Author: BelieveAgain

U.S. House of Representatives lawmakers who oversee budget-writing are endorsing President Donald Trump’s goal of slashing federal funding for K-12 schools in the next budget year—and they’re also proposing to cut more than $2 billion schools are expecting to receive next month.Members of Congress have less than a month to agree on a federal budget—a feat they haven’t managed in recent years. The bill Republican House appropriators began circulating Monday is unlikely to pass in its current form—but it offers an opportunity to compare lawmakers’ priorities and the president’s.Members of a House education subcommittee voted largely along party lines Tuesday…

To the Editor:The recent trend of platforming certain right-wing opinion pieces at Education Week is both disturbing and dangerous in this moment in history. To be clear, our profession and the public at large deserve a robust debate on issues of importance in the field. However, publishing pieces like “The U.S. Department of Education Could Be Dismantled. This Is Good News” (June 25, 2025) and “Let DEI Practices Die. Replace Them With Something Better” (June 5, 2025) raise serious ethical questions about the responsibility of one of the most widely read professional publications. It saddens me that EdWeek is now…

A Virginia school district is suing the U.S. Department of Education, saying the federal agency has put it in an “impossible position” by imposing funding restrictions due to the district’s policy that allows transgender students to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. The district’s school board argues the policy complies with both state and federal law.In the lawsuit filed Friday, the Fairfax County school board asks a federal court in Virginia to find the department’s actions “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and otherwise contrary to law.” It also asks a judge to agree that the district’s transgender student…

Many school districts’ biggest budget concerns this year have centered on the federal government: The Trump administration has moved aggressively—generally without warning or congressional approval—to withhold formula dollars, terminate in-progress grants, and change funding rules.But in a number of states, political debates and administrative turmoil are piling distinct and varied challenges on school districts at the start of a new school year.Lawmakers in Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania blew past their deadlines for finalizing their respective state budgets, jeopardizing tens of millions of dollars for public schools.Courts have recently issued rulings that education funding systems in Arizona, New Hampshire, and…

Illinois lawmakers passed a new law that codifies the right of undocumented students to receive a free, public education, and requires school districts to adopt clear policies protecting students from immigration enforcement activities in schools.House Bill 3247—signed into law by Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker on Aug. 15—is the state’s response to rising fear among local immigrant communities over the Trump administration’s push for increased immigration enforcement across the country, lawmakers and advocates said.The law is also a response to the efforts of policymakers in other states to overturn the 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe, which granted…

State officials must decide in the coming years if they’ll participate in the first major federal program that directs public funds to private schools. Congress in July included a tax-credit scholarship in the One, Big Beautiful Bill Act, allowing taxpayers to claim tax credits in exchange for donations to organizations that grant private school scholarships. Until now, all major private school choice programs have been state-level initiatives. But the federal tax-credit scholarship forces all states and the District of Columbia to decide on private school choice, whether they currently have a choice program of their own or don’t. Two governors…

The Trump administration has begun canceling dozens of competitive federal education grants years before they were set to expire—and the educators behind hundreds more in-progress projects are worried that funding delays mean their grants could be next.More than $1 billion for current recipients of grants under at least seven distinct U.S. Department of Education programs—including for school desegregration, disability services, higher-education preparation, teacher training, and academic research—has yet to materialize just weeks before the new fiscal year begins, according to interviews with grant recipients, state education agencies, and advocacy organizations. In previous years, the grant recipients said, they would have…

Sign up for Chalkbeat Detroit’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system and Michigan education policy.Michigan third grade students had the lowest performance in English language arts in the 11-year history of the state test. Only 38.9% of the third graders were proficient in ELA in the assessments taken last spring, down from 39.6% a year earlier, according to results from the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, known as the M-STEP.There are some positive trends: Test scores are up in four out of six grades in both English language arts and math. Still, overall proficiency…

When the U.S. Department of Education opened investigations into four Kansas school districts earlier this month, the call had come from inside the house: the state’s Republican attorney general was among those asking the federal agency to deploy its office for civil rights to look into the alleged wrongdoing.Since January, the Education Department has wielded its investigative arm, the office for civil rights, to open dozens of probes into states and school districts with policies that allow transgender students to play on athletic teams, use restrooms or locker rooms that align with their gender identity, and change names and pronouns…

Civil rights staff laid off by the U.S. Department of Education will begin returning to work in September, the department told a federal judge this week.Roughly 25 employees from its office for civil rights are slated to return starting Sept. 8, in the first wave of reinstatements set to run through early November, department leaders revealed in a filing submitted to a Massachusetts federal court on Tuesday.The reinstatement schedule comes two months after U.S. District Judge Myong Joun told the agency to bring the staff back—and days after he said the department wasn’t complying with that directive.It’s the first time…