This was the largest class Shaul had taught since he started Mode to Code as a passion project while he was a sophomore at San Francisco University High School. In 2025 alone, Shaul and his team of 15 high school volunteer instructors taught 1,000 students in the San Francisco Bay Area, Bolivia, Botswana, Canada, El Salvador, India, Italy and Jamaica, with class sizes averaging about 5 to 25 students.  

Shaul believes the lessons Mode to Code offers, both in-person and online, stand out because the instructors are interacting with students every step of the way.

鈥淲hile students might learn quite a lot from watching a video and then doing problems after, there’s a difference between having a teacher that’s right there teaching it to you,鈥� said Shaul. 鈥淸Students] can ask us questions and interact with us.鈥� 

A coding class comes to life聽

Shaul launched Mode to Code to introduce computer programming to middle schoolers. He had taken a programming class in sixth grade at the private Live Oak School in San Francisco and wanted to share his passion for it with other students.

鈥淚 wasn’t sure if there were middle schools around San Francisco that had the same opportunity that I did in a private school, so I did a little research, and I was very surprised to see that there was an extreme paucity of coding education, computer science education and technology education in general,鈥� said Shaul. 

But when he reached out to school administrators, they either didn鈥檛 respond or turned him down. 鈥淚 had to learn grit and persistence, and both improved with practice,鈥� recalled Shaul.

His lucky break came when he met with Live Oak鈥檚 after-school director, who gave Shaul a shot at running his own program. 鈥淭he first class had around 10 students and lasted six weeks (longer than our usual four-week program now), allowing me to try a variety of lessons and subjects to see what worked,鈥� said Shaul. 

Bolstered by the experience at Live Oak, Shaul was able to convince several area schools, including the Chinese American International School, Presidio Middle School, Presidio Hill School and Everett Middle School, to let him offer similar programs. 

As Mode to Code gained momentum, Shaul developed a curriculum with the help of a former dean, trained volunteer instructors and connected online with other schools and educational organizations that work with underserved youth around the globe.

鈥淚 knew that there were thousands of students who could benefit from our program and I wanted to see if it was possible,鈥� said Shaul. 

Jessica Sankey, a computer science teacher at Shelburne Community School in Vermont, was the first teacher to express interest in Shaul鈥檚 online classes. 

鈥淪he was immensely helpful and gave me confidence to teach,鈥� recalled Shaul. 

That experience allowed him to fine tune his teaching methods and accommodate for issues that pop up while instructing online. For instance, he had to get used to asking students to come up to the computer screen to show their code and ask questions. 

Shaul then decided to offer his online classes to American schools in other countries.

鈥淲e try to find American schools in other countries that speak English, but also have volunteers who speak other languages, such as Spanish,鈥� says Shaul.

The first international students he taught were in India. But juggling school and teaching classes halfway across the globe proved to be challenging. 

鈥淚 would teach classes during breaks in the school day, during lunch, or wake up early. I woke up at 4:00 a.m. to teach classes in Botswana, and spent my lunch teaching a class in Canada,鈥� said Shaul. 

Educating future computer scientists and programmers

Mode to Code now partners with 30 institutions, including , which offers tuition-free after-school and summer programs, and , a nonprofit aimed at getting children to embrace the sciences.

鈥淭hese institutions help us reach new students from under-resourced backgrounds, allowing us to educate future computer scientists and programmers,鈥� said Shaul. 

鈥淥ur goal is to always be free for all the students, which means that since we don’t really have any money and aren鈥檛 making it from anywhere, the teachers are all high school volunteers.鈥� 

Last March, the Mode to Code team began teaching senior citizens the basics of artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and the internet at eight senior centers in the San Francisco Bay Area, including and . 

鈥淭he catalyst was reading about how large the scamming industry has grown, especially when targeting more vulnerable elders,鈥� Shaul recalled.

In August, Shaul will be starting his freshman year at the University of California, Berkeley, where he plans to major in computer science. Ultimately, he wants to become a software engineer so he can develop technology that will help people.

鈥淭echnology is how you scale solutions to problems and create products that impact millions of people. No other industry is able to do that in the same way,鈥� he said.

Even though he鈥檚 starting his next chapter, Shaul wants Mode to Code to live on. He鈥檚 training underclassmen at his high school so Mode to Code can continue offering its in-person and online programs to middle school students and assisted living residents around the Bay Area and beyond.

鈥淥ne of the biggest things about Mode to Code, is that it’s run entirely by high schoolers, who are interested in giving back to the people around them. We’re very lucky to have the resources that we have, and we want to give it back to the people around us,鈥� he said. 

Starbucks would open every morning to a crowd of customers assigned by ZIP code. Managers wouldn鈥檛 be able to choose their market or tailor their product to the people most likely to buy it. And if the espresso machine broke, the manager wouldn鈥檛 just replace it. They鈥檇 apply for a grant, form a committee, hold a public hearing and eventually buy a replacement from a state-approved vendor 鈥� at triple the price 鈥攕ometime around next spring.

When people argue that schools should 鈥渞un more like businesses,鈥� they usually overlook one small detail: Most businesses wouldn鈥檛 survive a week under the constraints schools face every day.

So let鈥檚 flip the comparison.

Here鈥檚 what it would look like if American businesses had to follow just five of the rules public schools already operate under.

Rule #1: Serve Everyone, No Choosing Your Market

In business, success begins with knowing your audience. Public schools don鈥檛 have that luxury.

Schools must serve every child who walks through the door, every ability level, every need, every cost. They can鈥檛 specialize. They can鈥檛 narrow their mission. And they can鈥檛 turn anyone away.

If a bakery had to operate this way, it would be required to serve every resident within a five-mile radius, including customers who need gluten-free, nut-free, sugar-free, dairy-free and dye-free options at the same price.

Businesses pick customers and adapt quickly. Schools serve everyone under rules they didn鈥檛 choose.

Rule #2: Prices Frozen by an Outdated Formula

When costs rise, businesses adjust prices. Schools don鈥檛 have that option.

Many school funding formulas still reflect assumptions written long before Wi-Fi. Some date back to the era of overhead projectors, and many still rely on decades-old models of state aid. Yet a school鈥檚 basic funding structure still doesn鈥檛 come close to matching the difference between a child who needs a pencil and a smile and one who needs a full-time nurse and medical equipment comparable to a small clinic.

Imagine running a daycare and being told: 鈥淵ou get $7 per hour per child. Forever. It doesn鈥檛 matter what diapers cost now. It doesn鈥檛 matter if three children require one-on-one support. Figure it out.鈥�

A business leader would quit.

A superintendent rolls up their sleeves, pulls out the budget puzzle and asks the finance director what changed in the formula this year 鈥� and which updates must now be applied retroactively.

Rule #3: Money Comes in Buckets You Can鈥檛 Mix

Businesses move money where it鈥檚 needed. Schools receive funding in dozens of restricted pots: technology, training, English learners, nutrition programs and special education. Sometimes, deadlines require that the money be spent within weeks or returned.

It鈥檚 like telling a grocery store: 鈥淭his money is only for canned beans. That money is only for ceiling tiles. This money must be spent immediately on customer-service workshops. No, you can鈥檛 use any of it to fix the freezer.鈥�

What often looks like waste in schools is usually just the mechanics of compliance.

Rule #4: Every Major Decision Happens in Public

In business, strategic decisions happen behind closed doors. In public education, they happen at open meetings where anyone can speak.

Imagine McDonald鈥檚 livestreaming a meeting about a new spatula vendor, only to pause the vote so the public can debate whether the spatulas align with 鈥渃ommunity values.鈥�

This transparency is essential to democracy. But it also slows decision-making in ways most businesses would find unworkable.

Rule #5: Accountability Without Control

Schools are judged by test scores, attendance, behavior, graduation rates and college-going outcomes. Much of this is shaped by factors beyond their direct control, as research from the has shown.

Imagine a gym held accountable for every member鈥檚 physical fitness. If clients skipped workouts or ignored trainers鈥� advice, the gym would still be labeled failing.

That鈥檚 the environment schools operate in: responsible for outcomes they influence but do not control.

What This Means

The real question isn鈥檛 why schools can鈥檛 run like businesses. It鈥檚 why we keep pretending they should.

Public education operates within a system designed around universal access, equity, transparency and a commitment to every child. Those values impose real constraints. Ignoring them doesn鈥檛 make schools more efficient 鈥� it just makes the comparison dishonest.

None of this means schools are beyond criticism or improvement. Like any institution, they should constantly look for ways to serve students better. But honest reform begins with an honest understanding of the system we鈥檝e built.

If policymakers truly want schools to operate more effectively, the conversation shouldn鈥檛 start with comparing them to businesses. It should start by asking whether the rules governing public education 鈥� funding formulas, spending restrictions, bureaucratic processes and accountability structures 鈥� actually allow schools the flexibility people assume they already have.

And yet every day, schools open their doors. Not because the system makes it easy, but because the people inside refuse to let children down.

Texas can enforce a state law requiring public schools to display posters of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

A 9-8 majority of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Texas officials鈥� favor, concluding that the law does not establish an official state religion.

“It does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams,” according to . “It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason.”

The court heard arguments in January after 16 families sued over the law, alleging that it amounted to state leaders promoting their interpretation of Christianity over other faiths.

All 17 active judges on the court listened to the case 鈥� 鈥� alongside a similar challenge in Louisiana, the first state to pass a Ten Commandments requirement for its public schools. The court cleared the way in February for Louisiana to fully implement its law.

After Tuesday鈥檚 decision, the civil rights organizations representing the families expressed disappointment.

“The court鈥檚 ruling goes against fundamental First Amendment principles and binding U.S. Supreme Court authority,” the groups said in a statement. “The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction. This decision tramples those rights.鈥�

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the decision, calling it a major victory for Texas and its 鈥渕oral values.鈥�

鈥淢y office was proud to defend SB 10 and successfully ensure that the Ten Commandments will be displayed in classrooms across Texas,” Paxton said. “The Ten Commandments have had a profound impact on our nation, and it鈥檚 important that students learn from them every single day.鈥�

The case is playing a central role in the national debate over whether the laws violate the First Amendment鈥檚 Establishment Clause, which prohibits governments from endorsing or promoting a particular religion. The civil rights organizations said they plan to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the decision.

Here鈥檚 what we know.

Background: The Texas Legislature passed in 2025, with Gov. signing it into law that June. It requires public schools to display donated posters of the Ten Commandments, sized at least 16 by 20 inches, in a visible space on classroom walls.

The families 鈥� represented by a coalition of civil rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas 鈥� sued 11 school districts to block what their lawyers called 鈥渃atastrophically unconstitutional鈥� legislation.

U.S. District Judge Fred Biery agreed, blocking the law from taking effect in the districts named in the lawsuit: Alamo Heights, North East, Lackland, Northside, Austin, Lake Travis, Dripping Springs, Houston, Fort Bend, Cypress-Fairbanks and Plano.

Biery concluded the law improperly favors Christianity over other faiths and said it would likely interfere with families鈥� 鈥渆xercise of their sincere religious or nonreligious beliefs in substantial ways.鈥�

asked the 5th Circuit Court to overturn Biery鈥檚 ruling and allow all 17 active judges on the court to hear the Texas and Louisiana cases together.

A federal judge Louisiana鈥檚 Ten Commandments law from taking effect in 2024, a decision last year by a panel of three judges on the 5th Circuit Court. Twelve of the appeals court鈥檚 were appointed by Republican presidents. The court is considered one of the most conservative in the nation.

The arguments for the case did not include two other challenging the Ten Commandments law.

One lawsuit resulted in a federal judge blocking 14 more school districts from complying with the law. The other asks a federal judge to block all Texas schools from following the law and is pending.

Why the families sued: They argued that the law subjects children to a state-imposed Protestant version of the Ten Commandments that many religious and nonreligious Texans do not recognize.

The families believe the law seeks to pressure students into observing and adopting Texas officials鈥� preferred religious principles.

They say the law will inflict harm by alienating children of those who do not follow the state鈥檚 preferred religion and that parents鈥� authority to direct their children鈥檚 religious education is undermined.

鈥淧osting the Ten Commandments in public schools is un-American and un-Baptist,鈥� Griff Martin, a pastor, parent and plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement last year. 鈥淪.B. 10 undermines the separation of church and state as a bedrock principle of my family鈥檚 Baptist heritage. Baptists have long held that the government has no role in religion 鈥� so that our faith may remain free and authentic.鈥�

The families鈥� lawyers argue that because children are legally required to attend school, they have virtually no way of avoiding Texas鈥� required version of the Ten Commandments.

The U.S. Supreme Court found public school displays of the Ten Commandments unconstitutional in 1980. Civil rights attorneys argue that only the Supreme Court can overturn its previous rulings.

What the state argues: Paxton and attorneys from his office say the Ten Commandments played a significant role in the nation鈥檚 history and heritage. State leaders have said previous rulings from federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court did not examine that historical significance.

State lawyers also note that the Supreme Court recently , established by a previous ruling, that determined when a government had unconstitutionally endorsed or established a religion.

鈥淭here is no legal reason to stop Texas from honoring a core ethical foundation of our law, especially not a bogus claim about the 鈥榮eparation of church and state,鈥� which is a phrase found nowhere in the Constitution,鈥� Paxton said last year.

Lawyers with the attorney general鈥檚 office see the Ten Commandments requirement as requiring only a 鈥減assive display on the wall鈥� that does not rise to the level of coercion because students are free to ignore the posters. The law might cross the line if it sought to incorporate the Ten Commandments into lessons or assignments, they argued.

The posters must go up in Texas classrooms only if donated by someone. The law does not specify what would happen if school leaders choose not to comply. The state views that as evidence no threat or harm is posed to families. However, Paxton if schools do not comply and sued three districts for alleged noncompliance.

What happened during oral arguments: Some judges questioned state officials from Texas and Louisiana about their decisions to use a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments and how that would affect families who do not follow those religious principles.

