, to see progress up-close. This is why she is in education.

“It’s our passion to sit and watch these kids go from struggling readers to eventually testing out … and not having to come back and see us,” she said.

Hanna Brechenser uses a whiteboard in her classroom. She also uses a Smartboard during lessons with her third graders.

With one second grader, she has an engaging conversation about the reading’s topic, mammals, before they begin. He asks if a shark is a mammal, and if it evolved from dinosaurs.

Brown can see improvements, particularly with some of her first graders. Students are reading more words per minute, based on data they track every session.

“They are so engaged,” she said. “It’s been amazing to us that we’re going, ‘Wow, this has actually been so fun.’”

The way students use technology is an important consideration when thinking about limiting or banning screens, said Dr. Joanna Parga-Belinkie, a pediatrician and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Educators and parents should focus on using technology in ways that are interactive and in group settings, instead of having students looking at screens on their own.

“When you are focusing on screens and technology and the use of them you might be not focusing on human relationships,” she said.

Samantha Daniels, the mother of three children in the district, said that last school year, some of the software the district used would offer students games if they read enough.

She’d watch her son, a first grader, try to rush through the reading to get to the game. He struggled a lot with reading, becoming easily frustrated like many young readers.

“It would be about getting to that, versus us enjoying what we’re reading and what we’re learning,” she said.

But now, he’s starting to pick up books on his own.

Students work at their desks in third grade teacher Hanna Brechenser's classroom at Mesick Consolidated Schools.

There are some difficult practical adjustments to a mid-year change as big as this one. A lot of classroom resources are based online, or have some kind of an online component. Kastl asked teachers to stop using those components.

Ultimately, every hour of screen time represented “an hour that we’ve lost direct teacher instruction where they’re actually getting that responsive feedback from a human,” Kastl said.

“That’s when you move the needle.”

Will eliminating screens help young readers?

Ledford doesn’t think he’s taking a gamble by eliminating screens at the elementary school, even though students take state assessments on computers. He thinks it’s much easier to teach students technology skills than social skills.

In fact, he already has plans to scale back technology use by older students, too.

Ledford moved rapidly to ban screens, but he expects improvements in reading scores to happen more gradually. Still, he’s laser-focused on the connection between screens and literacy. To him, education should unlock the ability to read for students, because it affects everything else the district is trying to do for kids.

“We’re failing in literacy,” Ledford said. “If we fail in literacy, how can we effectively teach science or social studies or any of the subjects?”

Getting rid of screens will not solve all of Mesick’s problems, like a leaky roof or clapped-out HVAC system. Kastl has also observed a deeper potential issue: a drop-off in parent involvement after schools closed during the pandemic.

In many cases, Kastl said, “Parents don’t know what actually happens inside their kids’ school building.”

But parents know about the screen ban, and they’re excited about it. They’ve said they’ve noticed their children take more interest in reading.

Kids are also socializing more during free periods, a bright spot for the principal’s son, Sam Kastl.

Fifth grade students build forts in teacher Marie Lance's classroom at Mesick Consolidated Schools.

Sam, 11, used to spend indoor recess — a regular occurrence in northern Michigan’s severe winters — playing games on his Chromebook. He thought the screen ban was “going to be annoying.” Classmates who used to ask him if his mom would declare a snow day started asking him to convince her to bring back devices.

But those requests went away pretty quickly. Students now play board games together instead of games on their Chromebooks alone — just like how reading intervention students now study in a group instead of solo. Another student taught Sam how to draw. Everyone’s adjusted pretty well, from his vantage point.

On the day Chalkbeat visited their school, Sam and his fifth grade classmates built a fort out of blankets during class time. Then they climbed inside to read with flashlights.

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

America is turning against higher education. Students are still signing up.

2026-03-24T13:44:25+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

The narrative is by now familiar.

Americans’ confidence in higher education has fallen precipitously. More commentators are wondering aloud whether a degree is worth the cost. High school graduates and their families fret about taking on student debt. The Trump administration has aggressively attacked — rhetorically and legally — higher education. Artificial intelligence could threaten the university business model.

And yet, hard data show seemingly positive trends for higher education.

After a dip during the pandemic, enrollment has risen for three straight years. Elite universities continue to have vastly more applicants than seats. College-educated workers still far out-earn those without a degree, on average. College has actually become somewhat more affordable in recent years.

At Chalkbeat Ideas, we recently held an event trying to understand and untangle these confusing facts. The recording is here; the slides featuring my presentation of data are here.

“A lot of discouragement of students around higher education has very little to do with education or economic outcomes,” Zachary Bleemer, an economist at Princeton University, said during the event.

The discussion helped clarify my own thinking about the paradoxical state of American higher education — and what the prevailing discourse gets wrong. Here are some key takeaways.

The higher education backlash hasn’t stopped enrollment from growing.

In 2023 and 2024, headlines about Americans giving up on the value of college dominated. Ivy League presidents were filleted before Congress over antisemitism on campus. Trump campaigned on reining in elite schools. Support in polls dropped to record lows.

But a funny thing also happened during this time, although it was less noticed: Actual student enrollment started to trend upward again. Now, overall college and university enrollment is above pre-pandemic levels. The negative sentiment around higher education may have deterred at least some students from pursuing a degree, but in recent years there have apparently been other factors pulling them in.

The backlash has been strongest against elite schools — but they’re still thriving.

