Author: BelieveAgain

The small team overseeing special education programs at the U.S. Department of Education was thrilled when Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced in May one of her chief priorities would be improving literacy through evidence-based practices. It seemed to align perfectly with another initiative the office of special education programs had been planning to bolster achievement among different student populations by the end of 3rd grade.But the onslaught of cuts at the Education Department that had severed nearly half the agency’s staff by March through layoffs and buyout offers made it all but impossible to pursue it. Though the office of…

A governmentwide reduction in force during the federal shutdown will touch an already lean U.S. Department of Education, the Trump administration said Friday, with the department’s office of elementary and secondary education potentially facing some of the most significant cuts.An Education Department spokesperson Friday confirmed the agency will be subject to the RIF but did not immediately answer how many positions would be part of the downsizing and in which department divisions. A spokesperson from the Office of Management and Budget—whose director, Russell Vought, announced the layoffs in a Friday post on X—called the government-wide reduction “substantial.”The Education Department’s office…

President Donald Trump laid out his agenda for education in no uncertain terms in the first days of his second term: expand private school choice and scale back the federal role in education.A handful of early executive orders illustrated this message. He directed agency leaders to investigate how they could dispense public dollars for school choice, and he called for the secretary of education to facilitate the dismantling of her own department.In roughly eight months, the U.S. Department of Education under Trump has issued several pieces of guidance telling states how to use existing federal funds and provisions to promote…

A full federal appeals court said late Monday that it will review the constitutionality of Louisiana’s law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools.The decision raises the stakes for the Louisiana law, which was originally set to take effect on Jan. 1 of this year but had been blocked by a district judge and a three-judge appellate panel. It also keeps the issue from reaching the U.S. Supreme Court for now, where Ten Commandments supporters hope the court’s conservative majority will be receptive to their arguments.In June, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals…

Kirsten Baesler, the longtime North Dakota state education chief, cleared a U.S. Senate vote Tuesday to serve in a top leadership role at the U.S. Department of Education.Baesler will join the department as assistant secretary of elementary and secondary education under Education Secretary Linda McMahon, amid turbulent changes to the federal agency that has seen rapid downsizing during the Trump administration. President Donald Trump tapped Baesler for the post in February.The division Baesler will lead, the office of elementary and secondary education, oversees some of the federal government’s core K-12 functions, including distribution of Title I funds to states and…

Education savings accounts, tax-credit scholarships, vouchers, charter schools, home schooling, tutoring, course choice, dual degrees, and microschools are transforming K–12. In “Talking Choice,” Ashley Berner and I try to make sense of the shifting landscape. Ashley directs Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Education Policy and is a leading authority on “educational pluralism.” Whatever your take on educational choice, we seek to foster a more constructive conversation about what it means for students, families, and educators. Today, we focus on the federal tuition tax credit that President Donald Trump signed into law this summer. —RickRick: Ashley, I’ve been getting a lot of…

The union representing U.S. Department of Education staff has sued the federal agency, arguing that altered out-of-office emails blaming Democratic lawmakers for the government shutdown violate employees’ First Amendment rights.The lawsuit, filed by the American Federation of Government Employees in federal court late last week, challenges an automatic email from furloughed staff that blames U.S. Senate Democrats for the first government shutdown in nearly seven years after federal lawmakers failed to come to an agreement to extend funding beyond the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year. Staff say the partisan messages were placed without their knowledge or consent.“Employees are…

Staff furloughed from the U.S. Department of Education say their out-of-office emails blaming Democratic senators for the federal government shutdown were set up without their permission—and they raise concerns about violations of the federal law that prohibits government employees from using their positions for political activities.The department’s actions also coincide with several federal agencies—though not the Education Department—promoting partisan messages on their websites that have blamed Democrats and the “radical left” for the first government shutdown in nearly seven years, after lawmakers couldn’t come to an agreement to extend funding beyond the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year.Shortly before…

For the first time in close to seven years, Congress failed to reach a budget agreement in time for the new fiscal year. As a result, the federal government has shut down, causing nationwide ripple effects with short- and long-term implications for schools.Congress has struggled in recent years to meet self-imposed appropriations deadlines. The negotiations were particularly contentious this year in the wake of the Trump administration’s unprecedented push to unilaterally adjust federal spending decisions to align them with the president’s policy preferences.House Republicans are pushing to extend current federal spending levels for a few weeks or months while Congress…

The last U.S. Supreme Court term was among the most consequential in recent years for K-12 education, with the justices issuing major rulings on special education, the federal E-rate program for school internet connections, and parental rights to exclude their children from LGBTQ+-themed lessons.The court also deadlocked in a case on religious charter schools, leaving for another day the question of whether states may directly provide public funding to religiously affiliated schools.“I’ve long maintained that the public school is the most significant site of constitutional interpretation and legal conflict in our nation’s history,” said Justin Driver, a Yale University law…