Lawyers for the states argued that the laws do not ask children to subscribe to a particular belief and urged the judges to consider legislators鈥� intent to teach students about important documents in U.S. history.

The judges questioned how children would know the posters have anything to do with American history. They also asked for historical evidence showing the use of the Ten Commandments in public schools.

Lawyers for the states pointed to early textbooks that referenced the Ten Commandments but acknowledged those materials were largely used in religious settings prior to the establishment of public schools in the 1800s.

Public schools used the materials through the early 20th century. However, a prominent historian who testified in the case that the Ten Commandments were not significant aspects of the texts and that it is unclear how much teachers relied on those specific lessons.

鈥淎 legislature in Louisiana, a legislature in Texas, is absolutely well within its right to say: We want to actually teach our students about founding documents,鈥� said Ben Agui帽aga, the attorney representing Louisiana.

Judges asked the lawyers representing the families why they consider the Ten Commandments posters problematic when students recite the Pledge of Allegiance and learn about the Declaration of Independence and Martin Luther King Jr.鈥檚 Letter from a Birmingham Jail 鈥� all of which refer to God.

King鈥檚 letter and the Declaration of Independence may reference religion, the lawyers replied, but they鈥檙e about more than religion.

Some judges noted during arguments that the Supreme Court鈥檚 1980 ruling heavily relied on a test that courts no longer use. The families鈥� lawyers countered that removing the test did not overturn Supreme Court precedent preventing the Ten Commandments from going up in public classrooms.

If students do not follow the religious principles in the state鈥檚 mandated version of the Ten Commandments, judges asked, can鈥檛 they ignore the posters?

鈥淭hey can’t just look away, your honor,鈥� said attorney Jon Youngwood, representing the families. 鈥淣ot for 13 years. Not in every class. Not every minute of every day.鈥�

What the court ruled: A court majority concluded that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1980 ruling in is no longer valid. That case found a Kentucky law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court recently abandoned the test established in Stone that determined whether states had illegally endorsed or promoted a religion, the 5th U.S. Circuit judges noted. That means “there is nothing left of Stone,” they noted in the ruling.

They concluded that Texas’ Ten Commandments law does not establish an official state religion. Among reasons, they noted that it 鈥渓evies no taxes to support any clergy. It does not co-opt churches to perform civic functions.”

The judges ruled that the law is not coercive because it does not require students to learn the Ten Commandments or give teachers authority to undermine students’ religious beliefs.

“Yes, Plaintiffs have sincere religious disagreements with its content,” the opinion reads. “But that does not transform the poster into a summons to prayer.”

An opinion written by judges who opposed the decision argued in response that it is insignificant that Texas鈥� law does not require schools to teach the Ten Commandments.

The law poses a threat to children鈥檚 religious beliefs and undermines what parents may want their kids to learn about religion, they wrote in dissenting statements.

The opposing judges agreed with the argument of families who sued that the Supreme Court has not overturned its Stone v. Graham ruling. Lower courts are bound by Stone even if the test established in it is no longer in use, they added. Taking into account the historical-based approach courts must now use, the dissenting judges said Texas鈥� law still violates the Constitution.

This first appeared on .

In response, the national conversation has kicked into high gear. More than a dozen states have rewritten literacy laws, banning discredited instructional methods and mandating phonics-based curricula. Districts are overhauling materials. Parents are being urged to act in a multitude of ways: reading more at home, hiring a tutor, trying multiple apps.

I’ve spent decades as a classroom teacher, literacy coach, researcher, and now training future educators. I’ve worked with children who thrive and children who need extra support with reading. And I’ve seen how often parents are sent searching for complicated solutions while underestimating the impact of what happens in ordinary moments at home. That鈥檚 overlooking something both simpler and more immediate: Families already have powerful, evidence-based tools at their fingertips, and they don’t cost anything.

This isn’t a critique of schools. The evidence of what’s possible when schools commit fully is compelling: Louisiana became the only state to fully rebound in reading post-pandemic. Mississippi climbed from near the bottom of national rankings to the top ten in fourth-grade reading. Systematic, structured literacy instruction works when it’s implemented well. 

However, the best outcomes happen when classrooms and homes work together. The current reading crisis has exposed how much everyday language, attention and early habits have been neglected in shaping literacy, long before a child is ever formally tested.

Start with something deceptively simple: conversation. Reading is not just about decoding words on a page; it’s built on language. When parents narrate what they’re doing, ask questions and engage children in back-and-forth talk, they are building vocabulary and comprehension in real time. This isn’t enrichment. It’s the foundation strong readers stand on, and it happens in the car, at the kitchen table and at the checkout line.

Then there’s the way reading itself gets treated. Too often, it becomes something children think only “counts” as reading if it鈥檚 from a book. But literacy lives in the real world. A grocery list. A recipe. Street signs. Instructions. When children see that print carries meaning in daily life, they begin to understand why reading matters at all. 

And yet, in a culture saturated with screens and subscriptions, one of the most effective tools is analog: the public library. It’s easy to overlook because it’s free. But access to physical books 鈥� and the sustained attention they encourage 鈥� offers something many digital experiences do not. At a time when families are told to download more, the better advice may be to step into a quieter space and let a child linger with a book.

Honesty about the basics matters too. Letters and sounds are not outdated or trivial; they are essential. Helping children learn the alphabet, recognize letters in the environment or spell their own name is not busywork. It is preparation for the moment formal instruction begins and a base for whether that instruction sticks.

Perhaps most urgently, parents should stop being told to “wait and see” or 鈥渢hey鈥檒l grow out of it.鈥� These may sound reassuring, but in reading, it can be costly. Unlike spoken language, reading does not develop naturally without direct teaching. When a child consistently avoids reading, guesses at words, or becomes visibly frustrated, those are not quirks to outgrow. They are early warning signs. 

The earlier parents and educators respond, the easier the path forward, and the window for intervention narrows quickly. What looks like a behavioral problem in fourth grade often traces back to a foundational gap that could have been caught in kindergarten.

None of this will single-handedly reverse national test scores. But that’s not the point. The point is that in a moment when the literacy conversation is dominated by policy, programs and products, the most immediate and equitable intervention available risks being overlooked entirely: what families do every day.

The NAEP data tells a story of stratification: scores rising for high-performing students while struggling students fall further behind. That divide is not about capacity. It is, in part, about access to the kinds of early language experiences that wire children for reading before they ever enter a classroom. Debates about curriculum mandates and state laws are worth having. But while those debates unfold, children are sitting at kitchen tables tonight.

Parents are not a backup plan for struggling schools. They are a child’s first and most consistent teachers. The reading crisis is real. But so is the quiet, largely untapped power sitting in ordinary moments.

If better outcomes are the goal, the question shouldn’t stop at what schools will do differently next year. It should also demand answers about what’s already possible today 鈥� and why anyone has been told it isn’t enough.

That鈥檚 why she鈥檚 grateful that her 11th grader Kai can explore a career field at her high school in the Tomball Independent School District, outside Houston. Kai is in the legal studies program, which meets daily at the Tomball Innovation Center, a 70-acre facility that houses programs like aviation maintenance, cybersecurity and app design.

鈥淔or her to just get her feet wet and see if it’s something that she might want to do for the rest of her life is awesome,鈥� Davis said. 鈥淵ou don’t want to go into something in college and then all of a sudden not understand what it is you’re getting into.鈥�

Programs like Tomball鈥檚 are helping to keep some families in public schools at a time of rapidly expanding private school options, according to from Tyton Partners, a consulting firm that focuses on the education sector. Enrollment in the district has climbed from 10,000 to nearly 24,000 students over the past decade, even as many others in the Houston metro area have . The report attributes such increases to career-connected high schools that not only reflect student interests, but that are popular with both kids and parents. 

鈥淓veryone’s looking to create fun, interesting new programs. In fact, there are probably too many of them,鈥� said Adam Newman, Tyton founder and managing partner. Instead, districts should focus on making sure a 鈥渃ritical mass鈥� of students participate in high school redesign initiatives for those programs to 鈥渞emain compelling for parents鈥� and attract growth, he said.

A survey of 250 high school administrators showed that more than half of districts and charters with high participation in redesigned programs saw enrollment growth between 2022 and 2025. Those with minimal participation continued to see enrollment decline.

But that hasn鈥檛 been the problem in Tomball. The demand to enroll in classes at the facility, a for an oilfield services company, is so great, the district holds a lottery to admit students. With an actual courtroom on site, Kai, who attended a classical Christian school for K-5, has been able to observe traffic court. She鈥檚 learning how to prepare oral arguments and properly cite case law. 

鈥淭hey teach you about how to think like a lawyer,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 feel like I’ll definitely have a leg up once I get to college.鈥�

Other students can earn a pilot鈥檚 license when they graduate or leave with an industry certification in fields like animal science or graphic design. Those in the , an early college model, will complete an associates degree along with a high school diploma. 

With HCA Healthcare nearby and building a branch of its pharmaceutical business in Houston, Tiffani Wooten, assistant director of the Tomball Economic Development Corp., said P-TECH helps 鈥渇ast track鈥� kids into in-demand careers. 

Health care is a 鈥渉uge growing industry that we鈥檙e going to have to continue to filter kids in,鈥� she said. She describes her role as a 鈥渃onnector鈥� who works with the district to 鈥渂ring the industry to the table.鈥�

Christian Lehr, managing director at Tyton, said the district views 鈥渃areer-connected pathways as a core enrollment and value proposition strategy,鈥� instead of as an add-on.

鈥楨nrollment pressure鈥�

The report is a departure for Tyton, which has focused most of its analyses in recent years on efforts to disrupt the public education system. In 2022, it released survey data showing a one-year, 9% drop in families saying their children were enrolled in a traditional district school. Charters, private schools and homeschooling saw increases over that same time period.

In a deeper look at school choice, Tyton researchers reported in 2024 that improving their children鈥檚 mental health was the main reason why parents considered leaving the traditional system for alternatives like online programs and private schools.

This year, the team 鈥渢urned the lens back to the public system because many of them are grappling with enrollment pressure,鈥� Lehr said. With AI changing the workplace, they鈥檙e also thinking about the 鈥渟hift from a college-for-all, No Child Left Behind mentality.鈥� 

There are plenty of reasons to rethink education for teens, said Celina Pierrottet, who leads a high school transformation project with the National Association of State Boards of Education. 

In a from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation, less than half of students said their schoolwork was challenging in a positive way or matched what they do best. Forty-six percent of 12- to 27-year-olds, including those in K-12, said they weren鈥檛 having any engaging experiences at school. Chronic absenteeism also remains higher than it was before the pandemic.

鈥淭here are a lot of warning signs flashing that high schools need to change,鈥� Pierrottet said. 

鈥楢 long journey鈥�

The Tyton project, funded by the Walton Family Foundation, also includes brief case studies of districts and charter networks to identify some common redesign elements, like getting input from students on what they want and relying on outside groups, including employers and nonprofits, to execute the programs. 

The pattern revealed itself in Arizona, where over 100,000 students participate in the state鈥檚 universal private school choice program. Enrollment in the , outside Tucson, has increased 4.3% since 2022. While new housing development in the area has contributed to growth, enrollment increases have outpaced that of the high school-aged population. 

The Tyton report also features the Anaheim Union High School District in California, which used to remake secondary schools and re-engage students. District leaders took the focus off testing and designed courses like biotech chemistry that link academic content with job skills.  

One school launched a community gardening project that鈥檚 used for instruction across the curriculum. But getting the community to notice can be 鈥渁 long journey,鈥� Lehr said. The Anaheim district has been at its redesign work for a decade. 

In a state where public school enrollment is expected to through the end of the decade, the Anaheim district has seen a slight decline since 2022.

鈥淭he key question is whether execution holds,鈥� Lehr said. 鈥淚f it does, we鈥檇 expect stabilization and ultimately growth over the next five years.鈥�

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to 社区黑料.

A report released last month makes this even harder to ignore: New York State ranks among the most segregated in the entire country. That finding builds on a showing that deep school segregation in New York City has been the status quo since at least 2009. In some districts, the racial divide looks no different than it did in the 1930s.

Why have the state and the city failed to live up to the promise of excellent schools for all? Because a misconception persists: that building racially and economically diverse schools means lower quality and less academic rigor. Prospect Schools, a K-12 network of intentionally diverse charter schools in Brooklyn, was founded to challenge this notion, and I鈥檓 proud to have served as CEO since 2021. 

Brooklyn Prospect, our first campus, was the city鈥檚 first public charter school designed intentionally to be integrated along racial and socio-economic lines. Today, Prospect Schools serves almost 3,000 students across seven campuses, and is one of the few open enrollment public charter school networks offering the International Baccalaureate program to all high school students. Integrated schools benefit all students and raise performance across the board by spreading out resources and opportunity, expanding access to the best teachers and facilities, and preparing learners to thrive in a diverse world. 

The recent appointment of New York City Public Schools’ Chancellor Kamar Samuels and his policy agenda underscore that equity and excellence are not at odds. He garnered community support during previous leadership roles while  pursuing integration, an approach usually too controversial to touch. As superintendent of District 13 here in Brooklyn, he made the bold decision to replace exclusionary programs with school-wide IB enrichment. He understood that true equity isn鈥檛 about picking winners and losers; it鈥檚 about raising the ceiling for every child. 

Since taking office, Chancellor Samuels has signaled he is ready to hold this entire city accountable to a vision of education that is both radically inclusive and relentlessly rigorous. This is the right move for New York City. It also validates the approach to integrated education we rely on at Prospect Schools, where nearly two decades of work demonstrate that this vision can deliver meaningful results for students. 

We operate with a conviction that Samuels shares: that students learn best alongside peers who do not look, pray or live like them. At Prospect, we are 鈥渄iverse by design,鈥� which means we ensure that all of our classrooms reflect the vibrant diversity of the city through strategic recruitment, a weighted lottery, provision in our charter and a program that is inclusive and affirming. The result is a student body that is 29% White, 29% Black, 27% Hispanic and 10% multi-racial;  currently 44% of our students qualify for free and reduced-priced meals. 