It’s hard to know for sure why confidence in American education has fallen so sharply. But I suspect that a lot of it has to do with attention to the country’s most elite schools, the Ivy League and a handful of others. Those universities, which educate a tiny share of American students, have drawn incredible amounts of attention, largely negative: about their purportedly close-minded liberal culture, their remarkably high tuition rates, and their exclusive admissions practices.

Yet demand to attend these colleges remains strikingly high — they still reject the vast majority of students who apply. In recent years, enrollment has only grown at selective colleges, which remain dominated by students from high-income neighborhoods.

Shavar Jeffries, CEO of the KIPP Foundation, noted archly during the Chalkbeat event that there is little indication of declining interest in college among affluent families, despite suggestions that young people are pivoting to blue-collar work.

“When you look at the wealthiest people in this country … they’re not having conversations about construction trades. They’re not having conversations about HVAC [work] when it comes to their kids,” said Jeffries. KIPP, the country’s largest nonprofit charter network, serving mostly students from low-income families, continues to prioritize access to college, he said.

The fundamental economics of higher education have not changed much — and are fairly strong.

What drives many people to pursue a degree is economic opportunity. In recent years, a narrative has emerged that pursuing a bachelor’s degree is no longer worth it, due to some combination of higher costs and lower returns. Neither claim is well supported by the data.

Real college tuition — what people actually pay, rather than the sticker price — has been flat or even falling for nearly two decades, according to tracking from the College Board. Meanwhile, the wage advantage for college graduates has remained at very high levels.

Rigorous research has typically found that students on the margin of attending college benefit economically from doing so. “Unambiguously, you see large returns to college-going,” said Bleemer. He pointed to studies in Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, and Texas. That doesn’t mean everyone benefits, just that the typical student considering college does, at least where it’s been studied.

The persistent economic value of college may help explain why enrollment at four-year colleges has not responded strongly to the backlash.

Two-year colleges have also seen enrollment rise recently, though this followed years of declines. Between 2010 and 2023, student counts dropped precipitously at places like Wayne County Community College and Central New Mexico Community College, to name a couple. There were also steep declines at for-profit schools like the University of Phoenix Online Campus.

These were hardly the schools at the center of the recent higher education backlash, but they bore the brunt of enrollment declines.

This again may reflect economic fundamentals in which students see less value from certain schools. Rising unemployment rates, which typically make additional education more appealing, have corresponded with the recent uptick in enrollment.

Politics, shrinking student pools, and AI mean a new era of uncertainty for higher ed.

So if enrollment is growing and the economic case for a degree remains strong, are colleges in a secure spot? Well, no. They face many pressures at the moment. The first is the shrinking pool of potential students. For the foreseeable future, just about every graduating high school class will be smaller than the last, according to projections. Higher education still faces intense political opposition, which could result in less public funding for colleges and universities. Wealthy elite colleges are in many ways best positioned to weather this storm, while lesser-known schools may again be the hardest hit.

The other variable is artificial intelligence. For multiple generations, universities have benefitted from the fact that more-educated workers can often better take advantage of new innovations. This is sometimes called the race between education and technology — in other words, the country has long been racing to get more educated to keep up with evolving tech.

What’s not clear yet is whether this race will continue. It’s possible that AI could lead to even more demand for higher education, but it could also reduce interest by replacing white-collar work. At the moment, it’s too soon to say how this will play out.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@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.

A viral case against screens in schools is winning converts. Does the evidence hold up?

2026-03-17T14:39:42+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Schools have been struggling for nearly a decade with stagnant or declining test scores. Some have blamed external factors like the pandemic or children’s screen use outside of school. But what if, in a sort of educational horror movie, the call is coming from inside the house?

Such is the provocative theory advanced by Jared Cooney Horvath, a Ph.D-holding neuroscientist who runs an education consulting company. Students’ learning and attention have been derailed by the proliferation of screens in schools. “When tech enters education, learning goes down,” he told a U.S. Senate committee earlier this year.

Horvath has offered a synthesis of two anxieties of the moment: poor test scores and rising screen time among children, including in school. It’s a message that is resonating with some parents, educators, and lawmakers.

His Senate testimony has been viewed well over 2 million times on C-Span’s YouTube page. Clipped versions have ricocheted across Instagram. Prominent psychologist and tech critic Jonathan Haidt has promoted Horvath’s work. At least one tech-skeptical parent is attending school board meetings armed with copies of Horvath’s self-published book, “The Digital Delusion,” which is set to be re-released this summer by a major publisher. Meanwhile, some states are considering new restrictions on school-issued devices.

I wanted to figure out how strong the case against ed-tech really is, so I took a careful look at Horvath’s evidence. My takeaway: There’s no smoking-gun data showing that ed-tech is at the root of, or even contributing to, recent learning declines. But Horvath’s case should still give schools and educators some pause. Could the tech tools they’ve adopted be doing more harm than good?

In his book and Senate testimony, Horvath offers a three-pronged case against tech in schools.

First, he notes a basic correlation. On a number of international tests, students who spend more time on school computers tend to do worse, he finds. Both U.S. and international scores also started to drop once schools began giving students laptops, Horvath says.

Second, Horvath summarizes academic research — over 20,000 studies — on ed-tech tools, which he defines broadly. Startlingly, in his telling, they appear to harm learning. “Most general-use educational technologies perform below the effectiveness of ordinary classroom instruction,” Horvath said in his written Senate testimony.

Third, screens are not consistent with learning best practices, says Horvath, drawing from his neuroscience background. Human relationships are an important part of learning, which digital tools can’t match. Screens are also just distracting for students.

