Author: BelieveAgain

Linda McMahon will take the hot seat before U.S. senators Thursday at 10 a.m., as scrutiny grows over how President Donald Trump’s administration has aggressively moved to downsize the department she’s been nominated to lead.McMahon, Trump’s nominee to serve as secretary of education, will appear before the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Thursday morning as the U.S. Department of Education has already seen robust staffing and priority changes under the new administration, even in the absence of permanent leadership.More than 75 staff members are on administrative leave due to mostly tenuous connections to diversity, equity, and inclusion…

A tool that helps educators sift through dense curriculum research. Surveys on school crime. Long-term studies examining outcomes for high schoolers after graduation. All those services and more came to a sudden standstill this week as the Trump administration abruptly revoked nearly $900 million in contracts funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team late Monday touted the termination of 89 education department contracts. Though at least a handful touch on diversity, equity, and inclusion, most seem to stem from the agency’s research arm, the Institute of Education Sciences.IES is best known for…

The Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education, appears to be the latest agency in the crosshairs of President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency office.Dozens of researchers and contractors received notices Feb. 10, directing them to immediately stop work on research projects and program evaluations financed by IES, a federal agency with a roughly $800 million budget, sources say.It was not immediately clear which—or how many—of IES’ hundreds of contracts are affected. A statement from the American Education Research Association and the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics…

Linda McMahon’s confirmation hearing later this week to serve as the secretary of education comes as President Donald Trump administration is already whittling down—and seeking to abolish—the very department the president has selected her to lead.McMahon, a business mogul who served in the first Trump administration as head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, will appear before the U.S. Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee on Thursday, Feb. 13 at 10 a.m. It’s typical for lawmakers to question an appointee’s background, expertise, and preparedness for the job, as well as their relevant policy positions. But this hearing comes during…

President Donald Trump continued his aggressive foray into education in the third week of his second term. He signed an executive order to bar transgender student-athletes from joining girls’ teams and the U.S. Department of Education swiftly began investigations into potential violations at schools and universities.Meanwhile, the fallout from his attempted spending freeze continued, and his administration has been taking steps to prepare for the Education Department’s elimination.Here’s a closer look at what Trump did in week three. Trump’s effort to diminish the Education Department is well underway It comes as no surprise that the president is considering how to…

It was a proposal in President Donald Trump’s first term, a campaign promise in his most recent run, and now, it could be a directive in an executive order: Take steps to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Trump doesn’t have the power to end the department himself, but the president has the ability on his own to shrink the department’s footprint—and then ask Congress to do the rest.Early into his second term, the president has already flexed his executive power through a barrage of actions. Some, including two executive orders last week concerning school choice and “radical indoctrination” in…

Programs that provide pre-K instruction and day-care services for tens of thousands of children from low-income families cannot secure crucial federal money Congress approved for them months ago—despite verbal commitments from Trump administration officials that a planned federal funding freeze is no longer in effect and wouldn’t affect Head Start even if it were.At least 50 Head Start and Early Head Start providers in 24 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico are still waiting for reimbursements they requested from the federal government as much as a week earlier, according to a nationwide survey of providers conducted Feb. 4…

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that threatens to withhold federal subsidies from K-12 schools that allow transgender girls to compete on women’s teams and launch investigations into those that don’t comply. Trump signed the order at the White House surrounded by student-athletes, timing it to coincide with National Girls and Women in Sports Day.“You’ve been waiting a long time for this. So have I,” he told the crowd.The order is another effort from the president to roll back protections for transgender youth and adults, who in the past few years have been the targets of a growing…

The newly minted chairman of the U.S. House’s education and workforce committee said Tuesday that the U.S. Department of Education needs to be dramatically scaled back.And the Michigan Republican indicated that he won’t stand in the way of President Donald Trump’s plans to hobble or even abolish the agency by administrative action.“I certainly want to downsize, right-size, depower the U.S. Department of Education, unless our president can abolish it overnight some way,” Rep. Tim Walberg told former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings in an onstage interview at an event sponsored by the Bipartisan Policy Center, the nonprofit organization Spellings…

A big frustration with education policy is that it can feel so far removed from the real work of schooling. Why is that? What can we do about it? This all seems well worth digging into, especially in 2025, and I can’t think of anybody better to dig with than Andy Rotherham, the author of the Eduwonk blog, big-time education consultant, member of Virginia’s board of education, and former special assistant for education to President Bill Clinton. Starting today, Andy and I will occasionally try to make sense of the twists and turns of education politics and policy. Today, we…