We ensure all of our students have access to excellent teachers and rigorous academic curriculum which we model on the renowned IB Program. Through this globally recognized program, we raise the level of academic responsibility for all our students by cultivating curiosity, academic confidence, empowerment, global mindedness, community stewardship and life readiness. Further, we have proven that when you combine this intentional diversity with the high bar of the IB curriculum, the results are transformative.

Our students excel on state English language and math exams, most recently outperforming their city and district peers by 23 and 18 percentage points, respectively. This past year, over 80% of our graduating class was IB Diploma eligible, the highest in our history, and 100% of graduates were accepted into college. 

In Chancellor Samuels, I see a kindred spirit: a leader who understands that equity and excellence are not zero-sum competitors but twin pillars of a functioning democracy. Like Chancellor Samuels, I am the proud daughter of West Indian immigrants. I attended school in the Bronx and navigated the complexities of being a first-generation college student. Those experiences taught me early on that talent is distributed equally, but opportunity is not.

When I discovered the IB program, I saw a framework that didn鈥檛 just teach students what to think, but how to think. I knew then that this opportunity shouldn’t be reserved for private schools or select tracks of students 鈥� it belonged in every neighborhood and should be accessible to every child. 

We need this focus now more than ever. We are living in a time of deep polarization across our country, where echo chambers are solidifying into concrete walls. If NYC schools continue to remain segregated by race, class or academic tracking, we are merely preparing the next generation to perpetuate this divide. By championing integrated schools, academic excellence for all and global-mindedness of the IB, Chancellor Samuels is offering an antidote to this fragmentation. 

So said Steve Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, which has just published its examining state-funded preschools. 

鈥淭hat鈥檚 the story this year 鈥� that the race is highly uneven,鈥� said Barnett. 鈥淓ven as some states are racing toward the finish line, more states are moving in the wrong direction. A few states never entered the race. They鈥檙e not running.鈥�

The research center has been publishing the State of Preschool Yearbook since 2003, measuring state-funded preschool programs against a set of quality standards and tracking programs鈥� enrollment and funding. For the first time, six states hit all 10 of NIEER鈥檚 , which measure factors such as teacher credentials, staff professional development, curriculum supports, class sizes and staff-to-child ratios. One of those states, Georgia, became the first with a universal preschool program to meet all 10 quality indicators 鈥� a feat that NIEER is touting widely and which Barnett said made the Peach State a 鈥渟ymbol鈥� for everyone else. 

鈥淵ou don鈥檛 have to choose between serving all the kids and building a high-quality program,鈥� he said. 鈥淕eorgia shows you can do it and not break the bank.鈥�

In the 2024-25 school year, state-funded preschools saw record high enrollment and funding, though the pace slowed considerably from the prior year, according to NIEER鈥檚 findings. 

State-supported preschool programs now serve a combined 1.8 million children nationally, including 37% of 4-year-olds and 9% of 3-year-olds. The states that contributed most to the enrollment gains are California, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and Missouri, adding more than 52,000 new preschool seats.

Federal, state and local governments spent a combined $17.7 billion on preschool, with more than $14 billion of that amount coming from states. More than half of states increased their funding for preschool, including Michigan and New Jersey, which increased spending by more than $100 million each. Meanwhile, 17 states spent less, with Arizona, North Carolina and Texas among those seeing the biggest declines. Another six states do not have a state-funded preschool program, as defined by NIEER: Idaho, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, South Dakota and Wyoming.

Thus, the high-stakes race metaphor. 

鈥淵ou have states moving ahead,鈥� Barnett reiterated. 鈥淏ut you have states faltering, states that didn鈥檛 make much progress.鈥�

Part of the explanation for the faltering states, he said, is that they have less federal funding to prop up these programs than they used to. But that鈥檚 not the full story, since even in some states with budget deficits, , they managed to increase funding for pre-K. 鈥淚t is about how you set your priorities,鈥� Barnett said. 

This report found that enrollment for 3-year-olds in public pre-K is at an all-time-high, though Allison Friedman-Krauss, lead author of the report, clarified that it鈥檚 only marginally higher than it was the previous year and that it still lags far behind enrollment for 4-year-olds. 

Several states have pledged to serve all 3-year-olds, including less populous ones like Vermont and New Mexico and more populous ones such as Illinois and New Jersey. 

It takes time to build those programs, though, Friedman-Krauss and Barnett said, so the progress on serving 3-year-olds is expected to be slow and incremental. 

As for Georgia, it joins an elite group of states that are lauded by NIEER for quality, including Alabama, Hawaii, Mississippi, Michigan and Rhode Island.  

Each of the 10 quality benchmarks represents an improvement in preschool quality that can be felt by children and families, Barnett said. 

鈥淐hildren鈥檚 experiences can be tremendously different between programs that have all of this in place and programs that have little in place,鈥� he said. 

For example, he added, 鈥渙ne of the keys to good early childhood education is the teacher-child relationship.鈥� It is much more likely for that relationship to be strong and for children to get individualized support for their learning and development when a teacher has fewer children in her care.  

And better-prepared teachers, he said, are going to have more realistic expectations about what the job entails and will be more likely to stay in their positions for longer. That matters for young children, who benefit from consistent, stable caregivers and teachers. 

To meet all 10 benchmarks, Georgia its staff-to-child ratios and maximum classroom sizes, said Susan Adams, deputy commissioner for pre-K and instructional support at the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning.

As of fall 2024, Georgia has reduced maximum preschool class sizes to 20 and set ratios at one adult to 10 children, Adams said. The state has also achieved salary parity for preschool teachers, so that they now align with the earnings of K-12 teachers, she added. 

What sets Georgia鈥檚 preschool program apart is that it is maintaining a high-quality learning environment while serving more than 70,000 children per year across Georgia鈥檚 159 counties. 

The changes to ratios and maximum classroom sizes did reduce the number of preschool slots statewide, but the state is midway through a four-year effort to build back that capacity, by adding 100 new classrooms each year, Adams said. 

NIEER is tracking a number of other states that, with just a few changes, could join Georgia in providing universal access to high-quality pre-K, including New Mexico, which will be on par with Georgia once it meets the benchmark that requires all lead teachers to have a bachelor鈥檚 degree in early childhood education. 

While Barnett believes NIEER鈥檚 close tracking of state-funded preschool programs helps with accountability, he clarified that Georgia and other states are not improving their programs just so they can check another box in a report. 

鈥淭he rationale for the leadership is not to get the acclaim or recognition from us,鈥� he said. 鈥淭heir rationale, really, is we need to provide a better program for kids.鈥�

Last fall, U.S. Department of Education officials that transferring major K-12 programs to the Department of Labor would be 鈥渕ore difficult鈥� than its earlier move of career-and-technical education programs to that agency.

They鈥檙e not even going to try this year. 

To the relief of state leaders and education advocates, the department told education chiefs Friday that they would continue to access millions of dollars in Title I and other 鈥渇ormula鈥� grants under the Every Student Succeeds Act through the system that鈥檚 already familiar to state staff. 

鈥淲e have heard your concerns,鈥� Kirstin Baesler, assistant secretary for elementary and secondary education, told chiefs on Friday. The pause on handing that responsibility over to the Labor Department means districts won鈥檛 need to worry about funds arriving in time to plan for next school year 鈥� a situation that caught schools off guard last summer when the administration held up funding for a month.

Sticking with the Education Department鈥檚 system, Baesler wrote, would give everyone involved 鈥渕ore time to collaborate on procedures, processes and training to ensure states are set up to successfully receive and draw down formula funds.鈥� 

In recent weeks Education Secretary Linda McMahon and former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez DeRemer have jointly announced four smaller grant competitions related to , school leadership, and charter schools. Those funds will flow through a Labor Department grant platform. But some observers suggest the department鈥檚 decision to hang on to its largest K-12 program is an acknowledgement that the transition hasn鈥檛 been smooth. Title I serves roughly 25 million students.

鈥淭hat’s an important milestone to miss and a sign that the partnership has been rocky and poorly executed,鈥� said Braden Goetz, a senior policy adviser at New America, a left-of-center think tank. He previously directed the policy and research team focusing on career, technical and adult education at the Education Department, the first office to be transferred to the Labor Department.

State officials reported numerous complications last year in trying to access CTE funds, like error messages in the system. The Illinois State Department of Education waited several weeks to get its funding and spokeswoman Lindsay Record said communication from the Department of Labor often came 鈥渨ith little notice and without the benefit of the Department of Education鈥檚 expertise in overseeing education programs.鈥�  

States don鈥檛 want a repeat of that situation when they try to pull down roughly $28 billion in funds this summer. 

Competitive grants, like the ones McMahon and Chavez-DeRemer recently announced, are one thing. But Title I and other formula programs for all states 鈥渁re a different, and much larger and more essential, responsibility altogether,鈥� said Amy Loyd, president and CEO of All4Ed, an advocacy group. 

The Rhode Island Department of Education was another agency that experienced difficulties using the Labor Department鈥檚 system last year. Spokesman Victor Morente said Commissioner Ang茅lica Infante-Green appreciates Baesler allowing 鈥渁dditional time for preparedness鈥� with the formula funds, but added that 鈥渇urther clarity on how the new interagency plans will be implemented is absolutely necessary to avoid disruption and confusion related to funding concerns.鈥�

Along with state officials, staff within the Education Department “persistently communicated” to leaders that moving to Labor’s grant system “would cause significant problems for states and students,” said Rachel Gittleman, president of the union representing department employees.聽

Baesler said she would discuss the matter further with chiefs when she meets with them virtually May 7.

House committee vote

Congress also expressed concerns last year with the batch of 鈥渋nteragency agreements鈥� McMahon has initiated as she works to eliminate the department. Members warned that the actions would 鈥渃reate inefficiencies鈥� and 鈥渃ause delays and administrative challenges.鈥�

The agreements are illegal according to a group of states and districts that have the dismantling of the department. But on Tuesday, the House education committee took the first step toward writing those agreements into law. 

The Republican majority passed a bill that formally moves adult education programs to the Labor Department. Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan, who chairs the committee, said the move makes it easier for adults to 鈥渕ove from basic skills to training to employment within a more coordinated system.鈥�

Goetz disagreed. In , he said taking the program out of the Education Department changes it into 鈥渁 funnel to low-wage jobs鈥� and turns it over to those without expertise in reading and math.

Even so, aside from Baesler鈥檚 Friday announcement, he doesn鈥檛 expect the administration to slow down its work to distribute education programs to other agencies. Chavez-DeRemer鈥檚 resignation this week, following that she used Labor funds for personal trips and had an affair with an employee, could even accelerate the process, he said.

Savannah Newhouse, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, dismissed the idea that Chavez-DeRemer鈥檚 actions got in the way of carrying out President Donald Trump鈥檚 executive order to shut down the department. 

鈥淪uggesting one departure would affect these partnerships misunderstands how they鈥檙e structured,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hese partnerships are with agencies best equipped to manage federal education programs without disruption.鈥�

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The cognitive load is identical: budgeting, resource allocation and risk management. The difference is the delivery mechanism. And that difference is costly.

The United States has a financial literacy problem that decades of classroom instruction have failed to solve. Fewer than 57% of American adults are considered financially literate, according to the S&P , placing the U.S. behind countries such as Canada, the United Kingdom and Germany. Meanwhile, has climbed to $18.8 trillion, and rose 11%, to 574,314 cases, in the year ending December 2025. The nation is producing high school graduates who might understand the Pythagorean theorem but cannot read a credit card statement.

The standard policy response has been to mandate more financial education in schools. now require completion of a personal finance course for high school graduation. That is progress, but it mistakes input for outcome. Adding a required course changes nothing if the instruction itself is broken. 

My experience as a student at Drexel University proved the point for me. Two of my finance courses, Applied Portfolio Management and Advanced Portfolio Management, were not textbook-based in the traditional sense. They were simulation-based. Students worked on Bloomberg terminals, learning through market-driven exercises that mirrored real financial environments. That hands-on experience made the material stick in a way lectures never could, and it helped me land a job in investment accounting because I could speak to real-world tools and decision-making, not just theory.

Now, I am developing an artificial intelligence-powered financial literacy tool for K-12 students who are natives of a gamified world. 

Instead of sitting through lectures on compound interest and credit scores, students could access an AI-driven financial simulator that could compress 30 years of compounding into 30 minutes of gameplay. They could make a risky investment, watch the market crash and lose their virtual homes, all within a single class period. The lesson would land not as an abstraction, but as a lived experience.

Such an approach would also give students the safety to fail. Just as in the traditional classroom, where failure is punished with grades, in the real financial system, failure is catastrophic: bankruptcy, foreclosure, destroyed credit. Mistakes are irreversible.

A simulator breaks that trap. Students might begin with a paycheck, fixed monthly bills, a savings goal and a credit card balance. Then the simulation forces tradeoffs. Do they spend on wants, pay down debt or build an emergency fund? What happens if a surprise medical bill appears, work hours get cut or interest starts compounding after a missed payment? Instead of reading about leverage and cash flow as abstract ideas, students experience the consequences of those choices in real time. They can fail safely, reset and try again with better judgment. That process builds what textbooks cannot: financial muscle memory.

At a time when teachers are competing with TikTok for students’ attention, policymakers, school districts and curriculum developers have a real opportunity to embrace approaches that work for this generation, rather than trying to solve a 21st-century problem with 20th-century tools. 

AI simulations that turn abstract financial concepts into actual experience 鈥� allowing students to practice budgeting, debt repayment, credit management and emergency spending decisions in interactive environments where consequences unfold in real time 鈥� can be a powerful solution to America’s financial literacy crisis. What is missing is the willingness to abandon the comfort of the familiar worksheet.

