Author: BelieveAgain

The U.S. Department of Education will stop funding roughly $1 billion in grants that were meant to boost the ranks and training of mental health professionals who work in schools, saying the grant awards made under the Biden administration now conflict with Trump administration priorities.The multi-year grants will end at the conclusion of their current budget period, some recipients were told in an April 29 letter sent by Murray Bessette from the Education Department’s office of planning, evaluation, and policy development.The letter told grantees that their awards provide “funding for programs that reflect the prior Administration’s priorities and policy preferences…

The U.S. Department of Education is investigating New York’s state education department for its enforcement of a state policy that prohibits the use of Native American imagery in school mascots, in a continued show of force from the agency and one that also challenges a yearslong trend of phasing out logos long called offensive.The federal Education Department announced on Friday that its office for civil rights would investigate the state agency and the board that oversees it for discrimination after the Massapequa school district refused to eliminate its “Chiefs” mascot at the state’s insistence.Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the elimination…

President Donald Trump’s second first 100 days have already felt like being trapped inside a Russian novel—and we’re barely underway.Here’s my take on what we’ve seen in K-12. Be forewarned, you’ll need to look elsewhere for a blistering denunciation or an exercise in cheerleading. That’s because I’m feeling pretty conflicted. On the one hand, I support Team Trump’s priorities and vision. On the other, I think responsible government is less a matter of what you intend to do than what you actually do. And, on that score, there’s much to give me pause.Character is destiny, in Russian novels as in…

Laura Baker/Education Week via Canva On National Girls and Women in Sports Day, Trump signs an executive order threatening to withhold federal funds from schools that allow transgender students to compete on women’s teams. Under the order, the secretary of education is told to prioritize civil rights cases against schools and athletic associations that don’t comply. Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency abruptly revokes hundreds of millions of dollars in Department of Education contracts that fund key data collection and research efforts largely overseen by the agency’s Institute of Education Sciences. The contract terminations are the first of a series…

Three federal judges on Thursday significantly limited the Trump administration’s ability to enforce a series of orders it’s issued telling the nation’s schools and colleges to eliminate much of their diversity, equity, and inclusion programming or risk losing federal funds.Judges in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and New Hampshire all found the Trump administration’s anti-DEI efforts didn’t pass legal muster, but for slightly different reasons. Their orders came in response to three separate lawsuits led respectively by the NAACP, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association.The judges’ orders came the same day states and school districts faced…

The first three months of the second Trump administration have brought a dizzying cascade of threats to federal investment in K-12 schools, and even bigger existential battles loom in the near future.The administration has already terminated hundreds of grants and contracts supporting teacher preparation and education research; frozen funding doled out by the Biden administration for electric school buses and other clean-energy improvements; and canceled approvals for districts and states to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic relief funds on projects and programs they’ve already committed to carry out.The cuts and chaos are far from over. In recent…

Earlier this year, Tennessee legislators introduced three sets of bills that would require K-12 schools to verify students’ immigration status upon enrollment, charge tuition to undocumented students, and, in some cases, even deny these students enrollment.Tennessee became one of at least five states to propose actions since President Donald Trump’s re-election win that defied federal statute requiring compliance with the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe, which granted undocumented students a constitutional right to a free, public education.On April 21, the state’s efforts hit a snag after state House majority leader William Lamberth, a Republican, paused the…

A federal judge on Friday cast doubt on the Trump administration’s claim that its decision to terminate hundreds of Education Department employees in recent months was separate from its broader goal of shutting down the agency—a key distinction as the judge considers whether the staff cuts overstepped the president’s authority.Judge Myong J. Joun from the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts pressed Trump administration lawyers on what the president has meant when he’s spoken in recent months about “returning education to the states”; putting Education Secretary Linda McMahon “out of a job”; and closing the Education Department “to the maximum extent…

President Donald Trump is once again changing course on federal attempts to chip away at racial disparities in student discipline, issuing an executive order this week that calls on the education secretary to develop guidance for schools instructing them not to consider race at all when dealing with student behavior.Trump’s latest action continues to take aim at diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. He says in the order that previous administrations applying “school discipline based on discriminatory and unlawful ‘equity’ ideology” ultimately resulted in “teachers and students … suffering increased levels of classroom disorder and school violence.”The order comes as educators…

Of the three school cases the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing this month, two have drawn widespread attention for their potential to significantly reshape public education. One is about whether parents with religious objections may opt their children out of LGBTQ+ storybooks. Another is about whether public funding may be provided to a religious charter school.The third case has received far less attention, but is being watched just as closely by educators. A.J.T. v. Osseo Area Schools, scheduled for arguments April 28, centers on whether students with disabilities must satisfy a particularly stringent legal standard to prove they faced discrimination…