Author: BelieveAgain

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…

Education policy can feel far removed from the real work of schooling. Why is that? What can we do about it? These are crucial questions, never more so than in 2025, and I can’t think of anyone better to help tackle them than Andy Rotherham, the author of the Eduwonk blog, co-founder of Bellwether, member of Virginia’s board of education, and former special assistant for education to President Bill Clinton at the White House. Today, Andy and I discuss Trump administration efforts to downsize the Department of Education and what they mean. —RickRick: Andy, the Trump administration has issued an…

The U.S. Education Department threw school districts and state education agencies into yet another cycle of confusion and chaos this weekend with its abrupt Friday announcement that the deadline to spend remaining COVID relief funds had already passed, and that it was revoking all the extensions it had granted.With a two-page letter to states, the department effectively canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds overnight, offering little clarity on whether and how states and districts could recover that money.Some districts are already moving to cancel long-planned projects, dip into emergency funds, and renegotiate already-signed contracts. Meanwhile, state education…

The U.S. Department of Education recently slashed its workforce by 50 percent as part of President Donald Trump’s directive to “send education back to the states.” This drastic reduction in staff has amplified the urgency around a critical question: What will it look like in practice when states are expected to assume greater control for K-12 education?Although the federal government has contributed only about 10 cents to every dollar of school funding, Uncle Sam’s involvement has, over time, created a dependency. Federal policies and mandates have encouraged states to prioritize compliance above all else. Indeed, many state education agencies—the entities…

President Donald Trump has set a dizzying pace with his rollout of education policies since returning to the White House—with his detractors frequently trying to stall his aggressive maneuvers through litigation.As of March 26, Education Week has identified 19 lawsuits that challenge either Trump administration education policies or broader policies from the administration that affect education. The chart below details each of those lawsuits and their status as they make their way through the courts. Click here for a glossary of the policies the lawsuits are challenging. Have we missed a lawsuit here or a development in one of these…