Sarah Butrymowicz, Author at The Hechinger Report

The 6 surprising education issues at stake in the election

Sarah Butrymowicz — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 05:00:00 +0000

As is so often the case, education largely has been left out of the spotlight in this year’s presidential election. But many of the topics candidates — and voters — are talking about directly affect and involve schools and colleges.

The Hechinger Report has covered many of the key election issues, including abortion, the economy and immigration. Read our coverage of some of the biggest topics on this year’s campaign trail.

We want to know what questions you have about the election and education policy. Write to us: editor@hechingerreport.org.

On abortion

Immediately after Roe was overturned, we wondered what the fallout would be for medical education and soon reported on future doctors who were rethinking where they wanted to conduct their training. The concerns raised in that piece — that abortion bans could intensify OB-GYN shortages in certain parts of the country — began to be realized when we checked back in the following year. States with abortion bans saw the largest drops in OB-GYN residency applications. Medical school students in those states expressed frustrations with the complete lack of training in abortion, while program directors scrambled to find out-of-state training options.

We also looked at anti-abortion clinics known as crisis pregnancy centers and the outsized role they play in schools in Texas, despite offering risk-focused sex ed courses with little evidence that approach helps reduce teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections.

“Student education has become a very, very important part of our focus,” one center director said on a panel at a conference. “It’s a great way for us to begin to instill and teach and to educate these individuals on the pro-life message.”

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more election coverage

Election 2024

The Hechinger Report delved into where the presidential candidates stand on early education through higher education and beyond.

On the economy

In many ways, reporting on higher education is reporting on the economy. We’ve written about the impact of high housing costs on graduate students, the difficulty working college students can face getting food stamps and problems with many short-term certificate programs meant to lead to a well-paying career.

Many educators across the country are trying to explicitly tie their offerings to local industry needs, like we found in Colorado where a group of school districts has banded together to offer students a new array of career and technical education classes in keeping with the area’s job market. Similarly, at the higher ed level, trade school enrollment is booming, buoyed by students who see the credentials as an affordable, clear path to a job.

On immigration

The surge in asylum seekers and immigrants into the country has had real effects on many communities where these individuals have settled – including the schools. We took a deep dive into Denver and its surrounding area, where thousands of newcomer students were enrolled last academic year. And while the schools aimed to welcome everyone and provide appropriate support, there were also signs of strain. As one district official put it: “We have some less-than-ideal circumstances. We have some very full classrooms. We hear most from teachers, ‘This is kind of overwhelming. There’s a lot more kids and they all need a lot more from me.’”

The political debates and culture wars over immigration have also trickled down to schools, as we reported in Alabama. There, a superintendent who prioritized helping English learners was ousted. Dozens of interviews suggested that antipathy towards immigrants played a role in his downfall.

On the Supreme Court

The next president will likely appoint at least one new Supreme Court justice, experts predict. And those appointees will likely consider key education cases over the course of their tenure. Take, for instance, last year’s landmark case banning affirmative action at the nation’s colleges and universities.

We’ve been tracking the impact of that ruling, looking closely at how it’s affecting high schoolers applying for college. As part of that work, we gathered 50 college essays from high school seniors and talked to the students about how they pitched themselves to admissions officers. Many reported struggling with the question of whether to talk about their racial identity.

In 2022, the Supreme Court took up a school prayer case, ruling in favor of a football coach who prayed on the field following games. Now, educators and lawmakers are testing just how far they can go with a school-prayer friendly Supreme Court.

On climate change

For years, Hechinger has been reporting on the effects of climate change — and the increase in extreme weather it brings — on education, from fires to floods to intense heat. These weather events disrupt schooling, sometimes forcing students to flee their homes and adding to mental health strains. As one expert said, “Extreme weather is going to increasingly impact and disrupt learning. That is something that school leaders and administrators are going to have to grapple with and start to better plan for.”

Related: Interested in climate change and education? Sign up for our newsletter.

But we’ve also looked at ways schools and universities are using climate change as a teaching opportunity. And it could be an economic one as well — potentially leading to the creation of thousands of new jobs.

On LGBTQ+ rights

Protections and rights for LGBTQ+ people remain a divisive issue. State lawmakers have filed hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills and the Supreme Court has indicated openness to reconsidering the right to same sex marriage. Against this backdrop, we looked at the mental health of LGBTQ+ college students, who described feeling drained and emotionally exhausted.

Some high school students are struggling too, especially when the campus groups founded to support them come under attack. We reported on one Kentucky mom’s attempts to push her school to create a Gay-Straight alliance despite the state’s harsh anti-LGBTQ law. And we’ve profiled an Alabama principal who was removed from her post after she began coming out as gay to colleagues.

And we’ve reported on how, thanks to a legal morass, the nation’s K-12 schools and colleges are operating under completely different regulations for how to handle issues of sex and gender discrimination, including determining which bathrooms transgender students can use.

Contact investigations editor Sarah Butrymowicz at 212-678-3585 or butrymowicz@hechingerreport.org.

This story about the election and education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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See whether your school uses Biden or Trump’s rules on sexual discrimination and gender identity

Sarah Butrymowicz — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 13:02:12 +0000

Lawsuits challenging the Biden administration’s Title IX rule on sex discrimination have led to judges blocking its implementation in 26 states. The new rule was also halted in schools and universities attended by children of members of Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United, following lawsuits from those groups.

The result is a messy legal landscape with school officials trying to figure out their obligations. Below are lists of K-12 schools and colleges that, because of court injunctions, are continuing to follow the Trump administration’s Title IX rules instead of the newer regulations.

Search below and read our full report about this issue.

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America’s schools and colleges are operating under two totally different sets of rules for sex discrimination

Laura Pappano, Nirvi Shah and Sarah Butrymowicz — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 19:09:19 +0000

In Sheridan County School District #3 in northern Wyoming, where it can take an hour on the bus each way for students to attend the K-12 Clearmont School, the Biden administration’s rewrite of Title IX rules for addressing sex-based discrimination was welcomed — by some.

Chase Christensen, superintendent of the Sheridan County School District #3 in northern Wyoming and principal of the K-12 Clearmont School, said new Title IX rules would make it less burdensome to respond to sex-based discrimination complaints in his small, rural district. Credit: Hector Martinez, The Sheridan Press.

The new rules, said Chase Christensen, the school’s principal and superintendent of the district, offer a rural community like his a streamlined process that “can alleviate the burdensome investigation process for districts and for schools.” His district spans 1,000 square miles and serves 85 pupils.

“I think they were a large move forward,” Christensen said.

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The regulation that took effect this month was meant to replace Trump-era rules set in 2020 that, among other conditions, typically require multiple impartial adults to investigate and respond to allegations of sex-based discrimination. That demand, Christensen said, especially strains small communities and districts with limited personnel. Plus, he said, those bringing a complaint “are not wanting a remedy four months later,” but in a few days. “They are wanting to move on.”

But Wyoming and 25 other states sued to halt the Biden administration rules, and thus far, have succeeded in court. So in those states, plus a growing list of individual schools around the country, the new rules are blocked from taking effect.

The result is a messy legal landscape with school officials trying to figure out their obligations. In some cases, schools in the very same district are subject to different rules.

“It is creating so much more work and chaos,” said Emma Grasso Levine, the Title IX policy and senior program manager at the advocacy group Know Your IX. “Are we enforcing this rule or that rule?“

At the center of the court challenges is that the Biden administration’s new rules, issued in April, expand the definition of “sex” to include sexual orientation and gender identity. This aligns with protections extended in the workplace by a 2020 Supreme Court ruling and offers greater support for transgender students. That spurred lawsuits from political leaders in red states and groups including Moms for Liberty, explicitly objecting to this broader definition. As a result, several judges blocked the new regulations, which also are intended to protect students who are pregnant or who have terminated a pregnancy, from taking effect in certain states, as well as in schools attended by children of members of Moms for Liberty and two other groups that were plaintiffs in one of the lawsuits.

Opponents of the Biden-era regulations have cast the court decisions as a victory. In Missouri, Attorney General Andrew Bailey described the court order blocking the law in his state as “a huge win,” arguing that the proposed new rules were “a slap in the face to every woman in America.” The rules, he said in a press release, “would have forced educational programs that receive federal money to accept a radical transgender ideology.”

Earlier this month, the Education Department made an emergency request to have the polarizing matter of protections based on gender identity or sexual orientation considered apart from the other provisions so that the new rule would not be on hold entirely in some states. On Aug. 16, the Supreme Court denied that request. The new rules do not address transgender athletes, which the department is taking up separately. But Grasso Levine said the rise of anti-LGBTQ sentiment around sports participation, along with laws barring transgender athletes and gender-affirming health care in some states, has helped to drive the objections to the Biden administration’s Title IX regulation.