It is time to let students play the game.

For Dave Murman, the issue was personal.

The Republican state lawmaker knew Nebraska school districts were denying transfer requests at high rates to students with disabilities 鈥� kids who reminded Murman of his now-grown daughter. 

In 2025, he proposed a bill to ban the disproportionate rejections.

Gov. Jim Pillen , but by then, it was unrecognizable to the parents and disability advocates who had once backed it.

Murman, facing opposition from schools and the state teachers union, stripped most of the protections for students with disabilities out of the proposal earlier this year. The new focus of the legislation: allowing schools to suspend their youngest students.

Angela Gleason, whose son Teddy has been denied transfers several times, said it feels like one step forward and two steps back. 

鈥淚 was like, 鈥極h, it was going to help kids, and now I feel like it’s hurting more kids than it was going to help,鈥� 鈥� Gleason said.

Nebraska鈥檚 option enrollment policy allows students to transfer from one public school district to another, but in practice, kids with disabilities don鈥檛 have the same freedom to transfer as their peers, by the Flatwater Free Press and 社区黑料 found.

That trend continued during the 2024-25 school year, according to the latest state report. Nebraska districts denied 35% of option applications from students with individualized education programs, compared with about 9% of applications from students without them, a new Flatwater analysis found.

The rejection rates are especially disproportionate in the Omaha suburbs.

Bellevue Public Schools turned away more than three-quarters of students with IEPs but accepted all but one of the 246 applicants without disabilities. Three other suburban districts each denied well over half of the kids with IEPs who applied while accepting a majority of kids without IEPs.

Murman鈥檚 original bill would have outlawed that. But school administrators and opposed the legislation, contending that districts with dire special ed teaching shortages shouldn鈥檛 be forced to take on more kids with IEPs.

Murman knew he didn鈥檛 have enough votes from lawmakers willing to buck their local superintendents. So earlier this year, he altered the focus of the legislation.

The amended bill aimed to restore schools鈥� ability to suspend students in pre-K through second grade for violent behavior, reversing on the practice.

One option enrollment provision remained: Districts had to guarantee seats for siblings of students who had already optioned in.

After on school suspensions, Republican lawmakers passed the bill over objections from Democrats.

The siblings clause will provide an avenue for at least some students with disabilities to get into districts that might otherwise deny them, Murman said. 

State Sen. Danielle Conrad, a Lincoln Democrat, said Murman had hijacked a well-intentioned bill to push Pillen鈥檚 priority of removing protections for young students facing punishment.  

鈥淚f the schools, the governor and the Legislature won’t act to remedy this clear discrimination on a systemic level, I hope parents start suing the schools to hold them accountable,鈥� Conrad wrote in an email to Flatwater Free Press.

Gleason said it鈥檚 disappointing that the bill she thought would help kids like her son Teddy transfer schools will result in more of them being suspended. 

In first grade, Omaha Public Schools placed Teddy, who has autism, in a general education classroom where he struggled behaviorally, she said. The school called almost daily asking her to pick him up early, she recalled. 

鈥淗e basically had a lot of informal suspensions where they would call me and ask me to come get him,鈥� Gleason said. 鈥淭hen he’s just missing out on the education, and so it just snowballed.鈥�

Across the state, students enrolled in special education were suspended more than twice as often as their peers last school year, . The Arc of Nebraska, a leading disability advocacy organization, opposed Murman鈥檚 bill because of that disciplinary disparity. 

Gleason鈥檚 other children are option students at a nearby suburban district, so Teddy could potentially join them under the new law. It鈥檚 still upsetting that the opportunity to transfer doesn鈥檛 extend to all other children with IEPs, she said.

For the Shada family, the bill comes years too late to make a difference. 

Gary Shada, a longtime teacher at Pierce Public Schools in northeast Nebraska, applied years ago for his daughter Kylee to join the district as an option student, but his employer turned her away. His son was granted a transfer.

Instead, Kylee, who has Down syndrome, has been enrolled at the nearby Plainview district. But with Shada nearing retirement and his son due to graduate next year, he said he doesn鈥檛 see the point in bringing Kylee into the district anymore. Still, he said he wishes Murman鈥檚 bill had been in effect when the family first applied for option enrollment.

“I think sometimes public schools forget what their reason for existing is,鈥� Shada said. 鈥淚t’s not about being able to pick and choose who walks who walks through your front door.鈥�

Bellevue Public Schools is short six special ed teachers and about 15 paraprofessionals, and adding more option students with IEPs to 鈥渁lready difficult caseloads is not what is best for teachers or students,鈥� said district spokeswoman Amanda Oliver.

鈥淥ur decisions are not based on a student鈥檚 disability, but on our ability to provide the services required by their IEP in a manner that meets both educational standards and legal obligations,鈥� Oliver wrote in an email. 

Grand Island Public Schools, which denied all five of the students with IEPs who applied last school year, is similarly understaffed in special ed and is close to enrollment capacity just with neighborhood students, Superintendent Matt Fisher said in a statement.

鈥淟egally and functionally, we have not been able to accommodate some of the needs of those requesting to enter the district through the option process,鈥� Fisher said.

Staff at the Nebraska Department of Education are considering option enrollment rule changes tied to the original and amended versions of Murman鈥檚 bill, but it鈥檚 not clear what they will look like.  

Murman said the disproportionate rejection of kids with disabilities is 鈥減ure discrimination.鈥� Term limits prevent him from running for reelection this year, but he hopes another state lawmaker will take up the cause after he鈥檚 gone.

Gleason said she appreciated Murman鈥檚 intentions, but she鈥檚 not hopeful the Legislature will resolve the issue soon, especially given schools鈥� opposition.

This year, the Legislature also that would have required schools to get parents鈥� approval before changing a student鈥檚 IEP. Proponents said the legislation would have given families a way to fight schools鈥� attempts to cut special education services. 

Mary Phillips, president of the Arc of Nebraska, takes the long view on advocating for the rights of children with disabilities. It wasn鈥檛 until 1975 that a law ensured they could attend their neighborhood schools. 

鈥淚 feel like progress comes very slow for the disability culture,鈥� Phillips said. 鈥淭he work isn’t done.鈥�

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As momentum for participating in the program (which in most cases requires governors to opt their states in) grows, Democratic governors in particular are now caught between a Scylla and Charybdis of policy choices. Signing on provides a new revenue stream for enrichment, tutoring and other public school activities. But some children may use the credit to attend private schools, and opting out 鈥� as teachers unions advocate 鈥� won’t necessarily prevent money from flowing toward such purposes across state lines. 

What are governors, and advocates, to do?

颁辞濒辞谤补诲辞鈥檚 Jared Polis, a Democrat, has been a leader on the issue, opting the Centennial State in to the program, and several of his Blue State colleagues have at least signaled they are willing to examine the opportunity, primarily for the benefits it offers their states鈥� public school families.

The political and financial realities of a program that turns taxpayers into philanthropists are quickly dawning on education reformers as well, both those who opposed it and those who simply weren鈥檛 paying attention. And with billions of new dollars in charitable donations potentially in play, conversations are now being held in earnest about how to implement the credit at the state level. By implement, what I really mean is regulate the program in a fashion that accomplishes traditional education reform goals in the best cases, or that blocks private school participation in the most cynical.

While the motivations in the former instance are laudable, they show a misunderstanding of what the program actually is and what can and cannot be 鈥渞egulated鈥� as a result.

First, the tax credit scholarship is not education policy and is not regulated by any educational entity. It is tax policy, regulated by the Internal Revenue Service, that accomplishes a charitable purpose tied to education. Some have that donations should be treated as the federal government treats education dollars it distributes to states. But the mechanisms are dissimilar, and there are no provisions for this in the law, which instead only structures the eligibility and use of the credit, the types of organizations that can collect it and the kinds of students (by income) and activities (fees, supplies, equipment) it can be used for. In fact, the program is more like the widely supported Child Tax Credit, which gives families broad discretion, than education tax credits that exist in most states. 

Secondly, while states must opt in (and 28 have at the time of writing), contributions are not state money; they are a credit to individual taxpayers who may or may not give them to a scholarship-granting organization, be it public or private, in their home state or another. Members of the Colorado legislature, ironically and perhaps tellingly, have proposed regulating the program as if they are its arbiter and fiduciary. Moreover, under the guise of non-discrimination, they seek to enforce uniform public school rules on a diverse set of charitable actors. While those who support school choice know such language is often used to make participation unpalatable to private schools (which feature communities built on choice and voluntary association, not zip code and compulsory attendance), this language would potentially also prohibit public schools from building affinity programming to support marginalized communities. Additionally, Colorado (and all states) already have rules that govern individual charitable contributions. If those have historically eluded such regulation, why should this credit be treated differently? 

While these issues are resolved, many advocates who focus on student achievement are left with an interesting question to answer: How could tax policy be regulated to ensure children receive high-quality opportunities, given the absence of traditional policy levers, like authorizing or similar criteria, for SGO participation? This is a new question that requires novel thinking, but it is not impossible to do. And currently, there are three tools at the disposal of advocates and politicos worth considering to accomplish this goal.

The first is the bully pulpit, specifically state executives. Governors, when opting in to the program, have the opportunity to assert their priorities for it, including whom they think it should prioritize (such as low-income students), how they鈥檇 like to see it measured (i.e. state assessments) and what kinds of SGOs, or even which ones specifically, they believe are worth contributing to. Governors can do this with their state’s entire communications apparatus at their disposal. This is a megaphone of the highest and loudest order.

The second is brands, which signal quality in all areas of life including education. Here, trusted community organizations and, of course, school districts themselves have the opportunity to set the market for what is possible. District of Columbia Public Schools, for instance, could start a Summer Enrichment SGO to provide extended learning opportunities for the city鈥檚 students, as could the Boys and Girls Club or an established charter network such as Success Academy. A current example of this is Bloomberg Philanthropy鈥檚 program, which pairs philanthropists and charter schools across the country to deliver high-quality summer programming and tutoring to students. The tutoring and enrichment camps of and 颁辞濒辞谤补诲辞鈥檚 are also worth emulating.

Lastly, states can build their own SGOs. Arizona鈥檚 pandemic summer effort, AZ On Track, which sought to catch kids up after COVID school closures, was one such example. And while started by philanthropy, the state-funded nonprofit , which delivers high-impact tutoring for K-8 students and now runs on both state education funding and charitable donations, is another. Together, they show how states can lead the way or partner to found an aligned SGO.

The Federal Scholarship Tax Credit provides new challenges for political actors and advocates, but also new opportunities for families, nonprofits, districts and others to support the country鈥檚 children. As a new revenue stream with lots of flexibility, it creates a rare chance to do both more and different things across the nation鈥檚 education landscape. Governors shouldn鈥檛 waste that opportunity. Advocates shouldn鈥檛 either.

This obligation is the heart of equal opportunity in our country 鈥� and private school vouchers were built to bypass it. Vouchers to a time when states fought federally mandated school desegregation. Funded by , today鈥檚 state voucher programs extend this legacy by diverting funds to unaccountable schools that pick and choose the students they enroll, and the in them. 

鈥淐hoice鈥� is a compelling slogan, but with private school vouchers, it鈥檚 the school鈥檚 choice, not the families. Participating private schools admissions and enrollment decisions, with little oversight of nondiscrimination compliance. Private schools can kick students out without any explanation or deny admission to students based on religious affiliation, LGBTQ+ status, language proficiency, and more. 

One on Washington, DC鈥檚 voucher program found that students most often did not use vouchers because participating schools lacked services for their learning or physical disabilities. 

This is what happens when public dollars flow into systems that are not built to serve every child. 

Now, the federal government wants to supercharge this exclusion. Last year鈥檚 One Big Beautiful Bill Act introduced the country鈥檚 first national school voucher program. Starting Dec. 15, governors can opt into the program, which allows the use of tax-credit-funded scholarships to underwrite private or religious schools as early as 2027. The program for students who themselves or their siblings have previously received a federal voucher, favoring families already using vouchers.  

Selective admissions isn鈥檛 the only way the federal voucher scheme fails the 鈥渃ivil rights test.鈥� Having data on student and school performance broken down by student subgroups is a necessary civil rights tool, allowing the public to track disparities and target resources. Yet participating private schools do not have to report, test, or be held accountable for the requirements that apply to public schools. 

Most school choice programs students to take state assessments. And not all require that the . It is no surprise that lower-quality private schools are participate in voucher programs than higher-quality ones. When outcomes are hidden families are in the dark about how schools are serving their children. 

Then there is the cost. The true cost of this program to taxpayers and public school budgets is likely underestimated. In states with existing voucher programs, expenses have well beyond expectations, draining and destabilizing state budgets. In one Florida alone, the state voucher program contributed to a $17 million budget shortfall. Duval County serves a majority of students of color, about 40% of students are Black and 17% Latino, underscoring who bears the cost of these funding losses.   

In many places, voters have also rejected efforts to divert public funds away from public school students. In 2024, voters in Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska voted against ballot measures that would have directed taxpayer dollars to private school vouchers. 

According to UnidosUS鈥� of the Hispanic Electorate, a plurality of Latino voters oppose diverting public school funds to pay for private or religious school tuition, while found that more than two-thirds of all voters choose funding for public schools over vouchers. 

Despite its clear drawbacks, some supporters argue the new federal program could unlock new dollars for purposes that could benefit public school students, such as tutoring, after-school programs, transportation or services for students with disabilities. The promise of expanded services is appealing, but this, too, ignores key realities. 

Under the new federal tax-credit scholarship program, donors give money to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs), which then provide 鈥渟cholarships鈥� or vouchers to eligible students. It is up to the U.S. Treasury Department to determine whether states can screen and set guardrails for SGOs participating in the program, and the agency has not yet released their proposed regulations. Still early and suggest states won鈥檛 get a choice in which vendors are eligible, which services quality nor which non-discrimination protections SGOs have to uphold. 

