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Tag: Law and policy

  • As Justice Department priorities shift, concerns about protection of students’ civil rights escalate

    The 10-year-old was dragged down a school hallway by two school staffers. A camera captured him being forced into a small, empty room with a single paper-covered window. 

    The staffers shut the door in his face. Alone, the boy curled into a ball on the floor. When school employees returned more than 10 minutes later, blood from his face smeared the floor.

    Maryland state lawmakers were shown this video in 2017 by Leslie Seid Margolis, a lawyer with the advocacy group Disability Rights Maryland. She’d spent 15 years advocating for a ban on the practice known as seclusion, in which children, typically those with disabilities, are involuntarily isolated and confined, often after emotional outbursts. 

    Even after seeing the video, no legislators were willing to go as far as a ban. Nor were they when Margolis tried again a few years later.

    In 2021, however, the federal Justice Department concluded an investigation into a Maryland school district and found more than 7,000 cases of unnecessary restraint and seclusion in a two-and-a-half-year period. 

    Four months later, Maryland lawmakers passed a bill prohibiting seclusion in the state’s public schools, with nearly unanimous support.

    “I can’t really overstate the impact that Justice can have,” said Margolis. “They have this authority that is really helpful to those of us who are on the ground doing this work.”

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    Within the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is a small office devoted to educational issues, including seclusion, as well as desegregation and racial harassment. The division intentionally chooses cases with potential for high impact and actively monitors places it has investigated to ensure they’re following through with changes. When the Educational Opportunities Section acts, educators and policymakers take notice.

    Now, however, the Trump administration is wielding the power of the Justice Department in new and, some say, extreme ways. Hundreds of career staffers, including most of those who worked on education cases, have resigned. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights also has been decimated, largely through layoffs. The two offices traditionally have worked closely together to enforce civil rights protections for students. The result is a potentially lasting shift in how the nation’s top law enforcement agency handles issues that affect public school students, including millions who have disabilities. 

    “There are those who would say that this is an aberration, and that when it’s over, things will go back to the way they were,” said Frederick Lawrence, a lecturer at Georgetown Law and former assistant U.S. attorney under President Ronald Reagan. “My experience is that the river only flows in one direction, and things never go back to the way they were.”

    Related: Tracking Trump: His actions to dismantle the Education Department, and more

    The Justice Department’s lawyers historically have worked on a few dozen education cases at once, concentrating on combating sexual harassment, racial discrimination against Black and Latino students, restraint and seclusion, and failure to provide adequate services to English learners. 

    In the last 11 months, however, the agency has sued over and opened investigations into concerns about antisemitism, transgender policies and bias against white people at schools. It sued at least six states for offering discounted tuition to undocumented immigrants and pressured the president of the University of Virginia to resign as part of an investigation into the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies. And it joined other federal departments to form a special Title IX investigations team to protect students from what the administration called the “pernicious effects of gender ideology in school programs and activities.”  

    As the Educational Opportunity Section’s mission shifted, it shrunk in size. In January, before President Donald Trump took office, about 40 lawyers tackled education issues. In the spring, the U.S. Senate confirmed Harmeet Dhillon as leader of the Civil Rights Division. Dhillon founded the conservative Center for American Liberty, which describes itself as “defending civil liberties of Americans left behind by civil rights legacy organizations.”

    After her confirmation, staff who weren’t political appointees began resigning en masse, concerned Dhillon would promote only the administration’s agenda. 

    U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon speaks during a September news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. Credit: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

    By June, no more than five of the 40 lawyers were left, according to former employees. Some new staff have been hired or reassigned to the section, but the head count remains well below usual. It’s far from enough to sustain the typical workload, said Shaheena Simons, who was chief of the Educational Opportunities Section until she resigned in April. “There’s just no way the division can function with that level of staffing. It’s just impossible,” said Simons, who took over the section in 2016. “The investigations aren’t going to happen. Remedies aren’t going to be sought.” 

    Department officials responded to a list of questions from The Hechinger Report about changes to their handling of student civil rights protection with “no comment.” 

    The Department of Justice, including its educational work, has always been somewhat subject to White House interests, said Neal McCluskey, director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. During President Joe Biden’s term, for example, the agency pursued allegations of discrimination against transgender students, reflecting administration priorities. 

    McCluskey added, though, that the Trump administration is more aggressive in how it is pursuing its goals and is bypassing typical protocols, noting that in many cases “it’s like they’ve already decided the outcome.”  

    Related: Which schools and colleges are being investigated by the Trump administration?

    An investigation into allegations of antisemitism at the University of California, Los Angeles, for instance, took just 81 days before the department concluded the school had violated federal law. DOJ investigations typically have taken years, not months, to complete. 

    Lawrence, who also serves as president of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society, said he could not speak to specific investigations, but the UCLA timeline “does suggest a rather accelerated process.”

    A federal judge recently ruled that the administration could not use the findings from its UCLA investigation as a reason to fine the university $1.2 billion, which if paid would have unlocked frozen federal research funding. She wrote that the administration was using a playbook “of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding.” 

    As new investigations are opened, older ones remain unresolved, including one of practices in Colorado’s Douglas County Public Schools.

    In 2022, Disability Law Colorado submitted a complaint to the Justice Department about the district’s use of seclusion, as well as restraint, where school employees physically restrict a student’s movement.

    The following year, three other families sued the school system, alleging racial discrimination against their children. The students were repeatedly called monkeys and the N-word, threatened with lynchings and “made by teachers to argue the benefits of Jim Crow laws,” according to the complaint.

    Related: Red school boards in a blue state asked Trump for help — and got it

    The Department of Justice decided to investigate both issues. Four staffers were assigned to the restraint and seclusion investigation, said Emily Harvey, co-legal director at Disability Law Colorado.  

    As part of the inquiry, Justice officials visited the district twice. The second time was during the final week of Biden’s presidency. 

    After that visit, Douglas County didn’t hear anything about the investigation from the Trump administration until a mid-May email. “Good morning,” it read. “We are having some staffing changes.”

    The email, which The Hechinger Report obtained through a public records request, said that going forward, the district could contact two staffers on the restraint and seclusion case. The racial harassment case would be reduced to only one employee until another Justice staffer returned from leave in the fall. 

    One Douglas County parent, who asked her name be withheld because she is afraid of retaliation from the district, said that although she knew the investigation could take a couple of years, the longer it goes without a resolution, the more children could be harmed. 

    “The justice system is just moving so incredibly slow,” she said. 

    The parent said she knows of dozens of families who have dealt with restraint and seclusion issues in the district. Her own son, she said, was secluded in kindergarten. “He was scared of the person who put him in there. He kept saying, ‘I can’t go back,’” she said. “I never envisioned, until my son was secluded, a world where the school would not care about my child.” 

    When Harvey, of Disability Law Colorado, first contacted the Department of Justice, she hoped for statewide reform. She wanted to see a ban on seclusion, like Margolis had helped secure in Maryland, and for the state to commit to more accurate tracking of use of restraints. The way Colorado law is written, restraints must be recorded only if they last more than a minute. Douglas County, the second largest in the state with 62,000 students, reported 582 restraints to the Colorado Department of Education in the 2023-24 school year. The number of shorter-term restraints, however, is unknown. 

    “We believe this is an arbitrary distinction,” Harvey said. “My hope was that the Department of Justice would potentially weigh in on that as a violation” of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

    Related: How Trump 2.0 upended education research and statistics in one year

    Douglas County school administrators said in a statement to The Hechinger Report that their “focus is on taking care of each and every one of our students” and that they take all concerns seriously. 

    They have worked with the federal government to set up school visits and interviews during their visits, according to emails from January. 

    Subsequent emails between district and federal officials describe a phone call over the summer and requests for additional documents. Another DOJ employee was included in the messages.

    There are signs that the Justice Department is not abandoning restraint and seclusion work, said Guy Stephens, founder of the national advocacy group Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint. A webpage about previous cases that was removed after Trump took office has been restored, and in July, the DOJ announced a settlement with a Michigan district over these issues.

    Yet Stephens has concerns. “There are still people very, very dedicated to this work and the mission of this work, but it’s very hard to work in a system that is shifting and reprioritizing,” he said.

    Former DOJ employees worry that it might not only be future investigations that are markedly different. The department has historically monitored places where it has reached agreements that demand corrective action, rewriting them if districts or colleges fail to live up to their promises. It also provides support to achieve the new goals. Now, provisions written into past resolutions might be at odds with Trump administration actions, and oversight of some settlements is ending early.

    Take, for instance, a DOJ investigation into Vermont’s Elmore-Morristown Unified Union School District over allegations of race-based harassment against Black students. Investigators found that the district didn’t have a way to handle harassment or discrimination not targeted at a specific person, according to David Bickford, the school board chairman. 

    As part of a settlement agreement signed two weeks before Trump was inaugurated, the district agreed to provide staff training on implicit bias. A Trump executive order, however, calls for eliminating federal funding for anyone that discusses such a concept in schools. 

    Bickford said that the district has complied with everything the settlement called for, including professional development. 

    The investigation itself, he said, was extremely thorough, and required handing over nearly a thousand pages of documentation. Since then, the district has sent regular reports to the department but has not received any lengthy response or input, Bickford said. He also noted there had been staffing changes in who the district reports to. 

    Related: Federal policies risk worsening an already dire rural teacher shortage

    Justice officials decided to end supervision of a 2023 settlement early following a racial harassment investigation in another Vermont district, Twin Valley. The original plan was to monitor the district for three years. In October 2024, investigators visited the district to check in. In a letter two months later, officials noted that while Twin Valley had made significant progress, they still had several areas of concern, including how the district investigated complaints, as well as “persistent biased language and behavior on the basis of multiple protected classifications; a pervasive culture of sexism; and lack of consistent and effective adult response to biased language and behavior.” 

    Even so, the department was pleased overall with its visit, said Bill Bazyk, superintendent of Windham Southwest Supervisory Union, which includes Twin Valley. “But things certainly sped up after the election,” said Bazyk, who started his job after the case had been settled.

    Throughout the spring, Bayzk and his staff checked in with the department, and in May the district was told oversight of the settlement would end a year early, as Twin Valley had fully complied with the terms. 

    “We were doing all the right things,” Bayzk said, noting that the district’s work on diversity and equity is ongoing. “We took the settlement very seriously.”

    The investigation began in 2021 after the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont filed a complaint. Legal Director Lia Ernst said it is possible that Twin Valley resolved those lingering problems between December and May, stressing that it’s impossible to know from the outside. But still, she said, there is a larger pattern of ambivalence to the Justice Department’s approach to civil rights complaints.  

    “It is disappointing to see that one ending early,” she said. “It is my hope that it is ending early because Twin Valley has made so much progress, but it is my fear that it is ending early because DOJ just doesn’t care.” 

    Contact investigations editor Sarah Butrymowicz at butrymowicz@hechingerreport.org or on Signal: @sbutry.04.

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

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  • OPINION: It will take patience and courage to fix K-12 education without the Department of Education

    The Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education this week provides a rare opportunity to rethink our current top-down approach to school governance.

    We should jump on it. It’s not sexy to talk about governance, but we can’t fix K-12 education until we do so, no matter how we feel about the latest changes.

    Since the Department of Education opened in 1980, we’ve doubled per-pupil spending, and now spend about twice as much per student as does the average country in the European Union. Yet despite that funding — and the reforms, reports and technologies introduced over the past 45 years — U.S. students consistently underperform on international benchmarks. And people are opting out: 22 percent of U.S. district students are now chronically absent, while record numbers of families are opting out of those schools, choosing charters, private schools and homeschooling.

    Most federal and state reform approaches have been focused on curricular standards and have accomplished little. The many billions spent on the Common Core standards coincided with — or triggered — a 13-year decline in academic performance. The underlying principles of the standards movement — that every student should learn the same things at the same time, that we know what those things are and that they don’t change over time — have made our schools even less compelling while narrowing instruction to what gets tested.

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

    We need to address the real problem: how federal, state and district rules combine to create a dense fog of regulations and directives that often conflict or constrain one another. Educators are losing a rigged game: It’s not that they’re doing the wrong things, it’s that governance makes them unresponsive, bureaucratic, ineffective and paralyzed — can you name an industry that spends less on research and development?

    Fixing governance won’t be simple, but it shouldn’t take more than 13 years to do it: three years to design a better system of state governance and 10 more to thoroughly test and debug it.

    I would start by bringing together experts from a variety of disciplines, ideally at a new “Center for K-12 Governance” at a university’s school of education or school of public policy, and give them three years to think through a comprehensive set of state laws and regulations to manage schools.

    The center would convene experts from inside and outside of education, in small groups focused on topics including labor, funding, data, evaluation, transportation, construction, athletics, counseling, technology, curricula and connections to higher education and the workforce. Its frameworks would address various educational and funding alternatives currently in use, including independent, charter and parochial schools, home schooling and Education Savings Accounts, all of which speak to the role of parents in making choices about their children’s education.

    Each group would start with the questions and not the answers, and there are hundreds of really interesting questions to be considered: What are the various goals of our K-12 schools and how do we authentically measure schools against them? What choices do we give parents, and what information might help them make the right decisions for their kids? How do we allow for new approaches to attract, support and pay great teachers and administrators? How does money follow each student? What data do we collect and how do we use it?

    After careful consideration, the center would hand its proposed statutes to a governor committed to running a long-term pilot to fully test the model. He or she would create a small alternative department of education, which would oversee a few hundred volunteer schools matched to a control group of similar schools running under the state’s legacy regime; both groups would include schools with a range of demographic and performance profiles. The two systems could run side by side for up to a decade.

    Related: Schools confront a new reality: They can’t count on federal money

    Each year, the state would assess the two departments’ performance against metrics like graduation and college-completion rates, teacher retention, income trajectories, civic participation, student and parent satisfaction, and, yes, NAEP scores. Under intense scrutiny by interested parties, both groups would be free to tweak their playbooks and evaluate solutions against a range of real-world outcomes. Once definitive longitudinal data comes in, the state would shutter one department and move the governance of its schools over to the other, perhaps launching a new test with an even better system.