Kansas high school students, family members and advocates rally for transgender rights, Jan. 31, 2024, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. Credit: – Kansas high school students, family members and advocates rally for transgender rights, Jan. 31, 2024, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. John Hanna/ Associated Press

Now there is confusion and frustration, both from those eager to protect LGBTQ+ youth through the expanded definition of whom the law protects — and school officials hungry for more streamlined rules around Title IX complaints.

“It would be nice if we could take a big-picture look at the update, rather than targeting a couple of words that didn’t match up ideologically,” said Christensen, the superintendent and principal in Wyoming, where a statewide injunction has kept the new rules from taking effect.

This is also a problem in populous states like Pennsylvania, said David Conn, a lawyer who has worked on Title IX and LGBTQ+ issues in schools for over a decade.

The old regulations “have these very detailed rules for how to handle a complaint” that, he said, are not a good fit for typical minor cases of student misconduct. Conn said the new guideline better serves the day-to-day needs at the K-12 level and “allows for informal resolution, which in school districts is a big deal.”

When the new rules went into effect, they represented “a significant step forward in improving policies for LGBTQ students,” said Brian Dittmeier, policy director for GLSEN, a group started by teachers in 1990 that advocates for LGBTQ+ individuals in K-12 education.

According to GLSEN data, 83 percent of LGBTQ+ students said they were assaulted or harassed because of their gender identity in school in 2021, and nearly 62 percent of them did not report it. Such findings, said Dittmeier, suggest “a gap of trust” and students “not feeling they were protected by school policies.”

Since it was passed in 1972, Title IX — just 37 words — has leaned on regulations to shape its enforcement. Each administration has tweaked the language, but the Biden administration’s more detailed review, which included public comment, sought to give the new rules “the force of law” in contrast to the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleague” letter guidance, said Suzanne Eckes, Susan S. Engeleiter Chair in Education Law, Policy, and Practice at the University of Wisconsin.

She said that the new rules interpreting the Title IX phrase “on the basis of sex” as including sexual orientation and gender identity are in line with the June 2020 Supreme Court decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. That ruling found that sex-based employment protections under Title VII covered sexual orientation and gender identity, stating that “it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.”

Eckes said an August 2020 case, Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board that asserted violations of Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause, found in favor of a trans student’s right to use the restroom matching their gender identity, citing Bostock in the opinion. “Title IX cases look at Title VII and Title VII cases look at Title IX. This is nothing new,” said Eckes.

Yet that is exactly the conflict at play. Several courts blocked the new Title IX rules because of the expanded definition of “sex.” Kansas U.S. District Court Judge John Broomes ruled that “the reasoning of Bostock does not automatically transfer for the Title IX context.” He said the new rules fail to define “gender identity” and that “the unambiguous plain language of the statutory provisions and the legislative history make clear that the term ‘sex’ means the traditional biological concept of biological sex in which there are only two sexes, male and female.”

The case before Broomes was brought by political leaders in Kansas, Alaska, Utah and Wyoming, along with Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United. Broomes ruled that his injunction applied to the four states, and to schools attended by children of members of Moms for Liberty and the suit’s other plaintiffs. Following the ruling, Moms for Liberty co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich described it as victory, stating that “gender ideology does not belong in public schools and we are glad the courts made the correct call to protect parental rights.”

The groups have urged members to request the schools and colleges their children attend be exempt from the Biden administration rule; Broomes is allowing the list that already includes hundreds of individual schools not covered by statewide injunctions to expand. As a result, Moms for Liberty leaders, ahead of their annual gathering in Washington, D.C., this week, are pitching free membership that “ensures your child’s school is included in this exemption.” That has led to the situation where in states, including Pennsylvania, not subject to a statewide injunction, one school can be governed by the new rules while another in the same district is not.

Students, parents, educators and advocates gather in front of the White House to press the Biden Administration to release the long-awaited final Title IX Rule on Dec. 5, 2023, in Washington, DC. Credit: Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for National Women's Law Center

The key point of contention in the lawsuits, said Eckes, centers on transgender students’ use of restrooms, the most litigated issue involving transgender students in schools. While the Supreme Court has so far avoided taking up such a case, she said, “if this continues to cause chaos across the United States or another case comes up around trans access to restrooms,” that could change. Right now, as a practical matter, she said, case law has repeatedly supported the right of students to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity.

Some states, like Pennsylvania, have strong anti-discrimination laws. As a result, the injunction applied to individual schools “is much ado about nothing,” said Conn, the Pennsylvania attorney and Title IX expert. Plus, he said, applicable court decisions support protections for transgender students in the state. “Any school district that said, ‘What do we have to do about bathrooms?’ My answer is that you have to let those students use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity. Full stop,” he said.

That, however, may not be the case everywhere. Plus, there is the on-the-ground reality that court cases are one thing, but life in a school for LGBTQ+ students is another. Marlene Pray, director of The Rainbow Room in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a gathering place for queer youth, said students have told her they are anxious about the start of school. Some who have already returned have faced struggles — verbal attacks and isolation, harassment, and one, she said, shared that they “had trash thrown at me in the cafeteria.”

Pushback to the new Title IX rules is just part of a larger social challenge for LGBTQ+ students, said Pray. “Their daily experience of being bullied and being targeted has not changed. And it’s not because of some list that Moms for Liberty gave some right-wing judge.”

The problem, said Pray, is “the hundreds of legislative plans and policies that are targeting them.”

Although the result of the lawsuits is one set of colleges and schools operating under a four-year old regulation and another set operating under a brand new one, the underlying Title IX law is unchanged, noted Anya Marino, director of LGBTQI+ Equality at the National Women’s Law Center.

The legal action that resulted in blocking the newer rule in some places “does not eliminate students’ ability to bring claims under the statute, and it certainly does not eliminate schools’ obligation to uphold Title IX’s dictate.” Marino pointed to a guide from the ACLU this month that states as much. “I don’t think there should be any confusion regarding schools’ obligation to protect students.”

This story about Title IX regulations was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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What education could look like under Harris and Walz

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 06:48:00 +0000

Education vaulted to the forefront of conversations about the presidential race when Democratic nominee Kamala Harris announced Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz, the governor of Minnesota, worked for roughly two decades in public schools, as a geography teacher and football coach. He has championed investments in public education: For example, in March 2023, he signed a bill to make school meals free to all students in public schools.

Harris, a former U.S. senator and attorney general in California, has less experience in education than her running mate. But her record suggests that she would back policies to make child care more affordable, protect immigrant and LGBTQ+ students and promote broader access to higher education through free community college and loan forgiveness. Like Walz, she has defended schools and teachers against Republican charges that they are “indoctrinating” young people; she has also spoken about her own experience of being bused in Berkeley, California, as part of a program to desegregate the city’s schools.

Harris and Walz have been endorsed by the country’s two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, which tend to support Democratic candidates.

We will update this guide as the candidates reveal more information about their education plans. You can also read about the Republican ticket’s education ideas.

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Choose a topic

EARLY CHILDHOOD

K12 EDUCATION

HIGHER EDUCATION

Early childhood

Child care

Harris has been a vocal supporter of child care legislation during her time in the Biden administration, though the proposals have had a mixed record of success.

During the pandemic, the Biden administration provided $39 billion in child care aid to help keep programs afloat.

The administration lowered the cost of child care for some military families and supported raising pay for federally funded Head Start teachers to create parity with public school teachers.

Earlier this year, Harris announced a new federal rule that would reduce lower child care costs for low-income families that receive child care assistance through a federally funded program. That same rule also requires states to pay child care providers on a more reliable basis. In September, Harris highlighted affordable child care as a key issue on her campaign website and said she would ensure “that care workers are paid a living wage.” Harris also said she plans to cap child care costs at no more than 7 percent of a working family’s income, but did not elaborate on how that would be funded.

Walz has also supported child care programs as governor of Minnesota. Earlier this year, he announced a new $6 million child care grant program aimed at expanding child care capacity, which followed a 2023 grant program that cemented pandemic-era support so programs could increase wages for child care workers. — Jackie Mader

Family leave and tax benefits

As soon as she became the presumptive Democratic nominee in July, Harris reaffirmed her support for paid family leave, which also was part of the platform she proposed as a candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential contest. Harris provided the tie-breaking Senate vote that temporarily increased the child tax credit during the pandemic and has proposed making that tax credit permanent.

In mid-August, Harris unveiled an economic policy agenda that proposes giving a $6,000 child tax credit for a year to families with newborns. She also wants to bring back and expand a pandemic-era child tax credit that lapsed in 2021. Harris’ proposal would provide up to $3,600 a year per child.

