Author: BelieveAgain

As interest in four-day school weeks grows, more states are enacting laws or considering other measures that limit when schools can shift to the abbreviated schedule.Most recently, an Indiana law that took effect July 1 requires schools to meet new criteria before they can apply and be approved for a four-day week waiver. Among those conditions: Schools must maintain an A rating with the state education department, provide enrichment and remediation opportunities for students when classes aren’t in session, and meet the state’s minimum teacher salary of $45,000 per year. Schools that use four-day schedules must prove they meet these…

Sarah Cook spent months trying to cajole her Ohio school district into providing a safe way for her medically fragile daughter to attend school in person during the COVID-19 pandemic.After a series of increasingly tense, circular conversations, Cook called in the closest thing she had to a cavalry: The office for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education, which is charged with enforcing federal civil rights laws in the nation’s schools.With OCR’s involvement, “I felt like I had a partner in trying to help me get resolution,” Cook said. “They had some authority, whereas I felt a bit powerless…

A federal grant program for professional development focused on working with English learners will continue this fall with a new cohort of projects, and new priorities, including letters of endorsement from governors and state education officials.The office of English language acquisition (OELA) ran the National Professional Development grant program for years. Grant projects partnered researchers with local schools to advance English-learner research and create certification pathways for teachers working with the growing student population.Since early 2025, the grant program has experienced major upheavals,including:The loss of almost all dedicated program officers following mass layoffs in the U.S. Department of Education in…

A range of voices from across the field of education—from frontline teachers and administrators to major school associations—are urging the Trump administration to change or soften proposed regulations that would add new restrictions to federal grants.The White House Office of Management and Budget received a torrent of comments—about 500,000—by the July 13 deadline, including submissions from national and state education groups and many individual educators.The draft changes to the federal government’s “uniform grants guidance,” managed by the OMB, would add new restrictions on grant-funded efforts that clash with a president’s policy positions.The proposal would also empower political appointees to intervene…

The U.S. Department of Education has launched a new initiative aimed at ensuring schools promptly respond to allegations of sexual misconduct by teachers and don’t allow educators facing such allegations to move to different positions undisciplined.The Education Department said in a statement that it’s cracking down on a practice dubbed “passing the trash”—when instead of firing or disciplining educators accused of sexual misconduct, districts reassign the staff member to a different role or the employee is allowed to move to a different district, “enabling them to continue harming kids in another environment.”The initiative includes new guidance to school districts about…

It may sound uncontroversial that evidence should affect school decisions. In practice, though, it is deeply contested. When a district considers a new reading curriculum, a technology platform, or an intervention program, leaders are faced with competing claims from vendors and advocates that are often described as “research-based.” Sorting out which products, programs, and policies will improve student outcomes can be intellectually challenging. Those decisions can be politically challenging as well because a variety of groups are affected by school contracts, jobs, budgets, and priorities.Local control over decisions about curricula and other important issues has long been a defining feature…

California voters this year are set to decide who will serve as the state’s next superintendent of public instruction. But with campaign season already underway, the job the two contenders are running for is about to change drastically.Starting next year, the nation’s largest state will place its education department under the control of a commissioner appointed by the governor instead of the elected state superintendent who has traditionally run it. The elected superintendent’s role will still exist, but that official will be stripped of most powers. Instead, they will become one of 13 members of the state board of education…

Much of the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education would become permanent under a package of bills released this week by Republicans on the House Education and the Workforce committee, including Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan, the panel’s chairman.The introduction of the 10 measures—which are expected to receive committee consideration as early as next week—represents the most significant step so far among congressional Republicans to make good on President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to nix the Education Department.The package of bills, unlike some other legislation that’s been proposed, wouldn’t formally close the Education Department. But they still…

Two transgender girls who were the first to challenge President Donald Trump’s executive order, “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” have withdrawn their lawsuit in New Hampshire based on a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld state bans on transgender athletes in girls’ sports and their own personal hardships, their lawyer said.“This case was always about two courageous young girls who simply wanted the same opportunities as their peers to participate in school life,” their lawyer, Chris Erchull of GLAD Law, said in a statement Thursday. “Their willingness to stand up to extraordinary hostility made clear the human cost…

A new federal policy subjecting graduate-level teaching and education leadership degrees to lower federal borrowing caps will constrain educators’ advancement into administrative jobs such as principal and superintendent positions, a new research analysis finds.“This has sweeping workforce implications” in education, Lennon Audrain, an assistant professor of education at Arizona State University and the author of the study, said in an interview.Audrain, who studies educator workforce issues, recently released a working paper that analyzes the potential impact of the lower borrowing limits that educators face under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that passed last summer and the U.S. Department of…