That would mean governors couldn鈥檛 prioritize SGOs that serve public school students, ensure quality standards or bar those that offer private school vouchers.

Even if a state is allowed to pick the SGOs that participate in the program, guaranteeing transparency and quality is a complex, demanding and potentially costly endeavor. With new SGOs and vendors entering the market, weeding out bad actors has proven to be a major and costly undertaking for states.  

A state audit revealed that Florida failed to reliably track in voucher funds, making it easy for fraudsters to game the system with fictitious The same audit revealed scholarship granting organizations in the state kept large sums of taxpayer money in their accounts, leaving programs and parents waiting for voucher payments for months. 

The federal program is so convoluted and biased towards private school uses that it is unlikely to serve public school students in practice. Ultimately, the potential harm outweighs any hypothetical good. 

We call on governors and state leaders: Do not opt in. Put the focus on civil rights, strengthening public schools and the proven options within them: tutoring, after-school learning, special education services, dual-language programs, magnet programs, gifted-and-talented programs with fair access and career and technical education. 

The program only passed the U.S. Senate last year by one vote, and Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii recently introduced the to repeal the program.

Public dollars should expand civil rights, not shrink them. Public education is the backbone of equal opportunity. Leaders should protect it.

When Rickencia Clerveaux McClean’s son was around 18 months old, she noticed he wasn’t speaking the way she expected. He pointed instead of asking. He struggled with food textures. McClean looked ahead at his future in public school with some dread.

Fortunately, she said, there was an opening at Head Start at Action for Boston Community Development in Dorchester 鈥� the same program her younger sister had attended years before. Now her son is three, eating applesauce with his classmates and using his words.

“I feel like ABCD helped him navigate first before he was able to go to a public school,” said McClean, whose 2-year-old daughter is enrolled there, too. “That’s the best pathway for any kid who’s having a difficult time on their own.”

McClean, 27, is a student at Roxbury Community College working on the requisite classes for the nursing program. Head Start, she said, is what makes that possible.

She is among the lucky ones these days. Massachusetts has lost 1,300 Head Start slots over the last three years, as the federal government has level-funded the program, and there is worry that more seats could be in jeopardy.

The 60-year-old federally funded program for children from low-income families is navigating what advocates describe as a painful stretch of uncertainty.

The Trump administration’s , released earlier this month, includes $12.3 billion for Head Start nationally 鈥� the same level as the prior two fiscal years. While that has forced programs to reduce the number of families they serve, it is a retreat from that the administration might seek to eliminate the program entirely.

“It has been an incredibly unpredictable year, from both policy changes to funding instability,” said Michelle Haimowitz, executive director of the Massachusetts Head Start Association, which advocates for Head Start programs in the state. “Flat funding itself is a pretty sharp cut to programs every year, given increasing costs from things like health care and rent and utilities, as well as the need to continue to raise wages for our educators.”

Head Start provides early education, health, nutrition, and family support services to children from birth to age five.

In Massachusetts, it serves more than 11,000 children annually across 28 programs and employs about 4,000 early childhood professionals, according to the . Families receiving Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children, SNAP benefits, or disability assistance, as well as children in foster care or experiencing homelessness, qualify automatically.

Massachusetts is one of the few states that supplements the federal program with state dollars, contributing $20 million on top of the $189 million in annual federal funding that comes to the state, according to the .

The Massachusetts Head Start Association is asking the Legislature for a $4.56 million increase 鈥� enough to fund a 3 percent cost-of-living adjustment for program staff.

“Just because you close a classroom here or there doesn’t mean the children aren’t there to fill it,” said Haimowitz. “Programs need to make terrible choices between access and being able to staff the classrooms they are able to maintain.”

State financial support has crept up in recent years, but Gov. Maura Healey鈥檚 proposed 2027 budget kept its recommendation at $20 million, as does the version advanced through the House on Wednesday.

“We know it’s a tough budget year,” Haimowitz said. “And at the same time, we need to make sure our programs have what they need to keep as many classrooms open as they can.”

Compounding that financial pressure is a bureaucratic disruption that began a year ago. On April 1, 2025, the Trump administration five of Head Start’s 10 regional offices, including the Boston office that had served Massachusetts and the five other New England states. Massachusetts programs were reassigned to the Philadelphia regional office, which now carries twice its previous caseload.

Haimowitz said several programs in the middle of federally approved construction projects have nearly missed contractor payment deadlines because approvals that once flowed through the Boston office have stalled.

“Those bureaucratic slowdowns can seem really minor, but if you’re a contractor who’s been hired to build a Head Start program and your check hasn’t been clearing 鈥� that’s not minor,” she said.

The funding pressure came to a head last fall, when the federal government shutdown cut off grants to six Massachusetts programs with November award dates. operated by Self Help Inc. in Brockton and Norwood closed, leaving roughly 550 children without care and more than 150 staff furloughed.

McClean, who sits on ABCD’s policy council, has been tracking the funding uncertainty alongside other parents.

“Everybody’s on the edge, because we don’t know exactly the certainty of what can happen,” she said. A Haitian immigrant trying to carve out an education and a life for her family, McClean said the Head Start program is not 鈥渏ust like a place you drop your kids. It’s a family. It鈥檚 a community.鈥�

She said the program is not only crucial to her children鈥檚 development, but also makes it possible to work toward her goal of becoming a nurse. If her Head Start program is cut, McClean said, 鈥淚鈥檒l have to drop out of school.鈥�

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Enrollment in California K-12 schools, and in schools across the country, is declining rapidly as birth rates drop and immigration rates fall. This school year, California had the largest decline in enrollment rates since 2021-22, after schools returned from the pandemic.

Enrollment in public schools declined by 1.3%, or by 74,961 students, according to data released Thursday by the California Department of Education. State public school enrollment is now at 5.7 million students.

The biggest declines were in private schools, with a 6.6% drop in enrollment, and home schools, with a 3.7% decline, according to state officials. Traditional public school enrollment dropped 1.4% and charter public school enrollment fell by 0.3%.

State officials attribute the enrollment dip to an ongoing decline in birth rates and immigration losses.

The California Department of Finance, which makes demographic projections for the state, estimated last October that enrollment would decline by only 10,000 students, or about 0.2%.

Districts are shoring up enrollment losses with cuts

California funds schools based on average daily attendance. The new enrollment figures may not surprise district leaders, who have the staff to track births, housing projections and other factors, but smaller districts may have to redo attendance-based revenue projections for the coming years, said Kenneth Kapphahn, principal fiscal analyst for the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst鈥檚 Office. 

The impact on schools is real and immediate, said Kindra Britt, communications director for California County Superintendents. 

鈥淭hat translates directly into budget deficits, staff layoffs, program cuts, and in some cases, school closures,鈥� Britt said.

The continuing trend of declining enrollment is a new reality the state must adapt to, said Troy Flint, chief information officer for the California School Boards Association. Even when enrollment declines, costs to operate the school remain the same, he said. 

The decline in enrollment statewide will not affect overall TK-12 state funding, which will continue to be about 40% of the state鈥檚 general fund, and is projected to rise significantly in 2025-26.

Declining enrollment is a national problem

Nationwide K-12 school enrollment has declined by 2.3% or 1.18 million students over the past five years, according to the . National projections predict that the country will lose another 2.7 million students by 2031.

All 39 states that released enrollment data for this school year have experienced a decline, said Elizabeth Sanders, director of communications and public relations for the CDE. About half of the states had larger enrollment losses than California.

Half the enrollment loss in the state is in L.A. County

Los Angeles County lost 32,953 students, more than half from the Los Angeles Unified School District. The 2.6% decline in county enrollment accounted for 43% of the state鈥檚 loss.  

The number of LAUSD has dropped over the past two years after reaching a peak of 5% of the student population in 2023-24. Newcomer students are generally defined as students with limited English proficiency who have attended a U.S. school for three years or less.

LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who is on administrative leave, has blamed the decline on 鈥渁 climate of fear and instability created by the ongoing immigration crackdowns,鈥� according to the  

Declining enrollment was one of the main reasons for the budget deficits that led Los Angeles Unified to issue 3,200 layoff notices in February, according to district officials. The layoffs are expected to actually result in 650 job losses.

The number of Hispanic students has dropped

Hispanic students, who make up 56% of California鈥檚 student population, had the biggest loss in student enrollment, but not the largest percentage. The number of Hispanic students dropped by 48,064 or 1.48%, while the number of white students dropped by 31,076, or 2.68%.

The number of English learners also dropped by 8.2%, although the decline could be attributed, in part, to students being reclassified as proficient in English.

鈥淲e surmise that a portion of the enrollment loss is driven by current immigration enforcement activities; how long and to what extent that will continue is the crux of that question,鈥� said H.D. Palmer, deputy director of external affairs for the California Department of Finance.

Immigrant families have been afraid to send their students to school, said Martha Hernandez, executive director of  a coalition of 40 organizations focused on the educational success of English learners.

School staff have tried to assure families that it is safe for their children to go to school, but some families have opted to self-deport or simply leave the state or region for a safer place, she said. 

Immigration losses are likely to have continued to have an impact on school enrollment. Immigration to the state declined from 312,761 to 109,278 between 2024 and 2025, according to the .

Charter school skews Sacramento numbers

Sacramento County had a 9,744 drop in enrollment in its schools overall, a decline of 3.8%; while Orange County had 7,518, Santa Clara 4,198, San Diego 4,190, San Bernardino 2,543 and Ventura County 2,345 fewer students than last year.

Despite Sacramento鈥檚 ranking as the county with the second-largest loss in enrollment, two of its districts were listed as having some of the highest enrollment gains. Elk Grove Unified grew by 1,097 students, or 1.7% 鈥� making it the district with the largest enrollment gain in the state. Folsom Cordova Unified gained 537 students, an increase of 2.5%. 

The disparity in Sacramento County seems to be the result of a large enrollment dip in Twin Rivers Unified, which lost 12,300 students the same year  and Technical Schools laid off teachers and staff following a state audit that found it did not have enough teachers with the proper credentials.  

Regions with lower costs grew

The counties with the largest gains in enrollment this year are in Northern California and the Central Valley.

鈥淭here are counties and regions in California where there鈥檚 actually a sharp increase in school enrollment, and we鈥檙e seeing a direct correlation there between economies that are livable for families and where students are enrolling in school,鈥� Sanders said. 鈥淎nd then of the students who remain, those families are moving to areas that are more affordable for them to live.鈥�

The seven counties with the largest increases in enrollment are San Joaquin County, 842; Placer County, 841; Sutter County, 802; Butte County, 200; San Benito County, 146; Glenn County, 82; and Yuba County, 58.

More kids are attending transitional kindergarten

The drop in enrollment was offset somewhat by a 20.1% increase in students attending transitional kindergarten, after the state fully implemented enrollment for all 4-year-old students this school year. An additional 36,000 children were enrolled in transitional kindergarten this year, bringing the total to 213,313.

There was a 16% increase in the percentage of socioeconomically disadvantaged families that enrolled their children in the state鈥檚 transitional kindergarten program. There were also almost 20% more students with disabilities and almost 11% more homeless students in transitional kindergarten this year than last year.

There were fewer English learners listed in transitional kindergarten as a result of , which exempted transitional kindergarten students from taking the English Language Proficiency Assessment for California (ELPAC).

EdSource reporter Betty M谩rquez Rosales contributed to this report.

English and math still matter, said Patrick O鈥橠onnell, CEO of the foundation that supports the charter school north of Oakland, California. But having the ability to reason, research and adapt will be crucial as technologies like artificial intelligence change all aspects of life and the workplace.

鈥淚f students can really progress in these skills, they’re almost like launch pad skills,鈥� he said.

But there was a big challenge: How do you go about teaching them? How do you even define these so-called 鈥渟oft鈥� or 鈥渄urable鈥� skills? While most people have an intuitive sense of what skills like creativity and collaboration are, few have ever broken them down into clear components schools can use to teach students and test whether students have learned them.

Until now.

Several companies and non-profits are taking these skills that have been fuzzy concepts and working on giving them shape and definition. They鈥檙e gathering teachers, developers of tests, business leaders and other experts to break down these skills into smaller skills and then into even smaller subskills and nuances that can serve as steps toward mastery. Communications, for instance, could include negotiating and public speaking as subskills.

The resulting outlines of skills and subskills are like a tree branching out from its trunk into smaller and smaller limbs, all with an eye to making them as teachable and testable as math or English.

鈥淭here’s no system of capturing (these skills) and measuring them, because, frankly, we haven’t valued them as at the same level that we have academic skills,鈥� said Laura Slover, managing director of Skills for the Future, a leader in trying to define and test soft skills.

鈥淎s the world is changing, so must we,鈥� Slover said. 鈥淲e’re trying to make what is invisible visible鈥ow do we flip the discussion about college applications and getting jobs, from how someone looks on paper to showing evidence of what they’re capable of?鈥�  

Efforts to flesh out these long-undefined skills come as researchers, including, theand, most recently, the XQ Institute, a nonprofit that promotes soft skills, have increasingly highlighted their importance in the changing economy.

XQ earlier this year listed developing measurements of soft skills one of its 10 keys to adapting high school education for the future. 

The effort is still in its early stages. Skills For The Future released its 鈥� earlier this year, so lesson plans and tests of soft skills are still being developed. But Making Waves was able last school year to use to plan lessons on communication and of how students can take criticism constructively.

With communication, for example, O鈥橠onnell said teachers focus on public speaking 鈥� one of 10 different aspects of communication Pathsmith identified 鈥� then on having students prepare an 鈥渆levator speech鈥� 鈥� a quick pitch of themselves or a project they can give in just a few seconds.