Walz also was behind Minnesota’s child tax credit increase in 2023, and successfully pushed forward a statewide paid family and medical leave law that takes effect in 2026. — J.M.

Pre-K

In 2021, the Biden administration proposed a universal preschool program as part of a multi-trillion-dollar social spending plan called Build Back Better. The plan ultimately failed to win backing from the Senate.

Earlier this year, Walz signed a package of child-focused bills into law. one of which expands the state’s public pre-K program by 9,000 seats and provides pay for teachers who attend structured literacy training. — J.M.

Educating Early

Read comprehensive coverage of young learners with Hechinger’s biweekly Early Childhood newsletter.

K-12

Artificial intelligence, education technology, cybersecurity

Harris has played a key role in leading the Biden administration’s AI initiatives, particularly since the launch of ChatGPT. Biden signed an executive order on AI in October 2023, which directed the Education Department to develop within a year resources, policies and guidance on AI and to create an “AI toolkit” for schools.

While Harris hasn’t specifically addressed education technology, in the Biden administration, the Education Department earlier this year released the National Education Technology Plan to serve as a blueprint for schools on how to implement technology in education, how to address inequities in the use and design of ed tech and how to offer ways to bridge the country’s digital divide.

In 2023, the current administration announced several new initiatives to tackle cybersecurity threats in K-12 schools, including a three-year pilot program through the Federal Communications Commission that will provide up to $200 million to help school districts that are eligible for FCC’s E-Rate program cover the cost of cybersecurity services and equipment. — Javeria Salman

Immigrant students

Harris has vowed to protect those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which delays deportation for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. The Biden administration has also used its bully pulpit to remind states and school districts that all children regardless of immigration status have a constitutional right to a free public education. As a senator in 2018, Harris sponsored legislation designed to reunite migrant families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration, although family separation has continued on a much smaller scale in the Biden administration. In Minnesota, Walz signed legislation that starting next year will provide free public college tuition to undocumented students from low-income families. — Neal Morton

LGBTQ+ students and Title IX

Harris and Walz have both expressed support for LGBTQ+ students and teachers. As a senator, Harris supported the Equality Act in 2019, which would have expanded protections in the Civil Rights Act on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in education, among other areas. In a speech to the American Federation of Teachers, Harris decried the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” laws passed by Florida and other states in recent years. Walz has a long history of supporting LGBTQ+ students in Minnesota, where he was the faculty adviser of Mankato West High School’s first Gay-Straight Alliance club in the 1990s. In 2021, Walz signed an executive order restricting insurance coverage for so-called conversion therapy for minors and directing a state agency to investigate potential “discriminatory practice related to conversion therapy.” Walz signed an executive order in 2023 protecting gender-affirming health care. Earlier this year, he signed a law barring libraries from banning books based on ideology; book bans nationwide have largely targeted LGTBQ+-themed books.

The Biden administration announced significant rule changes to Title IX in 2024 that undid some of the changes the Trump administration made, including removing a mandate for colleges to have live hearings and cross-examinations when investigating sexual assaults on campus. The current administration also expanded protections for students based on sexual orientation and gender identity, which had been temporarily blocked in more than two dozen states and in schools attended by children of members of Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United. — Ariel Gilreath

Native students

As vice president, Harris worked in an administration that promised to improve education for Native Americans, including a 10-year plan to revitalize Native languages. The president’s infrastructure bill, passed in 2021, created a $3 billion program to broaden access to high-speed internet on tribal lands — a major barrier for students trying to learn at home during the pandemic. During his time as governor, Walz signed legislation last year to make college tuition-free for Native American students in Minnesota and required K-12 teachers to complete training on Native American history. Walz also required every state agency, including the department of education, to appoint tribal-state liaisons and formally consult with tribal governments.

Walz spent part of his early career teaching in small rural schools, including on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. — N.M.

School choice

Harris, who was endorsed by the nation’s largest public school teachers unions, has voiced support for public schools, but has said little about school vouchers or school choice. Walz does not support private-school vouchers, opposing statewide private-school voucher legislation introduced in 2021 by Republicans in Minnesota. — A.G.

School meals

One of Walz’s signature legislative achievements was supporting a bill that provides free school breakfasts and lunches to public and charter school students in Minnesota, regardless of household income. Walz, who signed the law in 2023, made Minnesota one of only eight states to have a universal school meal policy. The new law is expected to cost about $480 million over the next two years.

The Biden administration also expanded access to free school lunch by making it easier for schools to provide food without collecting eligibility information on every child’s family. — Christina A. Samuels

School prayer

The Biden administration has sought to protect students from feeling pressured into praying in schools. Following the 2022 Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton, the federal Education Department published updated guidance saying that while the Constitution permits school employees to pray during the workday, they may not “compel, coerce, persuade, or encourage students to join in the employee’s prayer or other religious activity.” — Caroline Preston

Special education

As a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, Harris released a “children’s agenda” in 2019 that, among other provisions, called for a large boost in special education spending.

When Congress first passed the federal law that is now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, it authorized spending to cover up to 40 percent of the “excess costs” of educating students with disabilities compared to their peers. But Congress has never come close to meeting that goal, and today the federal government distributes only about 15 percent of the total cost of educating students with disabilities. The shortfall is “immoral,” Harris told members of the National Education Association at a 2019 candidates forum.

The Biden administration also has proposed large increases in special education spending, but proposals for full funding of special education have not made it through Congress.

In 2023, the Minnesota Department of Education created a grant program to help school districts “grow their own” special education teachers. The first round of funding awarded $20 million to 25 grantees. In August, a second round of funding provided nearly $10 million to benefit more than 35 districts and charter schools. — C.A.S.

Student mental health, school safety

As California attorney general, Harris created a Bureau of Children’s Justice to address childhood trauma, among other issues. She has spoken out about the mental health toll of trauma, including from poverty, and the need for more resources and “culturally competent” mental health providers. But a 2011 law she pushed for as attorney general allowing parents of chronically absent students to be criminally charged later drew criticism for its toll on families, particularly those who are Black or Hispanic. Harris has said she regrets the law’s “unintended consequences.”

The Biden administration’s actions on student mental health includes expanding the pipeline of school psychologists, streamlining payment and delivery of school mental health services and directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop new ways of assessing social media’s impact on youth mental health.

As vice president, Harris leads the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which was created after lobbying by survivors of school shootings to support gun safety regulations. She has touted the administration’s efforts to prevent school shootings, including a grant program that has awarded roughly $500 million to schools for “evidence-based solutions,” including anonymous reporting systems for threats and training for school employees on preventing school violence. In September, the administration issued an executive order directing the surgeon general and several federal agencies to develop guidance for educational institutions on how to conduct active-shooter drills while minimizing student trauma.

In Minnesota, Walz’s 2022 budget called for $210 million in spending to help schools support students experiencing mental health challenges. “As a former classroom teacher, I know that students carry everything that happens outside the classroom into the classroom every day, and this is why it is imperative that our students get the resources they deserve,” he said. — C.P.

Teachers unions, pandemic recovery

The Biden administration has close ties to the nations’ largest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, the latter of which is the largest labor union of any kind in the country. First lady Jill Biden, who teaches community college courses, is a member of the NEA. Walz, a former teacher, is also an NEA member.

The administration was criticized for discussing with the AFT what kinds of safety measures should accompany the reopening of public schools after the pandemic.

Since 2021, the Biden administration has poured billions into helping public schools recover from the pandemic in various ways: to pay for more staff and tutors and upgrade facilities to improve air conditioning and ventilation, among other things. However, academic performance has yet to rebound, and the recovery has been uneven, with wealthier white students more likely to have made up ground lost during remote classes and Black and Latino students less likely to have done so.

The two unions, which had supported reelecting Biden, quickly threw their support to Harris and Walz. “Educators are fired up and united to get out and elect the Harris-Walz ticket,” NEA President Becky Pringle said after Harris named Walz as her running mate. “We know we can count on a continued and real partnership to expand access to free school meals for students, invest in student mental health, ensure no educator has to carry the weight of crushing student debt and do everything possible to keep our communities and schools safe.” — Nirvi Shah

Teaching about U.S. history and race

Both Harris and Walz have pushed back against Republican-led attacks on K-12 history instruction and efforts to minimize classroom conversations around slavery and race. Shortly after taking office in January 2021, the Biden administration dissolved President Donald Trump’s 1776 c ommission. In July 2023, Harris criticized a new history standard in Florida that said the experience of being enslaved had given people skills “for their personal benefit.”

As governor, Walz released an education plan calling for more “inclusive” instruction that is “reflective of students of color and Indigenous students.” It also called for anti-bias training for school staff, the establishment of an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion center at the Minnesota Department of Education, and the expansion of efforts to recruit Indigenous teachers and teachers of color. Walz also has advocated for educating students about the Holocaust and other genocides; state bans on teaching about “divisive concepts” in some Republican-led states have chilled such instruction. — C.P.