Plus, tech can make learning frictionless, which seems like a good thing but isn’t, Horvath contends. For instance, it’s easy to take notes on a computer. Yet the process of hand writing notes requires more consideration of what is being written, and that can help commit it to memory.

Across different strands of evidence, “the same exact pattern pops up again and again,” Horvath tells me — that ed-tech is actively harmful.

Yet this case has a number of significant holes.

His first point about correlation is just that: correlational. It does not show tech has caused lower achievement. Such declines in the U.S. and around the world have coincided with a number of other factors, including the pandemic and the growth of screens outside of school. Researchers are still struggling to pin down the key causal factors here. Horvath readily acknowledges this limitation.

His summary of research is also questionable. The overall impact of ed-tech in the studies he cites is actually positive. Horvath says the effect is too small to justify the use of tech because it’s smaller than the effect of “typical classroom instruction.” Taking that into account turns the ed-tech results negative, he says. This is a key methodological decision on which Horvath’s conclusion rests.

But it’s simply not the right approach, says Elizabeth Tipton, a Northwestern University statistician, who counts herself as an ed-tech skeptic. Horvath’s benchmark is wildly unrealistic, she says. In carefully designed studies, in which two groups are both receiving some sort of instruction, most effects are quite small. In that context, an effect above zero would be encouraging.

Perhaps more importantly, says Tipton, it’s not clear the vast array of research that Horvath is citing should be relied on at all. There are many poorly done studies in education. To do a good summary, low-quality papers need to be ruthlessly weeded out. Another challenge is that tech is constantly changing, making old studies quickly obsolete. She’s worried that there’s a “garbage in, garbage out” problem in Horvath’s summary, which is really an overview of multiple overview papers.

“We are so far from the original data, we have no idea what we’re studying at this point,” says Tipton. She’s not aware of a high-quality summary of research on ed-tech broadly. This would be hard to do because the uses of tech are so diverse.

Horvath acknowledges limits in his cause and effect evidence, but he says that’s inevitable in social science. We should look at the weight of the data and the overall coherence of the case, he argues.

Horvath is perhaps on the strongest ground in his summary of cognitive science research. Although it’s debated among researchers, there is some evidence that students learn less from reading and from taking notes on screens. Daniel Willingham, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia, says he’s particularly concerned that tech opens up new avenues for distraction. “If kids have a Chromebook and they can find a way out of whatever they’re doing so they can do something more fun with the Chromebook, they will,” he says.

For his part, Horvath argues the burden of proof should not be on him but on the purveyors of ed-tech. “We are much closer to proving that it’s harmful than we are to proving it’s helping,” he says.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

After fights over social studies standards, conservative activists turn to math

2026-03-17T12:45:41+00:00

This story about math standards was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

Susan Gilkerson, a math teacher and school bus driver, stood before a South Dakota education board and issued a warning.

The proposed math standards the board was considering — just 36 pages, less than half the length of standards adopted in 2018 — were so scant that teachers won’t know how to use them, Gilkerson said. The existing standards detail not just which math concepts should be taught but also the specific skills students need to demonstrate to show they understand them, said Gilkerson, who teaches in the rural Oldham-Ramona-Rutland district.

“When I talk to my students, I want them to understand it,” she said of a concept like the Pythagorean theorem. But the new standards contain little guidance on how students can demonstrate they grasp that math concept or countless others, she said.

Joseph Graves, South Dakota’s education secretary, countered: Teachers and parents don’t understand the current standards because they’re so complicated. “Our whole goal was to simplify, simplify, simplify,” Graves said.

That exchange this past October marked the opening salvo in an escalating battle over South Dakota’s math standards. One source the department consulted in creating its new draft — part of a review that happens every seven years — was a brand-new set of model math standards produced by the National Association of Scholars, a conservative group on the front lines of the education culture wars. The group’s document, named the Archimedes Standards for the ancient Greek mathematician, urges states to do what South Dakota is trying with its standards rewrite: eliminate Common Core math.

Almost from the time of their introduction in 2009, the Common Core State Standards — intended to create a set of academic expectations for students across the country — have prompted backlash from those who disliked both the content and the idea that standards supported by the federal government were usurping a role traditionally left to states.

Now, some of the same groups that have criticized schools and universities for diversity efforts and history instruction that embraces the contributions of people from marginalized groups are turning their attention to the math standards.

Math, with its black-and-white rules and rigid structure, might seem to be beyond politics. But the National Association of Scholars says the Common Core has injected too much confusion into math education and lacks rigor. The group aims to instead introduce more memorization of math facts and pare down the number of words used to describe the knowledge that students should be taught at each grade level.

Supporters of the current standards say that shortening them eliminates useful information that teachers can use to guide how they teach. And there’s no proof that changing the standards in this way will actually move the needle on math achievement, they say.

“Simpler doesn’t necessarily mean more rigorous,” said Jon Star, an education professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

Conservative group wants to rewrite academic standards

All but five states initially adopted Common Core, a state-led initiative developed by a bipartisan group of policymakers, scholars, and educators. But it soon faced pushback from conservatives and liberals alike.

Parents in blue states, troubled by what they saw as Common Core’s excessive focus on testing, started opting out of core-aligned annual state tests. Red-state politicians and tea party activists protested that Common Core intruded on state control of education. The Obama administration’s support for the standards intensified that opposition.

