Author: BelieveAgain
Education Secretary Linda McMahon defended the Trump administration’s deep cuts to the U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday by saying it’s time to “shake it up” and “revamp” some of the agency’s key data collection and accountability functions that have been subject to some of the steepest reductions.McMahon addressed attendees at the annual ASU+GSV Summit here, which has brought together thousands of ed-tech entrepreneurs and other education professionals to discuss K-12 and higher education.Her remarks, in an on-stage discussion with two moderators—Jon Hage, the founder of a multistate charter school network, and Phyllis Lockett, who headed up a charter school…
Philadelphia in recent years has had only two full-time librarians in a school district with 216 schools and 118,000 students. It’s a challenge Debra Kachel, an affiliate faculty member at Antioch University, has been working to solve.Kachel is partnering with the district on a federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to study how other urban school systems rebuilt their school library programs and funded training for a new generation of librarians. Using the findings, the plan for the project is to develop a long-term plan to restore school library services in Philadelphia and train school librarians.But…
Organizations representing scholars and researchers are asking a federal judge to order the reinstatement of canceled contracts and laid-off employees at the U.S. Department of Education’s data-gathering and research arm, arguing that the cuts have “functionally eliminated” a congressionally mandated office.The lawsuit, filed on Friday in federal court in Washington, is yet another challenging a massive reduction in force at the Education Department that has touched virtually every office and sliced staffing in half as part of President Donald Trump’s goal to abolish the agency. It also challenges the abrupt termination of scores of contracts that preceded the staff cuts.This…
Several states are urging U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to immediately restore previously approved pandemic relief funding that the Education Department canceled last week, even as her agency doubles down on a new appeal process for states and districts to release funding for projects they, in many cases, have already started.New York will pursue “legal redress” over the department’s “unilateral, unexplained reversal” if McMahon doesn’t withdraw the rule changes she announced on March 28, Daniel Morton-Bentley, the state’s deputy education commissioner, wrote in an email to McMahon on April 2.Education chiefs in Kentucky, Mississippi, and North Carolina have also sent…
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to immediately terminate more than 100 grants under two federal teacher-training programs.The court ruled 5-4 to undo a temporary restraining order issued by a federal district judge in Massachusetts last month that restored funding for 104 grants under the Teacher Quality Partnership and Supporting Effective Educator Development programs.The federal government “is likely to succeed” in showing that the lower court lacked jurisdiction to order the grants to continue under a challenge brought based on the Administrative Procedure Act, the majority said in an unsigned opinion in Department of…
The U.S. Department of Education is ordering school districts and states to certify in writing that they’re not using diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, in order to continue receiving federal education funds.In a letter sent out Thursday, the Trump administration gave state education chiefs 10 days to sign a certification saying they’re complying with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race-based discrimination in federally funded programs. The certification makes clear that the department, under President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, considers DEI programming to be a violation of the anti-discrimination law.In addition to collecting…
The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress results had a lot of bad news, but there were some scattered bright spots. Louisiana was one of them. In fact, the Pelican State was the only state in the nation that outperformed its pre-pandemic 4th grade reading scores on the 2024 NAEP. Over the past two testing cycles, Louisiana led the nation in reading growth and is in the top five for gains in math. I was curious to hear more about what might be going on, so I reached out to Cade Brumley, Louisiana’s state superintendent of education since 2020.…
I’m a big fan of rigorous academic research, especially well-constructed mixed-method studies that examine the effects of educational innovations on large, randomized samples. I like to know how innovations actually change educational practices and outcomes and I love the various quantitative and qualitative methods used to describe them.I am clearly biased in favor of strong research approaches. If someone tells me about “fantastic” new approaches to teaching, learning, managing, or designing educational systems, my first question is, what body of evidence do you have that supports these ideas?My second question is, how rigorous were the research methods used to inform…
Making good on an order from President Donald Trump’s first days in office to look into how it could expand school choice, the U.S. Department of Education on Monday reminded states of existing flexibility they have to spend some of their federal funds to allow parents more of a say in customizing their child’s education. The department said the move was a first step to push states to embrace existing freedom in law to advance a key education policy priority for the new administration. But the guidance on using a portion of federal funds earmarked for low-income students for that…
Alarmed by stubborn patterns of persistent student absences, state lawmakers have introduced dozens of bills aiming to make school attendance a priority.Legislators from both parties in 20 states have filed 49 bills related to school attendance and chronic absenteeism in their current legislative sessions, according to a new tracker by FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University.If passed, those bills would bring consistency to how schools define and count absences, improve statewide data tracking, and help identify promising practices for improving attendance.“The pandemic is a big reason” for state efforts, said Bella DiMarco, a senior policy analyst at FutureEd who…