Title I

Harris’ 2019 “children’s agenda,” from when she was angling to be the Democratic nominee for president, proposed “significantly increasing” Title I, the federal program aimed at educating children from low-income families. The Biden administration also has proposed major increases to Title I spending, but Congress has not enacted those proposals. — C.A.S.

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Higher Education

Accreditation

As California attorney general, Harris urged the federal government in 2016 to revoke federal recognition for the accrediting agency of the for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges, which she had successfully sued for misleading students and using predatory recruiting practices. The accreditor’s recognition ultimately was removed in 2022.

As vice president, Harris has said little about the accreditation system, which is independently run and federally regulated and acts as a gatekeeper to billions of dollars in federal student aid. But the Biden administration has sought to require accreditors to create minimum standards on student outcomes such as graduation rates and licensure-exam pass rates. — Sarah Butrymowicz

Affirmative action

Harris has long supported affirmative action in college admissions. As California attorney general, she criticized the impact of the state’s 1996 ban at its public colleges. She also filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the University of Texas’ race-conscious admissions policy when the Supreme Court heard challenges to it in 2012 and 2015.

Last June, Harris criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action the same day it was handed down, calling the decision a “denial of opportunity.” Walz, referring to the decision, wrote on X, “In Minnesota, we know that diversity in our schools and businesses reflects a strong and diverse state.” — Meredith Kolodner

DEI

Harris has not shied away from supporting DEI initiatives, even as they became a focus of attack for Republicans. “Extremist so-called leaders are trying to erase America’s history and dare suggest that studying and prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion is a bad thing. They’re wrong,” she wrote on X.

As governor, Walz has taken steps to increase access to higher education across racial groups, including offering tuition-free enrollment at state colleges for residents who are members of a tribal nation. This spring, Walz signed a budget that increased funding for scholarships for students from underrepresented racial groups to teach in Minnesota schools. — M.K.

For-profit colleges

Harris has long been a critic of for-profit colleges. In 2013, as California state attorney general, she sued Corinthian Colleges, Inc., eventually obtaining a more than $1.1 billion settlement against the defunct company. “For years, Corinthian profited off the backs of poor people — now they have to pay,” she said in a press release. As senator, she signed a letter in the summer of 2020 calling for the exclusion of for-profit colleges from Covid-era emergency funding. — M.K.

Free college

The Biden administration repeatedly has proposed making community college free for students regardless of family income. The administration also proposed making college free for students whose families make less than $125,000 per year if the students attend a historically Black college, tribal college or another minority-serving institution.

In 2023, Walz signed a bill that made two- and four-year public colleges in Minnesota free for students whose families make less than $80,000 per year. The North Star Promise Program works by paying the remaining tuition after scholarships and grants have been applied, so that students don’t have to take out loans to pay for school. — Olivia Sanchez

Free/hate speech

Following nationwide campus protests against the war in Gaza, Biden said, “There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students. There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, where it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans.” His Education Department is investigating dozens of complaints about antisemitism and Islamophobia on K-12 and college campuses, a number that has spiraled since the start of the war. — O.S.

Pell grants

The Pell grant individual maximum award has increased by $900 to $7,395 since the beginning of the Biden administration, part of its goal to double the maximum award by 2029. Education experts say that when the Pell grant program began in the 1970s, it covered roughly 75 percent of the average tuition bill but today covers only about one-third. They say doubling the Pell grant would make it easier for low-income students to earn a degree. The administration tried several times to make Pell grants available to undocumented students who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but has been unsuccessful. — O.S.

Student loan forgiveness

In 2019, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, Harris proposed forgiving loans for Pell grant recipients who operated businesses in disadvantaged communities for a minimum of three years. As vice president, she was reportedly instrumental in pushing Biden to announce a sweeping debt cancelation policy.

The policy, which would have eliminated up to $20,000 in debt for borrowers under a certain income level, ultimately was blocked by the Supreme Court. Since then, the Biden administration has used other existing programs, including Public Service Loan Forgiveness, to cancel more than $168 billion in federal student debt.

Harris has regularly championed these moves. In April, for instance, she participated in a round-table discussion on debt relief, touting what the administration had done. “That’s more money in their pocket to pay for things like child care, more money in their pocket to get through the month in terms of rent or a mortgage,” she said of those who had loans forgiven.

But challenges remain. In August, a federal appeals court issued a stay on a Biden plan, known as the SAVE plan, which aimed to allow enrolled borrowers to cut their monthly payments and have their debts forgiven more quickly than they currently can. — S.B.

Workforce development

Last fall, the Biden administration sent nearly $94 million in grant funding to job training programs, including community colleges and programs that partner with high schools. Earlier this year, the administration also announced $25 million for a new Career Connected High Schools grants program to help establish pathways to careers. In addition, the administration invested billions in nine workforce training hubs across the country.

The Democratic Party platform unveiled at the national convention in Chicago also mentions expanding career and technical education. “Four year college is not the only pathway to a good career, so Democrats are investing in other forms of education as well,” the platform says.

Walz’s education plan as governor of Minnesota also set a goal of increasing career and technical education pathways. In October 2023, he signed an executive order eliminating college degree requirements for most government jobs in the state, a growing trend in states looking to expand alternative pathways to careers. — A.G.

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What education could look like under Trump and Vance

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, are persistent critics of public K-12 schools and higher education and want to overhaul many aspects of how the institutions operate. On the campaign trail, Trump has repeatedly called for the elimination of the federal Education Department, arguing that states should have full authority for educating children. (Abolishing the department has been a long-standing goal of many Republicans, but it’s highly unlikely to win enough support in Congress to happen.)

Trump also supports efforts to privatize the K-12 school system, including through vouchers for private schools. Both he and Vance have launched repeated attacks on both K-12 and higher education institutions over practices that seek to advance racial diversity and tolerance and policies that provide protections to transgender students, among other issues. The candidates have also argued that higher ed institutions suppress the free speech of conservative students; as president, Trump took at least one action to tie funding to free speech protections.

“Rather than indoctrinating young people with inappropriate racial, sexual, and political material, which is what we’re doing now, our schools must be totally refocused to prepare our children to succeed in the world of work,” Trump said in a September 2023 video describing his education proposals.

We will update this guide as the candidates reveal more information about their education plans. You can also read about the Democratic ticket’s education ideas.

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Early childhood

Child care

Even though Trump launched his first campaign for president with a child care policy proposal to expand access to care through tax code changes, child care largely took a back seat during his presidency. That said, there were some notable actions: Before the pandemic, Trump signed a tax law that increased the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child, although research found higher-income families benefited significantly more from the change than low-income families. In 2018 he proposed cuts to the Child Care and Development Block Grant, a federal program that helps low-income families pay for child care, but ultimately approved funding increases passed by Congress in both 2018 and 2020.

In 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act, which allotted an additional $3.5 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant. The supplemental fund was also meant to support the child care needs of essential workers. The CARES Act also provided supplemental funding to Head Start. —Jackie Mader

Family leave and tax credits

Also in 2020, Trump supported a bipartisan paid family leave bill, although it was more limited in scope and benefits than other paid leave proposals. Trump’s 2021 budget proposal called for eliminating the federal Preschool Development Grant program and decreased funding for a federal program that helps low-income college students pay for child care.

Vance has focused on legislation that encourages and supports parents to stay at home with their young children. In 2023, he co-sponsored a bill that would prevent employers from clawing back health care premiums the employers paid during a parent’s time off under the Family and Medical Leave Act if the parent chose not to return to work. He has been a vocal opponent of universal child care and instead has expressed support for more tax credits for parents. In mid-August, Vance expressed support for a $5,000 per child tax credit, an increase from the current maximum of $2,000 per child.— J.M.— J.M.

Educating Early

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K-12

Artificial intelligence

In 2019, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to focus on research and development around AI, and a year later his administration announced that $140 million would be awarded to several National Science Foundation-led programs to conduct research on AI at universities nationwide.

On the campaign trail this year, however, Trump said he will reverse the executive order on artificial intelligence signed by Biden last October, calling it a hindrance to AI innovation. Both Trump and his running mate, Vance, have disagreed with the Biden administration on what AI regulations should look like. While education leaders have called for regulations and guardrails around AI use and development, Vance has called for less regulation. — Javeria Salman

Immigrant, Native and rural students

The Republican presidential ticket and official party platform espouse anti-immigrant positions, advocating for mass deportations of anyone who entered the country without legal documentation. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank behind Project 2025, earlier this year released a set of policy recommendations on undocumented immigrants in U.S. public schools that would directly challenge a long-standing Supreme Court decision requiring states to provide a free education to all students regardless of their immigration status. While Trump has tried to distance himself from Heritage and its policy proposals, his running mate wrote the forward to an upcoming book from Project 2025’s former leader and many former Trump administration officials were involved in crafting the plan.