In this politicized context, many states started revising, reviewing, or pulling away from the standards altogether. In releasing the Archimedes Standards last June, the National Association of Scholars wants more to follow their lead.

The 39-year-old organization has focused in recent years on revising state standards, which it says are “the single most influential documents in America’s education systems,” affecting curriculum, teaching training, textbook content, and more. It started in 2022 with social studies standards, releasing model standards that call liberty an “American birthright” and describe civics instruction advanced by mainstream groups like the National Council for the Social Studies as a “recruitment tool of the progressive left.”

The National Association of Scholars then turned to science standards in 2024 and math standards last year. In 2026, it unveiled new model standards for English language arts.

In introducing the Archimedes math standards, the association says that while Common Core has “useful elements,” it isn’t demanding enough and “was rushed into public use without sufficient testing and evaluation.” The group says that the Archimedes standards will improve students’ ability to do math in their heads by requiring more memorization, contrasting them with the Common Core’s “deemphasizing” of math facts. The standards ban the use of calculators beforehigh school.

Their key goal, though, is “lucidity” — standards that are easier for teachers and parents to understand. In an introduction to the Archimedes standards, the association contrasts a Common Core second grade standard on addition and subtraction that takes 67 words to explain with Archimedes’ 24-word version.

The standards were authored for the association by Jonathan Gregg, an assistant education professor at Hillsdale College, a small Christian liberal arts college in southern Michigan whose president chaired Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission on “patriotic education” in 2020. Gregg said in an interview that his background — undergraduate degrees in math and English, a master’s in humanities, and a doctorate in math education — equipped him to write the draft standards in simple prose.

That simplicity gives teachers more freedom to tailor approaches for their classrooms, said Gregg. “You can’t overprescribe. Teachers are the ones in the room, the ones facing the students,” he said. Standards are flags that everyone — students, teachers, parents, policymakers and researchers — can get behind, he said. For that to happen, all those groups need to understand them, he said.

Experts dispute whether simpler academic standards are better

In South Dakota, that accessibility attracted Graves, the state education secretary. With the state’s Common Core-aligned math standards, parents and teachers “are absolutely at sea,” he said in an interview. “They have no idea what those standards mean.” So last summer his department, using the Archimedes document and a few other state standards as examples, produced the dramatically slimmed-down rewrite.

The state’s math standards dispute has been sharpened by Hillsdale and the National Association of Scholars’ involvement in a contentious update of the state’s social studies standards. During that review, in 2022, then-Gov. Kristi Noem purged members of the standards commission, replaced them with political allies, and appointed a retired Hillsdale College professor to facilitate a rewrite.

The state board of education approved the new version in 2023. South Dakota Native American groups said those left out essential topics related to the culture and history of the state’s tribes. Teachers lambasted what they saw as a focus on memorization of historical facts over inquiry. But the National Association of Scholars wrote a letter praising South Dakota’s rewrite for among other things, taking “a clear stand against both the discriminatory ideologies commonly referred to as Critical Race Theory and the subordination of social studies instruction to political activism.”

The math standards have drawn similar fire from teachers and university education professors. An education department survey drew 44 comments on the rewrite, all but four of them critical.

Gilkerson, the teacher, pointed to the rewritten eighth grade requirement on scientific notation, which explains what’s expected in 10 words versus 53 in the current standards. In an interview, Gilkerson, who has taught for 15 years, said she knows the specific skills students need to master that operation on the state test. But many new teachers won’t, she said, and she fears test scores will suffer.

Sharon Vestal, president of the state’s Council of Teachers of Mathematics, which represents math teachers, and a South Dakota State University associate professor of math and statistics, called on Graves at a November hearing to scrap the rewrite. “They’re poorly written, and a lot of the math content has been lost by simplifying the language,” she said of the revised standards.

But a few educators support the rewrite. “The simplicity is nice,” said Susan Fairchild, a veteran math teacher at Watertown High School who served on a state committee that reviewed the new version. “As a new teacher, you don’t have to try and figure out what all of these fancy words mean.”

Monte Meyerink, another committee member and an assistant professor of math education at Northern State University, led a review of research on effective education standards to guide the department in preparing its revision. He said he doesn’t know of research supporting the connection between standards’ lucidity and student proficiency. But simplifying standards is a new trend, one whose effects on student outcomes won’t be understood for another 15 or 20 years, he said.

Once the standards are finalized, the department will roll out an expanded or “unpacked” version that has more detail, he said. That doesn’t comfort Vestal. “My concern is the quality of those unpacked standards because of the quality of the proposed standards,” she said.

Similarly, some national math education researchers reject the Archimedes Standards’ assumption that simpler standards mean better teaching. Ball State education researcher Michael Steele points to the Common Core standard for fourth grade fractions: “Explain why a fraction a/b is equivalent to a fraction (n x a)/(n x b) by using visual fraction models, with attention to how the number and size of the parts differ even though the two fractions themselves are the same size. Use this principle to recognize and generate equivalent fractions.”

The Archimedes Standards version reads, “Find equivalent fractions and reduce fractions to their simplest form.” Steele said that while the Common Core version takes a moment to understand, it reminds teachers of how they learned to use fractions and makes them better able to teach the concept.

“What this group calls lucidity in many cases, I might call an oversimplification of mathematics,” he said.

A final vote on South Dakota’s rewrite will come after a May 4 public hearing.

