Author: BelieveAgain

The Trump administration last year quietly wound down a program that for more than a decade honored schools and districts for making their campuses more environmentally friendly and offering hands-on environmental education.The U.S. Department of Education’s Green Ribbon Schools program, launched in 2011, recognized schools for implementing “cost-saving, health-promoting, and performance-enhancing sustainability practices,” according to a fact sheet still available on the Education Department website, though the program’s official website now leads to an error page.The program’s termination came the same year the Education Department also ended the Blue Ribbon Schools program that celebrated schools for academic excellence.The department didn’t…

President Donald Trump campaigned on getting rid of the U.S. Department of Education and returning K-12 policy to the states.He’s slashed the agency’s staff nearly in half and is moving the administration of key K-12 programs to the departments of Health and Human Services, Interior, and especially Labor.And in a wonkier, and more under-the-radar move, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has opened the door to state waivers from core requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the nation’s primary K-12 education law. In response, states have asked for potentially game-changing flexibility on testing, funding, and school improvement.Democrats and advocates for…

The Trump administration is in the process of shifting more than 100 U.S. Department of Education programs to other agencies, as part of its bid to shutter the agency altogether.The moves are a product of “interagency agreements” between the Education Department and other agencies. As of March 12, the Education Department has struck nine interagency agreements with four separate Cabinet-level agencies to transfer 118 programs.Use the chart and table below to see how many programs are moving and where. 2026-03-12 20:42:57 Source link

A federal appeals court has revived the First Amendment lawsuit of a California 1st grader who alleges she was punished for giving a drawing to a Black classmate with a message referencing Black Lives Matter and “any life.”A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that elementary school students have First Amendment free-expression rights in schools. It thus joined four other federal appeals courts that have ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark student-speech decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community Schools is not limited to secondary school students…

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon took office last year proclaiming a new era in state authority over K-12 policy and encouraging states to seek flexibility from “burdensome” federal requirements through waivers from the Every Student Succeeds Act.Now, a handful of states have responded to that invitation. Some seek never-before-tried approaches to funding, assessment, and school accountability that test just how far the U.S. Department of Education is willing to go in offering leeway from the law’s bedrock requirements.For instance, Idaho wants to let high schoolers to choose the assessment that best aligns with their post-graduation plans, instead of giving them…

Education groups have raised alarms about a proposed regulation that would exclude education from a list of “professional” graduate degrees and limit federal loans for students studying to become teachers and administrators.Those changes, and new limits on borrowing for part-time graduate students, could create financial challenges for professionals obtaining advanced education degrees, in turn exacerbating shortages of special education teachers, principals, and district administrators, according to public comments on the proposal.The U.S. Department of Education received 80,758 comments on the proposed regulation by its March 2 deadline.Here’s what to know about the proposal and what comes next. Why the Education…

Most federal school mental health grants that have been in limbo for nearly a year will see their funding continue for the next three months—and potentially through the end of 2026—after the Trump administration lost a bid in court late last month to keep the awards frozen.The U.S. Department of Education last week told the recipients of 120 of those grants that their funding to hire and train new school mental health professionals would continue until June 1. But it said in a notice to grantees that it was issuing the extended awards “under protest” as it appeals a lower-court…

Has the U.S. Supreme Court already signaled its position on parents’ right to be informed when their children socially transition or express gender nonconformity at school? Or is it poised to tackle the issue more fully with a new case?Meanwhile, how much does the high court’s preliminary decision in a case on schools’ policies around disclosing—or not disclosing—students’ gender transitions to parents matter for schools across the nation right now?The court this week ruled that California policies that sometimes limit or discourage schools from disclosing information to parents about children’s gender transitions and expressions at school likely violate parents’ constitutional…

The U.S. Department of Education is proposing to rework a decades-old program charged with helping states and school districts problem-solve and deploy new initiatives, calling the current structure “duplicative,” “confusing,” and “not responsive to state and local needs.”The federal agency on Monday released a proposal for new priorities and a reworked structure for its Comprehensive Centers program, through which contractors throughout the country work with states and districts in designated regions, and others work nationally on department-determined policy areas.The document detailing the new priorities, to be published March 3 in the Federal Register, outlines plans for a new national center…

Discontinued federal grant funding for expanding social services and improving student attendance in more than a dozen Illinois school districts will be partially reinstated—but a messy legal battle over tens of millions more grant dollars nationwide is far from over.The U.S. Department of Education has reached an agreement with the nonprofit ACT Now Illinois to restore $6 million in Full-Service Community Schools grant funds through June 30, lawyers for both sides announced Thursday during a status hearing in federal court. ACT Now distributes federal funds for community schools efforts to 32 school buildings in 16 districts across the state.The department…