With respect to Native students, Trump as president released a “Putting America’s First Peoples First” brief outlining his promises to Indian Country, including access to college scholarships for Native American students, creating new tribally operated charter schools and improving the beleaguered agency that oversees K-12 education on reservations. Trump also pitched a 25 percent boost in funding for Native language instruction.

Vance, in an interview before Trump took office in 2017, encouraged the new administration to focus on education as a tool to help struggling rural communities. He said increasing options for students after high school would prepare them for jobs in a “knowledge economy” and give them more choices beyond pursuing a minimum-wage service sector job or going to a four-year college. “There’s no options in between and consequently people don’t see much opportunity,” Vance said. — Neal Morton

LGBTQ+ students and Title IX

In 2017, Trump rolled back Obama-era guidance that offered protections for transgender students to use school bathrooms based on their gender identity. His campaign website says he plans to reverse any gender-affirming care policies implemented by President Joe Biden, who signed an executive order in 2022 encouraging the Departments of Education and of Health and Human Services to expand access to health care and gender-affirming care for LGBTQ+ students. He has also warned schools that, if reelected, he would cut or eliminate federal funding if teachers or school employees suggest “to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body.” Vance sponsored a Senate bill last year that would ban medical gender-affirming care for minors, but it has not advanced.

The Trump administration significantly changed how colleges handle sexual assault allegations through Title IX during his time in office, adding a requirement for colleges to conduct live disciplinary hearings and allow cross-examinations in sexual assault cases; this was largely undone by the Biden administration. Trump said he plans to roll back Title IX rules the Biden administration implemented that expanded protections against discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. Trump has also said he would prevent transgender athletes from participating in sports teams based on their gender identity; school rules on this issue are now decided at the state- or school-level with a Biden administration proposal stalled. — Ariel Gilreath

School choice

Expanding school choice through private-school vouchers has been a key part of Trump’s education policy, but he had little success in getting his most ambitious efforts passed by Congress. One early accomplishment came via the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. His administration made it possible for parents to use their children’s 529 college savings plan to pay for up to $10,000 annually in private school tuition.

His education secretary, Betsy DeVos, a longtime school-choice supporter in her home state of Michigan, made several high-profile attempts to support charter schools and expand private- school voucher expansion. DeVos attempted to set aside $400 million for charter schools and private-school vouchers in the 2018 federal budget, and in 2019, she promoted a $5 billion tax credit program for private-school vouchers, but neither proposal cleared Congress. During a speech in June 2020, Trump called school choice the “civil rights statement of the year.” Later that year, after widespread school closures, Trump issued an executive order allowing states to use money from a federal poverty program to help low-income families pay for private schooling, homeschooling, special education services or tutoring. His campaign website says he supports state and federal level universal school choice, and it highlights programs in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah and West Virginia. — A.G.

School meals

The Trump administration made several attempts to roll back lunch nutrition standards that had been championed by Michelle Obama, arguing that schools needed more flexibility and the standards were leading to wasted food.

However, in 2020, a federal judge ended the Trump administration’s efforts to ease requirements for whole grains and to allow more sodium in school meals, among other changes. The administration did not follow proper procedures in easing those nutrition mandates, the court ruled. — Christina A. Samuels

School prayer

Trump has been an advocate for what his campaign calls “the fundamental right to pray in school.” As president, he issued guidance intended to protect students who want to pray or worship in school. The outcome of Kennedy v. Bremerton, the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that a football coach had a constitutional right to pray on the field after games, was shaped by the three justices that Trump appointed to the court. Some nonprofit and legal groups have criticized Trump’s positions, arguing that he muddies the separation of church and state and that the real problem is not suppression of religious freedom in schools but children who feel pressured into religious expression. — Caroline Preston

School safety, student mental health

When it comes to school safety, Trump has supported policies that prioritize the “hardening” of schools and strict disciplinary approaches. According to his 2024 campaign website, if reelected, Trump would “completely overhaul federal standards on school discipline to get out-of-control troublemakers OUT of the classroom and INTO reform schools and corrections facilities.” He would also support schools that allow “highly trained teachers” to carry concealed weapons in classrooms and hire veterans and others as armed guards at schools. Regarding youth mental health, his campaign says he would direct the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to investigate the effects of “common psychiatric drugs” and gender-affirming hormone therapy on young people.

Vance has taken similar positions. During his 2022 Senate run, he said he supported Ohio’s new law that lowered the amount of training required for teachers to carry concealed weapons in classrooms. In Congress, he raised concerns about elements of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the gun safety law passed in 2022 after the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and co-sponsored two bills that would have altered language in the bill to permit schools to buy weapons for use in archery, hunting and sharp-shooting programs. (A similar bill introduced in the House ultimately passed.) Vance also sponsored a bill that would direct the education secretary to study the use of mobile devices in K-12 schools — a mental health concern — and establish a pilot program to support schools’ efforts to become device-free. — C.P.

Special education

The Trump administration attempted to roll back a rule that requires districts to track students in special education by race and ethnicity in order to determine if minority students are more likely to be identified for special education, face harsher discipline, or be placed in classrooms separate from their general-education peers. A judge dismissed the administration’s efforts to eliminate this policy on procedural grounds. — C.A.S.

Teachers unions, pandemic recovery

Teachers unions, unlike some other labor groups, did not work well with the Trump administration and do not back the Trump/Vance ticket. Trump’s 2024 platform advocates undercutting some of the protections teachers unions support. It says, “Republicans will support schools that focus on Excellence and Parental Rights. We will support ending Teacher Tenure, adopting Merit pay, and allowing various publicly supported Educational models.”

His administration pushed schools to reopen ahead of the 2020-21 school year but without the kinds of safeguards Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said were essential to get teachers and kids back together, in person. Trump signed two broad relief packages passed by Congress in 2020 that included more than $100 billion in aid for K-12 schools to recover from the pandemic. — Nirvi Shah

Teaching about U.S. history and race

Both Trump and Vance have attacked critical race theory and advanced concerns that K-12 teachers are stirring anti-white bias among students. As president, Trump criticized the 1619 Project, a New York Times history document arguing that the enslavement of Black Americans was central to U.S. history. He established the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission as a rebuke to the project; its January 2021 report called for “restoring patriotic education” and railed against “identity politics.” The Biden administration rescinded the commission, but Trump has pledged to reinstate it if reelected.

Vance, meanwhile, made education culture war issues central to his 2022 run for Senate. On his campaign website, he pledged to cut funding for state universities in Ohio that teach critical race theory and “to force our schools to give an honest, patriotic account of American history.” — C.P.

Title I

During each of his four years in office, Trump submitted budget proposals that would have consolidated more than two dozen programs, including Title I, the largest source of federal funding for schools. The program is intended to support services at schools that educate children from low-income families. Congress rejected the administration’s efforts to consolidate the programs — C.A.S.

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Higher education

Accreditation

The Trump campaign has gone after college accrediting agencies, which serve as the gatekeepers for billions of dollars in federal student aid, claiming that the entities are part of the “radical Left” and have “allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.” (The fact that some accrediting agencies have added or considered standards related to diversity, equity and inclusion also has drawn ire from many on the right.)

In a video posted to his campaign site, Trump pledges to “fire” existing accrediting agencies. The government does have regulations that these entities must follow, but revoking their recognition would require a lengthy Education Department review.

Trump goes on to say that he would open applications for new accreditors to impose standards that include “defending the American tradition and Western civilization, protecting free speech, eliminating wasteful administrative positions that drive up costs incredibly,” and “implementing college entrance and exit exams to prove that students are actually learning and getting their money’s worth.” — Sarah Butrymowicz

Affirmative action

Both Trump and Vance have taken a hard stance against affirmative action and diversity initiatives. Trump celebrated the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling banning affirmative action in college admissions, calling it a “great day for America.” “We’re going back to all merit-based — and that’s the way it should be,” he wrote on TruthSocial.

Following that decision, Vance wrote a letter to college presidents warning, “The United States Senate is prepared to use its full investigative powers to uncover circumvention, covert or otherwise, of the Supreme Court’s ruling.” Last December, he introduced a bill to create an inspector general’s office to investigate discrimination in college admissions and financial aid, which would take federal aid away from colleges found in violation. — Meredith Kolodner

Community college

Trump has said people don’t understand what community colleges are and suggested they be renamed vocational or technical colleges (though they are not the same thing). He has not supported tuition-free community college, but last year, he pitched the idea of a free online college he called American Academy, be paid for by taxes on private universities. Experts have said this plan is unlikely to take hold. — Olivia Sanchez

DEI

As the agitation about DEI initiatives intensified in 2020, Trump issued an executive order that banned diversity training that was “divisive,” which applied to federal agencies and recipients of federal grants, including universities.