鈥淲e gave students a template of components in an elevator pitch,鈥� O鈥橠onnell said. 鈥淭hen we also had a lesson on how a strong elevator pitch is both what you say and how you say it. (That) includes things like eye contact and pacing and verbal intonation.鈥� 

Tim Taylor, president of America Succeeds, a nonprofit that鈥檚 one of the major partners in Pathsmith, said he hopes the breakdowns of 10 skills the organization released in 2024 will help other companies develop ways to teach these skills as well as test them so employers can have some certainty a student has mastered them. Those skills include leadership, fortitude, character and mindfulness, as well as the three that Skills For The Future has tackled.

鈥淲ith the advent of AI, when everybody has the same AI, then the things that really differentiate you are these durable skills,鈥� Taylor said. 鈥淚t’s your critical thinking, collaboration, growth mindset.鈥� 

鈥淚’m old enough that I developed a lot of these skills by being feral and running around my neighborhood and having my peers tell me I was being a jerk,鈥� Taylor added. 鈥淚 think that the current generation is spending more time on their phones and less time really interacting face to face, and they’re not developing these skills in the same way. But employers still demand them in order to get and keep a job.鈥�

The OECD has tried to start on a test given in many countries, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) the last several years. The OECD hopes to branch out into others. 

An online assessment known as the has tried to gauge student skills of analysis, inference, evaluation, induction, and deduction for several years, even being used by some universities to verify whether students were learning well.

Skills For the Future, a partnership between six states, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Educational Testing Service, the company best known for running the SAT and GRE exams, already has prototypes of tests for high school students on collaboration, communication and critical thinking undergoing trials in a few schools in partnering states. 

The backbone of those tests are the detailed 鈥渟kills progressions鈥� released earlier this year outlining the three skills by breaking them down into three or four major subskills, then multiple 鈥渋ndicators鈥� within each subskill. 

It also shows how a student can progress in stages, not with A-F grades, but instead using 鈥渆xploring鈥� a skill at the start, to 鈥渁nalyzing; 鈥渋ntegrating鈥� it into their work and then 鈥渆xtending鈥� use of it. 

Communication, for example, is broken down into four subskills:

• Different communication modes, such as written vs verbal
• Adapting communication styles to different audiences
• Listening to others for deeper meaning
• Understanding and adapting to different emotional or ethical dynamics of an interaction

Critical thinking also has four major components: How students seek information, analyze it, form arguments and then reason with logic.

The breakdowns then go deeper into each skill. About half the evaluation of communication, for example, focuses on how well a student conveys a message. Beginners should recognize that communication should differ for different goals, such as whether to explain, inform, persuade, or entertain. At higher levels, a student should know how to tailor communication to the goal, as well as consider the needs of different audiences and respond to cues from an audience about how well the message is received.

The other half of the communication subskills, though, focus on how well a student is hearing and understanding communication from others. That might include pausing before responding to be sure others have expressed themselves fully, adapting to cultural differences of others, asking questions to clarify what someone said or picking up on messages that may be implied but not clearly stated.

鈥淐an you express the same idea in different ways?鈥� asked ETS researcher Teresa Ober. 鈥淚 think it’s maybe the easiest (subskill) to grasp, but it can also be kind of the most challenging to convey, right? Maybe you explain something one way and a person doesn’t quite understand it, Can you explain it in a slightly different way.鈥�

鈥淚t鈥檚 also really important to be able to use visuals very effectively, right?鈥� Ober added. 鈥淲e’re often used to giving presentations with PowerPoint slides and so forth. So, how can you take an idea and just present it as succinctly as possible?鈥�

Similarly, critical thinking covers component skills such as fact-checking, using multiple sources of information, using evidence over opinion in reaching conclusions, using deductive reasoning and recognizing and avoiding logical fallacies,

Ober said that because the skills progressions are designed for tests and to guide teachers in rating students, many of the indicators are behaviors a teacher can observe a student doing, or not doing. She compared them to the 鈥淚 can鈥� statements teachers use as goals for lessons 鈥� can a student say 鈥淚 can鈥� perform a skill.

鈥淭he indicators are still pretty general, but they allow us to get that much closer to observable behaviors,鈥� Ober said. 鈥淏ecause we are a measurement organization, we are really focused on things that we can observe, right, that provide evidence of a particular construct, a particular competency.鈥�

Skills for the Future hopes to have new assessments of collaboration, communication and critical thinking that include exams but also ways of allowing students to demonstrate mastery with projects or presentations available for schools to try out by fall.

It鈥檚 also looking at adaptations for colleges.

While Skills For The Future has built its frameworks with schools as its starting point, Pathsmith focuses on business needs first. Formed from America Succeeds, a Denver-based non-profit, and the Lightcast research and consulting company, formerly known as Emsi Burning Glass, it developed outlines of 10 skills by searching 80 million job advertisements for traits companies seek the most. The CompTIA digital training and certification company also joined the partnership.

鈥淲e define durable skills as how you use what you know, then how you show up in the world,鈥� Taylor added. 鈥淭he goal is to be able to signal to employees what you know, what you can do related to these skills, at what level.鈥�

Similar to Skills for the Future, Pathsmith breaks each skill into subskills 鈥� between four and eight for each of the 10 鈥� and also spells out how skills develop over time through four performance levels 鈥� emerging, developing, applying, succeeding. 

With communication, for example, Pathsmith divides it into eight subskills or contexts that each require different approaches. These include written vs. verbal, negotiations, customer service, on social media and public speaking.

Insuring someone has skills in all these areas matters to different businesses, said Jason Tyszko, senior vice president at the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, which uses some of the breakdown in its youth training programs.

Financial services companies, he noted, will care if someone can send clear, concise and polite notes to customers and write internal reports properly.

鈥淣ow, if I’m on a manufacturing floor, what I need to know is, when there’s a safety condition that is about to go wrong, how are you communicating effectively, loudly and as clearly as possible to prevent an injury on the job?鈥� Tyszko said. 鈥淎nd how are you making sure that you are reinforcing in a clear and consistent manner safety protocols to avoid injury or to avoid the line going down.鈥�

Pathsmith doesn鈥檛 have tests of the skills in the pipeline yet, though it hopes vendors will step forward to develop some, so that students can prove to employers they have a skill in a way employers will trust.

鈥淲e don’t want to say who can build it and who can’t,鈥� Taylor said. 鈥淲e just want to make sure that the market has an opportunity to start with a really quality back end, and they don’t have to start from scratch.鈥�

Whether universities and companies buy into the tests and treat the ratings as real credentials for college admissions and hiring will be key to whether either Pathsmith or Skills To The Future frameworks succeed..

鈥淚 would say, let them compete and see which one ends up getting more adoption than the other,鈥� said the Chamber of Commerce鈥檚 Tyszko. 鈥淏ut there’s room for both, as far as I’m concerned.鈥�

Some school districts, including ones in Maine, New Mexico, and , are shifting to standards-based grading, where students are graded on the skills and concepts they learn instead of points accumulated from assignments and tests throughout the school year.

, a professor of education at , studies how people learn and teach science, and standards-based grading is one aspect of this work.

The Conversation has collaborated with SciLine to bring you highlights from the discussion, edited for brevity and clarity.

What is standards-based grading, and how is it different from traditional grading?

Jerrid Kruse: The main thrust of is really an increased transparency between what teachers are teaching and how they are assessing their students.

I think when most people think of , they think of accumulating points or making deposits like in a banking model, where if I turn in the homework every day, I get 5 points. And I keep building those points up so that even if I do poorly on a test, I still end up with a B in the class, even though I may have gotten a C or even lower on a test.

is a shift away from that. Instead of focusing on student behaviors, such as completing homework and showing up to class on time, standards-based grading focuses on if the student is actually learning the things we鈥檙e trying to teach them.

How exactly does it impact student learning?

Kruse: If teachers can assess student learning more transparently, then teachers have about what students do and do not know, and students also have more information about what they themselves do and do not know. Then teachers and students can act on that information; that鈥檚 the key.

We cannot expect standards-based grading to magically fix the teaching and the learning that鈥檚 happening in the classroom. Instead, what it does is provide a more transparent assessment of to what extent the learning is happening in the classroom. And then it鈥檚 up to the teachers and the students to act on that information.

So the student can go home and study the particular things that they鈥檙e having trouble with, and the teachers can say, 鈥淥K, my class is really struggling with standard number 4, so let鈥檚 spend some more time on standard number 4.鈥� It鈥檚 really about what teachers and students do with that information.

What are some of the challenges?

Kruse: One of the big things is . Top-down initiatives oftentimes end up with really poor implementation or superficial implementation. In my experience, the best standards-based grading efforts have come from the teachers themselves rather than from an administrator. So I think it鈥檚 important to spend time getting teacher buy-in and maybe even making it optional at first to let it be more of a grassroots effort.

Another challenge for teachers is identifying the key standards. So rather than thinking, 鈥淥kay, I鈥檓 going to teach Chapter 3,鈥� it鈥檚 shifting that thinking to: 鈥淲hat is the thing or concept that I want students to learn out of Chapter 3?鈥� From there, they can better communicate that to students.

Also, what will the report card look like? Are we going to continue to report A, B, C, D and F grades? Are we going to report all of the standards? These are questions teachers and school administrators need to decide together.

Then finally, in terms of helping parents and students understand why a school might move to standards-based grading, I suggest leaning into the transparency piece. The goal is more communication and more accurate communication between schools and kids and parents. That鈥檚 going to be a key piece for any district considering this.

Why should people care?

Kruse: Grades are a consistent source of struggle for students. For some kids, it鈥檚 really about how we can help them be less concerned about the grade and more concerned about the learning. And so standards-based grading can help push in that direction.

And then on the other side, we have kids who have been underserved by traditional education, and a standards-based approach can help these kids see school as something that they can do because they can see incremental progress on the standards rather than just a C or other letter grade. It鈥檚 the difference between 鈥淚 got a C,鈥� and 鈥淚 got a C, and these are the three standards that I need to work on.鈥�

I think it helps all students, including high achievers and traditionally low achievers, but in different ways.

is a free service based at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a nonprofit that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

After taking a break from social media, Orange County student Elise Choi helped write a bill that would mandate California schools teach digital wellness 鈥� a response to growing concerns about how technology is affecting students鈥� mental health.

Assembly Bill 2071 would require California schools to include digital wellness in health classes, teaching students how social media and AI affect their mental health and behavior. Supporters say the bill focuses not on limiting access, but on teaching students how to use technology responsibly. 

Elise, a junior at the Orange County School of the Arts and a member of the student coalition, GenUp, said a bill that serves students 鈥� not simply alleviates parent anxieties 鈥� has been long overdue. 

鈥淚t鈥檚 powerful to have students at the center of policy change when it comes to education legislation,鈥� Elise said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 important because we are the ultimate stakeholders, and these issues affect us and our future.鈥�

The bill follows landmark court verdicts that found social media companies Meta and Google liable for designing 鈥渁ddictive鈥� features and endangering children online. Elise said it also responds to what experts describe as a growing , fueled in part by  about social media use. 

If the bill is passed, the California Department of Education must develop by January 2028 a plan to teach students about topics such as healthy screen habits, algorithms and AI and safe interactions on social media. The proposal passed a committee hearing last week and is expected to pass in the Legislature with bipartisan support. 

State Assemblymember Josh Hoover, R-Folsom, who introduced the bill in the Legislature, said the idea of digital wellness instruction was born out of student pushback against the Phone Free Schools Act, which would require all public school districts to create policies to ban or prohibit mobile phone use starting in July. 

鈥淣ow, students are realizing how much the screen time and the social media use really does impact their well-being,鈥� Hoover said. 鈥淎nd they鈥檙e actually getting excited about making changes and helping their peers actually improve their health as well.鈥�

Where cellphone bans fall short

For many digital wellness advocates like Kelly Mendoza, a senior education leader at Media Education Lab who served as an expert consultant on the bill, digital wellness education picks up where California schools鈥� cellphone bans fall short. 

鈥淧hone-free schools can reduce screen time or potentially reduce behavioral issues that can happen at school, but that doesn鈥檛 teach students healthy media use, decision-making and self-regulation,鈥� Mendoza said. 鈥淪tudents are still not offered the opportunity to learn these skills in school in a structured and valuable way.鈥�

Mendoza said she regularly sees students who are cyberbullied, experience depression and suicidal thoughts, are unhealthily attached to social media or struggle with loneliness in her work at a phone-free high school. A digital wellness course, she said, would teach students that they have control over their relationship to their phones.

Students would learn practical skills such as adjusting account settings, disabling notifications and managing algorithms to limit harmful or addictive content. They would also work through scenarios such as cyberbullying, body image pressure and misinformation to develop healthier behaviors online.   

Elise said she would like the curriculum to include families, particularly those from low-income and under-resourced communities. She recently attended a digital wellness workshop at a private school in San Diego, where parents and students learned to create a screen time agreement.

鈥淒igital wellness instruction is very inconsistent, and it depends a lot on the resources of the school,鈥� Elise said. 鈥淚 also envision digital wellness to be an equitable subject that hopefully all students can have access to.鈥�

Social media can be 鈥榞ood鈥� but 鈥榠nescapable鈥� 

Elise said social media also served as an essential 鈥渢ool鈥� for building connections after she switched to a different high school. She met students online who had launched social impact clubs and helped her sister recruit volunteers to teach dance classes for people with disabilities. 

鈥淲e鈥檙e not anti-tech,鈥� Elise said. 鈥淲e鈥檙e for education, and we have to be balanced with technology, because it can be good and also inescapable.鈥�

Elise said she met with representatives from Google last week, who she said generally supported 鈥渢he course of safety (for) children and youth online鈥� and expressed support for the bill. 

Hoover, however, emphasized that the bill is not meant to shield social media companies from regulation.  

鈥淲e cannot count on these companies to police themselves when it comes to child safety, so it鈥檚 important that we鈥檙e educating students, but also putting the right rules and regulations in place,鈥� he said.

Hoover has introduced additional bills to regulate children鈥檚 use of social media, including one that would prohibit children under 16 from creating social media accounts 鈥� similar to Australia鈥檚 blanket ban 鈥� and another that would establish an e-safety commission to enforce age compliance. 

