Author: BelieveAgain

The federal government is on the brink of shutting down later this week—and schools could struggle as a result, especially if the shutdown lasts more than a few days.Potential consequences include delayed funding and services for education nationwide; layoffs of federal staff beyond those implemented earlier this year; and an acceleration of the Trump administration’s stated goal of reducing the federal government’s role in supporting education.Federal lawmakers appear far apart on an agreement to extend federal government funding beyond the Sept. 30 end of the current fiscal year. House Republicans have moved to extend funding into November, but Senate Democrats—whose…

Ryan Walters announced Wednesday night that he is resigning as Oklahoma’s state superintendent after nearly three years of near-constant controversy.On a Fox News program around 10:45 p.m., Walters announced that he is becoming the CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance.The Teacher Freedom Alliance’s stated mission is to “assist educators in their mission to develop free, moral and upright American citizens,” and the nonprofit organization’s website states that it currently has 2,617 teachers enrolled as members. He did not say whether he is still considering a gubernatorial run in 2026.Among the group’s goals is to get teachers to drop membership in…

Republican leaders at the state and national levels are propelling Turning Point USA, the conservative advocacy group co-founded by Charlie Kirk, further into K-12 schools following the activist’s assassination earlier this month.The organization, which is known for its presence on college campuses, says it already has more than 1,000 chapters in high schools across the country and 48 representatives on staff meant to help students organize. Since the 31-year-old’s death, Kirk’s allies have pledged to expand the group’s reach and impact, and the organization has reported a surge in new interest. It received 54,000 inquiries about starting new chapters within…

The National Science Foundation has slashed funding available for research into STEM instruction in K-12 schools. The move—which amounts to a roughly 50% cut for such research, experts calculate—also cut the maximum amount available for STEM education research grants by 85%, from $5 million to $750,000. And the NSF refocused the grants primarily on artificial intelligence, a Trump administration priority.The NSF outlined this new approach in a call for grants released last month. The call for grants invited researchers from higher education institutions, nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, and state or tribal governments to apply for a slice of $30 million…

The U.S. Department of Education is kicking off two grant competitions to boost mental health services in schools, nearly five months after the agency abruptly told former grantees their awards would end because they reflected Biden administration priorities.But while the agency is devoting $270 million to resurrect the grant programs, it’s changed their emphasis to focus solely on boosting the ranks of school psychologists, and it’s eliminated a Biden-era emphasis on boosting the diversity of mental health professionals working in schools.The application period for the School-Based Mental Health Services and Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration grant programs officially opens Sept.…

The U.S. Department of Education released two new proposed priorities for competitive grant-making on Thursday, shedding more light on what initiatives the administration plans to champion—just as it cancels hundreds of ongoing grants.The two prospective additions, published in the Federal Register on Thursday, would focus on supporting “meaningful learning opportunities” in what the agency describes as foundational subjects, and advancing career and technical education.They would join the existing list, which includes evidence-based literacy, school choice, “returning education to the states,” artificial intelligence, and patriotic education.These priorities only affect dollars distributed through competitive grant programs, a tiny slice of the total…

The U.S. Department of Education is shutting down a Biden-era grant program intended to help make K-12 classrooms more racially and socioeconomically diverse—leaving four urban school districts and one charter school network millions of dollars short of the funding they budgeted for the school year that’s now underway.The school districts in Anchorage, Alaska; East Baton Rouge, La.; and two boroughs of New York City each had three years remaining of the five-year Fostering Diverse Schools grants they received in 2023. All four were expecting $1.5 million to $3 million apiece for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.The school district…

The Vaughn Next Century Learning Center in San Fernando, Calif., this week is wrapping up the first year of what was supposed to be a seven-year federal education grant totaling $19 million. Thousands of 6th and 7th graders at more than a dozen Los Angeles-area public charter schools have been getting tutoring and mentoring aimed at exposing them to college opportunities they might otherwise see as out of reach.As rumors swirled this summer about potential federal cuts, program leaders hoped the Trump administration would spare them, given that the Vaughn center is a charter school district, and charter schools are…

As education savings account (ESA) laws have been adopted by a number of states in the past few years, many observers have wondered how these work in practice. One huge area of interest is their impact on students with special needs. Well, Arizona’s status as home of the nation’s first ESA program could be instructive. Karla Phillips-Krivickas, a member of Arizona’s state board of education, has some practical wisdom to share. She is co-founder of Champions for Kids, a former Arizona education department official, and a veteran education advocate who consults with private schools on special education. Here’s what she…

President Donald Trump this week used the platform of the presidency to promote unproven and in some cases discredited ties between Tylenol, vaccines, and autism as his administration announced a wide-ranging effort to study the causes of the complex brain disorder.“Don’t take Tylenol,” Trump instructed pregnant women around a dozen times during the unwieldy White House news conference, also urging mothers not to give their infants the drug, known by the generic name acetaminophen in the United States or paracetamol in most other countries. He also fueled long-debunked claims that ingredients in vaccines or timing shots close together could contribute…