Vance has also criticized DEI initiatives, calling them “racism, plain and simple.” Last December, he wrote a letter to the president of Ohio State University, probing its hiring practices and its curriculum. “If universities keep pushing racial hatred, euphemistically called DEI, we need to look at their funding,” he wrote on X. — M.K.

For-profit colleges and universities

Trump has long been seen as a friend of the for-profit college sector. Before he became president, he ran the for-profit Trump University, which trained students for careers in real estate. He was subsequently sued by former students who claimed the college had misled them; the case was settled with a $25 million payout. While in office, he took several steps to make it easier for for-profit colleges to thrive, and enrollment at those institutions began to rise in 2020. His administration rolled back the Obama-era gainful employment rule, which required for-profit colleges to meet certain benchmarks to ensure that a majority of graduates were making enough to pay back their loans. As president, Trump vetoed a bill that would have provided debt forgiveness to veterans defrauded by for-profit colleges.— M.K.

Free/hate speech

Trump considers himself an advocate of free speech, but he has attacked the speech of others and drawn criticism for comments about immigrants and other groups that some argue amount to hate speech.

In 2019, Trump signed an executive order requiring that colleges and universities commit to promoting free speech and free inquiry to continue receiving research funding from 12 federal agencies. He said this was to protect conservative students from being silenced and discriminated against. “Under the guise of ‘speech codes’ and ‘safe spaces’ and ‘trigger warnings,’ these universities have tried to restrict free thought, impose total conformity, and shut down the voices of great young Americans like those here today,” he said when signing the order.

Vance also has argued that conservative students are being silenced on college campuses. When he was running for Senate, Vance gave a speech entitled “Universities are the enemy” in 2021, calling the institutions corrupt and arguing they disseminate lies rather than truth and knowledge.

In the same speech, he called his alma mater, Yale University Law School, “clearly a liberal-biased place” at the time he graduated in 2013, adding that when he returned five years later to promote his book, “it felt totally totalitarian.” “It felt like the sort of place where if you were a conservative student who had conservative ideas you were terrified to utter them,” Vance said. — O.S.

Pell grants

The Trump administration proposed cutting the Pell grant surplus fund twice, including a proposed $3.9 billion diversion that would have funded several unrelated initiatives, including a NASA plan to take astronauts back to the moon. Though dipping into the Pell reserves wouldn’t have affected students already awarded Pell grants, education advocates argued that it would have imperiled funding for future students. None of these proposals were approved by Congress. A Trump plan to allow students to use Pell grants on short-term programs was unsuccessful.

Trump proposed formalizing an Obama-era pilot program that made incarcerated people eligible for Pell grants. Congress approved this expansion in the FAFSA Simplification Act passed in December 2020. — O.S.

Student loan forgiveness

As president, Trump proposed eliminating the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which wipes out loan debt for people who work in the public sector or nonprofits. During his tenure, the Department of Education also stopped enforcing a regulation that provided an avenue for debt relief to students who had been defrauded by their colleges.

Trump praised the three justices he appointed to the Supreme Court for their votes to strike down Biden’s broad debt forgiveness plan. He has attacked the Biden administration’s continued efforts to cancel debt as “vile” and “not even legal.”

Vance has taken a similar stance on large-scale loan forgiveness, saying on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “Forgiving student debt is a massive windfall to the rich, to the college educated, and most of all to the corrupt university administrators of America.” But he did co-sponsor a bipartisan bill earlier this year that would allow parents to get loans discharged if their child became permanently disabled. — S.B.

Workforce development

Federal funding for career and technical education, which had been stagnant for more than a decade before Trump came into office, rose significantly during his administration. In 2018, Trump renewed the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act — one of states’ primary sources of federal funding for CTE programs – and reduced regulations on how states are required to spend the money. In 2020, he proposed one of the largest-ever increases in funding for career and technical education, even as he sought to cut the overall budget for the Department of Education.

Trump also established an advisory council tasked with developing a national strategy to train people for high-demand jobs. His campaign website says he plans to provide “funding preferences” for schools that help students find internships and jobs and for schools that have career counselors for students. His website also highlights the Cristo Rey Network — a group of Catholic schools across the country where students are required to work at part-time, entry-level jobs one day a week during the school year throughout high school. — A.G.

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How could Project 2025 change education?

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 14:13:49 +0000

The proposals in the 2025 Presidential Transition Project — known as Project 2025 and designed for Donald Trump — would reshape the American education system, early education through college, from start to finish.

The conservative Heritage Foundation is the primary force behind the sprawling blueprint, which is separate from the much less detailed Republican National Committee 2024 platform, though they share some common themes.

Kevin Roberts, the president of Heritage and its lobbying arm, Heritage Action, said in an interview with USA TODAY that Project 2025 should be seen “like a menu from the Cheesecake Factory.” No one president could take on all these changes, he said. “It’s a manual for conservative policy thought.”

The fast-changing political landscape makes it difficult to say which of these proposals might be taken up by Trump if he wins reelection. He has claimed to know nothing about it, though many of his allies were involved in drafting it. The exit of President Joe Biden from the presidential race may have an impact on Project 2025 that is still unknown. Finally, many of the broadest proposals in the document, such as changes to Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, would require congressional action, not just an order from the White House.

However, it remains a useful document for outlining the priorities of those who would likely play a part in a new Trump administration. The Hechinger Report created this reference guide that digs into the Project 2025 wishlist for education.

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Early childhood

Child care for military families

Project 2025 calls for expanding child care for military families, who have access to programs that are often upheld as premier examples of high-quality care in America. – Jackie Mader

Head Start and child care

Project 2025 calls for eliminating the Office of Head Start, which would lead to the closure of Head Start child care programs that serve about 833,000 low-income children each year. Most Head Start children are served in center-based programs, which have an outsized role in rural areas and prioritize enrolling a certain percentage of young children with disabilities who often struggle to find child care elsewhere. Head Start also provides a critical funding and resource stream to other private child care programs that meet Head Start standards, including home-based programs. – J. M.

Home-based child care

A conservative administration should also prioritize funding for home-based child care rather than “universal day care” in programs outside the home, Project 2025 says. That funding would include money for parents to stay home with a child or to pay for “familial, in-home” care, proposals that could be appealing to some early childhood advocates who have long called for more resources for informal care and stay-at-home parents. – J. M.

On-site child care

If out-of-home child care is necessary, Congress should offer incentives for on-site child care, Project 2025 says, because it “puts the least stress on the parent-child bond.” Early childhood advocates have been wary of such proposals because they tie child care access to a specific job. It also calls on Congress to clarify within the Fair Labor Standards Act that an employer’s expenses for providing such care are not part of the employee’s pay.– J. M.

K-12 education

Data collection

The National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” should release student performance data based on “family structure” — in addition to existing categories such as race and socioeconomic status — Project 2025 argues. Family structure, the document says, is “one of the most important — if not the most important — factor influencing student educational achievement and attainment.” The document goes on to endorse “natural family structure” of a heterosexual, two-parent household, “because all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.” — Sarah Butrymowicz

LGBTQ students

Project 2025 advocates a rollback of regulations that protect people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. It calls for agencies to “focus their enforcement of sex discrimination laws on the biological binary meaning of ‘sex.’”

The plan also calls on Congress and state lawmakers to require schools to refer to students by the names on their birth certificates and the pronouns associated with their biological sex, unless they have written permission from parents to refer to them otherwise.

The plan also equates transgender issues with child abuse and pornography, and proposes that school libraries with books deemed offensive be punished. — Ariel Gilreath

Privatization

In place of a federal Education Department, the blueprint calls for widespread public education funding that goes directly to families, as part of its overarching goal of “advancing education freedom.”

The document specifically highlights the education savings account program in Arizona, the first state to open school vouchers up to all families. Programs like Arizona’s have few, if any, restrictions on who can access the funding. Project 2025 also calls for education savings accounts for schools under federal jurisdiction, such as those run by the Department of Defense or the Bureau of Indian Education.

In addition, Project 2025 calls on Congress to look into creating a federal scholarship tax credit to “incentivize donors to contribute” to nonprofit groups that grant scholarships for private school tuition or education materials. — Ariel Gilreath and Neal Morton

School meals

The federal school meals program should be scaled back to ensure that only children from low-income families are receiving the benefit, the document says. Policy changes under the Obama administration have made it easier for entire schools or districts to provide free meals to students without families needing to submit individual eligibility paperwork. — Christina A. Samuels

Special education

Project 2025 says that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which provides $14.2 billion in federal money for the education of school-aged children with disabilities, should be mostly converted to “no-strings” block grants to individual states. Lawmakers should also consider making a portion of the federal money payable directly to parents of children with disabilities, it says, so they can use it for tutoring, therapies or other educational materials. This would be similar to education savings accounts in place in Arizona and Florida.