    This all may seem like a lot of work, but it’s a patient approach to a root problem. Schools remain the nation’s most local public square; they determine income mobility, civic health and democratic resilience. If we fail to rewire the system now to support them properly, we guarantee their continued decline, to the detriment of students and society. Instead of celebrating students, teachers and principals who succeed despite the odds, we should address why we made those odds so steep.

    That’s why we should use this moment to draft and test something audacious, and give the next Supreme Court a happier education case to decide: how to retire a legacy system that finally lost a fair fight.

    John Katzman has founded and run three large ed tech companies: The Princeton Review, 2U and Noodle. He has worked closely with many large school districts and has served on the boards of NAPCS and NAIS.

    Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about fixing K-12 education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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  • OPINION: A shuttered government was not the lesson I hoped my Texas students would learn on a trip to Washington D.C

    After decades serving in the Marine Corps and in education, I know firsthand that servant leadership and diplomacy can and should be taught. That’s why I hoped to bring 32 high school seniors from Texas to Washington, D.C., this fall for a week of engagement and learning with top U.S. government and international leaders.  

    Instead of open doors, we faced a government shutdown and had to cancel our trip. 

    The shutdown impacts government employees, members of the military and their families who are serving overseas and all Americans who depend on government being open to serve us — in businesses, schools and national parks, and through air travel and the postal service.  

    Our trip was not going to be a typical rushed tour of monuments, but a highly selective, long-anticipated capstone experience. Our plans included intensive interaction with government leaders at the Naval Academy and the Pentagon, discussions at the State Department and a leadership panel with senators and congressmembers. Our students hoped to explore potential careers and even practice their Spanish and Mandarin skills at the Mexican and Chinese embassies.  

    The students not only missed out on the opportunity to connect with these leaders and make important connections for college and career, they learned what happens when leadership and diplomacy fail — a harsh reminder that we need to teach these skills, and the principles that support them, in our schools. 

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

    Senior members of the military know that the DIME framework — diplomatic, informational, military and economic — should guide and support strategic objectives, particularly on the international stage. My own time in the Corps taught me the essential role of honesty and trust in conversations, negotiations and diplomacy. In civic life, this approach preserves democracy, yet the government shutdown demonstrates what happens when the mission shifts from solving problems to scoring points.  

    Our elected leaders were tasked with a mission, and the continued shutdown shows a breakdown in key aspects of governance and public service. That’s the real teachable moment of this shutdown. Democracy works when leaders can disagree without disengaging; when they can argue, compromise and keep doors open. If our future leaders can’t practice those skills, shutdowns will become less an exception and more a way of governing. 

    Students from ILTexas, a charter network serving over 26,000 students across the state, got a lesson in failed diplomacy after the government shutdown forced cancellation of their long-planned trip to the nation’s capital. Credit: Courtesy International Leadership of Texas Charter Schools

    With opposing points of view, communication is essential. Bridging language is invaluable. As the adage goes, talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. Speak in his own language, that goes to his heart. That is why, starting in kindergarten, we teach every student in our charter school network English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese.  

    Some of our graduates will become teachers, lawyers, doctors and entrepreneurs. Others will pursue careers in public service or navigate our democracy on the international stage. All will enter a world more fractured than the one I stepped into as a Marine. 

    While our leaders struggle to find common ground, studies show that nationally, only 22 percent of eighth graders are proficient in civics, and fewer than 20 percent of American students study a foreign language. My students are exceptions, preparing to lead in three languages and through servant leadership, a philosophy that turns a position of power into a daily practice of responsibility and care for others.  

    Related: COLUMN: Students want more civics education, but far too few schools teach it 

    While my students represent our ILTexas schools, they also know they are carrying something larger: the hopes of their families, communities and even their teenage peers across the country. Some hope to utilize their multilingual skills, motivated by a desire to help the international community. Others want to be a part of the next generation of diplomats and policy thinkers who are ready to face modern challenges head-on.  

    To help them, we build good habits into the school day. Silent hallways instill respect for others. Language instruction builds empathy and an international perspective. Community service requirements (60 hours per high school student) and projects, as well as dedicated leadership courses and optional participation in our Marine Corps JROTC program give students regular chances to practice purpose over privilege. 

    Educators should prepare young people for the challenges they will inherit, whether in Washington, in our communities or on the world stage. But schools can’t carry this responsibility alone. Students are watching all of us. It’s our duty to show them a better way. 

    We owe our young people more than simply a good education. We owe them a society in which they can see these civic lessons modeled by their elected leaders, and a path to put them into practice.  

    Eddie Conger is the founder and superintendent of International Leadership of Texas, a public charter school network serving more than 26,000 students across the state, and a retired U.S. Marine Corps major. 

    Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.  

    This story about the government shutdown and students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.  

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Eddie Conger

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  • NJ advisory group to probe how students with disabilities are separated from their peers 

    In New Jersey, fewer than half of 6- and 7-year-olds in special education spend the vast majority of their day with their classmates without disabilities. That might change, though, because a state special education advisory group has pledged to examine the issue. 

    Earlier this year, a Hechinger Report investigation revealed New Jersey is the worst in the nation when it comes to what’s known as inclusion — measured by how often students of all abilities are learning alongside one another in the classroom for at least 80 percent of the day. For young students, specifically, the rate is especially low. 

    In September, the council that advises New Jersey state education officials on special education issues announced plans to focus on the placement of young children with disabilities this year. It will examine how the state trains educators and administrators and study whether there’s a link between a child’s disability and their placement. 

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

    Nationwide, 68 percent of students with disabilities spend at least 80 percent of the school day learning alongside peers without disabilities, according to The Hechinger Report’s analysis of federal data. New Jersey has the lowest rate at 45 percent. 

    And just 48.5 percent of 6- and 7-year-olds with disabilities in New Jersey spend the vast majority of their day in a general education classroom, compared with nearly three-quarters nationally. Researchers say including those young students is often easier and more beneficial — while observers say the data shows New Jersey isn’t doing enough to protect children’s rights to try learning in inclusive classrooms in their first years of schooling.

    Vin Gopal, a New Jersey senator and chair of the state Senate Education Committee, called the statistics “extremely disconcerting” and said they demonstrate that New Jersey must make “fundamental changes.” 

    “Evidence clearly indicates that students with disabilities, and often general education students as well, benefit profoundly from inclusive educational settings, and understanding that, New Jersey needs to do better,” Gopal, a Democrat who also serves as Senate majority conference leader, said in an email.

    Under federal law, students have the right to learn alongside their peers without disabilities as much as possible. Special education experts say most students, especially young ones, can learn in a general education classroom with proper support and accommodations.

    New Jersey state Sen. Vin Gopal, a Democrat, is chair of the state Senate Education committee. He’s calling for the state to improve the inclusion of students with disabilities in the general education classroom. Credit: Julio Cortez/AP Photo

    Although there are some promising signs of change in New Jersey, advocates and parents say there are still many obstacles at both the state level and at the federal level as the Trump administration continues to target the Department of Education. 

    One potential factor behind New Jersey’s low inclusion rates: how exactly districts write and enforce individualized education programs, or IEPs. These agreements lay out what kinds of services students are required to receive, and where.

    Related: Tracking Trump: His actions to dismantle the Education Department, and more

    Between 2016 and 2023, state officials determined at least 50 school districts — nearly a third of those monitored — at times failed to justify where they placed students with disabilities, according to a Hechinger Report review of state records. All school districts undergo monitoring every six years in New Jersey, according to state policy.

    That’s a violation of New Jersey law, which requires IEP teams — whose members include school officials and educators — to annually review and provide a written explanation for student placements. For example, if a student is assigned to be in a separate classroom, their IEP should spell out why they can’t be taught in an inclusive classroom with additional support. And IEP teams are required to come up with plans to return students to classrooms with peers without disabilities, if possible. 

    Related: Young kids with and without disabilities can learn side by side. One state has instead kept them apart for years

    Districts are cited even if there is insufficient documentation in only one student’s IEP, according to Michael Yaple, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Department of Education. In a statement, Yaple said the department is focused on making sure all decisions about a child’s placement “are individualized, federally compliant, and regularly reviewed to promote inclusive opportunities.”

    To Gopal, problems with IEPs point to a need for more parental involvement in these decisions and better procedures to help parents object if they disagree about their child’s placement.

    “Failure to justify these placements should not be acceptable,” Gopal said. He has long focused on addressing problems with special education in the state, including sponsoring a bill last year to improve communication between schools and parents. 

    The bill, which was signed into law in the summer, will require districts to provide parents with details about their student’s academic progress ahead of IEP meetings, and it will also require that the state launch a working group to monitor parental involvement.   

    Efforts to train teachers in how to teach in inclusive classrooms are growing too. 

    The New Jersey-based nonprofit All in For Inclusive Education received interest from three times as many school districts as it could serve in this year’s round of applications for its New Jersey Inclusion Project program, which provides support to districts looking to improve inclusion rates. About a dozen districts were chosen to receive the training. 

    Related: New Jersey sends kids with disabilities to separate schools more than any other state

    Advocates hope rising interest means New Jersey is on the cusp of taking the steps that school leaders in other states have taken to improve inclusion and reduce reliance on separate classrooms. 

    For example: Hawaii, which once had the nation’s lowest percentage of students with disabilities learning in the general education classroom at least 80 percent of the time, set a goal to improve its inclusion rate to 51 percent by 2020. Over the past decade, Hawaii increased the proportion of students who spend most of their time in general education classes by 10 percentage points to 55.6 percent.

    Even if New Jersey does improve its inclusion rates, advocates say it’s important to follow what happens next. For example, federal data has never captured whether students with disabilities are receiving the services and aids they need to thrive in a general education classroom.

    State efforts could be even more crucial than before as the White House works to dismantle the federal Department of Education.

    In March, the Trump administration laid off half the staff of its civil rights enforcement arm, which in the past typically investigated thousands of complaints annually from students with disabilities. Last week, the Trump administration laid off nearly all employees of the U.S. Department of Education office that makes sure states are providing special education services required under federal law.

    The administration has also canceled more than $30 million for 25 special education programs in 14 states, according to Education Week. The letters to those programs cited references to diversity, equity, inclusion and racism in their application materials. 

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

    Overall, advocates — including Lindsay Kubatzky, director of policy and advocacy at the National Center for Learning Disabilities — worry Trump’s anti-DEI push will worsen efforts to integrate the nation’s 7.5 million students with disabilities in general classrooms. 

    “We are the ‘I’ in DEI,” Kubatzky said. “If you start attacking diversity, equity and inclusion, you’re, of course, looking at students with disabilities.”

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

    Contact investigative reporter Marina Villeneuve at 212-678-3430 or villeneuve@hechingerreport.org or on Signal at mvilleneuve.78

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Marina Villeneuve

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  • Red school boards in a blue state asked for Trump’s help — and got it

    MEAD, Wash. — A few weeks after President Donald Trump took office, the conservative school board leaders in this town near the Idaho border made a bet. 

    They would pit one Washington against the other and see what happened.

    For years, Democrats in control of the state had required every school district to have policies on the books that protect transgender students from bullying and prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity. The Mead school board unanimously approved a policy in 2019 to comply with the state guidelines, with little comment. Board members at the time asked only about potential cost and whether the student dress code also needed to change.

    In 2023, lingering frustration with Covid restrictions and a growing backlash to transgender rights helped propel conservatives onto the town’s school board, a dynamic similar to one that had played out in communities across the country. Then, last year, the state education department checked how many school district policies actually complied with Washington’s nondiscrimination laws. State officials found Mead’s needed updating on a few counts, such as staff training and when to use a student’s preferred pronouns.

    The board had 30 days to correct its policy, according to a Feb. 21 notice from the state. Trump by then had already signed a pair of executive orders proclaiming there are only two genders and banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.

    Taking their cue from a clear shift in White House policy, the Mead school board pleaded in a March 11 letter for help from the U.S. secretaries for education and justice.

    “We find ourselves caught between conflicting directives that threaten not only our federal funding but also the rights and values of the families we serve,” the board wrote. “Refusal to comply could prompt state retaliation in the form of withheld state funding, further threatening our ability to serve students in need.”

    It didn’t take long for the board’s gamble to pay off.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    The Mead school board’s letter — sent alongside complaints from several other Washington school districts — arrived just as the U.S. departments of Education and Justice prepared to launch a special investigations team to look into complaints of Title IX violations in colleges and schools.

    Title IX, a federal civil rights law from 1972, prohibits sex-based discrimination in education, and some on the right argue that allowing transgender girls to compete in school sports improperly disadvantages and discriminates against cisgender females. (Research to suggest transgender athletes have an advantage in sports is limited and inconclusive.) The joint team would fast-track resolutions and include civil rights attorneys from both departments.

    Their first target: the Office for Superintendent of Public Instruction, which oversees education for Washington state.

    “OSPI has threatened to withhold funding to school districts that refuse to comply with the OSPI policies that violate Title IX and its implementing regulations,” the U.S. Department of Education said in an April 30 letter announcing the investigation. The letter cited complaints from Mead and a half dozen other districts.

    The Hechinger Report, through open records requests, obtained thousands of pages of emails from the accounts of the Mead school board, its superintendent and other Washington school boards involved in the Title IX investigation. Their emails and interviews with conservative activists, elected officials, parents and educators across the state reveal a significant victory for school boards like Mead, which quietly strategized with a statewide network of parents and state Republican officials waiting for a shift in federal power before challenging Washington’s protections for transgender students. 

    The federal probe also underscores the second Trump administration’s intent to leverage federal authority to undermine progressive policies in blue states, even as experts expect the courts to ultimately determine the legality of the administration’s interpretation of Title IX. Already, the administration has launched similar probes into education agencies in California and Maine.

