Author: Cory Turner

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has acknowledged that, in some areas, the overall reduction-in-force at her agency has gone too far. Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Kent Nishimura/AFP via Getty Images President Donald Trump’s plans to close the U.S. Department of Education have run headlong into an awkward reality: The agency does important work that still needs doing. After losing roughly half its staff in last year’s big reduction-in-force, the department’s student loan office is in a hiring boom. The Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) is adding around 380 new workers, according to internal documents obtained…

A nurse checks a patient’s heart rate. kieferpix/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption kieferpix/Getty Images A coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday challenging a Trump administration rule that limits access to federal student loans for borrowers earning a graduate degree in several popular, healthcare-related fields. “Higher education is expensive, and our health care system is already under immense strain,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “This rule will shut talented people out of critical professions and leave communities with fewer health care providers they desperately need.”…

The pandemic-era backslide in math and reading scores for students across the U.S. was not a sudden catastrophe but the continuation of a brutal, decade-long “learning recession” that began years before COVID-19’s arrival. That’s according to the latest Education Scorecard, an annual deep-dive into student data from The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University and Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research. The new Scorecard, released Wednesday and in its fourth year, offers several revelations for families, educators and policymakers looking for clarity — and hope — at a time when public education has been blamed and battered for those…

With school choice programs ascendant not just in Iowa but across the U.S., Cedar Rapids offers a preview of who wins and who loses when education meets the free market. JUANA SUMMERS, HOST: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I’m Juana Summers.SCOTT DETROW, HOST: And I’m Scott Detrow. As in many Republican-controlled states, Iowa’s leaders have gone all in on school choice, pushing to create and expand alternatives to public schools. This has created a big problem for the Cedar Rapids public school district, which has been losing students and dollars to the competition, and now it is…

The average salary for a public school teacher in the U.S. rose to $74,495 in the last school year, up 3.5% from the year before. But adjusted for inflation, today’s teachers are estimated to be earning less, not more, than they were in 2017. That’s according to a new review of school-related data from the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers union with 3 million members. The annual release includes the latest data — collected directly from state departments of education – on teacher and support staff salaries, student enrollment and even how much money schools are getting…

Principal Condra Allred visits a third grade class at Cleveland Elementary School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in April. Soon, Allred expects to hear for certain if her school will close. Cliff Jette for NPR hide caption toggle caption Cliff Jette for NPR On an unseasonably warm February morning, Principal Condra Allred walked the hallways of Cleveland Elementary School’s 76-year-old building wearing a pink fanny pack slung over one shoulder like a bandolier. Inside the pack, a walkie-talkie squawked with the voices of staff who needed back-up on the playground, or a bathroom break, or help soothing a troubled student. Allred…

The Energy Department is slated to move into the Education Department’s current headquarters later this year. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images In the latest effort by the Trump administration to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, it announced on Thursday that all staff will be leaving the department’s longtime, Washington, D.C., headquarters in the Lyndon B. Johnson building, which the administration estimates “is roughly 70% vacant.” “Thanks to the hard work of so many, we have made unprecedented progress in reducing the federal education footprint,” said Education Secretary Linda McMahon in…

The Trump administration announced a plan to move significant management of and responsibility for the nation’s federal student loan portfolio from the U.S. Education Department to the U.S. Treasury Department. Alex Brandon/AP hide caption toggle caption Alex Brandon/AP The Trump administration announced Thursday a three-phase transition that will move significant management of and responsibility for the nation’s federal student loan portfolio from the U.S. Education Department to the U.S. Treasury Department. The administration says the Treasury Department is better equipped to, among other things, help millions of borrowers who are in default return to repayment on their loans, though the…

Just over a year ago, the U.S. Department of Education abandoned key oversight of the companies that run the federal student loan program, according to a new report from the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). GAO investigators found that, in February 2025, the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) stopped reviewing the accuracy of loan servicers’ records. FSA also stopped reviewing recordings of calls with borrowers to make sure they’re being given accurate information. Without this oversight, the report warns, borrowers could feel the consequences. “If servicers’ records are inaccurate, borrowers could, for instance, be placed in the wrong…

Roughly a million borrowers defaulted on their federal student loans late last year, with millions delinquent on their payments and sliding toward the same fate. That’s according to federal data and the latest Household Debt and Credit Report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which dropped on Tuesday. The report includes student loan data as of the end of 2025. Student loan delinquencies have continued to worsen, said New York Fed researchers on a call with reporters, and they expect the number of borrowers in default to continue to grow. The report offers further confirmation of a crisis…