The blueprint also calls for rescinding a policy called “Equity in IDEA.” Under that policy, districts are required to evaluate if schools are disproportionately enrolling Black, Native American and other ethnic minority students in special education. Districts must also track how these students are disciplined, and if they are more likely than other students in special education to be placed in classrooms separate from their general education peers. Current rules, which Project 2025 would eliminate, require that districts that have significant disparities in this area must use 15 percent of their federal funding to address those problems. — C.A.S.

Teaching about race

Project 2025 elevates concerns among members of the political right that educating students about race and racism risks promoting bias against white people. The document discusses the legal concept of critical race theory, and argues that when it is used in teacher training and school activities such as “mandatory affinity groups,” it disrupts “the values that hold communities together such as equality under the law and colorblindness.”

The document calls for legislation requiring schools to adopt proposals “that say no individual should receive punishment or benefits based on the color of their skin,” among other recommendations. It also calls for a federal Parents’ Bill of Rights that would give families a “fair hearing in court” if they believed the federal government had enforced policies undermining their right to raise their children. — Caroline Preston

Title I

This program, funded at a little over $18 billion for fiscal 2024, is the largest federal program for K-12 schools and is designed to help children from low-income families. The conservative blueprint would encourage lawmakers to make the program a block grant to states, with few restrictions on how it can be used — and, over 10 years, to phase it out entirely. Additionally, it says, lawmakers should allow parents in Title I schools to use part of that funding for educational savings accounts that could be spent on private tutoring or other services. — C.A.S.

Higher education

Affirmative action and diversity, equity and inclusion

The document calls for prosecuting “all state and local governments, institutions of higher education, corporations, and any other private employers” that maintain affirmative action or DEI policies. That position matches the views expressed by Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, about the use of race in college admissions and beyond. — Liz Willen

Data collection

In higher education, the proposal argues that college graduation and earnings data need a “risk adjustment” that factors in the types of students served by a particular institution. While selective colleges tend to post the highest graduation rates and student earnings, they also tend to enroll the least-“risky” students. A risk adjustment methodology could benefit community colleges, which often have low graduation rates but enroll many nontraditional students who face obstacles to earning a degree. It would also likely benefit for-profit colleges, which similarly tend to accept most applicants. Historically, for-profit schools have received scrutiny under Democratic administrations for poor outcomes and for allegedly misleading students about the value of the education they provide. Republican administrations typically have supported less regulation of for-profit institutions. — S.B.

Parent PLUS loans and Pell grants

The blueprint calls for the elimination of the Parent PLUS loan program, arguing that it is redundant “because there are many privately provided alternatives available.” Originally created for relatively affluent families, the PLUS loan program has become a crucial way for lower- and middle-income families to pay for college. In recent years, it has sparked criticism due to rising default rates and fewer protections than are afforded to other student loan borrowers.

At present, interest rates for private loans are significantly lower than Parent PLUS rates, but they come with fewer protections, and it is more difficult to get approved for a private-bank loan. Project 2025 would also get rid of PLUS loans for graduate students.

If the federal PLUS programs were eliminated, it could stem one portion of the rising tide of families’ education debt, but it would also make the path to paying for college more difficult for some families.

Project 2025 does not call for a change to the Pell grant program, which provides federal funding for students from low-income families to attend college. Some advocates have called for doubling the annual maximum allotment, which is $7,395 for the 2024-25 school year, far below the cost to attend many colleges. — Meredith Kolodner and Olivia Sanchez

Student loan forgiveness

Project 2025 would end the prospect of student loan forgiveness, which has already been largely blocked by federal courts; the Biden administration, in a sort of game of Whac-a-Mole, has proposed still more forgiveness programs that are being fought by Republican state attorneys general and others. Project 2025 would also dramatically restrict what’s known as “borrower defense to repayment,” which forgives loans borrowed to pay for colleges that closed or have been found to use illegal or deceptive marketing. Largely restricting the Education Department to collecting statistics, Project 2025 would shift responsibility for student loans to the Treasury Department. — Jon Marcus

This story about Project 2025 was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

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Suspended for ‘other’: When states don’t share why kids are being kicked out of school

Fazil Khan and Sarah Butrymowicz — Tue, 28 May 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Every time educators suspend students from school, they have to select a formal reason.

In Texas, they have 42 options to pick from — fighting, school-related gang violence, even arson. Despite those choices, 88 percent of suspensions in Texas last year were marked in state reports as a “violation of student code of conduct” with no additional detail.

That’s more than a million suspensions last school year alone.

Many states have these nebulous categories, designed for behavior that isn’t captured by another, more specific, reason set by their departments of education. These categories are often used at high — and potentially problematic — rates. Texas districts reported the highest number of these vague suspensions, but a review of five years of data across 15 other states for which The Hechinger Report obtained data showed school officials citing a broad category such as “other” nearly a million times when suspending students.

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School discipline experts warn that these ambiguous categories lack guardrails and can be used to justify suspensions for any misconduct, including minor infractions. They’re often available in addition to other subjective options such as willful defiance and insubordination, yet are even more indefinite, further obscuring why students are kicked out of school.

The very existence of these types of “catchall” categories sends a troubling message to educators, said Dan Losen, senior director for the education team at the National Center for Youth Law.

“It’s a way to say you can suspend basically for any reason whatsoever,” he said. “It gives carte blanche to administrators.”

In Texas, the catchall category captures almost 9 out of every 10 suspensions. In Mississippi, the similarly imprecise category of “noncriminal behavior” accounts for 3 out of every 4 — 232,000 out of a total of 303,000 suspensions over five years. In Indiana, Alabama and Vermont, a similarly broad category accounted for more than a quarter of all suspensions in that time.

In all these states, there are at least 25 more clearly defined categories of suspensions, such as fighting, stalking and sexual misconduct.

Studies show that Black students, in particular, are more likely to be suspended for vague reasons, an indication that bias may play a larger role in suspensions than behavior. Research has also long demonstrated that kids who are suspended have negative outcomes, including lower academic performance, higher dropout rates and increased involvement with the criminal justice system. Because there are such serious consequences, experts say transparency about the discipline process is key.

Suspended for…what?

Students miss hundreds of thousands of school days each year for subjective infractions like defiance and disorderly conduct, a Hechinger investigation revealed.

Read the series

In Mississippi, districts may soon need to note specifics about the kind of behavior that leads to suspensions in its noncriminal-behavior category, Shanderia Minor, spokesperson for the state’s education department, said in an email. The form districts use to record discipline incidents will be updated over the summer and may require additional information for these types of suspensions.

The Texas Education Agency said that discipline decisions are made at the local level. It did not respond to follow-up questions about the agency’s oversight. This means districts have complete control over determining what behavior is considered a violation of the student code of conduct.

In the Fort Worth Independent School District in Texas, almost 91 percent of suspensions were labeled a violation of the student code of conduct, or “Code 21” last year. Sandra Benavidez, executive director of guidance and counseling, oversees the district’s approach to discipline. She pointed out that the majority of Texas’ 41 other categories are for extreme behavior — think felonies rather than misdemeanors. The student code of conduct, she said, is where infractions such as horseplaying and skipping class are defined.

“They’re still infractions. They’re still undesirable behaviors,” Benavidez said. When students are suspended for them, the misconduct is labeled “Code 21.” Benavidez uses the same language as Losen: “In some cases, Code 21 has become, for lack of a better word, a catchall.”

She added that better guidance from the state about what kinds of behavior merit suspension would be useful, citing a lack of training on when educators should turn to such punishment. “If you asked 20 administrators, they would each give you a different response,” she said.

Jason Okonofua, an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies school discipline, said that more specific categories and clear guidelines are needed.

“Don’t leave any ambiguity,” Okonofua said. “Not only don’t have an ‘other’ box, but make clear instructions, like clear classifications for things, such that it’s very transparent for a teacher.”

Transparency could help reduce inequities in suspension rates under vague categories, Okonofua said. In all states with available data, Black students were more likely to be suspended than their white peers for “other” reasons.

Russ Skiba, a professor emeritus at Indiana University, who has studied the racial and ethnic disparities in exclusionary school discipline for decades, said the more subjective a category, the greater the chance it will be applied unevenly.

“When we have very broad categories, you can have subjective decisions and those subjective decisions really are more likely to tap into pre-existing stereotypes that exist in all of us,” he said.

