Author: BelieveAgain

The Trump administration’s dramatic downsizing of the U.S. Department of Education will soon extend to the agency’s physical space.The administration announced on Thursday that the Education Department beginning this summer will abandon its Lyndon B. Johnson building headquarters and move into a new location a block away formerly occupied by the U.S. Agency for International Development.The U.S. Department of Energy will take over the building the Education Department has occupied since its inception more than 45 years ago.Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, in a statement issued jointly with the heads of the Energy Department and General Services Administration, said the…

First lady Melania Trump often commands the attention of any room she enters but all eyes—and cameras—were trained on her humanoid companion on Wednesday.The humanoid accompanied the first lady as she arrived at the White House East Room for the final day of a summit she had convened with counterparts from around the world through her Fostering the Future Together global initiative. The group has been discussing ways to empower children using education, innovation, and technology, including artificial intelligence.Melania Trump and the humanoid walked slowly side by side along the red carpet from the opposite end of the hallway. The…

We, the board of directors of the National Academy of Education, sent a letter to Kristi Noem, the then-secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and Todd Lyons, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in February asking them to seriously consider the harms to students, families, teachers, and schools when making immigration enforcement decisions. We received no response. This week, former Republican senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma was sworn in to replace Noem. We urge him to put in place protections against these harms.Education has long been recognized as the backbone of our American democracy, and…

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…