    In Mead, the federal involvement into local school policy alarmed some residents.

    “It is irresponsible and dangerous,” said Alaura Miller, a recent graduate of the Mead School District, which serves a former railway town turned bedroom community of Spokane. She came out as transgender in her late teens. Now she’s in college with plans to become a mental health counselor for LGBTQ+ youth in eastern Washington.

    “The school board’s emboldening the worst in people,” Miller said. “It’s not teaching community.”

    Alaura Miller, a graduate of the Mead school district, has advocated for its school board to support LGBTQ+ youth in her hometown. She plans to work as a mental health counselor in eastern Washington state. Credit: Margaret Albaugh for The Hechinger Report

    Related: Knitting, cheerleading, fishing: This is what a cellphone ban looks like in one school district 

    The escalation of this conflict to Washington, D.C., follows years of simmering tension between local conservatives and the overwhelming number of progressives who run the Evergreen State.

    In 2007, it was the first state to adopt rules that allowed transgender students to participate in school sports and competitions that aligned with their gender identity. Lawmakers three years later explicitly included students in nondiscrimination laws, which count gender identity as a protected class. And in 2012, the state issued formal guidelines that protected locker and restroom access for transgender students.

    Conservatives grumbled along the way. But they focused political attention elsewhere, including some early victories to block mandatory sex education in every grade and every school. Voters eventually established that mandate in a 2020 ballot measure.

    The true firestorm arrived in 2023, with passage of a bill that would allow housing shelters to notify state authorities, not parents, when runaway youth seek refuge and gender-affirming care.

    “That’s what started it all. That put parents’ rights on everyone’s radar, as under attack,” said David Spring, executive director of the Washington Parents Network, a statewide coalition that formed during the pandemic to protest school closures and mask mandates. 

    By then, allies of Trump started to pay attention to Washington state.

    The America First Legal Foundation, started by longtime Trump adviser Stephen Miller, represented a group of parents who sued in 2023 to fight the new protections for transgender youth in crisis. Courts dismissed their lawsuit, but Spring’s coalition — and $16 million in political contributions — built momentum behind a 2024 ballot measure to create a “parents’ bill of rights.” The initiative, among other provisions, required schools to inform parents in advance of any medical services offered to their children. Proponents of the measure argue Democrats gutted it with a pair of student safety bills passed earlier this year.

    A parents’ rights-focused slate of candidates, meanwhile, secured a 4-1 conservative majority in 2023 on the school board in Mead, where student enrollment hovers just above 10,000 students. About 2 in 5 students qualify as low income and nearly 4 in 5 identify as white.

    The new board wasted little time before setting a clear agenda. “Voters made it clear tonight that they want a strong school board that represents parents,” Board President Michael Cannon, who won reelection, told local media at the time.

    The Trump administration launched an investigation into Washington state after the Mead school board and several other communities asked for federal intervention. Credit: Margaret Albaugh for The Hechinger Report

    In February 2024, the board adopted a resolution opposing a state policy that would require curriculum inclusive of “the histories, contributions, and perspectives of historically marginalized groups,” including LGBTQ+ people, saying it subverted local control over education. The board also joined with its counterparts from two dozen other districts in a campaign to prohibit transgender athletes from playing on female sports teams.

    The effort failed, but some residents took notice of a change in their community. One mother with students in Mead schools wrote to the board in December, sharing a statement from the Washington State LGBTQ Commission that condemned the board’s campaign.

    “It sends a very clear message to our children that Mead does NOT support and include all students,” her email reads. Writing from her work email account, she identified herself as a state employee active with the LGBTQ+ resources group for public workers.

    Alan Nolan, one of the new conservatives on the board, responded by notifying the mother’s employer that she may have broken laws against using government resources for personal matters.

    “Are you aware of her activities?” Nolan wrote to her supervisors. Nolan declined interview requests for this story, instead referring The Hechinger Report to the board’s previous statements on the Title IX investigation.

    Alan Nolan, one of the newer conservative members of the Mead school board, speaks during a Sept. 8 board meeting. In 2023, voters elected a parents rights-focused slate of candidates to secure a 4-1 conservative majority on the board. Credit: Margaret Albaugh for The Hechinger Report

    Cannon, the board president, defended Nolan’s decision to contact the parent’s employer: “He was saying, ‘Quit trying to push us around by using your state title.’”

    Cannon also disputed whether the board’s actions made any students or families feel unwelcome at Mead schools.

    “That certainly is not the intention at all,” he said. “We want to make every student feel like they belong as much as any other student.”

    Related: Trump’s actions to dismantle the Department of Education, and more

    By then, Trump had reclaimed the White House — after his campaign and Republicans spent $215 million on anti-transgender advertising, according to tracking firm AdImpact. In the presidential election, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris commanded a nearly 20 percentage point lead in the overall Washington vote; in Spokane County, a slim majority of voters supported Trump.

    Adrien Leavitt, staff attorney with the ACLU of Washington, said the GOP’s focus on transgender issues in the campaign trickled into local politics in places like Mead.

    “When vitriol toward trans people became a nationwide talking point for the right to win the presidency, that invigorated a lot of people to invoke the same harmful rhetoric in their local communities,” Leavitt said. “We think of Washington as a liberal state. Nonetheless, it’s a very diverse state.”

    OSPI, in its statewide civil rights review, required 59 out of 295 school districts in Washington to make corrections to their nondiscrimination policy, and 52 of them did so, according to agency data. Another 93 districts received notices to correct their gender-inclusive schools policy, but only 55 districts had as of earlier this year. 

    After the November election, Spring’s statewide network of parents worked with school boards to prepare for a shift in “the other Washington.” Nearly two dozen boards started a campaign to reverse the state’s policy on transgender athletes, and a growing clash over student pronouns in one district accelerated their efforts. The network’s members met weekly on Zoom, and Spring in early February filed a federal complaint over Title IX before boards like Mead — roughly 30 in total, Spring estimated — soon followed.

    “That’s a tenth of school districts doing this kind of revolt. School boards just want to run their schools,” he said.

    Michael Cannon, president of the Mead school board, was first elected in 2019. The school board was one of many that challenged Washington state’s Covid protocols. Credit: Margaret Albaugh for The Hechinger Report

    In Mead, after the board learned it had 30 days to correct its transgender policy, Nolan shared details of the state’s findings with county and state GOP leaders and the Silent Majority Foundation, a conservative legal nonprofit in eastern Washington. In response to a mother with students in nearby Central Valley schools who asked the board for advice on how to join the fight, Nolan painted an ominous picture of the stakes: “OSPI and the legislature intend to threaten all districts to adopt policies well in excess of what state law requires or face loss of funding.”

    Mead schools collect nearly $9 million in federal funding, or about 5 percent of its total budget; another 80 percent comes from the state. State code grants OSPI the authority to order the termination of funding to districts that violate nondiscrimination laws, but the agency has never withheld funding for noncompliance, according to spokeswoman Katy Payne. Still, the Mead school board cited the risk of losing funding — both state and federal — in its plea for help to the federal Education Department.

    “It shouldn’t be a choice of which funding to lose,” Cannon told The Hechinger Report. “We just don’t want to risk any funding. That just can’t be on the table for us.”

    Superintendent Travis Hanson, who declined several interview requests, said in an email that “culture-war conflicts” — specifically, the political shifts that lead to dramatic changes in local, state and federal education policy — have placed district leaders in an impossible position.

    “The increasingly acrimonious debates on these issues are generally split along partisan lines and represent a complex situation for district leaders: navigating socio-political conflict we did not create but are nonetheless responsible for managing,” wrote Hanson, who joined the district in July 2023, just months before the election of the new slate of board members.

    Related: School clubs for gay students move underground after Kentucky’s anti-LGBTQ law goes into effect

    Superintendent Travis Hanson listens during a Sept. 8 meeting of the Mead school board. He took over as superintendent in July 2023. Credit: Margaret Albaugh for The Hechinger Report

    In late March, the board took another step that further increased tensions: It proposed changes to the transgender policy — but not to comply with the state. Rather, the board would require students to get permission before using their preferred locker room or restroom and would not allow transgender students to room on overnight trips based on their preferred gender. School staff, under the changes, would not need a student’s permission before telling their parents about their gender identity.

    A transgender student at Mead High School wrote to the board urging members considering the issue to be sensitive to students “who may rely on school to be their one safe space.”

    Nolan replied first by stating his appreciation for the student’s willingness to engage in a civil discussion, but then he issued a vague warning to the teenager.

    “I don’t know the source of your gender confusion nor will I pretend I can provide a solution to resolve it,” Nolan told the student. “Fooling yourself to believe you can become that sex is a dangerous lie and those who have bought into it often pay a heavy price.”

    The student’s mother responded within hours.

    She balked at Nolan’s allusion to a “heavy price” and called him presumptuous and patronizing for commenting on her child’s gender identity.

    “We deliberately chose to live within the Mead school district upon recommendation from other family members — a decision I am increasingly questioning,” the mother wrote. “You can’t just wish away kids who are different, and deliberately isolating or driving away families like mine will come with its own heavy price.”

    Nolan shared the emails with Cannon, and later sent the mother an apology.

    “While we may hold different views on the matter, my response should have been more thoughtful in its tone as it is understandably a topic of significant personal importance,” he wrote. 

    Related: A principal lost her job after she came out. Her conservative community rallied around her

    Other residents praised the board, casting it as their ally in a fight against encroaching state mandates.

    One couple with a young daughter wrote: “They have exceeded government outreach for far too long and it is time to take back local control, as the system was designed.”

    In the interview with Hechinger, Cannon agreed. And he argued conservatives in Washington state have only acted on the defense.

    “The irony is that we’re responding to what they’re doing,” he said of Democrats. “They’ve used the Legislature to force school districts to adhere to their political ideology. None of this originated with these conservative school boards that they like to vilify.”

    Trump has continued to wield federal authority over states on Title IX and other issues, even while he has pledged to return control of education to individual states and communities and signed an executive order in March to do so. Later that month, newly confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon previewed the investigations to come.

    In a Dear Colleague letter to superintendents, McMahon raised concerns about the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a law that protects the personal records of students, and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), which gives parents the right to review instructional materials. The letter argued that some states and districts had turned “the concept of privacy on its head” and used the laws to prevent parents from knowing if their child started transitioning at school.

    The investigation into Washington state hinges on allowing transgender students to compete in female sports but also potential violations of those student privacy laws. Elizabeth Laird, director of equity in civic technology at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, described the administration’s legal reasoning as going beyond what Congress intended.

    “This investigation looks like the latest instance of the Trump administration weaponizing its ability to withhold federal funds to enforce its ideological agenda,” Laird said.

    In an email, an Education Department spokesperson said only that the investigation into Washington state was ongoing. The Justice Department declined to comment.

    Related: Which schools and colleges are being investigated by the Trump administration?  

    Chris Reykdal, the Washington state schools chief, described the federal government’s use of the privacy provisions as an attempt to mandate discrimination.

    “My office will enforce our current laws as we are required to do until Congress changes the law and/or federal courts invalidate Washington state’s laws,” Reykdal said in a statement. “Unless, and until that happens, we will be following Washington state’s laws, not a president’s political leanings expressed through unlawful orders.”

    Some states and districts have already faced consequences from similar investigations. In Maine, the U.S. Department of Agriculture — in a related Title IX investigation — froze federal money meant to feed children in schools, daycares and after-school programs. The state sued, and won a court-approved settlement to stop the freezing of funds. The Trump administration has initiated similar investigations and funding fights in California and in 10 school districts, in Colorado, Kansas and Virginia.

    Spring, with the statewide parents network in Washington, did not exactly celebrate the federal intervention in so many school districts. He’s a conservative who prefers local control, especially of education, but said state laws and rights can’t supersede federal law at the schoolhouse.

    “We right now have a state ordering school districts around, to break federal law,” Spring said.

    Related: At Moms for Liberty national summit, a singular focus on anti-trans issues 

    Ultimately, courts are likely to continue weighing in on whether these federal actions can be enforced. Conflicting rulings in the federal judiciary, however, make it difficult to predict the outcome. 

    Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which includes Washington state, barred Idaho from enforcing a ban — the first in the nation — on transgender athletes participating in girls’ and women’s sports teams. The 4th Circuit, also last year, ruled that a similar ban in West Virginia violated Title IX. 

    Then, this year, the Supreme Court dealt a significant blow to the transgender rights movement, deciding in a 6-3 split that states can prohibit gender-affirming medical care for minors. A Trump-appointed judge in Tennessee also scrapped a set of Title IX rules that former President Joe Biden’s administration proposed to strengthen protections for LGBTQ+ students. And on its upcoming docket, the Supreme Court will hear two cases on whether bans on transgender women in sports violate the Constitution. 

    “Trump and the alt-right folks want to suggest that civil rights are a zero-sum game,” said Hunter Iannucci, counsel with the National Women’s Law Center, a nonprofit legal group. “They’re trying to position this so Title IX operates only for those students, or only these students can have rights, and that’s just not accurate.”

    Back in Mead, the school board in April paused consideration of its contested updates to the transgender policy. Board members continued to hear from both angry and approving members of the public until deciding, in May, to indefinitely postpone any formal action until the federal departments finish their Title IX investigation. The board meetings and especially portions for public comment have been largely quiet since then.

    But Miller, the recent Mead graduate, still attends the meetings to speak on behalf of transgender students who remain in the district.

    “There are people in the community willing to stand up,” she said. “Even though we’re scared of violence and discrimination, we still have a voice. We still exist.”

    Contact staff writer Neal Morton at 212-678-8247, on Signal at nealmorton.99, or via email at morton@hechingerreport.org.