In the Fort Worth ISD last year, Black students received 48 percent of all suspensions for violations of the student code of conduct. They made up just 20 percent of the student body.

When Benavidez joined Fort Worth ISD last summer, one of the first things she did was look at the district’s discipline data. She noted racial disparities in alternative school placements, which follow misbehavior, and convened a group to help rethink the district’s strategy for dealing with students at risk of getting kicked out of their schools. Benavidez acknowledged that giving educators too much discretion can let bias creep into disciplinary decisions.

“We, as district leaders, have to identify those vulnerabilities and put systems in place that minimize those opportunities,” she said. “That’s the work I’ve been doing with the team this year.”

Tara García Mathewson contributed reporting.

This story about school discipline data was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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New data shows high totals of suspensions for missing class

Sarah Butrymowicz — Mon, 20 May 2024 05:00:00 +0000

Many American students face a strange punishment for missing school: losing more class time.

Educators nationwide regularly turn to suspension as a response to attendance problems, according to a Hechinger Report review of data from a dozen states that track this information.

Between 2017-18 and 2021-22, school districts in those states cited attendance-related violations as a reason for student suspensions more than half a million times. In all, they made up almost 1 in 10 discipline records.

Those totals are “crazy high,” said Robert Balfanz, director of the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University School of Education.

His research has shown that school attendance is an early indicator of whether a student is on track to graduate. Punishing students by forcing them to miss class can harm their chances of getting a diploma on time.

“To me, whether you’re truant, absent or late, that our remedy is to tell you to miss more school is just poorly thought out at best,” Balfanz said. “We just know from years and years of research that it’s really important for kids to be in school every day.”

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Hechinger’s analysis is the largest national look to date at suspensions for attendance violations, gathered as part of its Suspended …for what? project.

A previous Hechinger analysis of 150 Arizona school districts, in partnership with the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, found nearly 47,000 suspensions for attendance issues across five years, also accounting for 10 percent of all such punishments.

Both Hechinger reports found that the suspensions for missing class disproportionately affected students from certain minority groups.

Educators say suspensions can be a useful tool to teach students a lesson when they have persistent attendance problems or to help keep schools safe. But many experts criticize these punishments as an ineffective way to solve the problem.

“One can understand the theory behind that, but there’s no real evidence to show that it actually then spurs a student to change,” said Joshua Childs, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “What that doesn’t recognize is that a lot of attendance issues are beyond an individual student’s control.”

Students may miss part or all of the school day for any number of reasons, including mental health concerns, transportation problems or family responsibilities. A suspension addresses none of these issues and can instead further alienate a student from school.

Suspended for…what?

Students miss hundreds of thousands of school days each year for subjective infractions like defiance and disorderly conduct, a Hechinger investigation revealed.

Read the series

At least 11 states ban suspensions for attendance-related violations, and another six limit out-of-school suspensions for attendance violations. Following the 2022 Hechinger/AZCIR report, an Arizona lawmaker twice proposed bills that would have done the latter. Both measures stalled after initially drawing bipartisan support, and the legislator has decided not to seek reelection.

Some districts have acted on their own. In the 2022-23 school year, Georgia’s Gwinnett County Public Schools banned suspensions for attendance-related reasons. In the five years before that, the 194,000-student district assigned more than 27,000 such suspensions.

Statewide, educators issued more than 190,000 suspensions for attendance violations in that time, which accounted for more than 13 percent of all suspensions records.

The ban came with problems, though, Gwinnett spokesperson Bernard Watson said, including “an increase in the number of students arriving late to class, skipping class, and hanging out in restrooms and locker rooms.”

After hearing concerns about safety from school leaders, the district changed course. School leaders could once again suspend students for missing class, but only after they had first tried other options, such as detention, parent outreach or check-ins with support staff.

“Decisions related to discipline are not made in a vacuum,” Watson said in an email, adding that the district considers data, as well as seeking feedback from staff, parents and students. “These efforts help keep students and staff safe and productive in schools.”

Lori Miller, executive director of the Georgia-based Truancy Intervention Project, said her organization regularly works with kids who are punished for missing class, even if they managed to get to school for part of the day. In these cases, she says, the suspension rarely makes sense to the students.

“Well, you’re telling me I should go to school, but I showed up, even though I’m late, and your response was to pull me out,” she said. “It’s very confusing to kids. We have to be very careful with the messages we’re sending.”

Miller added that the problem is worse at schools that are under-resourced, which disproportionately serve Black and Latino students. There, teachers and staff are stretched thin dealing with a wide array of student issues including mental health challenges and food insecurity. In those cases, she said, suspension can be the easiest, quickest way to address a problem — even if it’s not the best.

In almost all states with available data, Black students were more likely to be suspended for attendance-related violations than their white peers. The same was true in our previous investigation in Arizona. Experts called the findings concerning and said further investigation was merited.

The Hechinger Report and AZCIR also found many school leaders who were committed to eliminating suspensions for attendance-related reasons. These educators focused on developing connections with students and addressing the root causes of what was keeping kids out of class, strategies Balfanz said are key to improving attendance problems.

In Arizona’s Tolleson Elementary School District, for instance, every student is paired with an adult who checks in with them regularly. Clubs and extracurriculars also help students find a place where they feel they belong. An onsite health clinic helps address medical concerns early to get kids back to school as fast as possible.

Schools should be focused on “What does it take to get the kids to be there every day?” Balfanz said. “Not just, ‘We take the ones who come and we punish the ones who don’t.’”

This story about school suspension data was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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For-profit beauty school settles class-action lawsuit

Sarah Butrymowicz and Meredith Kolodner — Thu, 09 May 2024 17:45:00 +0000

After four years battling a chain of for-profit cosmetology schools in court, and many more years struggling with debts caused by those schools, about 150 students will receive some financial relief.

As part of a settlement finalized this week in a class action lawsuit, La’ James International College, which is based in Iowa, will pay current and former students who joined the lawsuit $1,500 each. It will also discharge debts those students owed to the school and make changes in how it communicates about financial aid.

The suit was brought against La’ James International College in 2020 following a Hechinger Report investigation into cosmetology schools in Iowa. Our reporting showed how the business model of beauty schools can help for-profit schools rake in profits while pushing students deep into debt for an ultimately low-paying career.

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The lawsuit, which was brought on behalf of current and former students by the nonprofit legal and advocacy organization Student Defense, accused La’ James of delaying financial aid payments and causing them financial hardship in violation of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act.

“Students rely on their financial aid to stay afloat while they pursue their goals – and La’ James pulled that out from under them,” Student Defense’s litigation director, Eric Rothschild, said in a statement. “When for-profit colleges engage in such practices, hard-working students pay the price.”

La’ James did not respond to request for comment.

Most colleges disburse financial aid each semester, but beauty schools work differently. Students are required to clock a certain number of hours either in class or working in the school’s salon practicing their skills on paying customers. Financial aid payments are supposed to be made after students hit certain hour benchmarks, but students said La’ James often delayed those payments for months, so that they had to take out other loans to meet daily living expenses.

Cosmetology students in Iowa must complete more hours of training than those in any other state: 2,100 hours. (Most states require 1,500 hours.) Many for-profit beauty schools in Iowa have fought fiercely to keep it this way, lobbying hard against proposed changes. The state cosmetology school association has also protected its monopoly in this educational market, suing a community college that wanted to open a cosmetology program in 2005.

Related: Tangled up in debt

Many Iowa cosmetologists told Hechinger reporters that they spent a significant portion of their clock hours sitting around waiting for customers, not learning or practicing anything.

A Hechinger analysis showed that the more time a state requires for cosmetology training, the more debt aspiring hairdressers tend to take on. Yet the median annual pay for a cosmetologist is $35,000.

According to the most recent federal data, La’ James programs cost up to $20,000, while graduates from their schools make anywhere from $23,000 to $30,000 annually.

The Student Defense lawsuit is not the first time the school has found itself in legal jeopardy. The chain was sued in 2014 by the Iowa attorney general’s office, which accused it of deceptive marketing and enrollment practices. That suit resulted in a settlement in which La’ James forgave more than $2 million in student debt, paid a $500,000 fine and agreed to not make false or misleading statements about financial aid disbursements.

In 2021, however, the attorney general’s office found that the school was misleading students about financial aid, and once again entered into a settlement where the school forgave more than $460,000 in institutional debt.

This story about cosmetology schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Which colleges offer child care for student-parents?

Sarah Butrymowicz and Jon Marcus — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 19:15:44 +0000

Student-parents disproportionately give up before they reach the finish line. Fewer than 4 in 10 graduate with a degree within six years, compared with more than 6 in 10 other students.

Search to learn more about childcare availability at colleges and universities nationwide. Enter an institution name to see if child care is available and how many students are over the age of 24.

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