The National Association of Scholars wants to get other states on board. Gregg, the author of the Archimedes standards, said he’s helping to advise the Louisiana Department of Education on its math standards review, begun last year.

In those standards, “I think there are places where you’ll see — probably not as directly as you’ll see in South Dakota — some of the influence the Archimedes community has had,” he said.

Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965 or preston@hechingerreport.org.

Spring break is coming. South Carolina wants schools’ help to avoid a measles surge.

2026-03-13T17:23:21+00:00

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Amid concerns that spring break could reignite South Carolina’s measles outbreak, state health officials are trying to avoid a repeat of the communication gaps that delayed measles exposure investigations when schools were closed for winter break.

Healthbeat revealed last month that the South Carolina Department of Public Health was hamstrung in late December in its efforts to quickly warn and quarantine students and staff who had been exposed to measles. The problem: Schools were closed over winter break and they had nobody available to provide contact information to outbreak investigators.

The result was that people who were unaware they were infectious continued to interact with others in the community during the busy winter holiday season. In the weeks that followed, cases of measles surged dramatically and the South Carolina outbreak became one of the largest in decades.

“We are concerned that we may see another surge in cases,” Dr. Linda Bell, South Carolina’s state epidemiologist said. “So we have actually been in contact with schools to work with them more closely, to make sure that we have points of contact.”

Bell said Thursday that the department has sent letters to schools in South Carolina’s 11-county Upstate region asking them to identify a person who will be available during the spring break vacation period – when schools and administrative offices are closed – who can provide school attendance and contact information if it is needed for measles exposure investigations.

Here's how the S.C. measles outbreak grew after the holidays

“We’ve been receiving steady responses from the schools for those points of contact,” she said.

The health department said late Thursday that the letters, which requested contact information by March 10, were sent to all public school superintendents in the Upstate region. Only 11 of the 23 superintendents had supplied contacts as of Thursday. “DPH has previously established contacts at private and charter schools that have been impacted by the outbreak,” the department said.

Of the 993 measles cases recorded since the outbreak was identified in October, 936 have been in Spartanburg County and most of the others in nearby Upstate counties, according to state data. Almost all of those who have been infected were unvaccinated and most have been school-age children and teens.

In recent weeks, the number of new measles cases being reported to the department has slowed to a trickle. On Monday, the health department said just two new cases had been identified since Friday.

In Spartanburg County, spring break is scheduled for April 6-10 for many schools, but dates vary throughout the state.

“We’re very encouraged by the decline in cases, but we won’t be able to declare this outbreak over until we’re certain that measles transmission has ended,” Bell said. School holiday break periods pose an increased risk for the spread of measles because they often involve people traveling and socializing more.

The winter holiday break was a time of significant spreading of measles in the Spartanburg area.

Between early October – when the outbreak began – and Dec. 22, when Spartanburg County schools closed for winter break, there had been a total of 144 measles cases during the nearly three-month period. Then, in just the three weeks after schools reopened in January, there were more than 500 new cases of measles, state data show.

When Healthbeat asked South Carolina’s health department last month why it hadn’t reached out to schools to have contacts in place before winter break, the department said: “DPH cannot direct school employees to come to work to assist with outbreak investigations.”

Bell on Thursday said the new outreach to schools is an example of the department incorporating lessons learned into its outbreak response. “DPH has made the ability to communicate with school officials who have access to the information needed for case investigation a priority ahead of the upcoming spring break,” she said.

Measles is highly contagious and spreads through the air when an infected person breathes, coughs, or sneezes. The virus can linger in a room for up to two hours after an infectious person has left. Because a person is infectious for four days before the telltale measles rash appears, and initial symptoms may seem like a cold, many people spread the disease before they know they have it.

While two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine is 97% effective in preventing measles, those who are unvaccinated are at high risk of infection if they are exposed.

Christian school refused to share student information

Based on internal health department records, Healthbeat reported last month that during winter break there were delays quarantining people who had been exposed to measles – just prior to the holiday recess – at three public schools and one private Christian school.

In most cases, the schools were closed and didn’t have anyone available to provide information.

But when outbreak investigators reached Westgate Christian School in Spartanburg, the principal refused to provide information required to ensure those at risk of spreading the disease knew of the need to stay in quarantine, according to a health department warning letter to the school that Healthbeat recently obtained under South Carolina’s public records law.

According to the Jan. 9 letter, Westgate Christian School Principal Gail Grab responded to requests for information about exposed students by sending an email on Dec. 30 that said in part: “We will not provide personal details and immunization status information for the students in our school.”

Then when Grab sent outbreak investigators a list of exposed students on Dec. 31, the only names on it were the siblings of the person who had measles.

The department’s “final warning” letter on Jan. 9 gave the school until 1 p.m. the next day to provide the required information about all students who were had contact with the person with measles or the department would issue a public health order, under which the school could face fines of $1,000 per day for each exposed student’s name left off the list.

“Your continued failure to comply with this lawful demand has significantly impeded DPH’s ability to conduct mandatory case investigation, contact tracing, and quarantine monitoring,” the letter said. “This lack of cooperation places quarantined students, school staff, and the families of your students at increased and unnecessary risk of measles exposure, a highly contagious and serious disease.”

The school did comply before the deadline, Bell said.

Grab did not respond to requests for an interview on Wednesday. Pastor James Wooten, Westgate Christian’s president, replied Wednesday to emailed questions about the letter by saying he was traveling. He previously told Healthbeat that the school thought it had provided all necessary information on Dec. 31. He did not previously disclose that the school’s principal had sent an email refusing to provide required information.