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

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • Cosmetology schools and other certificate programs got exemption from rules on graduates’ earning levels

     

    Remiah Ward’s shift at the SmartStyle salon inside Walmart was almost over, and she’d barely made $30 in tips from the haircuts she’d done that day. It wasn’t unusual — a year after her graduation from beauty school, tips plus minimum wage weren’t enough to cover her rent.

    She scarcely had time to eat and sleep before she had to drive back to the same Walmart in central Florida to stock shelves on the night shift. That job paid $14 an hour, but it meant she sometimes spent 18 hours a day in the same building. She worked six days a week but still struggled to catch up on bills and sleep. 

    The admissions officer at the American Institute of Beauty, where she enrolled straight out of high school, had sold her on a different dream. She would easily earn enough to pay back the $10,000 she borrowed to attend, she said she was told. Ward had no way of knowing that stylists from her school earn $20,200 a year, on average, four years after graduating. Seven years later, her debt, plus interest, is still unpaid.

    In July, Republicans in Congress pushed through policies aimed at ensuring that what happened to Ward wouldn’t happen to other Americans on the government’s dime; colleges whose graduates don’t earn at least as much as someone with a high school diploma will now risk losing access to federal student loans. But one group managed to slip through the cracks — thousands of schools like the American Institute of Beauty were exempt. 

    Remiah Ward worked two jobs while trying to make it as a hair stylist but never made enough to pay her all her bills and has had to put her dream career on hold. Credit: Courtesy Remiah Ward

    Certificate schools succeeded in getting a carve-out. The industry breathed a collective sigh of relief, and with good reason. At least 1,280 certificate-granting programs, which enrolled more than 220,000 students, would have been at risk of losing federal student loan funding if they had been included in the bill, according to a Hechinger Report analysis of federal data. [See table.] About 80% of those are for-profit programs, and 45 percent are cosmetology schools.

    “There is this very strange donut hole in accountability where workforce programs are held accountable, two-year degree programs are held accountable, but everything in between gets off without any accountability,” said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.

    The schools spared are known as certificate programs and, with their promise of an affordable and relatively quick path to economic security, are the fastest growing part of higher education. They usually take about a year to complete and train people to be hair-stylists, welders, medical assistants and cooks, among other jobs.

    As with traditional colleges, there are big differences in quality among certificate programs. Some hair stylists can make a middle-class living if they work in a busy salon. But for people who have to pay back hefty student loans, the low wages for stylists in the early years can be an insurmountable obstacle.

    Ward found herself facing that dilemma. When she could no longer sustain the lack of sleep from her double shifts at Walmart, she pressed pause on her styling career and took a job with Amazon, loading and unloading planes. She wasn’t ready to give up her dream career, though, so in addition to her 10-hour days moving boxes, she took part-time gigs at local hair salons. She didn’t have family to help pay rent, not to mention loan payments, so she couldn’t afford to work fulltime at a salon, which is essential to build up a regular clientele — and bigger tips. Without that, she couldn’t get much beyond minimum wage. 

    A representative from the American Institute of Beauty denied that Ward was told she would easily repay her loan.

    “No admissions representative, not at AIB or elsewhere, would ever make such a statement,” Denise Herman, general counsel and assistant vice president of AIB, said in an email. 

    The high cost of many for-profit cosmetology schools — tuition can be upward of $20,000, usually for a one-year program  — can leave former students mired in debt. In May, the government released data showing 850 colleges where at least a third of borrowers haven’t made a loan payment for 90 days or more, putting them on track to default. About 42 percent of those were for-profit cosmetology and barbering schools (including AIB).

    Brittany Mcnew says she loves working as a stylist but that her income takes a hit when traffic is slow in her salon in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Credit: Meredith Kolodner/The Hechinger Report

    Herman blamed the Biden administration policy that after the pandemic let borrowers forgo payments without any penalty.

    “Debtors became ‘comfortable’ not making payments,” said Herman. “AIB provides the graduate with the information graduates need to make their payments. What that graduate decides to pay, or not pay, is not influenced by AIB.”

    Under the “big beautiful bill” passed in July, two- and four-year colleges must ensure that, after four years, graduates on average make at least as much as someone in their state who has only a high school diploma. The colleges must inform students if they fail that test, and if it happens for two out of three years, the college will be ineligible to receive federal loan funds.

    Some for-profit certificate schools lobbied hard for an exemption. The American Association of Career Schools, which represents proprietary cosmetology schools, spent $120,000 lobbying the Education Department and Congress, including on the “big beautiful bill,” in the first six months of this year. At the group’s major lobbying event in April, Sen. Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was the keynote speaker.

    Cassidy declined to answer questions about why certificate programs were excluded, but a fact sheet from his committee noted that they are already covered by something else, the gainful employment rule, which is also being challenged by the for-profit cosmetology industry.

    That federal gainful employment regulation, updated in 2023, requires in essence that graduates from career-oriented schools earn enough to be able to pay back their loans and earn more than a high school graduate. It also requires that consumers, like Ward, be given more information about how graduates from all colleges fare in the workplace.

    The rule posed an existential threat to a huge swath of cosmetology schools.

    In 2023, the American Association of Career Schools sued to block the gainful employment rule. 

    “AACS supports fair and reasonable accountability measures,” Cecil Kidd, the AACS’s executive director, said in an email. “However, we strongly object to arbitrary or discriminatory policies such as the US Department of Education’s Gainful Employment rule, which unfairly targets career schools while exempting many public and private non-profit institutions that fail to meet comparable outcomes.”

    He pointed to public comments in which AACS has argued that the rule imposes an unfair burden on cosmetology schools since stylists are predominantly women, who are more likely to have “personal commitments” that affect their earnings, and who rely on tips that are often pocketed as unreported income.

    Cameron Vandenboom is a successful hair stylist but says the high cost of her private beauty school wasn’t worth thousands of dollars in student debt: “I absolutely should have gone to community college.” Credit: Courtesy Shanna Kaye Photo

    In a twist that surprised advocates on both sides, the Education Department in May asked the court to effectively dismiss AACS’ lawsuit. 

    If the court rules in favor of the cosmetology schools, certificate programs will be free of all accountability requirements on their graduates’ earning levels, because they got the carveout in July. 

    Even if the court rules against cosmetology schools, advocates are pessimistic that the Trump administration will implement the gainful rules. The first Trump administration got rid of the original rules back in 2019 and Nicholas Kent, now the U.S. undersecretary of education, was previously the chief policy officer for Career Education Colleges and Universities, or CECU, the trade group that represents for-profit colleges, including certificate programs. He is a well-known critic of the rule.

    “I would be very surprised, if the unlikely scenario plays out that the Biden rule is upheld, that this Department of Education would just say, OK, the court has spoken,” said Jason Altmire, CECU’s executive director. “We are not opposed to accountability for certificate programs, so long as it’s fair to everybody and we have a voice in how you’re measuring programs.”  

    Altmire said CECU didn’t lobby for certificate programs to be carved out of Congress’ bill, but did argue against the earnings formula that Congress landed on. Altmire said it doesn’t take into account part-time work and the gender gap in wages.

    One objection from AACS, raised by CECU as well, is that the earnings measured don’t include tips, which are crucial to hair stylists’ income. Analyzed without including tips, 576 of 724 cosmetology schools in the Hechinger Report analysis would fail Congress’ earnings test. But even if tips were included and raised stylists’ income by 20 percent, 526 cosmetology schools would still fail.

    Earlier this year, Remiah Ward made the difficult decision to leave Florida and move to Kentucky, where the cost of living was more forgiving. She’s working from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. at an aluminum factory for $19.50 an hour. 

    One day, she might go back to styling after her debt is paid off. Like many former beauty school students, she wishes she’d had more information when she decided to enroll.

    “They really sugar-coated it. I was 18 years old, and I needed a trade that I was already pretty good at,” said Ward, who is now 26. “Everybody thinks they’re going to make a high return, and it’s just not the reality.”

    Marina Villeneuve contributed data analysis to this story. 

    This story about cosmetology schools produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger higher-education newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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    Meredith Kolodner

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  • Explore the earnings for graduates of beauty schools, other certificate programs

    Schools that train hairstylists, dental assistants and health aides will be able to keep getting federal student loan dollars even if the professionals they turn out don’t end up earning any more than a high school graduate.

    That’s because programs like those, which don’t end in a college degree, were granted an exemption from new accountability measures under President Donald Trump’s ”big, beautiful bill.” 

    A Hechinger Report analysis of federal data found at least 1,280 such certificate programs could have been at risk of their students losing access to federal student loans — but a successful lobbying effort excluded them from the accountability measures. 

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    Under the new law, most graduates of associate, bachelor’s and graduate degree programs must earn at least as much as someone who has only a high school diploma. If programs fail to hit that benchmark for two out of three years, their students will no longer be eligible for federal student loans. (And the schools must warn students of this possibility if they miss the mark for just one year). Without that borrowing power, many students could not afford to attend. And without those students, some of the schools might not survive. 

    Using the table below, see which certificate programs might have been flagged under the Trump law if not for the exemption. If graduates of a particular program ended up earning less than adults with only a high school diploma, that program could have faced losing eligibility for federal student loans under the Trump law.

    Methodology

    What exactly does the “big, beautiful bill” call for?

    The legislation requires the Department of Education to compare earnings of working adults who have only a high school diploma to the earnings of adults four years after they complete a degree program or graduate certificate. If a postsecondary program’s graduates fail to outearn adults with only high school degrees for two out of three years, students can no longer obtain federal student loans to attend that program. 

    The law also sets up an appeals process and a way for programs to apply to regain eligibility for federal student loans.

    What data was analyzed? 

    The law directs the education secretary to use census data to calculate median earnings for working adults with only a high school degree in the state where a program is located. The Department of Education will release regulations that spell out exactly how to do that math. For example, the law does not spell out whether it will look at census data averaged out over 12 months or a longer period of time. 

    For earnings data for high school graduates, The Hechinger Report relied on calculations from the Department of Education, which were derived from the 2022 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates Public Use Microdata Sample from the U.S. Census Bureau.

    To calculate median earnings for graduates, the law directs the Education Department to put together earnings data for a cohort of at least 30 graduates who received federal student aid for postsecondary education — which typically includes grants, loans or work-study. Graduates are excluded if they’re currently enrolled in another higher education program. If there are fewer than 30 students in a cohort, the Education Department can lump together several years of data to get to 30 students.

    To get earnings data for graduates of certificate programs, Hechinger used a federal database known as College Scorecard. We downloaded field of study data for the 2022-23 school year. From this data, The Hechinger Report extracted information about certificate programs, at their main campuses, and included only programs that had median earnings data. The federal database suppresses earnings data for small programs. That left 4,431 currently operating certificate programs. 

    How was a program determined to be at possible risk of failing the accountability measure?

    For each program, The Hechinger Report compared median graduate earnings to the high school graduate earnings data of the state where the program was located. If the graduates earned less, the program was considered to be at risk.  

    Under the law, postsecondary programs that don’t meet the earnings benchmark for one year have to inform all current students that they are at risk of losing their eligibility for federal student loans. 

    Are there any limitations to the data? 

    The “big, beautiful bill” takes online programs into account by considering whether students live in the same state where their academic program is based. Under the law, student earnings are compared with national data rather than state data when fewer than half of enrolled students live in the state where the school is located, which may be the case for online programs. 

    The Hechinger Report’s analysis instead compares every program with state earnings. That’s because the College Scorecard field of study data set is limited and only includes information about graduates employed within the same state as the institution, not whether enrolled students live in the same state as the program. In addition, College Scorecard data provides earnings data for all graduates without a breakdown for whether they receive federal aid.

    Also, the Hechinger database looks at the available median earnings of all students four years after graduation for the school year 2022-23, regardless of the number of graduates. Though College Scorecard suppresses data on smaller programs, median earnings data is available for programs with 16 or more working graduates. The “big, beautiful bill” directs the Department of Education to instead lump together years of data to create cohorts of at least 30 students.

    Contact investigative reporter Marina Villeneuve at 212-678-3430 or villeneuve@hechingerreport.org or on Signal at mvilleneuve.78

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

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • OPINION: The push to expand school choice should not diminish civic education

    From Texas to Florida to Arizona, school voucher policies are reshaping the landscape of American education. The Trump administration champions federal support for voucher expansion, and many state-level leaders are advancing school choice programs. Billions of public dollars are now flowing to private schools, church networks and microeducation platforms.  

    The push to expand school choice is not just reallocating public funds to private institutions. It is reorganizing the very purpose of schooling. And in that shift, something essential is being lost — the public mission of education as a foundation of democracy. 

    Civic education is becoming fragmented, underfunded and institutionally weak.  

    In this moment of sweeping change, as public dollars shift from common institutions to private and alternative schools, the shared civic entities that once supported democratic learning are being diminished or lost entirely — traditional structures like public schools, libraries and community colleges are no longer guaranteed common spaces. 

    The result is a disjointed system in which students may gain academic content or career preparation but receive little support in learning how to lead with integrity, think across differences or sustain democratic institutions. The very idea of public life is at risk, especially in places where shared experience has been replaced by polarization. We need civic education more than ever. 

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

    If we want students who can lead a multiracial democracy, we need schools of every type to take civic formation seriously. That includes religious schools, charter schools and homeschooling networks. The responsibility cannot fall on public schools alone. Civic formation is not an ideological project. It is a democratic one, involving the long-term work of building the skills, habits and values that prepare people to work across differences and take responsibility for shared democratic life. 

    What we need now is a civic education strategy that matches the scale of the changes reshaping American schooling. This will mean fostering coordinated investment, institutional partnerships and recognition that the stakes are not just academic, they are also democratic. 

    Americans overwhelmingly support civic instruction. According to a 2020 survey in Texas by the Center of Women in Politics and Public Policy and iCivics, just 49 percent of teachers statewide believed that enough time was being devoted to teaching civics knowledge, and just 23 percent said the same about participatory-democracy skills. This gap is not unique to Texas, but there is little agreement on how civics should be taught, and even less structural support for the schools trying to do it. 

    Without serious investment, civic formation will remain an afterthought — a patchwork effort disconnected from the design of most educational systems. 

    This is not an argument against vouchers in principle. Families should have options. But in the move to decentralize education, we risk hollowing out its civic core. A democratic society cannot survive on academic content alone. It requires citizens — not just in the legal sense, but in the civic one. 

    A democratic society needs people who can deliberate, organize, collaborate and build a shared future with others who do not think or live like they do. 

    And that’s why we are building a framework in Texas that others can adopt and adapt to their own civic mission. 

    The pioneering Democracy Schools model, to which I contribute, supports civic formation across a range of public and private schools, colleges, community organizations and professional networks.  

    Civic infrastructure is the term we use to describe our approach: the design of relationships, institutions and systems that hold democracy together. Just as engineers build physical infrastructure, educators and civic leaders must build civic infrastructure by working with communities, not for or on them. 

    We start from a democratic tradition rooted in the Black freedom struggle. Freedom, in this view, is not just protection from domination. It is the capacity to act, build and see oneself reflected in the world. This view of citizenship demands more than voice. It calls for the ability to shape institutions, policies and public narratives from the ground up. 

    Related: STUDENT VOICE: My generation knows less about civics than my parents’ generation did, yet we need it more than ever 

    The model speaks to a national crisis: the erosion of shared civic space in education. It must be practiced and must be supported by institutions that understand their role in building public life. Historically Black colleges and universities like Huston-Tillotson University offer a powerful example. They are not elite pipelines disconnected from everyday life. They are rooted in community, oriented toward public leadership and shaped by a history of democratic struggle. They show what it looks like to educate for civic capacity — not just for upward mobility. They remind us that education is not only about what students know, but about who they become and what kind of world they are prepared to help shape. 

    Our national future depends on how well we prepare young people to take responsibility for shared institutions and pluralistic public life. This cannot be accomplished through content standards alone. It requires civic ecosystems designed to cultivate public authorship. 

    We have an enormous stake in preparing the next generation for the demands of democratic life. What kind of society are we preparing young people to lead? The answer will not come from any single institution. It will come from partnerships across sectors, aligned in purpose even if diverse in approach. 

    We are eager to collaborate with any organization — public, private or faith-based — committed to building the civic infrastructure that sustains our democracy. Wherever education takes place, civic formation must remain a central concern. 

    Robert Ceresa is the founding director of the Politics Lab of the James L. Farmer House, Huston-Tillotson University. 

    Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.  

    This story about civic education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • OPINION: NAEP scores show we need new approaches, more resources and all hands on deck to address underlying education problems

    America’s future is not made in factories or innovation labs — it’s forged in classrooms. We can’t bring good jobs back to U.S. shores if we don’t first educate a workforce capable of doing them. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, known as the Nation’s Report Card, paints a grim picture, with test scores down since 2019 for eighth graders in science and 12th graders in math and reading.  

    The lowest-performing learners lost the most ground, leaving large percentages of students unable to perform the strong academic work required for postsecondary life. Only about 1 in 5 high school seniors scored at the NAEP Proficient level in math. That puts them at a terrible disadvantage since STEM positions make up a growing percentage of the workforce. Nearly half were working below even the NAEP Basic level, meaning they likely don’t know how to use percentages to solve real-world problems. 

    This isn’t the first bad report card we’ve seen since the pandemic upended learning five years ago, but progress in American education has generally been stalled for at least a decade. Leaders at every level need to stop using the pandemic as an excuse and start looking for solutions. There have been times in the past when Republicans and Democrats have come together around education. While that may be difficult to do today, it’s needed more than ever. 

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

    We need new approaches, more resources and all hands on deck to help students develop the knowledge and skills to thrive in an increasingly complicated world. The teens who took the 12th grade tests are now out of school. They’re facing a workforce disrupted by AI and demanding more from them — not less. Even young people who opt not to go to college, such as those looking to work in manufacturing, for example, need more advanced STEM and literacy skills than in the past. 

    There are some areas of educational progress around the country we can learn from. For example, Indiana is remaking the American high school experience to personalize it and connect it to the world of work, while Rhode Island is reinvigorating career and technical education to embed it with more rigor and ensure it provides an on-ramp to an array of postsecondary options, including college. 

    We can also expand on the reforms that are taking root in elementary education. An emphasis on the research behind teaching children to read, sometimes referred to as the science of reading, is effective. And states like Mississippi and Louisiana, leaders in this movement, have seen strong literacy gains. We can apply that kind of evidence-based approach across K-12 subjects and grades. 

    It’s also vital to listen to what students are saying. Fortunately, the Nation’s Report Card can help with this.  

    Survey data accompanying the eighth grade science assessment suggests that inquiry-based learning is in decline. Fewer students say they’re spending time on things like designing experiments to answer research questions. That kind of instruction helps students build science knowledge and develop key skills like the ability to think critically and to collaborate with peers, exactly the kind of skills that AI can’t replace. 

    Related: Nation’s Report Card at risk, researchers say 

    The best instruction has a purpose for learning, explores real-world problems and makes connections to work. Most states have passed science standards that promote this kind of instruction, but more resources are needed to get aligned materials into schools and provide teachers with the training to use them effectively. 

    Getting kids out of the classroom helps too. I invited elementary school students to my farm in western Massachusetts a few years ago and vividly recall a fourth grader’s aha moment, finally understanding decimals when collecting 2.25 inches of rain in a vial. It was a terrific example of how interdisciplinary science is and how powerful it is in experiential learning settings. 

    It’s true that science resources, such as lab materials, can be expensive; however, schools can tap into community partners and business leaders for assistance. In Massachusetts, for example, General Electric has helped bring mobile technology labs into schools.  

    One thing I am grateful for, even amid all this bad education news, is the high-quality data shining a light on the problems we’re facing. There are too many voices today calling for a rollback of testing. That’s a mistake. Obtaining meaningful data, such as that found on the Nation’s Report Card, is crucial. Of course, what we do with it matters even more. 

    It has been 42 years since American leaders from across political parties and sectors came together to bring attention to “A Nation at Risk,” a landmark report that spurred significant education reforms. And it’s been 36 years since 49 governors came together and defined the state role in K-12 schooling.  

    After these milestones, the nation saw sustained progress on NAEP. We need that same leadership now. 

    Republican Jane Swift is a former governor from Massachusetts who serves on the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the Nation’s Report Card. She is also the CEO of Education at Work, a nonprofit that connects college students with work-based learning opportunities. 

    Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org. 

    This story about NAEP scores was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • OPINION: If we are going to build AI literacy into every level of learning, we must be able to measure it

    Everywhere you look, someone is telling students and workers to “learn AI.” 

    It’s become the go-to advice for staying employable, relevant and prepared for the future. But here’s the problem: While definitions of artificial intelligence literacy are starting to emerge, we still lack a consistent, measurable framework to know whether someone is truly ready to use AI effectively and responsibly. 

    And that is becoming a serious issue for education and workforce systems already being reshaped by AI. Schools and colleges are redesigning their entire curriculums. Companies are rewriting job descriptions. States are launching AI-focused initiatives.  

    Yet we’re missing a foundational step: agreeing not only on what we mean by AI literacy, but on how we assess it in practice. 

    Two major recent developments underscore why this step matters, and why it is important that we find a way to take it before urging students to use AI. First, the U.S. Department of Education released its proposed priorities for advancing AI in education, guidance that will ultimately shape how federal grants will support K-12 and higher education. For the first time, we now have a proposed federal definition of AI literacy: the technical knowledge, durable skills and future-ready attitudes required to thrive in a world influenced by AI. Such literacy will enable learners to engage and create with, manage and design AI, while critically evaluating its benefits, risks and implications. 

    Second, we now have the White House’s American AI Action Plan, a broader national strategy aimed at strengthening the country’s leadership in artificial intelligence. Education and workforce development are central to the plan. 

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

    What both efforts share is a recognition that AI is not just a technological shift, it’s a human one. In many ways, the most important AI literacy skills are not about AI itself, but about the human capacities needed to use AI wisely. 

    Sadly, the consequences of shallow AI education are already visible in workplaces. Some 55 percent of managers believe their employees are AI-proficient, while only 43 percent of employees share that confidence, according to the 2025 ETS Human Progress Report.  

    One can say that the same perception gap exists between school administrators and teachers. The disconnect creates risks for organizations and reveals how assumptions about AI literacy can diverge sharply from reality. 

    But if we’re going to build AI literacy into every level of learning, we have to ask the harder question: How do we both determine when someone is truly AI literate and assess it in ways that are fair, useful and scalable? 

    AI literacy may be new, but we don’t have to start from scratch to measure it. We’ve tackled challenges like this before, moving beyond check-the-box tests in digital literacy to capture deeper, real-world skills. Building on those lessons will help define and measure this next evolution of 21st-century skills. 

    Right now, we often treat AI literacy as a binary: You either “have it” or you don’t. But real AI literacy and readiness is more nuanced. It includes understanding how AI works, being able to use it effectively in real-world settings and knowing when to trust it. It includes writing effective prompts, spotting bias, asking hard questions and applying judgment. 

    This isn’t just about teaching coding or issuing a certificate. It’s about making sure that students, educators and workers can collaborate in and navigate a world in which AI is increasingly involved in how we learn, hire, communicate and make decisions.  

    Without a way to measure AI literacy, we can’t identify who needs support. We can’t track progress. And we risk letting a new kind of unfairness take root, in which some communities build real capacity with AI and others are left with shallow exposure and no feedback. 

    Related: To employers, AI skills aren’t just for tech majors anymore 

    What can education leaders do right now to address this issue? I have a few ideas.  

    First, we need a working definition of AI literacy that goes beyond tool usage. The Department of Education’s proposed definition is a good start, combining technical fluency, applied reasoning and ethical awareness.  

    Second, assessments of AI literacy should be integrated into curriculum design. Schools and colleges incorporating AI into coursework need clear definitions of proficiency. TeachAI’s AI Literacy Framework for Primary and Secondary Education is a great resource. 

    Third, AI proficiency must be defined and measured consistently, or we risk a mismatched state of literacy. Without consistent measurements and standards, one district may see AI literacy as just using ChatGPT, while another defines it far more broadly, leaving students unevenly ready for the next generation of jobs. 

    To prepare for an AI-driven future, defining and measuring AI literacy must be a priority. Every student will be graduating into a world in which AI literacy is essential. Human resources leaders confirmed in the 2025 ETS Human Progress Report that the No. 1 skill employers are demanding today is AI literacy. Without measurement, we risk building the future on assumptions, not readiness.  

    And that’s too shaky a foundation for the stakes ahead. 

    Amit Sevak is CEO of ETS, the largest private educational assessment organization in the world. 

    Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org. 

    This story about AI literacy was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter. 

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • OPINION: The resumption of student loan payments means students will need new policies — and our help

    After a three-year pause prompted by the pandemic, the clock on student loan repayments suddenly started ticking again in September 2023, and forbearance ended last September. For millions of borrowers like Shauntee Russell, the resumption of payments marked a harsh return to financial reality.  

    Russell, a single mother of three from Chicago, had received $127,000 in student loan forgiveness through the SAVE program, and had experienced profound relief at having that $632 monthly payment lifted from her shoulders. SAVE exemplified both the transformative power of debt relief and the urgent need to continue this fight — but now SAVE has been suspended. 

    Such setbacks cannot be the end of our story, as I document in my forthcoming book. The resumption of loan payments, while painful, must serve as a rallying cry rather than a surrender. We stand at a critical juncture. The Supreme Court’s devastating blow to former President Biden’s initial forgiveness plan and the ongoing legal challenges to programs like SAVE have left 45 million borrowers in a state of financial limbo. The fundamental inequities of our higher education system have never been more apparent.  

    Black students graduate with nearly 50 percent more debt than their white counterparts, while women hold roughly two-thirds of all outstanding student debt — a staggering $1.5 trillion that continues to grow. These aren’t just statistics; they represent systemic barriers that prevent entire communities from achieving economic mobility. 

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. 

    The students I interviewed while reporting on this crisis reveal the human cost of inaction. They include Maria Sanchez, a nursing student in St. Louis who skips meals to save money and can only access textbooks through library loans.  

    Then there is Robert Carroll, who gave up his dorm room in Cleveland and now alternates between friends’ couches just to stay in school.  

    These students represent the millions who are working multiple jobs, sacrificing basic needs and seeing their dreams deferred under the weight of financial pressure. 

    Yet what strikes me most is their resilience and determination. Despite these overwhelming obstacles, these students persist, driven by the same belief that motivated civil rights leaders like Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. — that education is the pathway to economic empowerment and social justice. 

    The current political landscape, with Donald J. Trump’s return to the presidency and a Republican-controlled Congress, presents unprecedented challenges. Plans to dismantle key borrower protections and efforts to eliminate the Department of Education signal a dark period ahead for student debt relief.  

    But history teaches us that progress often comes through sustained grassroots organizing and innovative policy solutions at multiple levels of government and society. 

    State governments have an opportunity to fill the federal void through programs like Massachusetts’ Student Loan Borrower Bill of Rights and Maine’s Student Loan Repayment Tax Credit. 

    Universities must step up with institutional relief programs, as my own institution, Trinity Washington University, did when it settled $1.8 million in student balances during the pandemic. 

    The Black church, which has long understood the connection between education and liberation, continues to provide crucial support through scholarship programs. Organizations like the United Negro College Fund, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education remain vital pillars in making higher education accessible. 

    Still, individual, institutional and state efforts, while necessary, are not sufficient. We need comprehensive federal action that treats student debt as what it truly is: a civil rights issue and a moral imperative. The magnitude of the crisis — it affects Americans across every congressional district — creates unique opportunities for bipartisan coalition building. 

    Smart advocates are already reframing the narrative by replacing partisan talking points with economic arguments that resonate across ideological lines: workforce development, entrepreneurship and American competitiveness on the world stage.  

