Author: BelieveAgain

The U.S. Department of Education violated the law when it set a definition of “professional” graduate degree that excluded education and several other fields, a federal judge has ruled.The Wednesday ruling from Judge Beryl Howell came in response to lawsuits from professional health care organizations and the National Education Association that challenged the agency’s May regulation limiting the definition of “professional” degrees to just 11 mostly doctoral-level degrees.The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed last summer imposed new caps on how much graduate students can borrow in federal student loans, in a move proponents have said…

An Oregon federal lawmaker is seeking to impeach U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon over her shuttering of major Education Department functions, part of her stated goal to shut down the department entirely.U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Dist. 1, cited the transfer of Education Department programs to other parts of the federal government, essentially gutting the department, as reason to oust the secretary. Most recently, the department relocated its civil rights and disability services offices to the U.S. Department of Justice, a move critics say will prevent school discrimination cases from being resolved across the country.McMahon, an ex-CEO of World Wrestling…

Last week, the U.S. Department of Education announced that it has given up significant aspects of its civil rights enforcement obligations to the U.S Department of Justice’s civil rights division. It appears that the Education Department’s office for civil rights will now use the DOJ’s civil rights division to evaluate, investigate, and resolve complaints from students and families. The administration’s press materials call it a partnership and promise families won’t notice the difference. Families will notice.The reason is a single, unglamorous distinction. OCR is obligated to look at all complaints. Its own case-processing manual requires it to evaluate every complaint…

A state that has yet to commit to participating in the federal school choice tax credit starting next year has passed a new law restricting scholarships awarded under the program primarily to public school and low-income students.Vermont is the first state to pass such rules for the new scholarship tax credit program, an approach some Democrats have said they may favor to direct more of the law’s benefits to public rather than private schools and to students from lower-income families.But the new rules set Vermont on a collision course with the Trump administration as it develops regulations governing the first…

Education savings accounts, tax-credit scholarships, vouchers, charter schools, hybrid home schooling, and microschools are transforming K–12 in profound ways. In “Talking Choice,” Ashley Berner and I try to make sense of the shifting landscape. Berner directs Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Education Policy and is the author of Educational Pluralism and Democracy. Whatever you think of educational choice, we seek to provide more concrete insight into what it means for students, families, and educators. Today, we discuss a new international effort to establish principles for educational pluralism.—Rick Rick: Ashley, you were recently in Switzerland to help launch the Guiding Principles of…

The Trump administration last week advanced its ongoing push to close the U.S. Department of Education, announcing that two major agency functions—special education and civil rights enforcement—will move to other agencies.They join more than 100 other K-12 and higher education programs that have already begun moving. All told, six federal agencies—Health and Human Services, Interior, Justice, Labor, State, and Treasury—are set to oversee Department of Education programs.Republican presidents have advocated closing the Department of Education since its inception in 1979. But only Congress can shutter a Cabinet-level agency. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has pitched the program moves—many of which…

The U.S. Department of Education has begun outsourcing responsibility for overseeing the nation’s sprawling special education system and enforcing civil rights law in schools to other federal agencies, after months of previewing dramatic efforts to restructure both core functions.Department officials announced the moves—made possible by four new interagency agreements—on Tuesday morning to advocacy group representatives, and on Tuesday afternoon to reporters and the general public.The Education Department office that oversees special education and employment programs for adults with disabilities will move to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The U.S. Department of Justice will take on the Education…

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island, the National Education Association (on behalf of its members), and researchers have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education over the discontinuation of 28 grants intended to train teachers working with English learners.The National Professional Development grant program has historically offered a critical pipeline for educators serving a growing population of multilingual students, connecting research institutions with preservice and in-service teachers with training and affordable certification pathways. But since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, the program has experienced significant upheaval, including:The loss of most,…

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating how 43 school districts in three states teach about sexuality and gender identity and whether they give parents the opportunity to opt their children out of lessons that conflict with their religious beliefs.The agency’s civil rights division said the compliance reviews are necessary to ensure recipients of federal funding aren’t violating civil rights laws. But the investigations are a sharp departure from the practices of past presidential administrations. Fulfilling the requests will require extensive time and resources from district leaders, who’ve been directed to produce reams of curricula, documents, text messages, and other…

Indiana on Tuesday secured the broadest state waiver yet from federal school funding and accountability requirements, as the Trump administration aims to give state and local leaders more control over K-12 decision-making.It’s the third state to receive such a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education, following Iowa in January and Louisiana last month. But Indiana’s waiver goes further than the other two, marking the first time a state will be allowed to change how it rates school performance for federal accountability and the first to give school districts more leeway in how they spend certain federal education funds.Under the…