Author: BelieveAgain

Schools that educate large numbers of students of color and children from low-income families are far more likely than others to be identified as the lowest-performing in their state, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm.One eye-popping data point: For every 5% increase in the percentage of students living in poverty, a school had a corresponding 42% increased risk of getting flagged as seriously low-performing (a designation called “comprehensive support and improvement” school under the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, the primary federal school accountability and funding law).That finding is the result of…

More than 100 programs run by the U.S. Department of Education are shifting to other agencies, and that number could grow in the coming months.The Trump administration has framed these program shifts, along with laying off scores of staffers and canceling hundreds of ongoing competitive grants, as steps toward the ultimate goal of closing the Education Department.But in some respects, that elimination goal remains far off. Top administration officials have acknowledged they need lawmakers to sign off on shuttering the department altogether. Congress supplied the agency with essentially level funding for this fiscal year. More than 2,000 employees remain on…

The U.S. Department of Education last year brought a quiet end to the Green Ribbon Schools program, which had for more than a decade honored schools for their sustainability work.In the absence of that federal recognition, some states are stepping up to continue recognizing educators for their work to reduce schools’ environmental impact and engage students in hands-on environmental education.One of those states is Wisconsin, where the state education department established a new state-level honor that supersedes other sustainability awards in an effort to make up for the loss of the federal recognition.Victoria Rydberg-Nania, the agency’s environmental education consultant, spoke…

The U.S. Department of Education is handing off a portion of its student loan portfolio to the Treasury Department, a first step toward shedding management of all student loans as Trump administration officials dismantle the federal education agency.Under an agreement announced Thursday, the Treasury Department will take over management of student loans whose borrowers are in default, meaning they are months behind on payments. Those loans add up to about $180 billion, or 11% of the government’s $1.7 trillion student loan portfolio.The Treasury Department will take over debt collection on defaulted loans in the first of three phases that eventually…

As states seek to align their education and workforce strategies, they lack data on students who move on to serve in the military—creating a big gap in their ability to measure the academic paths that lead to success after high school graduation.Arkansas, Kansas, Ohio, Tennessee, and Washington state hope to change that by piloting a new data-sharing agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense that will allow them to securely access data on which students enlist, which branches they choose, and how long they serve, announced the Council of Chief State School Officers, which will lead the effort. After a…

A federal judge has ordered Texas to extend the application deadline for its new private school choice program by two weeks in response to a lawsuit alleging religious discrimination because the program has excluded Islamic schools. The order from U.S. District Judge Alfred Bennett allows families to apply for education savings accounts from Texas’ new program until March 31. Bennett issued his order on Tuesday, hours before the initial application period was to close.Texas is in the midst of launching the largest state private school choice program in the nation. Lawmakers there last year set aside $1 billion for the…

U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon is urging states to put their own stamp on federal school funding, standardized testing, and accountability as part of what the Trump administration describes as its larger project of “returning education to the states.” The U.S. Department of Education under McMahon has been encouraging states to apply for waivers from provisions of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the nation’s primary federal law governing K-12 funding and school accountability.Several states have already responded to that invitation, floating waivers that seek potentially significant changes to how they measure student outcomes, fix low-performing schools, and use federal…

The Trump administration’s ultimate objective is semiclear. The ambition is unmistakable. Bold measures have yielded real changes. But where things get murkier is how this is going to play out, what might go wrong, and what it’ll all amount to in the end.Now, we could be talking about the East Wing, tariffs, or the attack on Iran. But, in this case, it’s the push to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (ED).The administration’s allies will tell you that heroic doings are afoot. DOGE slashed the bureaucracy! Huge swaths of the department are being smoothly shifted to other Cabinet agencies, with…

Warning signs are piling up that schools could experience more funding turbulence in the coming months, even though Congress recently approved a federal budget with no major education cuts.The Trump administration is pushing to rewrite grant rules across the federal government to more explicitly restrict efforts to prioritize racial equity and support undocumented immigrants. Several anticipated education grant competitions haven’t yet begun soliciting applications. And the U.S. Department of Education is testing rarely deployed mechanisms for doling out funds with fewer strings attached.On top of all that, ongoing efforts to shift Education Department program responsibilities to other agencies are raising…

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…