    When student debt prevents nurses from serving rural communities, teachers from working in underserved schools and young entrepreneurs from starting businesses, it becomes an economic drag that affects everyone.  

    Related: How Trump is changing higher education: The view from 4 campuses 

    The path to federal action may require creative approaches — perhaps through tax policy, regulatory changes or targeted relief for specific professions — but the political mathematics of 45 million impacted voters ultimately makes comprehensive action not just morally necessary, but politically inevitable.  

    Student debt relief is not about handouts — it’s about honoring the promise that education should be a ladder up, not an anchor weighing down entire generations; it’s about ensuring that Shauntee Russell’s relief becomes the norm, not the exception. The fight is far from over.  

    The young activists I met at the March on Washington 60th anniversary understood something profound: Their debt is not their fault, but their fight is their responsibility. They carry forward the legacy of those who came before them who believed that access to education should not depend on one’s family wealth, and that crushing debt should not be the price of pursuing knowledge. 

    The arc of history still bends toward justice — but in this era of political resistance, we must be prepared to bend it ourselves through sustained organizing, innovative policy solutions and an unwavering commitment to the principle that education is a right, not a privilege reserved for the wealthy. 

    The resumption of payments is not the end of this story. It’s the beginning of the next chapter in our fight for educational equity and economic justice. And this chapter, like those before it, will be written by the voices of the millions who refuse to let debt define their destiny. 

    Jamal Watson is a professor and associate dean of graduate studies at Trinity Washington University and an editor at Diverse Issues In Higher Education. 

    Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org. 

    This story about student loan payments was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • OPINION: Trump is back. We’re still waiting on his plan for schools – The Hechinger Report

    OK. I guess we’re doing this (again).

    It feels awful for lots of reasons, of course, but mostly it’s because the country chose political vibes over policy ideas. As a researcher who spends his days trying to find evidence-based ways to make schools better, I’m at something of a loss.

    See, whatever you thought about the Harris-Walz ticket’s particular proposals, the Democrats had things to say about education issues that genuinely shape children’s development: affordable early care and learning, access to nutritious school meals, funding for English learners, and more.

    President-elect Trump’s education platform was made of much vaguer stuff — mostly culture war vibes. For instance, conservatives are eager to get the government involved in biological screenings to determine if kids have the “correct” genitalia for peeing in a particular bathroom or playing on a particular sports team. Trump talks about schools secretly imposing gender transition surgery on children. Finally, it’s likely that the administration will try to voucherize more public dollars to support families sending their children to private schools.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.

    But, again, all of this is light on substance. It’s pretty hard to see how bathroom-usage policies will help kids recover from the pandemic’s academic consequences, or get more children ready for kindergarten, or more third graders ready to read on grade level. School voucher programs may give anxious parents public money to pay for private education, but there’s not much evidence that they help students or the public schools they’re leaving behind.

    Worse yet, some of conservatives’ K–12 ideas are at war with themselves. The Republican platform calls for federal defunding of schools teaching curricula that conservatives don’t like, but it also pledges — immediately afterward — to “veto efforts to nationalize Civics Education [sic].” So they’re promising not to nationalize how schools teach history, except when they don’t like how certain schools teach history.

    Now, there was a detailed conservative plan for federal K–12 education drifting around during the campaign. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposes to “eliminate” and “redistribute the various congressionally approved federal education programs across the government.” But Trump claimed to want nothing to do with it.

    Related: How would Project 2025 change education?

    Maybe he’s telling the truth — perhaps he’s realized that Project 2025 would significantly reduce his ability to enact any sort of affirmative education policy agenda. It would be harder to remake American schools in a Trumpian image without a federal Education Department, after all.

    Of course, that’s assuming 1) that Trump has given K–12 enough thought to work through that strategic calculus, and 2) conservatives actually have an affirmative agenda for making schools more effective, something that goes deeper than lines like this from their platform: “Our Great Teachers, who are so important to the future wellbeing of our Country, will be cherished and protected by the Republican Party so that they can do the job of educating our students that they so dearly want to do.”

    Related: What education could look like under Trump and Vance

    Perhaps there’s a concrete, substantive plan for reforming Title II of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act lurking in those words, and I just don’t have the right GOP decoder ring?

    So look, conservatives: You’ve got to figure something out. The country’s schools can’t afford another four years like the first round of President Trump’s leadership, which left U.S. public schools reeling.

    By 2018, the leadership at the Fordham Institute, the country’s most august conservative education policy think tank, was calling for Secretary Betsy DeVos to resign in the hopes that troubles from her first two rocky years could be sorted out by a replacement.

    In a January 2021 piece headlined “The Wreckage Betsy DeVos Leaves Behind,” the New York Times editorial board wrote, “The Department of Education lies in ruins at precisely the time when the country most needs it.”

    Related: Trump’s deportation plan could separate millions of families, leaving schools to pick up the pieces

    Please forgive me if this reads like I’m being overdramatic. Perhaps it’s my outmoded instincts as a Very Serious Beltway Policy Researcher; I still think about policymaking as an effort to actually solve big public problems.

    I’m a hidebound fossil that way. Of course, if you really want to own me, really want to prove experts like me wrong (again), you could shock everyone by setting aside the culture wars and giving substantive education reform a try.

    Conor P. Williams is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a founding partner with The Children’s Equity Project, and a father of three children currently enrolled in public schools in Washington, DC. The views here are strictly his own.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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    Conor P. Williams

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  • STUDENT VOICE: Colleges and universities must do far more to support transfer students – The Hechinger Report

    STUDENT VOICE: Colleges and universities must do far more to support transfer students – The Hechinger Report

    When I left home at 17, I knew I wanted to go to college. I knew earning a degree would help me find a path to a more secure future. And I knew that I was interested in pursuing a career focused on social justice.

    I also had no idea how I could afford college when I was already working multiple jobs just to earn enough money to make ends meet. I had never met my father, and I had a rocky relationship with my mother, so I was largely on my own. Fortunately, I was able to use financial aid to enroll at Prairie State College, a community college just outside of Chicago. It remains the best decision I have ever made.

    I thrived at Prairie State, where I was surrounded by an incredible community of faculty, staff and other students who had my back at every turn. The support I received eventually allowed me to earn a scholarship and transfer to a four-year college to begin my pre-law journey.

    I’m now a senior at Howard University, where it remains all too obvious that the four-year college experience is not designed for transfer students like me — a realization that leaves us feeling isolated and overlooked.

    Like many transfer students, I felt stigmatized during the admissions process and alienated by other students; I didn’t get an orientation when I started, as first-year students do; and many of my previous credits didn’t transfer with me.

    That even an HBCU — commonly known for community-building efforts — struggles to effectively support transfer students underscores the gravity of this issue.

    Related: Interested in innovations in the field of higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly Higher Education newsletter.

    Solving such challenges will require four-year universities to reimagine how they support transfer students. Creating a sense of belonging for learners is critical. Research shows that students who feel as though they belong at their institution are more likely to remain and persist. Developing that connection can be challenging for transfer students, especially those coming from community colleges, as there are typically so few of us on a given campus.

    Some 80 percent of community college students aspire to earn a bachelor’s degree, yet just one-third transfer to a four-year institution. In total, community college transfers account for just 5 percent of undergraduate students at elite colleges and universities.

    The most obvious starting point for institutions looking to better support transfer students from community colleges is to admit more of us. This can be achieved by intensifying outreach efforts at local two-year colleges and more effectively promoting the message that transferring to a selective, four-year university is not only possible but encouraged. Some schools are already making an effort to admit more transfer students.

    Community college transfer students can find themselves adrift in their new institutions due to a lack of proper guidance and support. We are typically not given the insider knowledge required to navigate the complexities of a four-year university. For example, I’ve been excluded from being a part of student-led organizations that I would have needed to join as a freshman — when I was still in community college. A history of belonging to these organizations is mandatory when being considered for larger and more prominent selective organizations, including sororities and fraternities.

    Related: ‘Waste of time’: Community college transfers derail students

    The absence of a support system can transform what initially felt like an exciting step forward into a daunting and solitary journey. I am fortunate to have benefited from the support of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which provides me with access to a network of fellow transfer students and alumni who have successfully navigated this path.

    But many transfer students are not as lucky.

    Colleges could help by connecting transfer students with one another — either through on-campus groups or external organizations — to ensure they have the support, community and resources they need to thrive.

    Schools should make it clear that transfer students will be warmly welcomed and supported throughout their academic journey. By doing so, these schools can begin to foster a more inclusive environment, one that acknowledges and values the unique perspectives community college students bring.

    Colleges should also work to dismantle obstacles that complicate the transfer process and serve as subtle deterrents to students. Every prohibitive application fee, convoluted form or arbitrary rule might as well be a sign that says, “Turn back now.”

    For example, students lose an estimated 43 percent of their credits when they transfer, wiping out semesters of hard work, extending their time and increasing their costs to a degree. Institutions can proactively create clearer, more consistent transfer agreements with local community colleges, guaranteeing that credits will transfer.

    The financial aid and application processes for transfer students, who are not typically provided financial award packages upon admission, must also take into account their unique needs and circumstances.

    Here’s why this all matters: Data is clear that students who transfer from a community college are just as capable of succeeding as students who are first-time freshmen or transfer from four-year institutions.

    We know we can do this. We just need opportunities and support.

    Rebbie Davis is an English major, Philosophy minor who previously attended Prairie State College before transferring to Howard University. She is president of the Howard University Writers Guild and vice chair of HU’s Future Law Scholars’ board of directors.

    Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about community college transfer students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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    Rebbie Davis

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  • In Norway, a kid can still be a kid – The Hechinger Report

    In Norway, a kid can still be a kid – The Hechinger Report

    Imagine sending your 4-year-old to preschool knowing they will spend nearly all day happily traipsing through the woods, climbing trees and resting in hammocks. Imagine that they also take part in what most of us would view as risky activities for a preschooler, like building fires and using knives to whittle figures out of sticks. For children growing up in Norway, this is a daily reality in the country’s “barnehagen”: child care programs designed for children ages 1 through 6.

    In Norway, childhood is seen as a time of innate value that must be joyful and respected. Early learning — especially involving outdoor play — is part of that. The country has enshrined the right to child care into law and demands that early learning programs be rooted in “tolerance and respect” and teach values like empathy, charity and “a belief in human worth.”

    The country is so committed to early childhood education, it covers the vast majority of operating costs and subsidizes care for parents, who pay the equivalent of about $190 per month for the first child in care, and less for additional children in care. Children are guaranteed a spot in child care at age 1.

    Sounds idyllic, right? In April, as a Spencer Education Journalism Fellow at Columbia University, I traveled to Oslo to see it for myself. Over the course of a week, I spent time in nine different kindergartens to learn more about how Norwegians view the early years, how the country’s approach to early learning contends with a changing social demographic, and what the rest of us can learn from Norway. I returned hopeful and rejuvenated, but also with a greater sense of urgency about America’s need to address our own approach to child care. You can read the story, which was published in partnership with The Christian Science Monitor, by clicking the link below.

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

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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    Jackie Mader

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  • What one state learned after a decade of free community college

    What one state learned after a decade of free community college

    View of the Tennessee State Capitol, where lawmakers were the first in the nation to pass a law in 2014 to make community college tuition free for future high school graduates. Credit: Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

    The free community college movement effectively began in 2014 when Republican Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee signed the Tennessee Promise Scholarship Act, which offered the state’s high school graduates free tuition to attend any two-year public community college or technical college in Tennessee.

    Communities around the country had been experimenting with free college programs since 2005, usually with private funding, but Tennessee was the first to make it a statewide policy, and it inspired 36 states to follow suit. This year, Massachusetts was the most recent to make community college free. (Here is a search tool for all the free college programs, including more than 400 local ones.) 

    But as free-tuition programs have multiplied, so have questions and doubts. Are low-income students benefiting? Is free tuition leading to more college graduates? 

    Thirty-seven states operate statewide free college tuition programs. Some programs cover all tuition and fees; others don’t. Some just cover two-year community colleges while others include four-year institutions. Some only give assistance to low-income students; others give aid only to students who meet certain academic thresholds. Some states offer free tuition to a combination of those with need and merit.  Source: College Promise

    Unfortunately we have to wait years to allow students time to get through college, but answers to these important questions are starting to emerge from Tennessee. College Promise, a nonprofit that advocates for making college free, along with tnAchieves, the nonprofit that helps administer the Tennessee program, released a 10-year anniversary report on Oct. 14. The report offers encouraging signs that the Tennessee Promise scholarship program, which now costs about $29 million a year in tuition subsidies and other services, has helped more students go to college and earn two-year associate degrees. In addition, Tennessee shared some of the lessons learned. 

    First the numbers. The report highlights that more than 90 percent of all Tennessee high school seniors apply for the free college program. All students regardless of family income are eligible, and roughly 15,000 students a year ultimately use the program to enroll in college right after high school.  About half come from low-income families who qualify for the Federal Pell Grant. 

    Thirty-seven percent of students who stuck with the Promise scholarship program earned a two-year associate degree within three years, compared with only 11 percent of students who didn’t maintain eligibility, often because of incomplete financial aid paperwork, unfinished service hours that are required or failure to stay enrolled in college at least part time. Tennessee projects that since its inception, the scholarship program will have produced a total of 50,000 college graduates by 2025, administrators told me in an interview.

    Before the free tuition program went statewide, only 16 percent of Tennessee students who started community college in 2011 had earned an associate degree three years later. Graduation rates then rose to 22 percent for students who started community college in 2014. At this time, 27 Tennessee counties had launched their own free tuition programs, but the statewide policy had not yet gone into effect. 

    By 2020, when free tuition statewide had been in effect for five years, 28 percent of Tennessee’s community college students had earned a degree in three years. Not all of these students participated in the free tuition program, but many did. 

    It’s unclear if the free tuition program is the driving force behind the rising graduation rates. It could be that motivated students sign up for it and abide by the rules of the scholarship program and might have still graduated in higher numbers without it. It could also be that unrelated nationwide reforms, from increases in federal financial aid to academic advising, have helped more students make it to the finish line.

    I talked with Celeste Carruthers, an economist at University of Tennessee Knoxville, who has been studying the free tuition program in her state. She is currently crunching the numbers to figure out whether the program is causing graduation rates to climb, but the signs she sees right now are giving her “cause for optimism.” Using U.S. Census data, she compared Tennessee’s college attainment rates with the rest of the United States. In the years immediately following the statewide scholarship program, beginning with the high school class of 2015, there is a striking jump in the share of young adults with associate degrees a few years later, while associate degree attainment elsewhere in the nation improved only mildly. Tennessee quickly went from being a laggard in young adult college attainment to a leader – at least until the pandemic hit. (See graph.)

    Computations by Celeste Carruthers, University of Tennessee Knoxville. Data Source: American Community Survey, via IPUMS (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml). Graph produced by Jill Barshay/The Hechinger Report.

    While evaluation of the Tennessee program continues, researchers and program officers point to three lessons learned so far: 

    • The scholarship program hasn’t helped many low-income students financially. The Federal Pell Grant of $7,395 far exceeds annual tuition and fees at Tennessee’s community colleges, which hover around $4,500 for a full-time student. Community college was already free for low-income students, who represent roughly half of the students in Tennessee’s free college program. Like other free college programs around the country, Tennessee’s is structured as a “last dollar” program, which means that it only pays out after other forms of financial aid are exhausted. 

    That means that tuition subsidies have primarily gone to students from higher income families that don’t qualify for the Pell Grant. In Tennessee, the funding source is the state lottery. Roughly $22 million of lottery proceeds were used to pay for community college tuition in the most recent year.

    • Free tuition alone isn’t enough help. In 2018, Tennessee added coaching and mentoring for low-income students to give them extra support. (Low-income students hadn’t been receiving any tuition subsidies because other financial aid sources already covered their tuition.) Then, in 2022, Tennessee added emergency grants for books and other living expenses for needy students – up to $1,000 per student. The extra assistance for low-income students is financed through state budget allocations and private fundraising. For students who are the first generation in their families to attend college, current graduation rates have jumped to 34 percent with this extra support compared with 11 percent without it, the 10-year report said. 

    “Pairing the financial support with the non-financial support – that mentoring support, the coaching support – is really the sweet spot,” said Graham Thomas, chief community and government relations officer at tnAchieves. “It’s the game changer, and that is often overlooked for the money part.” 

    Coaching is best conducted in person on campus. During COVID, Tennessee launched an online mentoring platform, but students didn’t engage with it. “We learned our lesson that in-person is the most valuable way to go when building relationships,” said Ben Sterling, chief content officer at tnAchieves.

    • The worst case scenario didn’t happen. When free community college was first announced, critics fretted that the zero price tag would lure students away from four-year colleges, which aren’t free. That’s bad because the transfer process from community college back to a four-year school can be rocky with students losing credits and the time invested. Studies have shown that most students are more likely to complete a four-year degree if they start at a four-year institution. But the number of bachelor’s degrees did not fall. It seems possible that the free tuition policy lured students who wouldn’t have gone to college at all in the past, without cannibalizing four-year colleges. However, bachelor’s degree acquisition in Tennessee, though rising, remains far below the rest of the nation. (See graph.)
    Computations by Celeste Carruthers, University of Tennessee Knoxville. Source: American Community Survey, via IPUMS (https://usa.ipums.org/usa/index.shtml). Graph produced by Jill Barshay/The Hechinger Report.

    As an aside, students are also able to use their Tennessee Promise scholarship funds at a limited number of public four-year colleges that offer associate degrees. About 10 percent of the program’s students take advantage of this option.

    Despite all the positive signs for educational attainment in Tennessee, recent years have not been kind. “Everything that’s happened to enrollment since COVID  kind of erased all of the gains from Tennessee Promise,” said the University of Tennessee’s Carruthers. The combination of pandemic disruptions, a strong job market and changing public sentiment about higher education hammered enrollment at community colleges nationwide. Students have started returning again in Tennessee, but community college enrollment is still below what it was in 2019.  

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about free community college was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters. 

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • OPINION: I’d love to predict what a Kamala Harris presidency might mean for education, but we don’t have enough information – The Hechinger Report

    OPINION: I’d love to predict what a Kamala Harris presidency might mean for education, but we don’t have enough information – The Hechinger Report

    Predicting the future is often compared to reading tea leaves. In the case of forecasting what education policies Kamala Harris might pursue as president, though, a more apt analogy might be reading her mind. Frankly it’s anyone’s guess what her education policies would be given how few clues we have.

    It wasn’t always this way. Previously, presidential candidates laid out detailed plans for schools. George H. W. Bush wanted to be the education president. Bill Clinton wanted to use stronger schools to build a bridge to the 21st century. George W. Bush wanted to leave no child behind, and move the Republican party in a more compassionate direction. Barack Obama wanted Democrats to break with teacher unions by embracing merit pay.

    But in more recent cycles, education has dropped from the list of voters’ top-tier issues, and candidates have become increasingly cagey about their plans.

    Donald Trump’s administration was known for its advocacy of school choice, but that wasn’t something he talked much about on the campaign trail in 2015 or 2016; it only came into focus with his selection of Betsy DeVos as secretary of education.

    And Joe Biden’s unwillingness to challenge progressive orthodoxy on education would have been hard to predict, given his moderate persona in 2019 and 2020. What turned out to be the best guide to his education policies was his self-identity as the “most union-friendly president in history” — plus the membership of his wife, community college professor Jill Biden, in the National Education Association.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.

    So here we are with another election in which education issues are barely registering, trying to predict what Harris might do if elected. She has said even less than Trump or Biden, partly because of the truncated nature of her campaign, and partly because of her strategy of leaning into positive vibes and declining to offer policy specifics in the hope that doing so will better her chances of prevailing in November. Official statements — a Harris campaign policy document and the Democratic Party Platform — are thin on details.

    Making things even harder is Harris’ well-known willingness to run away from previous positions. She did that in 2019 when the Black Lives Matter movement made it awkward for her to embrace her record in law enforcement — including her tough stance on prosecuting parents of truant children.

    Expect a new era of isolation, separatism and a “politics of humiliation” in education


    That’s why looking at Harris’ statements from the campaign trail five years ago or her record as a U.S. senator only goes so far.

    What we do know is this: She’s sitting vice president. She has positioned herself in the middle of the Democratic Party, not wanting to break with progressives on the left or business-friendly centrists in the middle.

    And while her image is not blue-collar like Biden’s, she’s been careful not to put any sunlight between herself and the unions, including teachers unions. One of her first speeches as the presumptive Democratic nominee was to the American Federation of Teachers.

    For these reasons, it is likely that a Harris administration would bring significant continuity with Biden’s policies, including on schools.

    Picture her appointing a former teacher as secretary of education, proposing healthy increases in school spending and speaking out against privatization, book bans and the like. Call it the Hippocratic Oath approach to Democratic policymaking on education: First, do no harm.

    Can those of us involved in K-12 education hope for bolder strokes from a President Harris — including some that might move the needle on reform? Anything is possible.

    Her selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate thrust the issue of universal free school meals onto the national radar, given Minnesota’s leadership on that policy. Perhaps she will throw her support behind a congressional effort to provide federal funding for such an initiative.

    The most significant play we might anticipate, though, could be on teacher pay. Boosting teacher salaries by $13,500 per year (to close the gap with other professionals) was the centerpiece of her education agenda when she ran for president in 2019.

    It’s a popular idea, especially since so many Americans underestimate what teachers are paid today.

    She has a ready vehicle to pursue it thanks to the looming expiration of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which makes new legislation around tax reform a must-pass item for Congress next year. The most straightforward way for the federal government to put more money into teachers’ pockets isn’t through a complicated grant program to states and districts, but via tax credits that would flow directly to educators.

    The tax code already allows teachers to deduct up to $300 for classroom expenses. There are also several student loan forgiveness programs for teachers.

    A major teacher tax credit could quickly get expensive, however, given the size of America’s teaching force (3 to 4 million depending on how you count it). At, say, $10,000 per teacher, that’s $30 to $40 billion a year — in the neighborhood of what we spend on Title I and IDEA combined.

    A smarter, more affordable approach would be to target only teachers serving in high-need schools — as the student loan forgiveness programs already do. Studies from Dallas and elsewhere acknowledge that great teachers will move to high-poverty schools — but only if offered significantly higher pay, in the neighborhood of $10,000 more per year.

    We also know that when we pay teachers the same regardless of where they teach — the policy of almost every school district in the country — the neediest schools end up with the least-experienced teachers.

    A tax credit for teachers in Title 1 schools — which get government funding for having high numbers or high percentages of students from low-income families — could transform the profession overnight, significantly closing the teacher quality gap, school funding gap and, eventually, the achievement gap, too.

    Related: OPINION: If Trump wins, count on continued culture wars, school vouchers and a fixation on ending the federal Department of Education

    Given Democrats’ interest in boosting the “care economy,” perhaps such a tax credit could flow to instructors in high-poverty childcare and pre-K centers, as well. This would fit well with Harris’ promise to move America toward an “opportunity economy,” including by boosting the pay of childcare and preschool teachers.

    Still, a big effort on “differential pay” for teachers might be just one wonk’s wish-casting. We’ve had two presidential administrations in a row with little action on K-12 education. It’s quite likely that a Harris administration would be a third.

    But here’s hoping for a pleasant surprise after November.

    Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. He served in the George W. Bush administration.

    Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about Kamala Harris’ education policies was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

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    Michael J. Petrilli

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  • TEACHER VOICE: Here’s why teachers should help students develop logic and reasoning skills early on – The Hechinger Report

    TEACHER VOICE: Here’s why teachers should help students develop logic and reasoning skills early on – The Hechinger Report

    As a special education teacher, I often encountered students who struggled with solving math problems. Many would simply add all the numbers they saw without grasping what the problems were actually asking.

    To help, I introduced keywords like “all together” for addition and “difference” for subtraction.

    However, this approach fell short when students focused solely on the keywords, missing the problem’s context. Today, elementary school teachers share similar struggles with their students.

    The issue isn’t just about teaching math; it also involves addressing gaps in literacy. Reading skills are closely related to children’s ability to solve math problems. And, as much as early literacy development plays a critical role in developing problem-solving abilities, early numeracy strongly predicts overall academic success, including literacy development: Research has found that literacy and math development are intertwined.

    Yet, pre-K teachers spend an average of only 2.5 percent of their day on numeracy skills — a gap that underscores the need for teaching approaches that bridge math and literacy.

    Teachers must do more to help students build foundational cognitive skills, such as logic and reasoning.

    Related: Our biweekly Early Childhood newsletter highlights innovative solutions to the obstacles facing the youngest students. Subscribe for free.

    Integrated teaching can help students view math and English language arts as complementary disciplines that help them solve real-world problems. It could lead to better academic outcomes and a richer understanding of the world. Unfortunately, most elementary schools teach math and English language arts separately.

    One way that teachers can address these comprehension gaps is to initially remove numbers from word problems and encourage students to read through the entire problems before they add or subtract. By solving “numberless word problems,” students can visualize and grasp the context before computing.

    We can also use the power of storytelling. In my classroom, I incorporated engaging literature into math instruction to help my students better understand word problems. We used “Amanda Bean’s Amazing Dream,” a Marilyn Burns Brainy Day Book by Cindy Neuschwander, to explore multiplication concepts; the book’s illustrations helped students identify repeated addition and multiplication and allowed them to recognize similar scenarios in math problems. Incorporating math through storytelling helps children better understand and remember math concepts and also improves their confidence and reduces math anxiety. By building on the critical skills students need to excel in math and ELA, we can better equip them to apply math to real-world problems.

    Here is what this approach encourages:

    • Improved comprehension: Stories and real-world scenarios promote a better understanding of math concepts, making abstract ideas more accessible.
    • Math visualization: Using descriptive writing and storytelling to explain math concepts, such as measurement and fractions, gives students a tangible reference for math principles as they exist in the world.
    • Vocabulary development: Just as students learn new words in ELA, with math storytelling they learn math vocabulary to enhance their understanding of the math concepts needed to solve problems.
    • Critical thinking skills: When students analyze problems from various perspectives and use language to describe them, they’re better equipped to apply problem-solving skills across disciplines.
    • Contextualized problem-solving: By establishing context through literature, students are able to construct meaning to solve other problems.

    Administrators should encourage training for teachers and provide resources that effectively blend math and ELA. Supporting a curriculum that encourages the teacher to be a facilitator — rather than a sage on a stage — will encourage more students to talk about math, draw upon their language skills and solve problems together.

    Here are some approaches educators can use to blend instruction to challenge students and enhance math and ELA skills:

    • Project-based learning: Assign hands-on projects that require mathematical analysis and language arts skills, such as reviewing datasets, creating infographics and writing interpretations.
    • Collaborative learning environments: Ask groups of students to work together to solve complex problems that require mathematical reasoning and effective communication. Their work could include debates or reviews of written mathematical explanations.
    • Literature-based mathematical discussions: Read books that incorporate mathematical themes or concepts and include a character who uses math to solve problems; such books can spark lively debate and serve as a springboard to discuss how math applies to real life.

    These strategies strengthen the connection between math and ELA and promote deeper learning and engagement for all students.

    Related: You probably don’t have your preschooler thinking about math enough

    Using an integrated approach with literature also provides a level of comfort for teachers. Not surprisingly, most elementary school teachers didn’t choose their profession due to a deep love of mathematics — and some may suffer from math anxiety themselves. Teachers can model problem-solving beyond the classroom by expanding what it means to teach math through children’s books and hands-on activities.

    Math instruction will only improve if administrators, educators, parents and policymakers push for integrated curricula. Doing so will not only help students’ math, but promote a more effective education system overall.

    Thera Pearce is the learning services manager at ORIGO Education. She has experience in instructional design, curriculum consulting and professional development coordination. She has also worked as a special education teacher and coach for 15 years in North Carolina.

    Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about early numeracy was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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    Thera Pearce

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  • A decade of data in one state shows an unexpected result when colleges drop remedial courses

    A decade of data in one state shows an unexpected result when colleges drop remedial courses

    Fifteen years ago, the Obama administration and philanthropic foundations encouraged more Americans to get a college degree. Remedial classes were a big barrier. Two-thirds of community college students and 40 percent of four-year college students weren’t academically prepared for college-level work and were forced to take prerequisite “developmental” courses that didn’t earn them college credits. Many of these college students never progressed to college-level courses. They racked up student loan debts and dropped out. Press reports, including my own, called it a “remedial ed trap.”

    One controversial but popular solution was to eliminate these prerequisite classes and let weaker students proceed straight to college-level courses, called “corequisite courses,” because they include some remedial support at the same time. In recent years, more than 20 states, from California to Florida, have either replaced remedial classes at their public colleges with corequisites or given students a choice between the two. 

    In 2015, Tennessee’s public colleges were some of the first higher education institutions to eliminate stand-alone remedial courses. A 10-year analysis of how almost 100,000 students fared before and after the new policy was conducted by researchers at the University of Delaware, and their draft paper was made public earlier this year. It has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal and may still be revised, but it is the first longer term study to look at college degree completion for tens of thousands of students who have taken corequisites, and it found that the new supports haven’t worked as well as many hoped, especially for lower achieving students .

    First the good news. Like earlier research, this study of Tennessee’s two-year community colleges found that after the elimination of remedial classes, students passed more college courses, both introductory courses in English and math, and also more advanced courses in those subjects.

    However, the extra credit accumulation effect quickly faded. Researchers tracked each student for three years, and by the end of their third year, students had racked up about the same number of total credits as earlier students had under the old remedial education regime. The proportion of students earning either two-year associate degrees or four-year bachelor’s degrees did not increase after the corequisite reform. Lower achieving college students, defined as those with very low ACT exam scores in high school, were more likely to drop out of college and less likely to earn a short-term certificate degree after the switch to corequisites.

    “The evidence is showing that these reforms are not increasing graduation rates,” said Alex Goudas, a higher education researcher and a community college professor at Delta College in Michigan, who was not involved in this study. “Some students are benefiting a little bit – only temporarily – and other students are harmed permanently.”

    It seems like a paradox. Students are initially passing more courses, but are also more likely to drop out and less likely to earn credentials. Florence Xiaotao Ran, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware and the lead researcher on the Tennessee study, explained to me that the dropouts appear to be different types of students than the ones earning more credits. Students with somewhat higher ACT test scores in high school, who were close to the old remedial ed cutoff of 19 points (out of 36) and scoring near the 50th percentile nationally, were more likely to succeed in passing the new corequisite courses straight away. Some students who were far below this threshold also passed the corequisite courses, but many more failed. Students below the 10th percentile (13 and below on the ACT) dropped out in greater numbers and were less likely to earn a short-term certificate. 

    Data from other states shows a similar pattern. In California, which largely eliminated remedial education in 2019, failure rates in introductory college-level math courses soared, even as more students also succeeded in passing these courses, according to a study of an Hispanic-serving two-year college in southern California. 

    Ran’s Tennessee analysis has two important implications. The new corequisite courses – as they currently operate – aren’t working well for the lowest achieving students. And the change isn’t even helping students who are now able to earn more college credits during the first year or two of college. They’re still struggling to graduate and are not earning a college degree any faster.

    Some critics of corequisite reforms, such as Delta College’s Goudas, argue that some form of remedial education needs to be reintroduced for students who lack basic math, reading and writing skills. 

    Meanwhile, supporters of the reforms believe that corequisite courses need to be improved. Thomas Brock, director of the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, described the higher dropout rates and falling number of credentials in the Tennessee study as “troubling.” But he says that the old remedial ed system failed too many students. (The Hechinger Report is an independent news organization, also based at Teachers College but is unaffiliated with CCRC.)

    “The answer is not to go back,” said Brock, “but to double down on corequisites and offer students more support,” acknowledging that some students need more time to build the skills they lack. Brock believes this skill-building can happen simultaneously as students earn college credits and not as a preliminary stepping stone. “No student comes to college to take remedial courses,” he added.

    One confounding issue is that corequisite classes come in so many different forms. In some cases, students get a double dose of math or English with three credit hours of a remedial class taken concurrently with three credit hours of a college-level course. A more common approach is to tack on an extra hour or so to the college class. In her analysis, Ran discovered that instructional time was cut in half for the weakest students, who received many more hours of math or writing instruction under the old remedial system.

    “In the new scenario, everyone gets the same amount of instruction or developmental material, regardless if you are just one point below the cutoff or 10 points below the cutoff,” said Ran.

    There are also big differences in what takes place during the extra support time that’s built into a corequisite course. Some colleges offer tutoring centers to help students fill in their knowledge gaps. Others schedule computer lab time where students practice math problems on educational software. Another option is extended class time, where the main professor teaches the same material that’s in the college level course only more slowly, spread across four hours a week instead of the usual three.  

    Overcoming weak foundational skills is not the only obstacle that community college students face. The researchers I interviewed emphasized that these students are struggling to juggle work and family responsibilities along with their classes, and they need more support – academic advising, career counseling and sometimes therapy and financial help.  Without additional support, students get derailed.  This may explain why the benefits of early credit accumulation fade out and are not yet translating into higher graduation rates. 

    Even before the pandemic, the vast majority of community college students arrived on campus without a strong enough foundation for regular college-credit bearing classes and were steered to either remedial or new corequisite classes. High school achievement levels have deteriorated further since 2020, when the data in Ran’s study ended. “It’s not their fault,” said Ran. “It’s the K-12 system that failed them.”

    That’s why it’s more important now than ever to figure out how to help under-prepared college students if we want to improve post-secondary education. 

    Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at (212) 678-3595 or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about corequisite courses was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters. 

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Jill Barshay

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  • OPINION: If we don’t do more to help homeless students, we will perpetuate an ongoing crisis

    OPINION: If we don’t do more to help homeless students, we will perpetuate an ongoing crisis

    Young people experiencing family instability and trauma are at increased risk for precarious living situations and interrupted educational experiences. And students who leave school before graduation are considerably more likely to experience homelessness and less likely to enroll in college. 

    By failing to systematically and preemptively address youth homelessness through our schools, we are increasing the chances of hundreds of thousands of young people becoming and remaining homeless. 

    We can change this. 

    Schools are key to intervention. Schools can and should serve as indispensable resources for students who are experiencing unstable housing or outright homelessness. Lamentably, too often, there aren’t enough staff members to carry out existing support programs, much less manage additional programs designed for youth who are at risk for or are already experiencing homelessness.

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    I saw these issues firsthand when I worked as the chief of staff at Chicago Public Schools, but they are prevalent at schools nationwide. For roughly 700,000 youth ages 13 to 17, not having stable or any housing is top of mind, a recent study found. 

    Here are some suggestions for identifying youth at risk and tackling youth homelessness systemically. 

    Paying more attention to risk factors will increase the chance that at-risk students will be identified earlier and interventions enacted. 

    We’ve learned a lot about risk factors at the independent, nonpartisan policy research center I lead. For example, a family’s income is a strong indicator of risk, so school officials and staff should be hypersensitive in districts where families are struggling financially.

    Yet appearances alone won’t necessarily indicate which students are struggling. Many schools rely on student self-reporting, which students are less likely to do if they don’t know there are resources available or if they are too ashamed to reveal their status. 

    Schools should initiate a universal screening at the beginning of the school year to gauge if students are vulnerable to homelessness. All staff should routinely be trained to look for signs of homelessness and risk factors. 

    Not everyone at a school needs to deeply engage with each student, but they should be aware of signs so they can make referrals to a social worker or the school’s McKinney-Vento liaison if needed.

    The federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act includes a requirement for schools to provide “comparable” transportation for homeless students to get to and from school. And while every school has a McKinney-Vento liaison who administers programs funded by federal dollars, at many schools that assistance boils down to just providing a bus pass for homeless students, nothing more. 

    If their school is only able to provide a bus pass, students’ many other needs — like clothing and mental health care — will not be met. 

    Having more school social workers would also help identify students struggling with housing stability and match them to programs and services that could meet their needs. 

    Another significant risk factor for homelessness is dropping out of school. A truancy officer’s role is critical when students drop out. Administrators should be asking themselves what it takes to get kids back in school to stay. The goal of that position should not be to identify and punish students but to figure out what resources they need to get them back to school and keep them there. 

    Related: Couch surfing, living in cars: Housing insecurity derails foster kids’ college dreams

    One way to ensure that interventions are available and applied would be to mirror the work of the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse, the place where evidence-based interventions for child welfare are vetted, rated and made eligible for federal reimbursement. 

    The inclusion of an evidence-based clearinghouse in a federal program is a legislative component that has historically enabled bipartisan buy-in. Since schools are already burdened by tight budgets and overworked staff, adding a clearinghouse for homelessness prevention efforts would allow qualified outside agencies to provide — and be reimbursed for — evidence-based intervention services. 

    Two other points not to be overlooked are that youth homelessness is experienced disproportionately by Black, Hispanic and LGBTQ youth, and youth homelessness is a leading pathway into adult homelessness. That’s why supporting young people at risk for or experiencing homelessness — through substantial investments and increased services — is a significant way to address racial inequity and break these cycles. 

    The point of school is to educate and nurture our youth so they can successfully pass on to the next phase of life. If we work together, we can disrupt the brutal cycle of homelessness and give more young people the future they deserve. 

    Bryan Samuels is executive director of Chapin Hall. He previously served as chief of staff at Chicago Public Schools, director of Illinois DCFS, and commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the first Obama administration.

    This story about homeless students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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    Bryan Samuels

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  • OPINION: Give college students free subscriptions to their local newspapers so they can read them on their phones

    OPINION: Give college students free subscriptions to their local newspapers so they can read them on their phones

    As the start of the school year approaches, high schools, colleges and universities across the country are figuring out how to help young people navigate the 2024 elections during these highly polarized and contentious times.

    Here’s a way we can help students become informed and active participants in our democracy, while potentially avoiding fights in classrooms and on playing fields: Provide them with free, digital access to their community’s local newspaper so they can read it on their phones.

    Engaging young people in democracy — getting them to follow the news and to vote — has always been a concern for educators and has always been a challenge. Young people pay less attention to the news and participate less than older people. This was the case fifty years ago and remains the case today.

    That’s why in Oneonta, New York, Hartwick College’s newly launched Institute of Public Service is offering students a free digital subscription to the local paper, The Daily Star. This new initiative has emerged from the institute’s mission to help young people become more informed about and engaged with local government and the issues affecting the community where they go to school.

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    It’s no surprise that the vast majority of teens report spending a lot of time on social media, especially YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram; a growing share say that they are on social media “almost constantly,” a recent report by the Pew Research Center shows.

    Young people also say that social media is the most common way that they get news; many add that they do not actively seek out news, but are only exposed to it incidentally as part of their curated social media feeds.

    Reliance on social media for information about candidates, policies and the actions of our government is a serious problem since much of the news content on social media is not the product of authentic, verified journalism. Inaccurate, misleading and conspiratorial information is common.

    Moreover, the way social media algorithms work, readers with certain political leanings will increasingly be exposed only to content reflecting those leanings. This dynamic makes it hard for young people to find any common ground across partisan divides.

    Providing young people with barrier-free access to a local newspaper is a concrete way for educational institutions to counter that trend and foster engaged citizenship.

    This works because local politics is much less partisan than national politics, as New York Timescolumnist Ezra Klein pointed out in “Why We’re Polarized.” In most localities, we still see Democrats and Republicans working together to solve problems. The work of local government directly affects the lives of those in their communities.

    Furthermore, Pew Research shows that Americans of both parties see value in local newspapers. Views about local news are not as starkly divided as opinions about the national media. As a result, local government and local news provide a good entry point to democracy for young people.

    I’m heartened by new partnerships between local news outlets and academic institutions across the country, such as the one at the University of Vermont, through which the school is providing journalism students with the opportunity to write for local newspapers and get hands-on civic experience while also helping provide professional news coverage for their communities.

    Related: Could colleges make voting as popular as going to football games?

    By investing in local news, schools and colleges can invest both in their communities and in democracy. Due to the changing news media environment, local newspapers have been in serious decline. Over the past several decades, we have seen hundreds close down. Currently, the majority of counties in America have only one local newspaper or, even more problematically, none at all.

    Without local news, it is very difficult for people and communities to know what their local elected officials are doing and to hold power to account.

    Many high school and college libraries have databases that allow students to search and access stories from a range of newspapers, and these are wonderful services. But they also take time and work to access, requiring students to log in and wade through multiple portals to get to news stories. And often the content in these databases is not updated throughout the day.

    Giving students subscriptions to their local newspapers enables them to simply click the app on their phones and start reading.

    Moreover, research shows that, like many other democratic behaviors, including voting, reading a newspaper and following the news is a habit: Once you start doing it, you are likely to continue.

    At Hartwick, we hope that providing free, easy access to our local newspaper will result in more students consuming verified, objective news and lead to more informed and thoughtful discussions on campus and in our classrooms.

    We encourage other schools to do the same. Nudging even a handful of students to become lifelong newspaper readers is a way for educational institutions to transform the lives of those students while strengthening our democracy — and our local newspapers.

    Laurel Elder is professor and chair of political science at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., and is co-director of the Hartwick Institute of Public Service.

    This story about college students and newspapers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

    Laurel Elder

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