Author: BelieveAgain

Beginning in January, a new federal scholarship tax credit is projected to generate billions of dollars to expand educational opportunities for students across the country. Roughly 9 out of 10 American students—including the overwhelming majority of those attending public schools—will be eligible to benefit from those dollars.Last summer, when one of us (Deborah Gist) first heard about the new law, her reaction was similar to that of many public school leaders. It looked like another private school voucher initiative that offered little to the public school students she had spent her career serving. But when she read the statute itself,…

A federal judge has granted a preliminary injunction request from a Florida-based organization seeking to open a Jewish online charter school in Oklahoma.In an order issued Thursday, Judge David Russell with the Western District of Oklahoma granted a request from Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation to block the Statewide Charter School Board from denying the organization’s charter school application solely because of its intent to incorporate faith-based instruction.“Because the non-sectarian provision in the Oklahoma Charter Schools Act expressly discriminates against otherwise eligible recipients solely because of their religious character, it violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,”…

The Trump administration is using a mechanism widely viewed as illegal to cancel nearly $100 million Congress appropriated for expanding college-level foreign-language instruction and helping transient U.S. agricultural workers get GEDs and go to college. The White House late Friday announced a package of $810 million in “pocket rescissions”—essentially, overriding congressional appropriations so late in the fiscal year that lawmakers won’t have time to intervene before the funding expires on Sept. 30.The list includes two U.S. Department of Education line items: $70 million of the $85 million lawmakers approved in February for International and Foreign Language Education (IFLE), and $25…

OpenAI has disclosed that its artificial intelligence agents interacted with several U.S. government websites in unexpected ways, activity discovered as part of an ongoing review into its models’ unanticipated behavior.The New York Times, citing security researchers and a person familiar with the incidents, reported that one of those websites was the U.S. Department of Education. The AI giant’s models accessed publicly available information on two websites operated by the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as U.S. Census Bureau data, the company revealed Sept. 25. OpenAI did not find any use of SEC credentials, access to accounts or nonpublic information,…

To the Editor:Every education leader and school board understands that public dollars come with an obligation to use them responsibly and for their intended purpose. If I, a superintendent in a rural district, failed to put funding approved for my students to work, my school board would rightly demand answers. That same standard of accountability should apply at every level of government.That is why a recent investigation by Education Week reporter Mark Lieberman deserves attention. (“Trump’s Education Department Is Letting Tens of Millions of Dollars Expire,” Aug. 4, 2026). His review of federal spending records found that the U.S. Department…

For decades, a key principle underpinned civil rights enforcement in American schools: Not all discrimination was intentional. Even if a school policy was written without overt racial bias, it might unfairly hurt one group of students over another, the understanding went. The concept is known as systemic racism, and Republican and Democratic administrations agreed: Schools and universities that received federal funding had an obligation to address it.Under President Donald Trump’s administration, that’s no longer the case. One by one, the administration has limited the remedies schools can use to address systemic racial injustice. This summer, the Education Department rescinded a…

The clock is ticking: The ambitious new federal school choice program will launch in January. And while the broad aim of the program is clear—to direct federally bankrolled money to families to spend on schooling—key details are still being hammered out.That’s why school and district leaders, school choice advocates and skeptics, and the broad field of education experts are waiting eagerly for proposed regulations—expected at the end of this month from the U.S. Department of Treasury—to answer pressing questions about how the tax-credit scholarship program will work and who will benefit.“Everybody’s kind of watching and waiting on this September announcement…

K-12 schools are on the ballot in a big way this fall, both directly and indirectly.Amid a dominant focus on affordability and economic issues in a pitched battle for control of Congress, voters will also make decisions with major implications for the nation’s schools.Education Week reviewed what is on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and assembled this guide to highlight the statewide races and ballot initiatives of greatest consequence to schools. (Local school board elections, bond issues, and property tax levies will also have a big impact, but are excluded from this guide.)Voters in…

The U.S. Department of Education isn’t keeping a close eye on how states are tracking chronic absenteeism, suggesting a pattern of lax oversight that may put billions in federal funds at risk of waste, fraud, and abuse, according to a report released Sept. 23 by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm.The problem appears tied at least in part to the Education Department’s decision this year to suspend its regular, comprehensive examinations of how states are implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act, the nation’s main federal K-12 law through which the federal government disburses billions of dollars for schools, the…

The school choice explosion has lent new urgency to the question of what information parents need when choosing schools. Well, GreatSchools has been working on that challenge for more than a quarter century. The site offers in-depth profiles of over 150,000 public and private schools, and it offers more than a million parent and community school ratings. Earlier this year, GreatSchools partnered with Oklahoma to launch the state’s new School Choice Hub, an AI-powered platform that can help parents explore school options and financial resources. I recently had a chance to chat with CEO Jon Deane about GreatSchools’ work. Here’s…