鈥淭ech companies have a responsibility to be regulated to make sure that they鈥檙e not entrapping kids into a very addictive technology,鈥� Hoover said.

Mendoza, a parent of a teenager, said her daughter uses social media to share and receive feedback on her art, where she has connected with a community of artists. She said the course could also teach students how to reap the 鈥渞ewards and opportunities鈥� of social media. 

The course would examine 鈥淲hat are the healthy communities that you connect to that are really fostering your growth and your development as a person? And how can you change your algorithm to connect more with those things?鈥� Mendoza said. 

Before she got her first phone, Elise said she spent her time solving Rubik鈥檚 cubes, baking and reading. She said she is now spending time on those hobbies when she gets home from school. 

鈥淭he cellphone ban only gets us halfway 鈥� it doesn鈥檛 change our relationship with our devices,鈥� Elise said. 鈥淲e need to teach kids and give us skills for what happens when we get our phones back at the end of the day.鈥�

To a child in their care, their roles may be indistinguishable. Both teachers play with them, read to them, sing to them and guide them throughout the day. 

But each pair consists of a lead teacher 鈥� the senior professional in the classroom 鈥� and an assistant teacher, who may serve in more of a supporting role but, in many programs, acts as a co-teacher. 

Assistant teachers, despite their status as the junior educator, are 鈥渁n integral part of the teaching team,鈥� said GG Weisenfeld, associate director of technical assistance at the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER). They are participating in children鈥檚 brain-building, actively contributing to their learning and development, she said. 

Yet in most early care and education settings, and in most states, the policies and pay for assistant teachers do not align with that reality. 

When it comes to teacher qualifications, NIEER recommends that, at minimum, assistant teachers hold a Child Development Association (CDA), a nationally recognized credential for entry-level early childhood educators, or have equivalent preparation from at least nine credits of coursework. This benchmark for teacher qualifications is accepted by other leading organizations in the field. 

Often the first credential in an early educator’s career, the CDA introduces teachers to foundational child development concepts, the conditions of a safe learning environment, how to establish healthy relationships with families and more. 

鈥淗aving that basis,鈥� Weisenfeld said, 鈥渁llows that person some comfort and knowledge to be able to鈥� serve confidently in an early learning setting.

But only one-third of state-funded preschool programs have policies in place that require these minimum qualifications for assistant teachers, NIEER found in a . 

Weisenfeld, who authored the report on assistant teachers, said the findings were 鈥渢roubling,鈥� noting that having low or no qualifications can justify low wages and trap teachers in a cycle where they can鈥檛 afford the education needed to advance in their careers. 

It鈥檚 critical to have skilled teachers working with young children, Weisenfeld added. 鈥淚f we want the child outcomes 鈥� they need to be qualified and then they need to be supported once in the classroom.鈥�

The report also found that only 30% of state-funded preschool programs met NIEER鈥檚 minimum standard for professional development of at least 15 hours of in-service training for assistant teachers. 

In a field where low wages and scant benefits affect early childhood educators in every role, assistant teachers fare worst of all, earning an average of $11.88 per hour as of 2022, according to . 

That financial reality makes it difficult for states to set higher standards for assistant teachers. Instead, it鈥檚 becoming increasingly common, Weisenfeld noted, for states to see that they aren鈥檛 filling open positions for early childhood educators and to respond by 鈥� allowing teenagers to fill teaching positions, instituting higher adult-to-child ratios and loosening training and licensing requirements.

鈥淐utting qualifications so you can justify inadequate salaries is not a good thing,鈥� Weisenfeld said. 

She added: 鈥淭o me, the strategy should be to help people raise their qualifications, help support people getting the qualifications, and ensure they are adequately compensated for their work.鈥�

It鈥檚 not the norm, but a few states are pursuing that strategy. New Mexico is one of them. 

Assistant teachers in New Mexico鈥檚 state-funded pre-K classrooms are required to have an associate degree in early childhood education (or be actively enrolled in a program to earn one). If they have an associate degree in another field, they must earn 12 college credits in early childhood education, said Elizabeth Groginsky, the secretary of New Mexico鈥檚 Early Childhood Care and Education Department. 

To work in one of the state-funded pre-K classrooms, assistant teachers must also complete 44 hours of mandatory foundational training and an additional 24 hours of training annually. 

Lead teachers in these classrooms, in contrast, must hold a bachelor鈥檚 degree in early childhood education and complete additional hours of professional development. They also earn more money, as is typical for more seniority across professions. 

鈥淭he important thing,鈥� Groginsky said, 鈥渋s they are both considered teachers and are both bringing a full set of knowledge and skills to advance the education of young children.鈥�

Across early care and education settings in New Mexico, assistant teachers must earn a minimum wage of $18 an hour (about $37,000 per year for a full-time teacher), the secretary shared. Assistant teachers in state-funded, community-based pre-K classrooms are also eligible for the , which ensures that teachers with an associate degree and up to three years of experience earn $45,000 and teachers with an associate degree and more than three years of experience earn $50,000.

鈥淭he idea is we鈥檙e moving up the compensation to reflect the level of education and the skills that both the lead teacher and the assistant teacher bring to the classroom,鈥� Groginsky said. 

Alabama is another state that meets NIEER鈥檚 benchmarks for assistant teacher qualifications and professional development and that Weisenfeld praised for its 鈥渂rilliant鈥� approach to building a pipeline of assistant teachers in high school.

Assistant teachers in Alabama鈥檚 First Class Pre-K Program are required to have a CDA credential or equivalent coursework in child development, and complete at least 20 hours of professional development each year. 

A number of K-12 schools in Alabama offer a pathway for high school students to pursue and complete their CDA, qualifying them for assistant teaching positions in the state鈥檚 preschool program upon graduation, said Milanda Dean, director of workforce development at the Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education. From there, teachers can participate in Alabama鈥檚 to earn their associate degree and even bachelor鈥檚 degree.

鈥淲e鈥檙e helping them earn their credentials,鈥� Dean said, 鈥渁nd growing our workforce.鈥�

Although the exact roles and responsibilities of assistant teachers do vary from program to program, it is important that these educators are recognized for the strengths and skills they bring to the classroom, said Ami Brooks, secretary of the Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education. Assistant teachers are not there just to wipe the tables, walk kids to the bathroom or put the cots out for naptime, she said. 

鈥淲e want to honor the early childhood development knowledge he or she is coming in with,鈥� said Brooks, 鈥渁nd use that to partner with the lead teacher so they can work together to help the children develop.鈥�

Responsible legislation could limit the dangers by requiring age verification before kids can sign up for social media accounts, making learning content easier to access and demanding that cellphone providers provide safety tools for families. Instead, a huge wave of poorly constructed bills is working its way through state legislatures that could cause unintended consequences and set young people back even further. 

For example, in Missouri, a recently passed the statehouse that will require 70% of elementary school assignments to be completed with pencil and paper and prohibit schools from assigning any homework that uses technology. In Tennessee, legislators passed to ban all technology in grades K-5 for students and teachers. A proposed Kansas would mandate that all K-5 instructional materials be 鈥減rint-based.鈥� Virginia鈥檚 Senate has legislation directing the state to cap instructional screen time by grade level. And in Utah, a package of signed by the governor will sharply curtail the use of technology to support learning.

There are two consistent problems in the current wave of bills. First, they treat distracting entertainment media and research-based educational technology as if they are the same. But not all screen time is created equal, and these bills completely ignore that distinction. Lumping TikTok together with a math tutoring app, or Instagram with a text-to-speech tool for a student with dyslexia, is a practice that has been repeatedly . 

Second, they assume that the best way to limit tech use is with a timer. But the issue is quality, not quantity. Many of these bills set a daily time limit (e.g., one hour of digital instruction), though any amount of time would be too much for a student who is not using the technology effectively. On the flip side, technology used thoughtfully to increase student engagement and creativity should not be constrained by an arbitrary time limit, especially when supporting evidence-based pedagogical practices. What鈥檚 worse, not one of the bills requiring paper-based worksheets to be used in place of technology imposes any quality standards on the types of activities assigned. According to these bills, a teacher could replace a highly effective math app with a dot-to-dot worksheet, and it would be totally fine. That’s an 鈥渙ut of the frying pan into the fire鈥� situation.

As a parent and former educator, I understand the desire for . Personal devices and non-learning apps that don鈥檛 support educational goals can hijack students鈥� attention and try any teacher鈥檚 patience. But when learning is not engaging, literally anything will become a distraction. Limiting instruction to filling out paper-based worksheets would be mind-numbing for any student.

In contrast, the key to get kids to love learning is to make it meaningful, and this is where ed tech can be a game-changer. Recently, I visited a school in Los Angeles that was transforming math instruction by having students play a research-based math game, which informed the teacher exactly who needed extra help with specific concepts. Other technologies adapt learning activities based on students鈥� interests or skill levels, let teachers know which kids need help before they fall behind and enable educators to meet each student鈥檚 needs in ways that would otherwise be impossible. The effectiveness of these tools is backed by decades of . A bill like Missouri鈥檚 would make this kind of data-informed teaching nearly impossible.

For children with disabilities, assistive technology 鈥� screen readers, text-to-speech software, adaptive learning systems and language translation tools 鈥� is not just a nice-to-have; it whose needs might otherwise go unmet. Today, in the U.S. receive special education services, many of which include technology as part of their individualized education plans. For students with dyslexia using a text-to-speech app, for example, technology isn鈥檛 a distraction 鈥� it鈥檚 how they access learning. Tennessee鈥檚 original proposal would have barred teachers from even using digital devices for instruction, meaning the very tools these students depend on could have been eliminated.

In today’s economy, there is no college or career path that doesn鈥檛 require the effective use of technology. Students who develop digital literacy skills early than those who don’t. Essentially all jobs 鈥� 鈥� now require applicants to have digital proficiency. Preventing K-12 students from learning to use technology for writing, research and collaboration would undermine their future employability and the nation鈥檚 economic competitiveness.

This is even more striking in a global context. While America’s state legislatures debate whether to let elementary students touch a keyboard, other countries are on teaching students how to use technology 鈥� including artificial intelligence 鈥攖o solve complex problems. They recognize that technology can enhance curiosity, critical thinking and other essential skills, ensuring their graduates can thrive in the workplace and beyond. 

With the emergence of artificial intelligence, the world is at the . If the nation’s goal is to prepare kids to thrive in a complex and modern economy, it cannot retreat to the tools of the last century.

There is no disputing the need for guidelines and guardrails for children using consumer technology. But by treating math software the same as Netflix, and assistive technology the same as TikTok, the ed tech bans gaining momentum in statehouses around the country guarantee that the students who can least afford to fall behind will be the ones hurt most. If these bills become law, America won鈥檛 have protected its children 鈥� it will have forced them to learn for a paper-based world that no longer exists.

Banning technology for learning doesn鈥檛 make us principled 鈥� it makes us negligent.

Still, she appreciated the reason the Carter administration summoned her father to the nation鈥檚 capital. , a prominent researcher who focused on school integration, was part of a team tasked with creating a new cabinet-level education agency. 

was to bring all of the various education programs scattered across multiple departments under one roof.

鈥淚 remember the sense of fervor and purpose that surrounded the work that they were doing,鈥� she said. 

Almost 50 years later, Miles leads Education Resource Strategies, an organization that helps districts make sense of regulations tied to department funds. She鈥檚 quite familiar with complaints that those rules are confusing and can make spending money difficult, but the grumbling hasn’t changed her view about the department鈥檚 original mission. 

鈥淧art of the federal role,鈥� she said, 鈥渋s to be a safeguard for the nation in the stewardship of those dollars.鈥�

Such requirements are at the center of a long-running debate over the department鈥檚 existence. With her most recent announcement that the Treasury Department would , Education Secretary Linda McMahon is reversing history and redistributing her department鈥檚 major responsibilities across the federal government. K-12 programs are going to the Labor Department, while the Department of Health and Human Services is expected to absorb special education.

Like President Donald Trump, McMahon dismisses her staff鈥檚 oversight functions as unnecessarily burdensome and says parceling out the department鈥檚 functions will . Washington should 鈥済et out of the way,鈥� she said in January when she granted Iowa a waiver to blend some federal funds into a block grant.

But others say those rules ensure that schools spend the money the way Congress intended. 

鈥淭he more flexibility you have, the more you run the risk that people may take advantage of that flexibility,鈥� said Vic Klatt, who worked at the department during George H.W. Bush鈥檚 administration and then spent several years working on education policy for House Republicans. 

鈥楯ust very loose鈥�

During a , McMahon defended her actions and described the Education Department as a mere 鈥減ass-through鈥� agency for funds Congress appropriates. Before the department was established, programs like Title I for low-income students and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act 鈥渨ere handled very well,鈥� she said.  

But that wasn鈥檛 what civil rights advocates found when they took an extensive look at how districts spent the funds. An often-cited example from their report was how the Claiborne Parish schools in Louisiana used Title I funds, meant to improve achievement among educationally 鈥渄eprived children,鈥� to build two Olympic-sized swimming pools at Black schools.

A school in Oakland, California, used the money for an exercise program to 鈥減revent heart trouble鈥� and increase the 鈥渇low of blood to the brain,鈥� the report found. When parents asked if the funds might be better used to teach their kids to read, school officials told them that the P.E. program would improve the students鈥� reading skills.

鈥淚t was just very loose,鈥� said Nora Gordon, a Georgetown University professor who has written extensively about the history of Title I. 鈥淭hey weren鈥檛 breaking the law at the time, but they were violating the spirit of the law.鈥�

Title I was meant to be supplemental. Districts had to 鈥渟ign an assurance鈥� that they wouldn鈥檛 cut their own spending when they received Title I funds, the report said, but there were no penalties for doing so. Audits uncovered numerous examples of districts using Title I to pay for general expenses that should have been covered with state and local funds, like building classrooms and stocking libraries with books at Black schools. 