Plans unclear at schools with past delayed measles investigations

Officials at the other three schools where state investigations of measles exposure incidents were delayed during winter break did not answer Healthbeat’s questions Wednesday and Thursday about any changes they have made for the upcoming spring break period.

Mark Robertson, principal at Global Academy of South Carolina, a public charter school where state records show only 21% of students are up-to-date with school immunizations, said he had no comment.

A vaccination rate of 95% is needed in communities to stop the spread of measles.

South Carolina has spent $1.6 million to combat its huge measles outbreak – and it’s not over yet

Cynthia Robinson, a spokesperson for Spartanburg County School District 6, did not respond to emails and calls on Wednesday and Thursday. Delays investigating measles cases over winter break occurred at the district’s Jesse S. Bobo Elementary School, where state data show 94% of students are up-to-date on vaccines.

Other schools that had delayed measles exposure investigations over winter break were in Spartanburg County School District 2: Sugar Ridge Elementary, where state data show 78% of students are up-to-date on vaccines, and Boiling Springs Elementary, where 80% of students are up-to-date on vaccines, also had delays investigating measles exposures during winter break, Healthbeat previously reported.

Adrian Acosta, a District 2 spokesperson, did not answer Healthbeat’s questions about what the district will do differently during spring break to avoid the winter break problems providing health officials with measles contact tracing information.

Acosta first sent a statement saying a district nurse supervisor is available 24/7. Then when asked if this person will be available during the spring break vacation period, Acosta emailed another statement saying school administrators are “always on the job.” Acosta added: “If an administrator knows they will be out of touch or unreachable, then it is expected that they have a communication plan in place.”

But Acosta did not respond to questions about what the district will do differently during spring break to prevent a recurrence of the delays.

Alison Young is Healthbeat’s senior national reporter. You can reach her at ayoung@healthbeat.org or through the messaging app Signal at alisonyoungreports.48

Healthbeat is a nonprofit newsroom covering public health. Healthbeat is published by Civic News Company, which also publishes Chalkbeat. Sign up for Healthbeat’s newsletters here.

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.

Manhattan proposal for NYC’s first AI-focused public high school sparks pushback

2026-03-13T00:33:22+00:00

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New York City students with a passion for STEM — and an interest in artificial intelligence — may soon have a high school dedicated to training “the next generation of technology professionals.”

But families in Manhattan’s District 2 are pushing back against the proposal for Next Generation Technology High School, a new screened admissions high school that would take the place of the tiny, girls-only Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women. Next Generation would be the first city public school to focus its curriculum on AI and computer science.

As details of the two proposals emerged over the last month, so have dual tensions: What should fill the space left by Young Women in Business, and how private technology companies and their artificial intelligence products could shape the curriculum at Next Generation.

Much of the opposition to Next Generation has come from families at a middle school also in the Broadway building, Lower Manhattan Community School. Also known as LMC, parents at the school have called on the department for years to expand enrollment from grades 6-8 up to grade 12.

The Panel for Educational Policy, the board that votes on new schools and closures, is expected to consider the proposals for Next Generation and Business for Young Women at its April 29 meeting.

The Education Department released both proposals on March 6, the day after the city’s eighth graders received their high school acceptance offers. If approved, Next Generation would welcome its first class of ninth graders in the fall. (The plan to close Business for Young Women in June is not contingent on Next Generation’s approval.)

Despite not having the green light yet, Next Generation has already held three virtual open houses. Its online interest form states the school is “set to open” in fall 2026, noting that applications would open March 19.

Parents ask: ‘Why this school and why here?’

Manhattan High Schools Superintendent Gary Beidleman introduced the idea for Next Generation Technology High School at a Feb. 25 meeting of the District 2 Community Education Council.

Panel for Educational Policy members and families of the three co-located schools at 26 Broadway — in addition to LMC and Business for Young Women, Richard R. Green High School of Teaching shares the building — said that meeting was the first time the district school community had been notified of the proposed STEM- and technology-focused screened high school.

At the Feb. 25 announcement, Beidleman said Next Generation grew out of his experience as a summer 2024 Google Education Innovation Fellow, and that Google and OpenAI are part of the planning team for the school. One of the school’s goals, he said, is to “expand pathways connected to high-growth technology careers” and provide advanced STEM and technology programming for NYC students. Next Generation also plans to offer a summer internship program with Carnegie Mellon University.

Caleb Haraguchi-Combs, founding principal and project director of Next Generation High School, said in an information session that the school would utilize Google’s new, AI-powered Skills Platform. How much of this AI-powered, AI-focused Google coursework would comprise the curriculum is still in flux, according to the proposal’s educational impact statement.

The school’s academic description includes similar or identical language as found on the Google Skills website: Next Generation’s “special access to technology industry mentors,” “technology certifications,” and “curriculum that adapts to the dynamic changes in the technology field” are offerings advertised on the homepage of the Google Skills site.

Officials and families question new school proposal process

The community and Panel for Educational Policy members have asked questions about the fast proposal process, speaking to uncertainty around admissions for the coming school year.

Parents said in a letter to the Panel for Educational Policy that the proposal seemingly came out of nowhere, and families were not provided adequate engagement opportunities before its release. Panel Chair Greg Faulkner said he has received hundreds of similar letters from parents since the community learned of the incoming proposal in late February.

High school offers were released March 5, ahead of the panel’s vote and months before the proposed school would open. It remains unclear how the Education Department would handle screening requirements — such as interviews or assessments — after the main admissions cycle has concluded. The Office of District Planning did not respond to questions about how enrollment would work for this fall.

A petition in support of the school, created by the Next Generation’s founding principal and program director on March 8, had under 100 signatures at the time of publishing.

A public hearing is scheduled for April 14, two weeks before the panel’s vote.

“I would love more transparency around why the department chooses certain schools to go in certain places,” said Sarah Calderon, a parent at Lower Manhattan Community School. “When we asked the superintendent, ‘Why this school and why here?’ he said he had no data on district demand.”

Beidelman told parents at the Feb. 25 District 2 meeting that expanding Lower Manhattan Community “was not an idea that was on the table.”

The Education Department receives many proposals each year, including some from outside New York City, said Sean Rux of the Office of New School Development.

“This was the proposal that spoke to us,” Rux said.

Families push to expand Lower Manhattan Community School

The plan to close the underenrolled Business for Young Women school has been percolating for a few years — with just 91 students this year, it’s the smallest district high school in the city, said Education Department officials.

Families at Lower Manhattan Community School say they have pushed for years to expand into a 6–12 model, and would like to move into the space used by Business for Young Women, if closed.

“A proposal to expand LMC could potentially open up sixth grade admissions to applicants citywide, but we have not been given the opportunity to even submit a proposal,” said Anne Hager, a parent of a sixth grader at Lower Manhattan School.

At a PTA meeting with Education Department staff on Wednesday, LMC’s Student Leadership Team presented its case to expand the school instead of opening Next Generation.

A new 6-12 would eliminate the need for LMC students to go through a second, onerous application process, something that students with disabilities would especially benefit from, they said. The presentation also cited Department of Education data from 2024 that showed 6-12 schools have nearly three times higher demand than their 6-8 middle school counterparts.

District 2 has a higher proportion of screened and specialized high schools compared with citywide averages.

The department’s proposal focuses largely on space at the Broadway campus, estimating that Next Generation would serve roughly 450 students by its fourth year. All three schools can comfortably co-locate, according to the proposal, though its capacity calculations do not allot for significant expansion for either Richard R. Green High School or LMC.

Debate over AI timing and oversight

Next Generation’s proposal arrives amid broader debate over artificial intelligence in schools.

The school initially marketed itself in information sessions and on social media as an “AI school,” though DOE officials later clarified that students would learn about artificial intelligence rather than be taught by it.

“Students need to be creators, not consumers, of technology,” Beidleman said at the Feb. 25 meeting. “Lessons learned from the past show us that new tech in place creates an opportunity.”

Some parents have argued that broad use of an AI platform in public schools should not be allowed before comprehensive guidelines have been released by the city.

Greg Faulkner, who chairs the Panel for Educational Policy, said he first learned of the proposal after receiving Next Generation’s interest form last month. Since then, the panel has received hundreds of letters from parents opposing the plan and raising concerns about the lack of community engagement so far.

“I have two major hesitations with this: We don’t know what kind of AI involvement there will be. The development team has not provided a playbook for how that will look,” Faulkner said. “And in reading the response letters from District 2 parents, I see that proper engagement and process was not done.”

At a District 2 town hall on March 5, Chancellor Kamar Samuels said the Education Department expects to release AI guidance in the coming weeks and will provide a 45-day window for community feedback once it’s published.

Five Community Education Councils have passed resolutions calling for a two-year moratorium on artificial intelligence use in schools. But calls for broad AI guidelines implemented at the city level are nothing new; a proposed expansion of an AI-powered reading program was halted in 2024 after former Comptroller Brad Lander called for a citywide playbook.

“I think the question of teacher capacity and teacher shortages, the research on kids and AI, is still nascent, and the DOE’s lack of its own AI policy leads me to question the timing of any AI school,” said Calderon, the parent at Lower Manhattan Community.

Lizzie Walsh is a Data Fellow at Chalkbeat New York. She reports on New York City education and produces data-driven stories across Chalkbeat’s national network. Contact her at ewalsh@chalkbeat.org.

Did federal COVID aid allow states to cut back on school spending?

2026-03-12T21:17:52+00:00

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Nearly $200 billion in federal COVID relief money left schools in a relatively strong financial position in recent years. But new data highlights a potential unintended consequence of all the federal aid: states cutting back on their own efforts to fund education.

A report, released by the Albert Shanker Institute, a think tank affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, tracks the share of each state’s economy devoted to public schools. Researchers call this “fiscal effort.” I like to think about it as the tax rate applied to the states’ economy to fund education (though it’s really multiple taxes). Crucially, this does not count federal dollars, just state and local money.

By this measure, funding effort dropped sharply between 2020 and 2023, as the figure below from the report shows. This doesn’t mean that states are spendinglessin real dollars on schools because the economy has also been growing during this time. They’re spending less as a percentage of the economy.

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Families turn to states for civil rights support as Trump dismantles the Education Department

2026-03-10T16:57:58+00:00

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WASHINGTON (AP) — In their mostly white school district, Black students routinely heard racial slurs. White classmates hurled insults like “slave,” “monkey,” or worse. It often went unpunished.

Parents made those claims in a 2024 complaint asking the U.S. Department of Education to investigate racial bullying at the Pennridge School District in Pennsylvania. They thought their complaint had the power to make things better. Instead, it became one of thousands sitting in a federal office with little hope of gaining attention after layoffs by the Trump administration.

Families say they’ve had nowhere else to turn.

“There was an expectation that something was going to happen,” said Adrienne King, who has two daughters in the district and is president of the NAACP Bucks County chapter. When nothing did, “it’s a very hollow, empty feeling.”

One of the Education Department’s biggest jobs is to police discrimination in America’s schools. But amid mass firings and shifting priorities, that role has waned. In its place, there’s an emerging push for states to step up.

In Pennsylvania, a lawmaker is proposing a new state agency that would investigate schools and uphold students’ civil rights — traditionally the role of the federal government. At the same time, advocates there and in other Democrat-led states are pressing existing state agencies to intervene when students face discrimination based on race, disability, or sex.

The idea carries risk. Pushing the work to the states could create a patchwork of systems with uneven protections. Some worry it will embolden the Trump administration to retreat further on civil rights.

Lawmakers propose more muscular state agencies

Pennsylvania state Sen. Lindsey Williams offered a blunt message last fall when she proposed a new state civil rights office to be modeled after its federal counterpart. “If the federal government won’t stand up for our most vulnerable students, I will,” said Williams, a Democrat.

Her bill, to be introduced this spring, faces long odds in the state’s Republican-controlled Senate. Yet even if it fails there, Williams believes it has potential to become a national model. She’s already heard interest from lawmakers in other states, and similar proposals have been put forward in Maryland and Illinois.

Colorado lawmakers want to help parents who feel ‘ghosted’ by the federal Office for Civil Rights

More immediately, advocates in Pennsylvania are calling for heavier investment in an existing but often overlooked agency. The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission already has the power to investigate schools and enforce students’ rights, but it’s rarely used for that end. It’s better known for handling employment disputes, with just 5% of its recent cases involving education.

Kristina Moon, a lawyer at the Education Law Center in Pennsylvania, has started encouraging families to take discrimination complaints to the commission instead of the federal government. She sees it as the next best option for families left in limbo amid federal turmoil.

“It’s incredibly important for students and families to be aware of any other option available to them,” said Moon, who represents families in the Pennridge complaint.

The commission is welcoming complaints that have stalled at the federal level. Yet officials are also realistic about their limitations. The agency has about 100 staff — down from more than 200 in the past — and some question its ability to handle a sharp increase in complaints.

New banners of Benjamin Franklin, Martin Luther King Jr., and Anne Sullivan hang from the U.S. Department of Education building on March 1, 2026. The department has brought back some laid-off civil rights staff but still faces a backlog of complaints.

The federal Education Department had more than 300 open investigations in Pennsylvania as of January 2025, according to the most recent federal data. Each is a possible candidate to be shifted to the state.

“It would be tough, I’ll be totally honest,” said Desireé Chang, the commission’s education director. “A stark influx would definitely put some weight on our agency. But we would do it because that is what we are charged with doing.”

Civil rights work has slowed under Trump administration

Before President Donald Trump took office last year, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights was already struggling under a heavy caseload. Work has slowed further after sweeping layoffs, which closed entire offices in Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and elsewhere. Some remaining staff say time-consuming investigations have become rare as they focus on the quickest complaints.

At the same time, Trump officials have used the office to go after schools that make accommodations for transgender students and athletes, arguing that it discriminates against girls and women.

Trump officials blame the previous administration for leaving a backlog of complaints. Trump officials have brought back some fired employees to help clear cases.

The fallout is being felt across the country. In Maryland, a recently proposed bill would give the state’s Commission on Civil Rights new power to investigate discrimination in schools. The office has long handled discrimination cases in areas like housing and employment, but students don’t have a comparable option to file complaints.

At a hearing last week, officials at the commission supported the bill and said they can no longer rely on the federal government to defend students’ rights.

“Offices have been closed, people have been fired, cases are piling up or not even moving — that’s why we sought to step in that gap and provide Maryland students an option,” said Glendora Hughes, general counsel for the commission.

In Massachusetts, advocates are turning attention to an existing office in the state’s education department. State officials say anyone can file a complaint with the Problem Resolution System to address violations of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or other laws protecting students from discrimination.

“It is imperative that the Office for Civil Rights perform its congressionally mandated duties, rather than leaving states on their own to protect the rights of their students to learn in environments free from discrimination,” the Massachusetts Executive Office of Education said in a statement.

Some legal aid groups are also filling in gaps. The Southern Poverty Law Center is suing a Louisiana school district on behalf of a 10-year-old boy with autism. The suit says the St. Tammany Parish School District illegally cut the boy’s classroom time to just two hours a day starting in 2024, down from a full day. The nonprofit said it’s the kind of case that would have been handled by the federal government in the past.

One of the U.S. Education Department’s most powerful tools is the ability to pull federal funding from schools that violate civil rights laws. Facing that threat, schools usually have agreed to make changes when pressed by the agency.

Proposals at the state level have varying enforcement powers. Some would allow states to mediate disputes between families and schools and to issue legal orders. By contrast, a newly created Office of Civil Rights in California primarily aims to provide anti-discrimination guidance and training to local schools.

In Pennridge, families are weighing their next steps. King said she has little hope in the federal complaint, and the bullying hasn’t stopped. Her daughters still hear racial slurs at school, and students make insensitive comments about their hair. She wonders how it will all shape her daughters’ lives.

“I feel as though my girls have normalized a lot of this, but for the sake of survival — middle school is hard,” she said. “You just want to be like everybody else.”

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