When Congress amended the Elementary and Secondary Education Act , members wrote a 鈥渟upplement, not supplant鈥� provision into the law 鈥� three words that have generated immense confusion through the years. The rule has prompted countless 鈥済uidance鈥� documents that can be equally confusing and spawned a cottage industry of consultants and lawyers who advise districts how to avoid mistakes.聽

The department, for example, presumes that districts are supplanting if they used state or local funds to cover an expense in the previous year or if they鈥檙e spending federal funds on something the state mandates, like teacher training in the science of reading. 

Some argue that the department has gone so overboard with requirements for documentation that states and districts worry more about compliance than whether the students those programs are meant to help are making any progress. 

In 2006, an Office of the Inspector General review found almost 588 requirements related to the No Child Left Behind Act 鈥� so many that a manual describing states鈥� and districts鈥� responsibilities only included about 60% of them. The Inspector General questioned whether all those rules were necessary.聽

鈥淪ure, there is flexibility in how you spend federal dollars,鈥� said JoLynn Berge, deputy superintendent and chief financial officer at the Northshore School District near Seattle. 鈥淏ut you really have to be this high-level expert to understand how to comply with the rules.鈥�

Lucky for Northshore, she is. She previously oversaw district finances for the Seattle Public Schools and before that, worked for the Washington state superintendent鈥檚 office, where she monitored districts鈥� use of federal dollars. She sees value in the push for flexible block grants instead of holding funds for different programs 鈥渋n these little buckets,鈥� each with their own rules. 

鈥淵ou have to trust that people are going to do things right,鈥� she said. There will always be 鈥渂ad actors,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut that鈥檚 what you have auditors for.鈥�

For some district leaders, procurement rules 鈥� those governing how districts purchase everything from tutoring services to software programs 鈥� are a common frustration. To use federal funds, like those for kids with disabilities, a district has to conduct a bidding process.

But that timeline can stretch out for weeks and cause delays in students getting the help they need, said Jay Toland, chief financial officer for the Cumberland, North Carolina, district.

鈥淪ometimes we might have to do something on the fly with exceptional children,鈥� he said, like hiring a speech pathologist. 鈥漌e’re still providing those services; we just have to find another funding source.鈥�

鈥楻颈蝉办-补惫别谤蝉别鈥�

According to McMahon, states and districts should have more say over how they spend federal dollars. During the extended government shutdown last fall, her team took to social media to mock the department鈥檚 oversight role.

鈥淲e might be away from our desks attending strategic assessments, creating more red tape and doing nothing to improve student outcomes,鈥� said the post, signed 鈥渂ureaucratically yours.鈥� 

But the Education Department isn鈥檛 the only agency that asks districts to complete tedious administrative tasks, and many of those will stay in place whether the department exists or not. 

The requirement that school staff document they spend on a federal grant, for example, comes from the Office of Management and Budget. 

States are known for layering their own rules on top of the federal guidelines. Jeremy Vidito, chief financial officer for the Detroit schools, previously worked in California and Louisiana, but called Michigan 鈥渢he most restrictive place鈥� he鈥檚 worked when it comes to spending federal dollars. 

鈥淭hey must approve all travel and conferences in advance. They approve service vendors and materials,鈥� he said. 鈥淎t this point, we know what they will and won’t approve, so we don’t try to do anything creative.鈥�

The public also has expectations for how districts spend that money. 

The law requires districts to spend Title I in schools with poverty rates of 75% or higher, and they can direct funds to schools with much lower poverty rates if they have some left over. Berge, in the Northshore district, described it as 鈥減eanut buttering鈥� the funds around to keep everyone happy. Legally, leaders could concentrate that money in just the poorest schools, but pushback from the community would be intense. 

鈥淭he federal government doesn’t prohibit you from doing that. You’re just dealing with local politics,鈥� said Marguerite Roza, who directs the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University and advises districts nationwide on budget and spending issues. 

With achievement gaps wider since the pandemic, and low-performing students continuing to lose ground, she challenges districts to rethink how they spend Title I. But district officials, she said, are a 鈥渞isk-averse鈥� group and tend to stick with spending plans that state officials and auditors have signed off on in the past. 

In conversation with a group of districts last fall, she proposed that they use all of their Title I funds to pay non-teaching staff members, like instructional coaches and assistant principals, to work as tutors for low-income students. One leader from a midsized Midwestern district said the idea wouldn鈥檛 work because Title I instructors must be certified teachers. Roza reminded her that tutoring isn鈥檛 core instruction. 

鈥淪o this was actually a non-issue,鈥� she said. 

California provides another example of how districts can get locked into misconceptions about what鈥檚 allowed. In 2012, advocates for arts education found that districts were reluctant to use Title I funds for the arts even though the U.S. Department of Education encouraged it. A 鈥渃ulture of 鈥榝ear of reprisal鈥� seemed to permeate the Title I world,鈥� . 

It took a letter from the state education department and extra assurance from a federal official to convince districts it was OK. Klatt, the retired Congressional staffer, is among those who predict that even if some federal rules disappear, district leaders will likely still manage those funds like nothing has changed.

鈥淚t鈥檚 hard to break that mold,鈥� he said.

But there鈥檚 another reason, experts say, why those spending federal dollars might not be able to tell much difference between this administration and those that came before. Other than granting the Iowa waiver, which observers say was not a significant change, McMahon has mostly reiterated what the law already allows. 

In January, she released a letter highlighting the way schools can use Title I funds for improvements (on the books since 1978) and blend federal grants with state and local funds (added in 1994). She鈥檚 made similar announcements about 鈥渆xisting鈥� flexibilities related to , transferred to the Labor Department last year. 

If anything, Klatt doesn鈥檛 buy McMahon鈥檚 argument that moving K-12 programs there is a way to lighten the bureaucratic load. After all, it鈥檚 the agency that enforces strict rules related to and . 

鈥淎lmost everybody at the Labor Department,鈥� he said, 鈥渋s involved in some kind of regulatory activity.鈥� 

A few years back, a groundswell of Brooklyn parents in District 13 wanted to ditch gifted and talented classes, concerned about sorting and segregating children starting in kindergarten.

Then-Superintendent Kamar Samuels, now chancellor of New York City schools, wanted to find an alternative that offered rigorous academics for all students in a school rather than a select few. He settled on the and encouraged schools in District 13, which spans from Brooklyn Heights to Bedford-Stuyvesant, to pursue the yearslong authorization process, using a grant to support the shift.

The IB approach embraces inquiry-based, transdisciplinary learning that allows students to go deep into a specific topic across classes, connecting global issues to their own experiences. Educators are trained to facilitate these connections and foster ways for students to become independent thinkers and leaders.

鈥淚t means something for a teacher to be an IB teacher. It means you鈥檝e gone through a process,鈥� , when introducing the initiative, 鈥渁nd you鈥檙e really pushing the envelope as you think about all your students.鈥�

The district now has five elementary schools and two middle schools in the program, representing New York City鈥檚 first IB 鈥減athway鈥� designed to serve children from 3-K through eighth grade. (The district also hopes that students continue on to the handful of public IB high schools in the city, including those in neighboring districts.)

The IB model might soon gain in popularity as schools grapple with the state鈥檚 graduation requirement overhaul, as the Portrait of a Graduate framework replaces Regents exams for diplomas starting in the 2027-28 school year. The approach closely aligns with the state鈥檚 students must demonstrate (such as being creative innovators, effective communicators, and global citizens). And as schools await the state鈥檚 guidance on how to assess students under the new framework, IB schools already have a well-developed system of project-based assessments.

The schools also boast strong post-secondary outcomes: 71% of IB students in the U.S. enrolled in college compared to the average of 56%, .

On a recent Monday at P.S. 56, in Clinton Hill, second graders hummed as they worked on a project for a unit on self-expression. The kids were creating shapes to use for fabric construction, incorporating math, writing, and social-emotional learning as they jotted down the way the colors they used made them feel.

In a fifth grade room down the hall, students 鈥� also doing a unit on self-expression 鈥� tackled a poem about technology, as they discussed the effect technology is having on education. Another fifth grade class read a poem about bullying, and students were asked to write their own poem about a problem they wanted to change.

Jayda, a fifth grader, wrote about concerns with the increase in immigration enforcement across the nation. She recently participated in an anti-ICE protest that Lucy, another fifth grader, organized. They and their peers talked about how they struggled with writing when they were younger but have since blossomed as writers, especially as they鈥檝e been able to work on more creative writing.

鈥淣ow it鈥檚 my passion,鈥� fifth grader Noah said. 鈥淚 couldn鈥檛 imagine life without it.鈥�

Tracey Scronic, the instruction lead and coordinator for District 13鈥檚 IB schools, sees the shift to the IB model as an 鈥渆quity tool鈥� to ensure all of a school鈥檚 students are exposed to enrichment. She said it 鈥渄e-prioritizes traditional testing鈥檚 emphasis on regurgitation of information.鈥�

Leaning on IB to tackle enrollment declines

The IB program at P.S. 56 has helped prop up enrollment, its principal, Eric Grande, said.

Just before Grande became principal of P.S. 56 a decade ago, the Clinton Hill elementary school tried to bolster enrollment, then hovering below 200 students, by adding a gifted and talented program. Grande added a 鈥渨orld language鈥� program, focusing on Spanish, hoping that would attract more families. But the school didn鈥檛 feel cohesive.

鈥淓ven though we had a relatively small school, there was almost like schools within the school,鈥� Grande said. 鈥淵ou had your world language Spanish program, your gifted and talented program, you had your special education classes and your gen ed classes, and it just started to feel a little bit off.鈥�

Students within the school, which is more racially diverse than most New York City elementary schools, were not integrated within the different programs, he said. (Last year, about 36% of its students were Black, 36% were white, 17% were Latino, and 1% were Asian American; roughly 47% of children came from low-income families.)

Grande began looking for a model to bring everyone 鈥� and all of their different programs 鈥� together, appeasing families who wanted a foreign language and those who wanted a project-based approach to teaching. IB offered the 鈥減erfect synergy of all things that we were doing.鈥�

The school is now in its second year as an authorized IB school following three years as a candidate school. Enrollment has increased, with about 230 students last year.

And while Grande said his school has never been too focused on test prep, he was proud to see a shift in state test scores since his teachers transitioned to the IB framework, from about 35% proficiency on reading in 2019, the year before the pandemic, to more than 60% last year.

The move to IB can be challenging

The buy-in from teachers on IB takes some time, said Scronic. They needed training to shift practices and must do more in-depth planning around the new units. They also needed to figure out how to meld the IB framework with the mandated literacy curriculum for their district, EL Education.

鈥淚t is a bit more cognitively intense for the teachers,鈥� Scronic said. But after a while, she said teachers feel like they鈥檙e being respected again for their craft and facilitating connections between the curriculum and students鈥� own lives. 鈥淚 feel like the passion that a brand-new teacher brings to the profession then kind of gets squashed sometimes, IB has brought that back.鈥�

Becoming an authorized IB school is not easy. Schools have to pay the Switzerland-based nonprofit that oversees the IB program about $9,000 a year to start the training and candidacy process. It鈥檚 about $10,000 each year once a school is authorized to support the implementation and maintenance of IB programs, . District 13 used a grant to cover the costs for the initial training for the schools, though the schools have had to foot the bill for new teachers.

Though Scronic leads District 13鈥檚 IB initiative, she鈥檚 started holding monthly Zoom meetings for about 40 IB elementary and middle schools in the city, a grassroots effort to provide support and create a community to share best practices and resources.

Samuels continued to promote IB schools when he left his Brooklyn district to become superintendent of Manhattan鈥檚 District 3. He encouraged schools in Harlem to adopt the IB model as a way to tackle declining enrollment in a part of the district facing heavy competition from charter schools. (District 3 used a grant to cover the costs as well.)

But Samuels acknowledged the challenges in pursuing IB authorization.

鈥淚 do believe in a lot of the work of IB, but it really takes a big investment,鈥� 鈥淚t takes principals being onboard. It takes teachers being onboard and willing to go and get a lot of background and content knowledge, and to be able to personalize for young people and the kids in your school.鈥�

A middle school IB program helps students find their 鈥榲oice鈥�

Sanai Gary, an eighth grader at Bedford-Stuyvesant鈥檚 Restoration Academy 鈥� which is in its first full year as an authorized IB school after its yearslong candidacy 鈥� said the IB approach has helped her deepen her learning.

鈥淚 like how the topics transmit over to other classes. I feel like it helps me learn better,鈥� said Sanai. 鈥淚t gives me more time to focus on it.鈥�

Last year, she and her peers became clean water advocates after diving into a unit on global sustainability.

It started after they read a novel in English class, 鈥�,鈥� about the struggle in South Sudan for clean water. In their Individuals and Societies class (akin to social studies), a student brought up questions about t, that got the students wondering about the water quality in their own school. So, in science class, they tested their school鈥檚 water fountains and created makeshift filtration devices.

Concerned about the color and clarity of their school鈥檚 water, back in English class, the students mounted a letter-writing campaign to city officials demanding changes.

Restoration Academy has struggled with enrollment and has long served marginalized students. The middle school currently has roughly 80 middle schoolers; about 80% are Black and Latino, and more than 90% are from low-income families. Pre-pandemic, about 20% of its students were considered proficient in reading. Since transitioning to IB, the scores have improved, rising to about 30% last year.

But more importantly, Principal Adele Simon said, students are increasingly linking what鈥檚 happening around the world to their own lives and finding their voices to advocate for change based on what they鈥檙e learning in school.

鈥淚t鈥檚 the connection between what they鈥檙e reading,鈥� Simon said, 鈥渁nd not just reading it for the purpose of reading it, but reading it for the purpose of, 鈥極kay, what am I going to do with this? 鈥� Who鈥檚 in power and who is not in power? And how can I make sure that the people in power represent me and my community?鈥�

Their school is getting new water fountains with filtration devices this spring.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .