鈥淩esting up from my vacay.鈥�

鈥淣etflix binge last night.鈥�

Those were among the 鈥渓ame excuses鈥� for missing school that Oklahoma鈥檚 Union Public Schools featured during the 2024-25 school year, part of a humorous campaign intended to reduce chronic absenteeism.

Behind the comical posters, however, leaders were troubled by the data. During the 2022-23 school year, 29% of students missed at least 10% of the school year. At Union High School, the rate soared to 43%.

鈥淚 think there have been huge changes in behavior since COVID,鈥� said Chris Payne, spokesman for the Tulsa-area district. He echoed what policy experts and school leaders nationwide have been saying since rates skyrocketed after schools fully reopened. 鈥淚 think people reprioritized and decided, 鈥榊ou know, I’ve got things I need to take care of.鈥� 鈥�

In addition to the attendance campaign, staff met with parents and visited students鈥� homes to find out why they were missing school. But starting in 2027, Oklahoma schools will no longer be judged on whether those chronic absenteeism rates go up or down. The legislature voted last year to remove the indicator from the state鈥檚 education accountability system as a factor that contributes to a school鈥檚 overall grade and can determine whether a school is labeled in need of improvement. 

Among , teachers and administrators, there鈥檚 a sense of relief.

鈥淚’m not sure that it’s fair to evaluate schools based on something that we cannot control,鈥� said Mike Simpson, superintendent of the Guthrie Public Schools, north of Oklahoma City. Originally in favor of making chronic absenteeism a factor in schools鈥� A-F grades, he no longer thinks it鈥檚 a good way to assess schools.

Oklahoma鈥檚 most , for 2024-25, gives the state a D for the percentage of students with good attendance. Its chronic absenteeism rate of 19% is far from the worst in the nation, but it鈥檚 still 5 percentage points above the state鈥檚 pre-pandemic level of 14%. Data from shows the rate stands at about 21%. 

鈥淚t鈥檚 not just an Oklahoma thing,鈥� Simpson said. 鈥淚’ve got colleagues and friends all over the country, and they’re fighting some of the same challenges.鈥�

Oklahoma isn鈥檛 the first state to remove chronic absenteeism from its accountability system. Arkansas took it out in 2024 as part of . Illinois officials have recommended replacing chronic absenteeism with , and now reports broader attendance data rather than just chronic absenteeism.

鈥楽tates already had the data鈥�

The federal Every Student Succeeds Act requires state accountability systems, and the report cards available to the public include indicators of academic performance, graduation rates, progress in learning English and an additional measure of student success. For that last metric, 38 states chose chronic absenteeism.

The U.S. Department of Education confirmed that it鈥檚 currently considering the state鈥檚 request to replace chronic absenteeism with a new measure, but so far, state officials haven鈥檛 said what that鈥檚 going to be. The challenge will be landing on a K-12 data point that is comparable across Oklahoma鈥檚 more than 500 districts, said Paige Kowalski, executive vice president for the Data Quality Campaign. The nonprofit has published reviews of state report cards since 2016.

Chronic absenteeism 鈥渨as an inexpensive indicator to implement because states already had the data,鈥� she said. Adopting a new measure, she said, could require districts to pay for changes to their student information systems and spend time training staff to collect and input the data. In addition, she said, it takes two years to ensure data is reliable enough to use in decisions about school ratings.

But the connections between chronic absenteeism and student achievement are backed by years of research. , for example, showed that a 1% increase in attendance was linked to a 1.5% jump in third graders passing the state reading test. showed that students who were chronically absent in middle school had lower math scores and were less likely to graduate on time than those who didn鈥檛 miss as much school. 

Kowalski said there鈥檚 plenty schools can do to improve attendance. Reducing bullying, increasing teacher retention and challenges, she said, can address some of the reasons students miss school.

Transportation surfaced as a barrier when the Union district surveyed parents, teachers and students on the issue. But teachers were far less likely than parents to say that reliable transportation would improve attendance 鈥� 25% compared to 47%. There were also stark differences between parents and students. Twenty-three percent of students said mental health reasons kept them home, while 12% of parents said that was a common explanation. 

Tulsa makes progress

Some communities in Oklahoma have adopted a tough posture toward parents whose children are frequently absent. Erik Johnson, a Republican district attorney in the southeastern part of the state, has prosecuted and jailed parents to force compliance with the law. 

Prior to the pandemic, Guthrie allowing police to fine parents for their kids鈥� truancy, but Simpson, the superintendent, said those measures didn鈥檛 鈥渕ove the needle.鈥�

In Tulsa, the state鈥檚 largest district, Board Member Stacey Woolley said she鈥檚 glad chronic absenteeism is no longer part of the grading formula because the indicator lowered schools鈥� scores.聽

鈥淎t the same time, we have to continue to make it a priority,鈥� she said. When leaders examine student data, they find that students who struggle are chronically absent, regardless of their socioeconomic status. 

The district鈥檚 work shows that reductions are possible. The rate has declined over the past two years from 44% to 37%, and have seen drops of at least 10% compared to last school year. 

Such efforts won鈥檛 go completely unrewarded. Under the to the Education Department, schools that lower chronic absenteeism could still score 鈥渂onus points鈥� toward their grade but the indicator won鈥檛 be used in determining which schools are identified as needing improvement. 

By the end of the Union district鈥檚 campaign, chronic absenteeism had dropped by about 1.4%, well below the goal of 7%. Still, Payne said, the progress equated to 200 fewer chronically absent students. 

Leaders also realized something else: Students in the district鈥檚 career-tech programs, like aerospace and construction, had lower absenteeism rates than those in the general student population. Now, in response to local workforce shortages, the district has launched a healthcare career pathway as well. 

鈥淚 had students that didn鈥檛 really have a direction,鈥� said Jason McMullen, who teaches aviation courses at the district鈥檚 Innovation Lab. 鈥淭hen they see a helicopter land and that lightbulb goes off.鈥�

On a recent Wednesday morning, some students at the lab learned how to secure safety wire to the nuts and bolts that hold planes together, while others patched holes in sheetrock. 

The change to the state鈥檚 accountability system, 鈥渄oesn鈥檛 mean we’re going to quit working on it,鈥� said Payne, the district鈥檚 spokesman. 鈥淭he reality remains that if students are not present, they’re not going to perform and have success in school and life.鈥�

To Lila Byock, one of two California moms suing Curriculum Associates over its product i-Ready, the advisory was the right move. Thousands of school districts use the program, with its animated alien characters, to give students practice in math and reading.

鈥淓xcessive classroom screen use is a public health crisis,鈥� she said, adding that district leaders should 鈥渞educe the use of individual devices, reinvest in paper curricula and stop letting Big Ed Tech exploit our kids for profit.鈥�

Districts like and , are already rethinking their use of i-Ready or in response to growing backlash from parents. , led by the Austin-based EdTech Law Center, could be one reason. The complaint argues that the company gained 鈥渧irtually unfettered access鈥� to children鈥檚 personal information, like birth date, gender, race and disability status, and shared it with 鈥渕yriad third parties.鈥� 

Curriculum Associates denies the accusations. 

鈥淐urriculum Associates takes student data privacy extremely seriously, and the claims in this litigation are without merit,鈥� a spokesperson told 社区黑料. 鈥淲e do not sell student data, use it for advertising, or create commercial profiles of students. All use of student information is limited to supporting the educational services requested and authorized by schools and districts in compliance with applicable federal and state laws.鈥�

Ed tech vendors rely on long-standing federal that says 鈥渟chools may act as the parent鈥檚 agent,鈥� provided the data they gather is for educational, not commercial, purposes. 

The lawyers taking ed tech companies to court are challenging that guidance. Linnette Attai, a data privacy consultant and founder of Playwell, LLC, said the complaint over i-Ready is based on 鈥渁 lot of speculation,鈥� but it has still put vendors and education leaders on alert.

鈥淐urriculum Associates is facing significant legal bills, but also a public relations and customer retention issue. The industry is sitting up and taking notice,鈥� she said. But she said the issues the complaints raise are 鈥渂etter suited for legislators and not a courtroom.鈥�

鈥楾heories of consent鈥�

Congress passed the in 1998, requiring online sites to verify parents鈥� approval before they collect, use or share information from children under 13. 

Last , the Federal Trade Commission鈥檚 FAQ on the law says that schools 鈥渃an consent under COPPA to the collection of kids鈥� information on the parent鈥檚 behalf.鈥�

But with that put students鈥� privacy at risk and that digital tools benefit kids, the attorneys representing parents like Byock hope to defeat that interpretation of the law. 

鈥淭hese theories of consent that companies rely on in order to bypass actual consent from parents are all bogus,鈥� said Andrew Liddell, one half of the husband-and-wife legal team behind the EdTech Law Center. 鈥淭hey have no basis in the law whatsoever.鈥� 

The FTC updated its COPPA regulation in early 2025, but left the school consent issue alone. The agency, however, it was 鈥渃oncerned about the use of and other engagement techniques to keep kids online in ways that could harm their mental health.鈥�

Last summer, the FTC submitted an in support of EdTech Law Center in a separate , an online learning platform used by more than 18 million students. The Liddells sued on behalf of three Kansas families who said the company uses 鈥渄eceptive design techniques鈥� to keep kids hooked and shares their data with a 鈥渉ost of private companies.鈥� The families have asked for monetary damages.  

The law, the FTC wrote, does not create an 鈥渁gency relationship between schools and the parents of school children.鈥�

The Liddells say the brief is the most definitive statement yet that parents, not schools, have the final say over what data ed tech vendors can access. But the FTC hasn鈥檛 changed its existing guidance, and other student privacy experts say schools can continue to it.

A spokesperson for the FTC told 社区黑料 it doesn鈥檛 鈥渉ave anything to add to the amicus brief.鈥�

鈥楾he long game鈥�

Meg Leta Jones, founder of the Center for Digital Ethics at Georgetown University, said there is tension in Washington over this issue. On one hand, the administration is 鈥渢rying to be pro-AI,鈥� she said. First lady Melania Trump entered a White House education summit in April alongside a saying, 鈥淭he future of A.I. is 鈥榩ersonified,鈥� 鈥� 

At the same time, Republicans support parental rights, and a few months earlier, a Senate committee held to examine the harms of ed tech.

鈥淚t鈥檚 hard to move when both of those things are happening,鈥� Jones said. The lawsuits are important, she said, because they take the issue out of federal officials鈥� hands. 鈥淐larity around this consent issue is what will come in the long game.鈥�

Outside the courts, the litigation has inspired more parents to push for restrictions on i-Ready and other ed tech platforms. Parents in New York City鈥檚 District 4, on Manhattan鈥檚 East Side, noted the i-Ready lawsuit in a calling for screen time limits. 

Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, a mom of two who chairs the Community Education Council for District 4, has already opted her kids out of i-Ready and NWEA鈥檚 MAP tests. But she said she remains 鈥渁 thousand percent鈥� concerned about her 14-year-old鈥檚 use of programs like Google Classroom, IXL and JumpRope, a grading platform.

The resolution cited a recent finding 141 data breaches or 鈥渦nauthorized data releases鈥� between 2023 and 2025. The district, the New York comptroller鈥檚 office said, doesn鈥檛 have an 鈥渁ccurate inventory鈥� of all of the software programs schools use or the privacy risks involved. 

鈥淚t’s like ed tech on steroids,鈥� said Salas-Ramirez, also a neuroscientist who trains future doctors. 鈥淲e don’t have the data to validate that these quote unquote tools, instruments or assessments provide us anything worthwhile.鈥� 

鈥楢dministrative nightmare鈥�

Ed tech experts say schools wouldn鈥檛 be able to function if vendors had to get consent directly from parents for all the online products students use in the classroom. 

It鈥檚 an 鈥渁dministrative nightmare鈥� said Mark Williams, a California attorney who specializes in ed tech contracts and student privacy. 鈥淭hrow that out the window; it doesn鈥檛 work.鈥�

Vendors share data with third parties. That part isn鈥檛 in dispute. The question is if it鈥檚 being shared, as the FTC says, 鈥渇or the use and benefit of the school鈥� or falling into the hands of companies that use it for marketing or targeted ads based on students鈥� characteristics.  

A last year offered another look into what happens when kids click answers or type personal information into a program. The state board turned to , a nonprofit that tests software products, to investigate 100 apps commonly used in the state鈥檚 schools. 

The review found that over a third shared student information with advertisers. shared data with six advertisers. Others shared data with dozens of advertisers as well as with sites like Google and Microsoft.

The report stressed that the 鈥減resence of sharing alone does not necessarily constitute a contract violation.鈥� Some sharing is necessary for an app to function properly, the authors wrote.

It鈥檚 鈥渃ommon sense鈥� for a vendor to share data they collect to fix bugs or security flaws, said Steve Smith, executive director of , a global network of vendors and schools. But legally, it鈥檚 鈥渁 little bit of a stretch鈥� for a company to create a new program with that information.

Vendors go too far when they share 鈥渋ncredibly sensitive student data鈥� from a school monitoring app to develop a new product, said Amelia Vance, president of the nonprofit Public Interest Privacy Center. Many schools use such programs to monitor for online threats or risks of self harm.

鈥淭he companies have everything the kid has done online, everything that they’ve written in the Google Drive,鈥� she said. 鈥淵ou can think about that extremely personal information then being used to create a personalized learning platform that they sell back to schools.鈥�

鈥楶retty opaque鈥�

Inspired by Utah鈥檚 work, Access4Learning is developing a tool that districts can use to track what vendors do with student information. Leaders expect to launch it later this year. 

But that might not satisfy the concerns of some parents leading the charge against ed tech. They often point out that such organizations or have received funding from some of the very companies the screen-free lobby opposes. The growing mistrust surfaced at last December that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration held to discuss kids鈥� 鈥渆xcessive screen time.鈥� 

鈥淓d tech is so devious that it’s created dozens of nonprofits cloaked as online safety organizations,鈥� Lisa Cline, a Maryland parent who has advocated against screens in the Montgomery County Public Schools, said at the event. 鈥淪ome of them are here today. Look closely. These guys are bankrolled by big tech and frankly, they mock the work that unpaid people like myself do to educate parents.鈥� 

While the lawsuits between parents and vendors could drag on for a while, districts should at least be transparent about the products they鈥檙e using, said Williams, the California attorney. 

Parents are allowing districts 鈥渢o collect and give to a third party data that they would not otherwise be entitled to,鈥� he said. In return, educators should explain what data they take and what they do with it. 鈥淯nfortunately, that process can be pretty opaque.鈥�

Last year, WalletHub, , ranked the state 50th 鈥� just above New Mexico 鈥� on a mix of criteria including test scores, graduation and teacher certification rates. More recently, a University of Oklahoma researcher zoomed in on the , where the state places 48th overall in math and reading.

The unwelcome attention typically prompts a wave of finger-pointing from politicians and . 

Sometimes, teachers like Sarah Clifford.

A single mom of two who relocated from New York, she鈥檚 among the thousands in the state who entered the classroom without completing a teacher training program. In 2023, as a new teacher in the Edmond Public Schools outside Oklahoma City, she struggled to write lesson plans and hated teaching math, a subject she disliked as a child. Districts statewide have increasingly depended on emergency certified educators like her to fill vacancies. In 2023-24, the number topped 5,000, state data shows. Since 2022, the state has also allowed schools to hire , who may have no more than a high school diploma.

鈥淲e don’t want to demonize any person who is stepping up to be a teacher, regardless of the pathway,鈥� said Bryan Duke, dean of the College of Education and Professional Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma. 鈥淏ut the difference in preparation launches people successfully or unsuccessfully into careers.鈥�

Duke鈥檚 program has been part of the solution. In 2024, the university received nearly $2.5 million in from the state for scholarships to help teachers like Clifford complete their certification programs and earn a master鈥檚 degree. She graduated with last December after spending nine months instruction so she could 鈥渉elp students feel confident and start to love something that’s hard.鈥� Most of her third graders students who were 鈥渙n watch鈥� in math ended up on grade level by the end of the year.

鈥淥ur state doesn’t look like we’re doing well,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut if you go inside a classroom with people who have the passion and want to be there, those kids are thriving.鈥�

The data on the state鈥檚 decline is undeniable. In the mid-鈥�90s, the state ranked 17th in math and reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. With the 2024 scores, the state had fallen to 48th.

In a , University of Oklahoma researcher Adam Tyner described how Oklahoma missed the 鈥渟outhern surge鈥� that brought academic turnarounds to states like Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. Those states saw improvement after pouring millions of dollars into teacher training, strong curriculum and coaching.

Oklahoma鈥檚 results have also affected public opinion. Less than a third of Oklahomans graded their local schools an A or B in from the university鈥檚 Oklahoma Center for Education Policy. Two years ago, 41% gave their schools high marks.

At about $12,500, the state鈥檚 per-pupil spending is . One reason is because it takes a in the legislature to approve a tax increase. District budgets could take another hit if voters this fall approve on property taxes. 

鈥淚f it’s really hard to increase revenues, you have to take away things from other areas,鈥� said Deven Carlson, a public policy researcher at the University of Oklahoma. 鈥淚t’s going to be hard to improve outcomes, if you think that money matters.鈥�

One possible off-ramp for parents is school choice. Many charter schools their local district schools, data shows, leading to push for expanding the charter sector.

This year, lawmakers took a dual approach to tackling the state鈥檚 education challenges. They gave teachers a $2,000 raise 鈥� but the is still well below neighboring Texas and Arkansas. Gov. Kevin Stitt also signed a increasing the minimum number of days in the school calendar from 166 to 173. That will make it harder for some districts with four-day weeks to maintain that schedule.

鈥淲e’ve lost a lot of instructional days,鈥� said Education Secretary Dan Hamlin. 鈥淚t’s not the only thing that matters; you need other things, too. But it is a component that’s meaningful.鈥�

鈥楢rt of teaching鈥�

State data shows that 184 districts are in session for 166 days or less, which they can achieve through four-day weeks with longer days. 

shows four-day weeks don鈥檛 necessarily improve retention, but districts that don鈥檛 adopt them can to nearby ones that do. The model is generally popular with teachers, who trade off longer hours for three-day weekends.

Superintendent Rick Cobb鈥檚 experience in the Mid-Del School District, outside Oklahoma City, illustrates the problem. When he became superintendent in 2015, he was 鈥渁larmed鈥� that the district had 20 emergency certified teachers, he said. Now 114 either have emergency certifications or are adjunct teachers, according to .

His district, which serves a blue collar community near an Air Force base, never shifted to a four-day week. But others around Mid-Del did, luring away his teachers.

Knowledge of the subject matter generally isn鈥檛 a weak spot for emergency certified teachers, he said. But they often lack the skills to manage classrooms and modify lessons for students working at higher and lower levels.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 the art of teaching,鈥� he said.

Mike Simpson, superintendent of the Guthrie Public Schools, north of Oklahoma City, has faced the same challenge. His district, where nearly 60% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, has lost teachers to districts with four-day weeks. But he never went that route because parents in his district depend on schools not just for education, but also for school meals. 

鈥淚f the parents go to work, who’s taking care of those kids? Who’s feeding them?鈥� he asked. 鈥淚 take that very seriously.鈥�

The small, rural Jennings Public Schools, west of Tulsa, is among those that run four days. It received a waiver from the state to operate a 156-day calendar.

Superintendent Derrick Meador doesn鈥檛 struggle to find certified teachers. He had three job openings recently and about 10 applicants for each one. It was the first time in three years he鈥檚 had to hire a teacher. Families, he said, support the four-day week and don鈥檛 want to lose it. Fewer than 2% of students are chronically absent, and the district performs well academically.

鈥淚f we weren’t getting the results that we were, I would have ended it a long time ago,鈥� Meador said. He doesn鈥檛 appreciate districts with four-day weeks getting for dragging the state down. 鈥淚 don’t like being lumped in with other districts. We stand alone on our merits and should be judged accordingly.鈥� 

He hopes the state will continue to allow waivers from the new 173-day requirement, but without it, Jennings will likely have to give up its four-day week.

鈥楲ife experience鈥�

It鈥檚 difficult to tie student outcomes to any one education policy, whether that鈥檚 the academic calendar or teacher certification. But Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research, said if performance is falling, teacher quality 鈥渋s one of the very first things that I would look toward.鈥�

Oklahoma is certainly not alone in lowering the bar to teach, especially since the pandemic. Goldhaber examined post-COVID outcomes for students in Massachusetts and found that those whose teachers had emergency licenses in math and science than their peers. 

In Texas, a third of teachers were unlicensed in 2023-24. aims to reverse that trend by gradually reducing the share of unlicensed teachers that districts can hire to 5% by 2029.

Oklahoma took a small step in that direction this year when it tightened restrictions on adjunct teachers, who are only required to have 鈥渄istinguished qualifications in their field,鈥� but not a college degree. Stitt signed that stops schools from hiring adjuncts to teach core content areas in K-5.

that educators with temporary or emergency certifications are more likely than those who are fully certified to leave the profession. But they often take positions that would otherwise be nearly impossible to fill. 

In the Union Public Schools, which serves southeast Tulsa and part of Broken Arrow, several teach at the district鈥檚 Innovation Lab, a hub for career and technical education courses. They include Jeremy Weber, a who teaches students the basics of aircraft maintenance. On a recent morning, he showed students how to use safety wire to secure nuts and bolts to parts of a plane.

鈥淭hat life experience is pretty valuable,鈥� said Kenneth Moore, the district鈥檚 executive director of secondary education.

Earlier this month, newly certified teachers with years of life and career experience gathered at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond to celebrate their graduation from the two-year alternative certification program. 

Grabbing refreshments at a pre-graduation reception and posing for pictures with their families and fellow graduates, they talked about wanting to reverse the stigma attached to teachers who take a nontraditional route to the classroom.

They included Cherice McDonald, a teacher in Oklahoma City schools who previously worked in the oil and gas industry, and is now being recruited to work as an assistant principal. 

Melanie Whitekiller Lawrence, a member of the Cherokee Nation, stayed home to raise her four kids before taking a job as a long-term substitute. When she took charge of a fourth grade class in Edmond, she said she 鈥渉ad no idea鈥� there were academic standards in math and reading she was required to teach under state law. She鈥檚 come a long way since the days when a colleague in the classroom next door would supply her with ready-made lessons for the week.

Last fall, her colleagues at Chisholm Elementary chose her to represent their school as . 

鈥淪ometimes, I feel like I’m more knowledgeable about current and best practices than my colleagues who have been teaching for a very long time,鈥� she said at the reception. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not just warm bodies.鈥�

In the heart of the Bible Belt, a small Methodist college graduated its final class in May 2024, shutting its doors after 168 years.

Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, was a Christian private liberal arts school that counted among its graduates members of Congress, famous musicians, Pulitzer Prize winners and the former executive editor of The New York Times. Yet it had been unable to endure years of financial losses.

About 15 minutes southeast, toward the Birmingham suburbs, the inaugural freshman class at Highlands College was finishing its first year that same spring. The private Christian school, which has just gotten permission from the state to award bachelor鈥檚 degrees, was born out of the nondenominational Church of the Highlands, the biggest religious congregation in the state and one of the largest in the nation. It claims across more than two dozen campuses in Alabama and Georgia.

Long-established, religiously affiliated small colleges such as Birmingham-Southern are battling the same existential pressures weighing on non-religious liberal arts colleges nationwide: declining enrollment, rising operational costs and a deepening skepticism of higher education among families who fear ideological influence on their children or question whether steep tuition and fees are worth it.

But a different model of Christian education is on the upswing: Some of the nation鈥檚 biggest megachurches are getting into the college business, prioritizing job training and church culture over traditional liberal arts. A franchise-style model from a Christian university in Florida has made it easier than ever for them to launch.

The new schools are attracting big donors and growing their enrollment through a built-in base of believers 鈥� and some are pushing to access public funding.

States including Florida, Georgia and Minnesota have opened their state financial assistance programs to religious colleges in recent years. The change mirrors a broader push already underway in K-12 education, where states have funneled to religious schools.

Many of these new colleges eschew the regional accrediting that鈥檚 standard for more established universities. Some pursue alternative accreditation from religious nonprofits that may or may not be recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.

That means students鈥� college credits may not transfer to other schools or to graduate programs. And the costs of non-accredited coursework aren鈥檛 eligible for federal financial assistance offered through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.

Supporters of the megachurch-affiliated schools say they鈥檙e a good option for students who want practical training for specific jobs, generally in ministry or business. They say students benefit from being closely connected to their local faith community.

But some experts question whether the schools鈥� lack of traditional accreditation could limit students鈥� options after graduation, or whether their close ties to one church could have an outsized impact on the school鈥檚 accountability and transparency.

鈥淧ublic funding is something that everybody should be concerned about, no matter your politics, no matter your religion,鈥� said Adam Laats, a professor of education and history at Binghamton University in upstate New York who has written books on the history of Christian education in America.

鈥淎nd I think it鈥檚 everyone鈥檚 business if there are schools that are restricting the chances of students in a way that students aren鈥檛 aware of what they鈥檙e getting into.鈥�

Financial aid

Schools such as Highlands College are growing their physical footprints with big donations from heavy hitters. A from the Green family, whose patriarch David Green founded the Hobby Lobby craft store chain, funded Highlands鈥� first two residence halls.

In March, 3-year-old Austin Christian University 鈥� born out of Texas-based Celebration Church, which has more than 23,000 members 鈥� broke ground on thanks to a donation of the same size from Roger Bringmann, a vice president at California-based tech giant Nvidia.

The schools鈥� focus more closely aligns with many conservatives鈥� educational goals. Republicans in statehouses across the country have pushed to increase Christianity鈥檚 influence and presence in education, while President Donald Trump鈥檚 administration has proposed relaxing accreditation rules.

In last month, Republican state Attorney General James Uthmeier declared the state won鈥檛 enforce its constitutional ban on funding religious institutions, opening the door for state-funded scholarships for Christian colleges.

The newer Christian schools also may benefit from battles fought by their older counterparts.

Last year, agreed to allow religious colleges to participate in state-funded financial aid programs after a 64-year-old Christian college sued the state over its law that barred theological schools from public tuition assistance.

And after two century-old colleges filed suit in last year, a federal judge struck down a 2023 state law that barred religious colleges from a state-funded dual enrollment program that lets high school students enroll in college credit courses tuition-free.

鈥淲e鈥檝e done lobbying at the state level, working with the state legislators to get access to things like in-state, need-based grants,鈥� said Patrick Fitzgerald, a spokesperson for Southeastern University, in Lakeland, Florida, which has partnered with more than 200 churches across the country to help them launch colleges. 鈥淒epending on the need in each state and the availability of state funding, we try to access every scholarship dollar that we can for students.鈥�

Many megachurch schools offer financial aid. But tuition and fees at more established church-affiliated schools can run into the mid-five figures 鈥� with their private college counterparts, but far above in-state tuition at big public universities.

At Highlands College, tuition, housing and fees total about . The school, which focuses on training for the ministry, says 100% of its students receive scholarships. In-state tuition, housing and fees at the University of Alabama cost . At Birmingham-Southern, the year it closed, those same costs totaled about .

But costs vary. At Elevation College, which plans to welcome its first class this fall and was launched by North Carolina megachurch Elevation Church, the tuition, housing and fees are about . VOUS College of Ministry in Miami, based at one of the fastest-growing megachurches in Florida, charges per year in tuition and fees, though that doesn鈥檛 include housing.

Single-church affiliations

Unlike more traditional schools that are affiliated with an entire denomination, these newer schools are often deeply entwined with the leadership at just one megachurch.

At Austin Christian, for example, the college president is Connor Champion, the son of Celebration Church鈥檚 founding pastors, Joe and Lori Champion.

Last year, Church of the Highlands founding pastor Chris Hodges from his role there to focus on being chancellor at Highlands College, and to become the church鈥檚 new head pastor.

Some critics say that when schools are closely tied to one church, rather than to an entire denomination, the church鈥檚 leadership and finances have an outsized impact on the school.

鈥淵ou can end up with this insular, sometimes authoritarian power structure, which I don鈥檛 mean to say is unique to religious schools, but it is one of the hazards of this kind of institutional structure,鈥� said Laats.

But having a college tied to a local church also can boost its credibility and accountability within that faith community, said Rick Ostrander, a longtime Christian college administrator who is currently the executive director for the Michigan Christian Study Center at the University of Michigan.

鈥淭here鈥檚 always the danger with new markets and new models that develop some bad actors or just some unhealthy situations,鈥� Ostrander said, 鈥渂ut I think that鈥檚 less likely in this area than some other quote-unquote professional areas.鈥�

Church franchise models

The Highlands model 鈥� practical, church-based job training paired with academic courses offered through an accredited partner university 鈥� is spreading, in part, thanks to a franchise-style approach from a Florida university that has made launching a church-based college easier than ever.

Southeastern University in central Florida is a private school affiliated with Assemblies of God, one of the world鈥檚 largest Pentecostal Christian denominations. Southeastern is accredited by a federally recognized regional accreditation body, and it鈥檚 one of the in the country, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

One reason for that growth is it has partnered with more than 200 churches, including some of the nation鈥檚 largest, to offer accredited Southeastern聽degrees through local startup colleges. Some of these church colleges, such as Highlands, have hundreds of students; some just a handful. Southeastern provides the academics while the church provides the practicum classes.

About a third of the 13,600 students at Southeastern are at schools affiliated with their network partner churches, said Fitzgerald, who is chief of staff for Kent Ingle, the president of Southeastern.

The university helps the church colleges line up curriculum and instructors, he said, and helps secure the necessary state approvals.

鈥淲e make sure that their courses are up to accreditation standards,鈥� Fitzgerald said. 鈥淲e make sure that the faculty they have are well-qualified, and we鈥檙e able to provide a stamp of approval on pretty much what they鈥檙e already doing, and so it鈥檚 a match made in heaven, if you will.鈥�

By offering educational degrees, a church can create a pipeline of future staffers who are steeped in its culture, a priority for megachurches intent on preserving their brand.

And it gives churches additional workers who run conferences, staff events or manage social media, all for college credit rather than wages. That can be a boon for high-revenue megachurches that rely on an army of volunteers.

Fitzgerald said he鈥檚 not aware that Southeastern has ever said no to a church that approached it about becoming a partner site. Revenue from student tuition and fees is split between Southeastern and the church college.

Coming changes

One of Southeastern University鈥檚 biggest success stories has been Highlands College in Birmingham. The school began offering unaccredited ministry courses in 2011 before joining the Southeastern network in 2017.

In 2023, Highlands was awarded its own accreditation by the Association for Higher Education, a network of Christian schools that has been recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. It now offers more than half a dozen bachelor鈥檚 degree programs.

This fall, the college will launch and a bachelor鈥檚 degree in business leadership. The Dunn School of Business is named in honor of the former CEO of a faith-based investment group that has in a church-planting network co-founded by Chris Hodges, the chancellor of Highlands College.

In Texas, Austin Christian University is focused entirely on business education, offering a bachelor鈥檚 of business administration degree through its partnership with Southeastern. Tuition, fees and housing are $35,000 per year. In addition to academic classes, students attend weekly sessions with Christian business executives and can work with Christian entrepreneurs on business projects in a 鈥渟tartup accelerator鈥� program.

The business focus could help protect the school from coming changes at the federal level.

The Trump administration has been working to overhaul higher education, including proposing that would require undergraduate programs to show their graduates earn more than the median earnings of similarly aged adults with only a high school diploma, or risk losing access to federal student loans and grants.

Some Christian higher ed organizations, such as the Association for Biblical Higher Education and the, worry these provisions would have a disproportionately negative effect on Christian institutions, particularly those that train for traditionally lower-paying ministry or church roles.

Fitzgerald of Southeastern said he isn鈥檛 concerned that the federal overhaul will harm the newest crop of church colleges.

鈥淲e believe that as students begin to really reevaluate the return on investment of higher education, we think that unique models for education like this one are the ones that are going to thrive and succeed,鈥� Fitzgerald said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

鈥淲e wouldn’t be able to function as an organization without him,鈥� said Superintendent Jennifer Gaffney. 鈥淎 lot of what students, teachers and our office staff do is centered around the use of technology and data systems. He is the backbone of all that.鈥�

But now Gaffney doesn鈥檛 know how much longer she can rely on the federal dollars that pay his salary. The Rural Education Achievement Program is among the 17 funding sources that the Trump administration wants to roll into a . Congress approved $220 million for REAP this year, but under the president鈥檚 plan, governors and state education chiefs would decide whether rural districts would get extra money.

Monty Mayer, superintendent of the Velva Public Schools in North Dakota, about 20 miles southeast of Minot, used the $14,000 he received from the program this year to pay teaching assistants to work with students who were behind academically.

鈥淢oney rolled into a block grant would be swallowed up by the bigger schools as their needs are much greater than ours,鈥� he said. That would leave 鈥渟mall rural schools looking to find answers in different places without a clear picture as to where those resources would come from.鈥�

During with the Senate appropriations committee in late April, Education Secretary Linda McMahon faced several questions from both Democrats and Republicans about the future of the program. She suggested that REAP was underutilized.

鈥淎 lot of rural schools do not have grant writers, cannot bring in the resources other states might have or other cities might have,鈥� she said. 鈥淎 lot of states never participated in any of the grant funding.鈥�

Under a consolidated program, she said, all states would receive a portion of the block grant and officials would decide 鈥渉ow this money should be spent in their state, where the greatest needs are, whether that’s in rural communities.鈥�

Officials with years of experience in rural education say that isn鈥檛 how REAP works. States or districts don鈥檛 write grant proposals for the funding, said Steven Johnson, superintendent of the Fort Ransom Public School District, which operates one elementary school in southeast North Dakota. Districts , based on size and location, receive an invitation to apply. And most do, Johnson said.

鈥淚t鈥檚 rarely about capacity or lack of grant-writing ability. If anything, what we鈥檙e seeing is the opposite,鈥� he said. 鈥淩ural districts rely on REAP because it is simple, direct and does not require extensive administrative capacity.鈥�

Abigail Swisher, who previously worked on the REAP program at the department, said where rural districts struggle is applying for large, competitive grant programs.

“Applying for competitive federal grants is time-consuming and complex. Larger districts are hiring grant writers who have the specialized expertise and who have time,” she said. “That’s exactly why we have the REAP program. It was designed by Congress to help fill that gap.”

There were efforts to help rural districts access those other programs, she said, but those ended with the new administration.

鈥楾esting and reporting standards鈥� 

Districts that for Small, Rural School Achievement funding, one of the two REAP programs, have fewer than 600 students and are located in an area their state defines as rural. Others, with 20% of students who live below the poverty line, qualify for the Rural and Low-Income School program, and some are eligible for both. This year, 17,873 were eligible for one or both programs.

Last week, Kirstin Baesler, the assistant secretary of Elementary and Secondary Education, that they have considerable leeway to use federal funds for programs like tutoring or after-school programs.聽

But Johnson said that flexibility was 鈥渙ne of the original core concepts behind REAP.鈥� His district, for example, didn鈥檛 have enough poor students to qualify for Title I funding, but under existing law, he was able to use federal funds to provide students with reading and math tutoring.

Congress created REAP as part of No Child Left Behind, the 2001 federal accountability law that set strict expectations for school improvement, and reauthorized the program as part of the Every Student Succeeds Act. Despite their small size, rural districts were not exempt from NCLB鈥檚 mandates, Johnson said. 

鈥淪mall, rural schools were expected to meet the same testing and reporting standards as larger systems but often lacked the staffing and resources to do so,鈥� he said.

A from AASA, the School Superintendents Association, showed that districts most commonly used the funds for technology, followed by staff training, compensation and expanding programs like STEM and arts for students. When Johnson asked other administrators across the country, they listed bullying prevention, special education assistants and support to help students graduate among the ways they use the funds.

鈥淩ural districts piece together budgets with many smaller sources,鈥� said Margaret Buckton, a school finance consultant in Iowa. Although REAP 鈥渋sn’t a huge sum, when combined with other small grants, it likely makes a difference.鈥�

Questions of 鈥榚fficacy鈥�

In her exchanges with Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican who has made rural schools a priority, McMahon questioned whether the program has a positive impact.

“Many of these programs have lost their efficacy and they really are not returning, giving the returns that we hope to see for rural schools,” McMahon said.

The Department of Education did not respond to questions about what data McMahon was referring to when she said the program wasn鈥檛 effective. But Melissa Sadorf, executive director of the National Rural Education Association, said because districts can use the funds in a variety of ways, the department looks primarily at compliance issues rather than impact on students.

鈥淭here is no single, consistent student outcome measure applied across grantees,鈥� she said. 鈥淭he program has not been the subject of a comprehensive federal evaluation in close to a decade, which makes any sweeping claim about effectiveness difficult to substantiate from the data.鈥�

That was mostly a summary of the challenges facing rural schools, like transportation and teacher recruitment, and what the department was doing to support them.

The department also tracks whether districts comply with the rules for using the funds.

A in the Custer County, Colorado, district, for example, discovered an accounting error because a staff member entered data using hand-written notes. The same issue came up in Indiana鈥檚 in 2022. The department鈥檚 website doesn鈥檛 list any reports conducted since McMahon took office.

The administration pitched the same block grant idea last year, and Congress ultimately rejected it. With the appropriations process likely to drag out for months, it鈥檚 unclear whether lawmakers will be more receptive this year. 

But for rural districts like Sackets Harbor, the site of an important naval base during the war of 1812, the continued uncertainty over federal funding is 鈥渦nnerving,鈥� said Gaffney, the superintendent. 

The district鈥檚 annual , in which students fanned out across the historic town for service projects, like gardening and polishing headstones, is popular with local residents. The school board asked voters to approve a nearly 8% tax increase, which they did. But with increases in English learners and students with disabilities, Gaffney said the district is still under 鈥渁 great deal of financial pressure.鈥�

鈥淭hat is precisely why every dollar matters to us, including REAP funding,鈥� she said. 鈥淭hese resources are vital in helping us maintain programs, services and opportunities for our students.鈥�

Last Thursday, that would have allowed public school teachers, among other public-sector employees, to form unions and negotiate over their wages and working conditions throughout Virginia. At present, those workers can organize only ; those number fewer than 20 of the state鈥檚 133 city- or county-level governments.

Many of the governor鈥檚 supporters in labor were outraged by the decision, of a key constituency. One of the largest unions in the state, the Virginia Education Association, almost a full year before last fall鈥檚 election, putting their membership of more than 40,000 teachers and school personnel behind a high-profile effort to retake the governor鈥檚 mansion from Republican control. 

VEA President Carol Bauer referenced her organization鈥檚 efforts in an interview with 社区黑料, calling the veto 鈥渁 great disappointment.鈥�

鈥淥ur members campaigned for Gov. Spanberger on the promise that she supported workers, supported affordability, and supported collective bargaining, and we were hopeful,鈥� Bauer said. 鈥淲e had every indication she was going to sign a collective bargaining bill.鈥�

But the Democratic-led proposal to allow statewide bargaining put Spanberger in the challenging position of weighing workers鈥� rights 鈥� an after the Trump administration terminated thousands of federal employees in early 2025 鈥� against her mandate to reduce costs for taxpayers and local governments, . If inflation and interest rates continue to rise , other Democratic leaders could soon face similar considerations.

The governor鈥檚 office did not respond to a request for comment. But one of the bill鈥檚 main detractors said her veto was a necessary corrective.

Derrick Max, president of Virginia鈥檚 conservative , called the legislation an overreach that would weaken local control over public services. While some of the bluest communities in the state for their workforces, including those in Richmond and the suburban counties around Washington, D.C., other Democratic-led jurisdictions have demurred over concerns about financial implications, he said.

鈥淭he biggest problem is that [HB 1263] took local governments out of the decision on whether or not to allow collective bargaining,鈥� Max wrote in an email. 鈥淎t a time when affordability is the top priority, passing a bill that would likely lead to massive increases in costs was not wise.鈥�

Local officials made throughout the spring while attempting to put the brakes on the bill, arguing that compelling them to bargain with teachers, firefighters, and other public employees would significantly budgeting. By the time of the legislature鈥檚 vote, across the state had issued statements in opposition to the adoption of the law. 

It is difficult to estimate a price tag for the policy, the costs of which will ultimately depend on the outcome of negotiations between workers and school boards. The Virginia Commission on Local Government, a state agency created to assist towns, cities and counties, issued a report indicating that some jurisdictions could face recurring expenses totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars.  

Yet activists in the VEA and other unions that a guaranteed right to negotiate over pay and working conditions was critical to closing wage gaps in the teaching profession, protecting workers from retaliation for seeking to organize, and limiting staff turnover that has proven deleterious to student achievement. 

It also situated the fight playing out in the state鈥檚 House of Delegates within the broader struggle to win greater power for labor and end Virginia鈥檚 long-running reputation as a state hostile to public-sector unions. Educators only gained limited bargaining rights , after Democrats took unified control over state government for the first time in a generation; prior to that breakthrough, Virginia was one of just three states that expressly banned the practice.

Local teachers rushed to swell the ranks of unions in the aftermath, forming large new organizations in just a few years. The in the state鈥檚 largest county was hailed by the national American Federation of Teachers as 鈥渢he largest U.S. public sector union victory in 25 years.鈥�

In her bid to reclaim the governorship after the single term of Republican Glenn Youngkin, Spanberger on the organizing power of labor, vowing to 鈥渟tand up for Virginia鈥檚 workers鈥� after the mass layoffs precipitated by the Trump administration. Yet she also walked a careful line in campaign pronouncements, the idea of fully repealing the state鈥檚 right-to-work statute even as she acknowledged that it would 鈥渄isappoint鈥� some of her supporters. 

As Democrats in Richmond came closer to passing the statewide expansion, the governor asked the legislature to consider amendments that would delay its implementation until 2030 to allow local governments to prepare for the adjustment. Those proposed changes were ultimately not taken up.

Balancing the demands of her coalition may be particularly important as Spanberger considers her political future. She was elected only last fall in to show a substantial Democratic recovery from the doldrums of the 2024 presidential contest, and within weeks of her inauguration, to give the official response to President Trump鈥檚 State of the Union address 鈥� a plum reserved for fast risers.

Since then, the governor has been embroiled in a highly controversial push to re-draw Virginia鈥檚 congressional districts, boosting her profile and enraging her opponents at the same time. showed that her favorability ratings have suffered in recent months.

Though it is too early to speculate on the state of the 2028 primary field, any Democrat with ambitions to lead their party will need to court teachers鈥� unions, whose millions of members and generous campaign contributions help deliver victory in primary campaigns and general elections alike. Governors thought to be considering a run, including Illinois鈥檚 J.B. Pritzker and Michigan鈥檚 Gretchen Whitmer, significant in their respective states. In Wisconsin, the controversial Act 10 law barring teachers from negotiating over compensation is thought to be in serious legal jeopardy now that Democrats control the state鈥檚 Supreme Court.

Michael Hartney, a political scientist at Boston College who studies the political power of teachers鈥� unions, said that Spanberger鈥檚 veto may reflect political calculation as much as principle. Unlike those in other states, governors in Virginia cannot serve consecutive terms, meaning that frustrating her labor allies won鈥檛 cost her reelection in a few years鈥� time, he wrote in an email.

鈥淔or Spanberger, the move allows her to cultivate an image as a centrist, 鈥榓bundance鈥�-oriented Democrat rather than a reflexive ally of public-sector unions 鈥� a potentially valuable distinction if she wants to occupy that moderate lane within the party,鈥� Hartney observed.

For her part, Bauer said that she hoped to persuade Spanberger that her organization鈥檚 priorities should be central to the Democratic agenda in the months and years to come. 

鈥淲e will be organizing,鈥� she said. 鈥淥ur action didn’t start with this bill, and it’s not going to end with this bill.鈥�

At the helm since 2019, an unusually long tenure for an , Ferebee led DCPS through the pandemic and leaves at a time of historic increases in student performance. Last week, researchers for the Education Scorecard as the district that had made the greatest gains in both math and reading since the pandemic.

鈥淗igh quality instructional materials have always been a part of the way that I thought about improving student achievement,鈥� said Ferebee, who previously led the Indianapolis Public Schools and began his career as a teacher and principal in North Carolina. 鈥淭his is a remarkable opportunity to take that to scale nationally.鈥�

Under Ferebee鈥檚 leadership, D.C. schools have experienced 鈥渕eaningful progress,鈥� according to a by the D.C. Policy Center. has risen to 52,000, up from the pre-pandemic level of 49,000, even as other urban districts suffered continued declines. On the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, fourth graders improved 10 points in math, for large cities. While the district continues to battle high 鈥� nearly 38% in 2024-25 鈥� it implemented a that has contributed to a rebound. In an interview with 社区黑料, Ferebee said he expects the district to 鈥渂uild on that momentum and contribute nationally to the whole recovery narrative.鈥� 

He will remain with DCPS until June 18 and assume his new role the following week. With D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser for re-election, a new mayor will choose his replacement.

The leader of a parent advocacy group in the district said Ferebee has always considered parents鈥� input, something she hopes the future mayor will consider when looking for a new chancellor.

鈥淭his is the most stable period of leadership that we’ve seen in the district in quite a while,鈥� said Maya Martin Cadogan, executive director of Parents Amplifying Voices in Education. 鈥淚n a city where so many of our families have housing instability and economic instability, to have stability in our school system has been really critical.鈥�

As the successor to EdReports鈥� founder Eric Hirsch, Ferebee will join the organization at a time of change. It recently began reviewing pre-K curriculum and adopted through 2029 that aims to produce more timely reviews and information about the research behind curriculum products. Dana Nerenberg, EdReports board chair, called Ferebee 鈥渢he right fit in all the right ways.鈥�

Hirsch, who announced his resignation last year, launched the nonprofit in 2015 to help point districts toward materials aligned to the Common Core standards that the majority of states still follow. Experts said independent reviews were needed at the time as an alternative to curriculum publishers鈥� promotional materials. Many district and state leaders continue to base their curriculum purchasing decisions on whether a product gets the coveted green rating from EdReports.

But with the growing emphasis on the role of curriculum in driving student achievement, some critics said the organization didn鈥檛 adapt quickly enough. Reviews, they argued, didn鈥檛 emphasize phonics-based, foundational skills and gave lower, yellow ratings for reading they helped students improve. EdReports has since revised its criteria to emphasize the science of reading.

Kareem Weaver, founder of FULCRUM, an Oakland-based literacy advocacy group, said Ferebee faces a huge responsibility.

鈥淭he shifts that the education field is demanding have become a matter of civil rights. Including evidence of results in their reviews is no small thing,鈥� he said. 鈥淧arents, teachers, principals, superintendents, kids want to know, 鈥楧oes this stuff work?鈥� 鈥�

He called Ferebee 鈥渁 good choice鈥� because he has 鈥渉is feet planted in the ground as a system leader.鈥�

Ferebee replaced former Chancellor Antwan Wilson, who following a scandal involving his daughter鈥檚 transfer into a sought-after high school with a long waitlist. found that his predecessor, Kaya Henderson, gave the children of some government officials special treatment in the school lottery process. 

But her resignation in 2016 was unrelated to that issue, and during her nearly six years in charge, the district saw increasing enrollment and graduation rates. 

鈥淭hey have this history of long-time superintendents who have built on the work of each other,鈥� said Ray Hart, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools. 

Cadogan, who leads the parent advocacy group, pointed to the expansion of dual enrollment programs and the , which trains teachers in evidence-based literacy practices, as examples of innovations she wants the new mayor to continue.聽

But significant challenges remain. In scores on reading, 37.6% of students performed in the proficient range, the highest point since the test began. But less than 30% of Black students scored at that level. The difference in performance between poor and more affluent students is even larger. The next leader will also inherit an with the federal government to improve services for students with disabilities, especially transportation. 

鈥淧arents are really proud of the progress we’ve made,鈥� Cadogan said, 鈥渂ut there are still so many gaps between our students.鈥�

On Nov. 5, 2024, men and women around the U.S. headed to the polls to decide a race hyped as a battle of the sexes.

By evening鈥檚 end, Kamala Harris鈥� quest to punch through and become America鈥檚 first female president lay in shambles. Donald Trump, the Republican Party鈥檚 undisputed since 2015, would return to the White House. And voters, especially the youngest ones, were themselves divided starkly on lines of gender.

As in each of the three previous federal elections, women鈥檚 support for the Democratic ticket considerably exceeded men鈥檚. But the gulf separating Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 was historically wide: According to , a data and analytics company that contracts with progressive organizations, Harris won the backing of 63% of women and just 46% of men.

The 17-point gap cleaving through Generation Z was not only bigger than that of every other age group; it was comfortably the largest Catalist had measured across four presidential cycles. of Trump鈥檚 approval conducted corroborated the same trend the following year, showing disparities between the men and women of Gen Z that eclipsed smaller splits among Millennials, Gen Xers, and Baby Boomers.

Jennifer Benz, a political scientist who leads the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, said findings like that were consistent across surveys she administered prior to the Trump-Harris contest, as well as exit polling conducted at the end of the campaign. Men and women for roughly a half-century, but it was unusual for newly minted voters to lead the way, she added.

鈥淲hat’s been notable about this younger generation is that the gender divide is already shaping up now, as opposed to when they age into the more typical partisan patterns we’ve seen over recent years,” Benz said.

While Gen Z鈥檚 gender gap is a relatively new phenomenon, its features can already be seen in K鈥�12 schools. They spring from the rancorous gender politics of the 2020s, which have left girls repelled by Trump鈥檚 policies and boys disaffected by Democrats鈥� seeming indifference to their concerns. 

As the youngest 鈥淶oomers鈥� enter high school this year, they appear to be accelerating toward the political 鈥� and often social 鈥� estrangement already evident among their older brothers and sisters. Their stories, based on interviews with 社区黑料 and supported by the insights of educators and public opinion researchers, offer a rare snapshot of that polarization as it takes shape. In America鈥檚 college dorms and high school homerooms, young adults are , occupying separate online spaces and even demonstrating an aversion to dating.

Sarah Campbell, a high school teacher in Brunswick, Maine, said she鈥檇 noticed a pronounced change in her social studies classroom. Earlier in her career, students broadly approached discussions of politics and public policy with open minds. But over the past 10 years, a growing number have entered those conversations 鈥渁lready aligned with certain ideas.鈥�

鈥淚鈥檝e had girls talk about things like safety, rights or future opportunities in very real, personal ways, and in the same conversation, boys are questioning whether those issues are still relevant,鈥� Campbell wrote in an email. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e not just disagreeing, they鈥檙e experiencing these issues from completely different realities.鈥�

鈥楩eminism rooted in me鈥�

Those distinct worldviews may have origins stretching long before adolescence. Celeste Lay, a professor at Tulane University who studies how young people acquire political beliefs, noted that their beginnings overlap with children鈥檚 early attempts to fashion adult identities for themselves. 

“At the same time young people are going through political socialization, they’re also going through gender socialization,鈥� she said. 鈥淪o as they’re developing their politics, they’re learning what it means to be a boy or a girl and what society says those concepts mean.鈥� 

In , Lay and several co-authors used survey data from more than 1,500 children to determine when they start to examine the world through the lens of partisanship. They discovered that kids as young as six are already tottering down the path to the ballot box, and nearly half the study鈥檚 participants affiliated with a party by the age of 12. 

A high school senior named Lily was once such a novice partisan. Raised in South Lyon, Michigan, along the outskirts of Metro Detroit, she was encouraged by liberal-minded parents to take an interest in U.S. history and current events. When she was eight, the Democrats nominated the first woman to lead a major party鈥檚 presidential ticket. After that, her course was set. 

鈥淭his sense of feminism rooted in me because my parents were letting me educate myself,鈥� Lily recalled. “When Hillary Clinton was up against Trump, I was like, ‘There’s never been a female president! I have to support her.鈥欌��

A decade after that formative electoral heartbreak, she spoke to 社区黑料 while taking part in the , a for-profit summer program offering learning experiences in a range of fields. Alongside a few dozen others with similarly arcane interests in bicameralism and campaign finance, Lily 鈥� whose last name has been withheld to allow her and her peers to speak freely about political matters 鈥� spent nine days last July at the Georgetown University campus. In between sessions role-playing as U.S. congressmen, the group made field trips to walk the halls of the Capitol in person.

Lily and her fellow government enthusiasts might reasonably be called some of the most civically engaged high schoolers in the nation. But countless girls her age followed a similar trajectory to both political consciousness and the political left. 

In the years spanning the Clinton and Biden administrations, the youngest female voters steadily warmed to the label of 鈥渓iberal鈥� ( ideological category). By 2023, Gallup research shows, the proportion of women aged 18鈥�29 who described themselves as liberal had leapt from 28% to 40%, while liberal men of the same age stalled at 25% over the same period. 

The evolution was not merely rhetorical. Teenage and 20-something women adopted on the environment, abortion, gun rights, marijuana access, the Israel-Palestine conflict and an array of other cultural issues. Today, the women of Gen Z are commonly regarded as voter demographic. 

Marie Sarnacki, an English and history instructor in South Lyon, contrasted recent waves of female students with those in her own graduating class of 2009. While stipulating that she spoke only for herself, Sarnacki added that girls in 2026 had far fewer reservations about voicing feminist beliefs on some of the most pressing questions of the day. 

鈥淚 don’t know if they would give themselves the label, but it’s safe to say they’re more open about their concern for reproductive rights or supporting classmates who are gay,鈥� she said.

The elephant in the room

Sarnacki believes that the ideological shift she has witnessed throughout 11 years in the classroom can be substantially explained by a corresponding development unfolding on the Right. 

Trump鈥檚 presidencies, each achieved through , have repeatedly pushed debates around sexism and women’s rights to the center of the national agenda, she argued. From the Women鈥檚 March to the #MeToo-inflected Kavanaugh hearings, the stunning demise of Roe v. Wade, and the president鈥檚 demeaning comments about various female antagonists, the Trump era may have hastened a leftward drift that was already in progress.

Daniel Cox, director of the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI)鈥檚 , agreed with Sarnacki. While women have lately gained or even in some professional and educational spheres, he continued, many of the most 鈥渕omentous cultural events鈥� of the last 10 years led them to the conclusion that their rights were imperiled.

鈥淭hey were doing really well in higher education and high schools in terms of AP courses and graduation rates, and tons of statistics suggest that young women were comparatively doing better than men,鈥� Cox said. 鈥淏ut when they looked around politics and the culture, they were upset about a lot of things and became politically active.” 

Public opinion research provides clear signs that their dissatisfaction remains high during the second Trump presidency 鈥� and is equally vivid among those too young to participate in elections. revealed that, within a representative panel of children aged 13鈥�17, girls were vastly more negative than boys in their assessments of Trump (-38 from females versus -7 favorability from male respondents) and the GOP (-16 from girls and +2 from boys), while also much warmer toward the Democratic Party (+13 from girls and -5 from boys).

Trump鈥檚 macho stylings and media omnipresence play a crucial role in expanding the rift. Lily remarked that he has become an inescapable figure, whether in school or on social media. If anything, the president鈥檚 ubiquity was actually heightened by his reelection defeat in 2020, which lengthened his time in the spotlight.

“He’s so loud, with all the scandalous things he’s done,鈥� she said. 鈥淵ou can avoid the news, but you can’t avoid him.”

Another participant in the NSLC鈥檚 Georgetown session was Cate, a junior enrolled at a small private school in Louisville, Kentucky. Like Lily, she said she was motivated by societal injustice to become involved in politics. Her father is gay, and his experiences were part of what spurred her to activism. 

But whether engaged in private discussions with friends or public outreach through her school鈥檚 Human Rights Club, Cate felt frustrated by her male classmates鈥� lack of interest in the politics of Kentucky or the wider world.

She expressed particular disappointment with boys in her school who, she suspected, held views similar to hers but would not voice them out of fear of losing face with friends who 鈥渋dolize鈥� Trump鈥檚 brash manner. The gush of on platforms like TikTok helped foster a hero worship that was difficult to puncture.

It was understandable that young men would seek to emulate a powerful personality, Cate said, specifically citing the 2024 assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. The moment after that attack, when the then-candidate rose to his feet and exhorted his audience to 鈥渇ight,鈥� has become a centerpiece of at teenage boys, she said. Yet his influence heightened a dynamic in which 鈥渆mpathy is seen by this generation of men as weak, feminine.鈥� 

鈥淚t gets into all this misogyny,鈥� she lamented. 鈥淏ut women, who don’t care about that and can be empathetic loudly, are more able to share their political opinions.”

鈥榃here am I in this equation?鈥�

Girls were not alone in observing the stridency of gender conflict. Nor were self-described progressives the only ones to complain about its occasionally personal nature. 

Nathan, a junior from the prosperous suburban enclave of Westfield, New Jersey, struck a note of bemusement when describing an of the online right: left-leaning white women, a category encompassing many of the students he鈥檇 met that week at Georgetown. 

鈥淭here’s a stereotype that liberal white women are self-hating,鈥� he said. 鈥淎nd supposedly it’s not feminine, and it’s not attractive, and it’s not manly if you support it.鈥�

Voluble and direct, Nathan described himself as a 鈥渞ight-winger,鈥� one of the few participating in the program. But he professed no admiration for political harangues mingled with sexism, and he objected to the treatment suffered by some of his gay classmates at home, who he said were frequently mocked in private. 

Instead, along with several other male students, he spent much of an hour-long conversation with 社区黑料 lampooning the fixation of social authorities 鈥� including his school鈥檚 leaders 鈥� with identity politics. A multitude of perceived sins drew their attention, including the proliferation of various 鈥渉eritage months鈥� across the school calendar and the alleged maligning of the Founding Fathers in history curricula. The most annoying of these were dismissed as 鈥渧irtue signalling.鈥� 

Many politically engaged young men share Nathan鈥檚 perspective on the newfound prominence of equity-focused language and policies. 

This is, in fact, a key distinction between male and female Zoomers. According to , Gen Z men and their Millennial counterparts were only about half as likely as women to 鈥渃losely follow鈥� news coverage of social issues. And while the rising salience of such causes, including LGBT rights and abortion, have clearly played a role in politically activating many American women, they do not appear to have galvanized men to support Democratic candidates.

Catalist鈥檚 overview of the election results shows that both men and women became more likely to vote Republican between 2020 and 2024, but the gender gap across all ages was principally driven by men abandoning the Democratic Party. 

Monty, a junior from deep-blue San Diego, said that students attending his private high school were 鈥渆xtremely left,鈥� and typically surrounded by friends and family members of the same mindset. A strong impulse to activism also pervaded the halls, he added, attracting a number of his peers to Pride marches and No Kings rallies over the past year.

As Monty described it, the somewhat airless ideology of his school mirrored that of the larger progressive movement: Just as he鈥檇 periodically felt isolated during a long stretch of school assemblies commemorating the historic contributions of women and minority groups, a groundswell of 鈥渟tranded people鈥� were successfully targeted by the Trump campaign .

鈥淵ou have all these other groups represented, and then you have a generation of these young white males saying, ‘Okay, where am I in this equation? Because I’m not Black, I’m not a woman, I’m not LGBTQ, and I don’t know where I’m going to fit into this,’鈥� Monty said.

Rachel Janfaza is an independent researcher who writes the newsletter , which aims to surface the attitudes of Gen Z for a national audience by convening focus groups and listening sessions around the United States. In an interview, she said Democrats had 鈥渇umbled鈥� in 2024 with a critical group of potential male supporters.

鈥淚 don’t think the Republican Party necessarily set out to attract young men from the start, but the Democratic Party being so coded as being friendly to women made it hard for young men to see themselves in that party,鈥� Janfaza said. 鈥淎 lot of the men I spoke to who voted for Trump in 2024 felt like they were still not being messaged to by the Democratic Party.鈥�

鈥楾his system doesn鈥檛 benefit us鈥�

Part of the difficulty in communicating to Gen Z is the fact that, beneath the level of partisan affiliation, perceptions of society and gender often differ significantly. 

Nowhere is this clearer than in the respective views of men and women toward feminism, a cause that has since the 1960s. Women have always been more keen than men to accept the label of 鈥渇eminist,鈥� but showed that over half of male Millennials said the term fit them personally; that figure was actually higher than the proportion of women from preceding generations who agreed with the description.

Yet far fewer of the youngest male respondents agreed. Zoomer men were only as likely as those in Gen X 鈥� a group more than twice their age 鈥� to call themselves feminists. Between that striking reversion and the leap in self-described feminism among younger women, Gen Z saw the widest gender gap on the issue of any age cohort. 

In the same survey, 23% of Gen Z men said they had experienced gender-based discrimination, a nearly fourfold increase over the oldest men included in the sample. Women are also increasingly likely to express this belief, with half of all Gen Z females saying they鈥檇 been discriminated against (compared with just 38% of Boomer women). 

Some fear that such sharp departures on fundamental questions will foment mutual resentment. Nathan, the New Jersey high schooler, said that boys his age were becoming embittered by a lack of recognition from the political left. In particular, he said that white males could be alienated from the Democratic Party in the same way that African Americans in the 20th century. 

鈥淚 think a similar situation is happening with young white men,鈥� Nathan said. 鈥淭hey’re like, ‘This system, this establishment, doesn’t benefit us in any way. We have no stake in maintaining it.'” 

Meanwhile, dramatic developments in the political realm can leave residue in the social one. The interpersonal relations of men and women are under greater strain than at any time in the past few decades, epitomized by exploring romantic relationships. While almost 90% of high school seniors reported that they鈥檇 gone out on at least one date in 1987, according to a recent poll by the Institute for Family Studies, only about half said the same in 2024. 

Competing partisanship seems to be at least partially responsible for the decline. In a by NPR and PBS News, 60% of Zoomers agreed that it was 鈥渋mportant to date or marry someone who shared your political views鈥�; by contrast, 62% of respondents aged 60 or older said that politics didn鈥檛 carry much weight in matters of the heart. A published last year on the American dating scene found that fully three-quarters of single women with a college degree said they would think twice before dating a Trump supporter.

Campbell, the Maine social studies teacher, said she had seen both sides of the dichotomy in her high school class. Girls are increasingly hesitant to pair off, or even socialize, with male classmates. Boys jokingly attack one another as “simps” 鈥� a slang term for men desperate for the attention of women 鈥� and have become “much more likely to push back” in class discussions of gender differences.

鈥淭here is almost a defensiveness in their attitude, as if I am trying to tell them they aren鈥檛 important and girls are,鈥� Campbell wrote. 鈥淚t is genuinely a shift that is concerning to me.鈥�

Lily, who now attends high school in State College, Pennsylvania, didn鈥檛 address her dating life. But she opined that the apparently right-wing outlook expressed by some boys may simply reflect their wish to fit in 鈥� an instinct with which she sympathized.

“The same way we find ourselves in social situations where we’re pressured to join some clique, that’s present in our political positions too,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd guys experience that too. I just think they’re better at hiding it.”

What comes next?

Neither students, teachers, nor researchers could guess whether the gender gap would reverse with time or continue to grow.

In his sixth year in office, young women haven鈥檛 relented in their loathing for Donald Trump. In fact, it might be said that American women and the Democratic Party have , both measurably more feminist, more liberal, and more credentialed than they were a generation ago. According to Gallup data, is now a college-educated woman.

On the other hand, it is far from clear whether a sufficiently large number of today鈥檚 high school boys will reverse course and embrace the Democratic candidate in 2028. A of the semi-annual Yale Youth Poll showed that 68% of voters aged 18鈥�22 disapprove of Trump鈥檚 performance in office, a four-point increase since the previous fall; still, men in that age range actually became less favorable toward the Democrats during that same five-month span.

If national Republicans hope that disenchantment brings them an army of converts, they may find themselves disappointed. AEI鈥檚 Cox said the evidence from most polling and election results shows only that young men have become hostile toward Democrats 鈥� not that they have become doctrinaire conservatives.

鈥淚’m not even sure they like the Republicans that much, honestly,鈥� Cox said. 鈥淚t’s not so much that they’re attracted to the whole GOP agenda 鈥� it’s that, between the two parties, they’re looking at which one seems more receptive to the concerns they have.鈥�

Asher, visiting NLSC鈥檚 summer program from Pennsylvania鈥檚 solid-blue Delaware County, said he would have voted for the Democratic ticket in 2024 had he been old enough. The measured junior particularly came to admire Tim Walz after he was selected as Harris鈥檚 vice-presidential pick. 

Yet he critiqued the way in which the party sought to woo men as 鈥減andering,鈥� including launched to rally 鈥淲hite Dudes for Harris,鈥� and Walz鈥檚 . (The Minnesota governor later disclosed that he saw his ability to 鈥溾�� as one of his major contributions to the campaign.) 

Nathan recalled an episode that saw Walz join Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in streamed on the popular service Twitch. “They had the most artificial attempts to win over men,鈥� he marveled. 鈥淭im Walz and AOC playing video games, and you could tell they weren’t actually playing. No one related to that!”

Asher 鈥� happy to number himself among the relatively scarce white dudes for Harris, albeit one without a vote 鈥� said he hadn鈥檛 personally felt excluded from political debates with left-leaning classmates, but acknowledged that such conversations sometimes hinged on participants鈥� personal 鈥渃redibility鈥� to speak on specific issues. 

鈥淚 have seen that happen with people: ‘You don’t have female genitals, so you don’t get to have an opinion about abortion,’鈥� he said.

The Up and Up鈥檚 Janfaza said that similar complaints are a hallmark of her listening sessions with college undergraduates. Many feel as though their sentiments, goals and desires are so diffuse that they are 鈥渢alking past each other.鈥� 

鈥淲hen I ask young men and women, ‘Do you see a gender divide in your community?鈥� they are so quick to tell me that they feel men and women are on different playing fields,鈥� she said. 鈥淭his isn’t fun for anyone.” 

Testing experts at the Education Department had been laid off and the board in charge of the program . But now, expansion is coming in the form of additional results that could give the public more information about how students in their states are performing.

The National Assessment Governing Board approved a new testing schedule Friday that allows for state-level results in 12th grade math and reading, eighth and 12th grade civics and eighth grade science. 

The vote was 16 to 3.

NAGB, which sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, has long aspired to add more granular results, said Executive Director Lesley Muldoon.

鈥淭hat’s what helps drive actual policy action at the state level,鈥� she said. 

The would take effect in 2028 for eighth grade civics and 12th grade math and reading. The eighth grade science test would be administered in 2029 and 12th graders would take a civics exam in 2032. Participation is optional, but NAGB wants to know states鈥� intentions by this summer.

The governing board isn鈥檛 alone in wanting NAEP to be more useful to state policymakers. In its on the future of the American workforce, the Bipartisan Policy Center, led by former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, called for more state-level data in the same three areas and a shorter, six-month timeline between the assessment and the release of the results.

Some observers say the board鈥檚 vote underscores the importance of NAEP.

鈥淭his suggests an acknowledgment that standardized testing, and comparable data across states, still matters,鈥� said Dale Chu, an education consultant who frequently writes about assessment. 

At the same time, in its fiscal year 2027 budget, the administration is requesting less for the program than Congress has appropriated in recent years, $137 million compared with $193 million.

Muldoon told 社区黑料 that if Congress maintains $193 million for the program, no additional money would be needed to expand testing at the state level. But if all 50 states want to participate, they might need more resources. 

鈥榃e got busy鈥�

The response from states, she said, has been positive, but she doesn鈥檛 expect all to sign up. 

Board Member Julia Rafal-Baer, who voted against the plan, said while she agreed with the science and civics schedule, she鈥檚 concerned about whether enough states would participate in the 12^th grade assessments. The announcement, she said, would also come in the midst of a 鈥渃harged environment.鈥� 

鈥淵ou can see it bubbling up now 鈥� public trust around testing, technology, AI, screens and student data,鈥� she said during the meeting. 鈥淚n this room, we understand all the differences. Parents right now do not understand the differences.鈥�  

Others noted that with 39 governors鈥� races this year, those who show interest now might be out of office by the time they have to formally commit. But Board Member Ron Reynolds, formerly head of a California private school organization, said the elections shouldn鈥檛 affect the board鈥檚 decision.

鈥淚 think we would cross a dangerous line if we began to anticipate what the political environment might be at a specific time and then make decisions in advance that might foreclose an opportunity to assess and report,鈥� he said.

States would need to identify a sample ranging from 1,200 to 2,000 students in each of the categories for which they want new results. 

Tennessee Rep. Mark White, a Republican and current NAGB chair, told 社区黑料 that his state is among those that would likely 鈥渏ump on the opportunity鈥� to see how the state鈥檚 students are performing in science, civics and in their senior year.

鈥淭ennessee realized that our K-12 standards were not adequate in 2011 when we compared our performance to NAEP data,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e got busy.鈥�

In 2013, the state was the in the nation, and this week as a top performer in post-pandemic academic recovery.

Ang茅lica Infante Green, Rhode Island鈥檚 education commissioner, wants her state to participate in all of the assessments, but is particularly enthusiastic about state-level civics . The state passed in 2021 requiring students to demonstrate proficiency in civics to graduate.

鈥淚t’s important, based on where we are as a country,鈥� she said. 鈥淚f our students don’t know how the government works and how our democracy works, that poses a challenge.鈥�

Chu said he wouldn鈥檛 be surprised if Mike Morath, state chief in Texas, or Indiana Education Secretary Katie Jenner also take 鈥渁 keen interest,鈥� but predicted that 鈥渋n many other places the reaction would amount to little more than a shrug.鈥�

Former Florida Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. after the 2024 fourth and eighth grade results were released. The state saw a sharp decline in reading scores, which he attributed to a sample of schools that he said was not representative of the state overall and included two of the lowest-performing schools. He also blamed the shift that year on the switch to a digital test on school district devices. 

The Florida Department of Education did not respond to questions about whether the state might participate. 

鈥楶owerful source of information鈥�

Chu and others, however, question whether state-level data on 12th graders would be that useful. 

鈥淟ow student motivation has long been a cloud hanging over 12th grade,鈥� he said. 鈥淚鈥檓 not sure bringing those results to the state level adds much unless that issue is addressed.鈥�

Muldoon disagreed that motivation is a challenge, but said that getting a large enough national sample of 12th graders can be. Seniors, she said, are sometimes off campus for internships or college trips. 

Some states, like Nevada, require students to take the ACT for graduation. But Jhone Ebert, superintendent of the Clark County School District, and former state chief, said a college entrance exam might not be the best way to measure the skills of students planning to go straight into the workforce. NAEP, she said, would offer a fuller view of students鈥� skills.

鈥淣ot everybody鈥檚 going to college,鈥� said Ebert, also on the board. 鈥淭hat doesn’t mean that they’re not going to be successful participants in our society.鈥�

National results from 2024鈥檚 12th graders were discouraging. Twenty-two percent tested at the proficient level in math, a 2 percentage point decline since 2019. In reading, 35% were proficient, also a drop. As with fourth and eighth graders in recent years, the percentage of high school seniors scoring at the below basic level increased. But those results don鈥檛 tell states anything about their specific strengths and weaknesses. 

State-level data could be a 鈥渞eally powerful source of information,鈥� Muldoon said. 鈥淭here is no other nationally representative assessment of high school students鈥� achievement.鈥� 

鈥楤lue and red states鈥�

The same is true for civics. The last NAEP civics test was in 2022, and just in eighth grade. Average scores on the 300-point scale fell by two points, the first-ever decline in the 25-year history of the test, which measures students鈥� knowledge of government, the founding documents and politics. 

Twelfth grade results in civics haven鈥檛 been available since 2010. The 2032 civics test in 12th grade will also be an updated version. Patrick Kelly, chair of NAGB鈥檚 assessment development committee, told the members Friday that while the 鈥渂ones are good,鈥� the design of the civics assessment is old.

The last time the test was updated, 鈥渙ur president of the United States was playing ,鈥� he said. 

Shawn Healy, chief policy and advocacy officer at iCivics, a nonprofit that provides civics lesson plans and online games, called the state-level results and the update 鈥渁 big win for our field.鈥�

The results, he said, will offer insight into the success of civics education policies at the state level, such as requiring a dedicated course or completion of student projects, or offering diplomas that recognize achievements. This year, he鈥檚 tracked 240 civics education bills in 40 states.

鈥淭hat speaks to the interest in this issue across blue and red states,鈥� he said.

In science, 2029 won鈥檛 be the first time state results will be available. Most states voluntarily . But now, under a new design, the questions will more closely match what states expect eighth graders to know in science, said Christine Cunningham, senior vice president of STEM learning at the Museum of Science in Boston and a NAGB member. Large school systems,  those in the Trial Urban District Assessment group, would also be able to opt in to that science exam. Currently, only national data is available for those subjects and grades.

鈥淎t a time when science and engineering are having such a profound impact on our lives, it鈥檚 important to understand how our students are doing,鈥� she said. 鈥淓ducation leaders continue to see value in expanding opportunities for state-level reporting beyond reading and math.鈥� 

The disquieting findings come from the latest release of the , a data project spearheaded by scholars at Dartmouth, Harvard, and Stanford. Rolled out in 2022, the collaborative initially aimed to chart how quickly schools bounced back from the disruption of remote learning. Now in its fifth year, the research team has turned their perspective backward in time to examine events leading up to the academic crash.

Among those developments, the newest dispatch devotes special attention to two: the rollback of school accountability policies that were the hallmark of the federal No Child Left Behind law, and the spread of social media to younger children. While acknowledging a lack of firm causal evidence, the authors argue that the parallel trends helped precipitate a downward spiral in student outcomes.

Thomas Kane, a professor of economics at Harvard and one of the Scorecard鈥檚 creators, said that taking a longer perspective on student achievement illustrates not merely the enormity of the loss, but also the impressive progress that preceded it. 

Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (a federal exam often referred to as ) show that fourth- and eighth-graders steadily grew more proficient in core academic subjects from 1990 through 2015, absorbing the equivalent of two grade levels in math knowledge during that time. Kane said it was all the more frustrating to see those gains, which he stacked against the most important public policy successes of the last half-century, substantially unwound over the last decade.

鈥淚f you had told me in 1990 that we would see that kind of rise in fourth- and eighth-grade math, I’d have said you were crazy,鈥� Kane reflected. 鈥淎nd yet it happened, and nobody celebrated.” 

The post-pandemic era has seen a number of experts explore the beginnings of the K鈥�12 downturn, which first became evident through NAEP data near the end of the Obama presidency. Those have that learning losses started well before 2020, while shining less light on possible explanations. Morgan Polikoff, a professor of education at the University of Southern California, said the Scorecard was laudable in its ambition to 鈥渢ell the whole story,鈥� even in the absence of dispositive proof.

“This paper is, by far, the most comprehensive effort to explore the two main hypotheses for what’s gone wrong in education over the last decade-plus,鈥� he said.

What remains uncertain is the path forward for schools and communities that have seen a generation of students learn less successfully than the one preceding it. Kane and his collaborators recommend a reorientation in federal research priorities to study the impact of social media use, as well as wide-ranging responses to the problem of chronic absenteeism. In the meantime, their release includes a set of local case studies showing where districts have led meaningful improvements in the last few years. Among them are a number of major urban school systems not historically numbered among the nation鈥檚 top performers, such as Atlanta, Birmingham, Alabama and Compton, California.

But the silver linings of the 2020s may be obscured by the grim chronicle of the 2010s. 

Doug Lemov is a former teacher whose book, , has become a reference text for educators around the world. Reviewing the report鈥檚 conclusions, he said he hoped it would help both the public and the education policy world reach a fuller understanding of the challenges converging in American classrooms 鈥� a long list encompassing technology and accountability policy, but also a broader collapse in the authority of schools, he added.

鈥淎ll of these social changes have happened together, they’ve been disastrous for schools, and their effects tend to narrowly be blamed on ‘the pandemic,’鈥� Lemov said. 鈥淏ut the causes are bigger.”

The end of NCLB

If part of that blame can be laid at the feet of the federal government, as Kane and his co-authors contend, it can be traced back to 2011.

That was the year when the Obama administration to avoid penalties for failing to meet the conditions of the decade-old NLCB, which had boldly mandated that 100 percent of K鈥�12 pupils attain proficiency in math and reading by the end of the 2013鈥�14 school year. 

While student performance in both subjects had , no state could meet that timeline; NCLB鈥檚 ever-rising standards meant that fell short of their academic goals by 2011. In a bargain struck with Obama鈥檚 Department of Education, states could seek relief from federal accountability requirements to adopt new academic standards, overhaul their teacher evaluation systems, and meet a few other requirements. In all, over 40 states had applied for and received the waivers.

As the Scorecard authors document, education leaders used their newly earned flexibility to ease off their scrutiny of the lowest-performing schools in their states; by 2014, under 10 percent of schools were flagged for missing learning benchmarks, a massive decline from just a few years earlier. 

In consequence, not only were fewer teachers, principals and superintendents explicitly prodded to boost student learning 鈥� under NCLB, schools faced an escalating set of sanctions, including the prospect of permanent closure, for persistent ineffectiveness 鈥� public awareness of academic underperformance also fell dramatically. Through an archival search of major news outlets, the Scorecard researchers discovered that the annual number of media references to federal accountability categories and penalties fell by 97 percent after 2017. By that time, NCLB had been replaced entirely by the Every Student Succeeds Act, which ratcheted down expectations on states to an even greater extent.

Polikoff recalled that, prior to the changes of the 2010s, even his affluent home district in suburban Chicago was leery of federal interventions. But such communities were largely able to relax after being granted waivers.  

鈥淭he waivers, and then ESSA, fundamentally changed the level of pressure and scrutiny on a big chunk of schools 鈥� in particular, these middle-to-high-performing schools that clearly know they’re not going to be at the bottom of the distribution.鈥�

The second major factor identified in the paper is the rapid rise of social media use among school-aged children. According to , the portion of U.S. teenagers saying that they were online 鈥渁lmost constantly鈥� jumped to 46 percent by 2022.

While the effects of this shift are debated, a growing body of psychological research has pointed over the last few years to a link between internet use, social media saturation, and poor youth mental health. While stipulating that the connection cannot be assumed to be causal, Kane and his coauthors note that the students who posted the lowest scores on the international PISA exam were also the likeliest to report high social media use.

Laws restricting smartphone use inside of schools have spread rapidly in the past few years, though published studies have shown little corresponding signs of academic improvement. One widely cited paper, released earlier this month by Stanford professor Thomas Dee, delivered a split verdict: After two years of implementation, students forced to hand over their phones each day exhibited better psychological well-being, but their showing on state assessments was mostly unaffected.

David Figlio, an economist at the University of Rochester who conducted some of the earliest research into schoolwide bans, has found they yield modest academic benefits in their early stages. In an email, he wrote that he was unsurprised to see social media use specifically called out  in the Scorecard report. But he also noted that most kids enjoy free access to digital technology outside the classroom. 

鈥淭o the extent that reducing cellphone use will reduce classroom distraction, that seems like a good thing. But there are many ways for students to access these distractions even in the face of cellphone bans,鈥� Figlio said. 鈥淗ome use, with its attendant sleep disruption and crowding out of homework, study, etc., is certainly still present.鈥�

鈥楾op national priority鈥�

The few existing studies probing the correlation between student achievement and social media鈥檚 sudden ubiquity paint only a suggestive, if incomplete, picture, Kane conceded, adding that the broadening of that inquiry 鈥渙ught to be a top national priority.鈥� 

That could be a job for a reconstituted Institute for Education Sciences, the Washington agency charged with supporting education research. About 90 percent of the IES workforce was terminated in the early months of the Trump presidency, but some re-staffing has taken place since. More recently, the Department of Education commissioned a blueprint for the rebuilding of its empirical arm, including a recommendation that federal officials narrow their focus to a set of key issues facing schools.

Kane remarked that the phenomena identified in the latest Scorecard release would make an excellent start. University-based experts couldn鈥檛 summon the same resources or urgency as the U.S. government, he concluded.

鈥淚f you leave it up to the research community to come to consensus on the science of reading, or the effects of cellphone bans, or the effects of social media, you’re going to be waiting decades,鈥� he said. 鈥淪o somebody needs to be convening people, looking for conflicting findings, and trying to reconcile them.” 

In the meantime, the report identified 108 districts that have posted sizable gains in both math and reading 鈥� and nearly 450 that have seen large improvements in at least one of the two subjects 鈥� since 2022. While some are listed among the most privileged school systems in the country, a number of large and relatively unsung urban districts have already returned to pre-COVID learning rates.

Among them is Washington, D.C., where reading achievement for students in grades 3鈥�8 now exceeds the level set in 2018 by the equivalent of almost half of one grade level. A case study assembled by Kane and his colleagues identifies specific steps taken by the district鈥檚 leaders to bring about that progress, including the development of and for undergoing specialized literacy training.

The Scorecard team recommends that education leaders deploy their own staff to rapidly improving districts to learn from their success. With time, they conclude, cities like Washington could become K鈥�12 exemplars in the same way that Mississippi has set a template for states with its reading reforms. 

Figlio said there was promise in the idea, but added a note of caution.

鈥淚t鈥檚 hard to go to a school district, see that they are doing ten different things, and know which of these things is actually leading to the improvements,鈥� he wrote. 鈥淏y all means, we should study districts that seem to be beating the odds, but we need to make sure that the lessons learned are durable and transportable rather than anecdotes or circumstantial evidence.鈥�

Lemov said that the most important lessons might be gleaned from years past. Since the reform era, he lamented, states have been all too happy to overlook poor results from their schools 鈥� and the schools themselves have been loath to set higher expectations for themselves or their students. The effects can be measured in lost learning opportunities, he said, but also teacher burnout from working in increasingly chaotic disciplinary environments.

“All of the things we did really well 鈥� only in unwinding them have we realized how much progress we were actually making. Which is tragic, but it suggests that we could wind them back up if we wanted to.”

A similar split was present in the vast architecture of special education offered through Individualized Education Programs 鈥� though in that case, the dynamic was reversed, with IEP recipients much more likely to come from low-income families than well-off ones.

Nick Ainsworth, a doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine, and lead author, said his interest in the topic was stoked during the COVID era, when evaluations for special education fell dramatically in schools around the country. While studying trends leading up to the pandemic, however, he and his colleagues noticed how differently rich and poor households access the federal government鈥檚 two biggest sources of disability services.

鈥淲e looked across the income distribution and started to see these large differences,鈥� Ainsworth said. 鈥淲e had some hypotheses about what that would look like with respect to 504 plans, but we did not expect to see those differences favoring high-income students.”

Those findings may have come as a surprise to the research team, but they validate long-held suspicions among education observers that 504-mandated aid 鈥� considered less comprehensive than those provided by IEPs, but subject to fewer legal requirements 鈥� are directed disproportionately toward the affluent. 

In 2019, a pair of investigations by and revealed that school districts with higher average incomes enrolled conspicuously larger numbers of students with 504 plans. Eligible pupils are typically given extra time to complete assignments and tests, raising concerns that some parents exploited the program to gain unneeded academic perks for their kids.

Such cynicism is perhaps inevitable amid the furious competition waged for top scores and coveted admissions slots. And the jostling for position doesn鈥檛 even relent with the arrival of college acceptance letters: at America鈥檚 most prestigious universities now say they experience conditions like anxiety and ADHD, which can confer special accommodations. But experts say it is unclear whether the system is being gamed, or if its design simply leaves needier children underserved. 

Ainsworth and his colleagues created the study by gathering academic records for millions of Oregon students between the 2008鈥�09 and 2018鈥�19 school years, then over the same period. The combined data allowed them to see not only which students were classified as needing IEP vs. 504 services, but which specific disability they reported.

In all, one-quarter of the most disadvantaged students had an IEP, a portion more than three times greater than that of the very wealthiest students. Meanwhile, nearly twice as many students from families near the top of the income scale were assigned a 504 plan than those near the bottom (2.9 percent vs. 1.5 percent).

Paul Morgan, a professor at the University of Albany whose work focuses on disability classification, said those patterns reflected important distinctions in how the two offerings are used. 

IEPs provide specialized instruction geared toward each student鈥檚 learning goals, sometimes including placement outside general education classrooms. By contrast, 504 plans only require schools to make the requisite modification to give students equal access to learning opportunities. Their looser eligibility standards may allow parents with the resources and wherewithal to access support on behalf of children who aren鈥檛 obvious candidates for IEPs, Morgan remarked.

鈥淭hese are benefits that don’t come with a lot of costs. Your child is typically not leaving the classroom,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hey might be seen as beneficial without much downside in terms of tradeoffs.鈥�

The laws鈥� tradeoffs

To a large degree, the tradeoffs families face when choosing between an IEP and a 504 plan are shaped by the laws governing each policy. Differences in those statutes mean that many don鈥檛 perceive a choice at all. 

IEPs were created by the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, which lists 鈥� from deaf-blindness to traumatic brain injury 鈥� that make children eligible for special education. Congress disburses annual grants to states ( in FY 2025) that pay for the provisions included in each student鈥檚 IEP. 

The calculation is different with 504 plans, which are not attached to any federal funding. Under the eponymous Section 504 of the , the plans establish students鈥� rights to reasonable accommodations for a much broader array of conditions. Yet in the absence of a federal subsidy, the assistance provided usually takes the form of cost-free interventions like extra testing time, preferential classroom seating, and even reduced homework burdens.

Schools are to find and evaluate children who may be disabled, but in practice, many are never referred for services. Christopher Cleveland, an assistant professor of education at Brown University and one of Ainsworth鈥檚 coauthors, said the incentives for schools to initiate the 504 process are 鈥減robably less clear.鈥�

鈥淢any school leaders feel that they’re in a high-pressure situation to figure out the resources of special education versus local, in-state dollars,鈥� Cleveland added. 鈥淲hereas the 504 plan decisions seem like they’re more subject to advocacy on the part of families.鈥�

The parents best equipped to wrangle the needed paperwork and prod school staffers toward a resolution are those with sufficient time, mental bandwidth, and experience dealing with bureaucracies. Since the outcome of 504 evaluations can hinge on diagnoses for disorders like social anxiety or attention deficit, it also helps to be able to afford the kind of expensive neuropsychological evaluations that insurance doesn鈥檛 always cover.

Miriam Nunberg is a former attorney for the Department of Education鈥檚 Office of Civil Rights who now works as in New York City. She said parents are obliged to be proactive in seeking accommodations, especially for high achievers whose performance at school tends to conceal learning difficulties. For guidance, they can turn to a cottage industry of lawyers, professional advocates, tutors, and clinical evaluators.

While each of them bill at healthy rates, the expense could be unavoidable in New York. As in many other jurisdictions, disability evaluations conducted through the school district have in the past due to staffing shortages.

鈥淲hen kids are pulling As and Bs, school staff generally aren’t referring them to assessments, whether for 504s or IEPs,鈥� Nunberg said. 鈥淪o it really has to come from the family 鈥� and that’s where you need to have the ability to educate yourself, or hire someone to help you with it.鈥�

Help on the SAT

Still, the mere fact that financially comfortable families are well positioned to hire that help doesn鈥檛 reveal anything about their motives. 

Ben Lovett, a professor of psychology and education at Columbia University鈥檚 Teachers College, said he thought the 鈥渧aluable鈥� study鈥檚 finding that poorer students are likelier to be assigned IEPs was plausible because poverty and disability . On the other hand, he wrote in an email, the overrepresentation of 504s at the high end of the income scale was 鈥渉arder to understand.鈥�

Some combination of three factors had to explain what was going on, Lovett continued: Either moneyed parents are pushing schools to issue 504 plans that are not educationally necessary; their children are particularly susceptible to conditions, such as mood or anxiety disorders, that aren鈥檛 usually addressed through special education; or the families of the neediest learners are more challenged than others in navigating the system. 

鈥淥nly additional research that audits 504 plans and investigates the evidence of disability for each student can really determine the degree to which these three factors explain the disparities,鈥� he wrote.

One suggestive detail is that the socioeconomic divide estimated in Ainsworth鈥檚 paper actually grew slightly as students entered middle and high school, when academic demands escalate. The lure of extra time on college exams could be a powerful inducement to grab any available edge.

A , published in March by Princeton doctoral candidate Tiffany Liu, discovered a measurable uptick in 504 plan enrollments in 2017 after the College Board began a policy of automatically honoring test takers鈥� school-based accommodations when they took the SAT. The increase was sharpest in wealthier schools.

Nunberg agreed that the elevated academic stakes of high school likely motivated some parents to have their sons and daughters evaluated for disabilities 鈥� especially after seeing them underperform on, or become anxious about, tests like the PSAT. But while conceding that some parents in New York always search for unwarranted advantages, she argued that it was more common to encounter intelligent kids juggling real problems of focus and executive function.

鈥淲hat I see much more often are kids who are brilliant and have a lot of pressure put on them by their parents, or themselves, or the system at large, and who are literally staying up all night to achieve high grades,鈥� she lamented.

The University of Albany鈥檚 Morgan said he believed there was substantial unmet need for disability services in K鈥�12 schools. What鈥檚 more, he concluded, it was 鈥渘ot unreasonable鈥� to think that people would use the methods at their disposal to push their offspring to the top of the pile.

鈥淚 imagine there is abuse or manipulation of the system, including by parents who view it as a way for their child to get additional support. Especially for some selective colleges, things have gotten so extremely cutthroat that you’d want to give your kid any benefit you could.鈥�

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It may come as a surprise to Californians who know the state has consistently ranked low in how much it spends on students compared to other states: California鈥檚 ranking has soared to the 13th-highest in the nation for how much it funds education per student.

03That鈥檚 not all. California鈥檚 equity ranking 鈥� comparing how fairly it distributes money to districts in high-poverty communities 鈥� rose to the second-highest in the nation, capturing the impact of the state鈥檚 equity-focused funding formula for schools, known statewide as the Local Control Funding Formula.

These are just some of the findings of , a report from the Education Law Center, a national education advocacy organization that has been ranking states since 2019.

Many Californians have long complained about the state鈥檚 dismal ranking in public education funding. But it turns out that some of what is repeated is outdated. The report鈥檚 findings led EdSource to take a closer look at its data and what they can tell us about whether decisions California voters and policymakers have made are leading to better outcomes for all students.

California鈥檚 rise in student funding

California鈥檚 average per-student funding is $19,894, as of 2022-23. That California rose from 28th in per-student funding in 2021-22 to 13th in 2022-23, the latest year for which comparisons are available, reflects a unique set of circumstances: California rebounded quickly from a short Covid-19 recession, producing higher revenues led by high-tech stocks, while education spending in many states, still mired in the recession, declined.

Other factors helped boost California鈥檚 ranking. The state responded to the Covid-19 pandemic with about $30 billion in one-time funding over four years. That included billions of dollars for summer school, learning-loss recovery, the phase-in of transitional kindergarten, as well as money to hold districts financially harmless from chronic absences.

Yes, California is the most populous state and has vast riches. Still, no other state provided funding on this scale in the aftermath of Covid-19; it roughly matched California鈥檚 share of record-level federal funding under the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief aid.

Even before the Covid-19 education funding bump, California鈥檚 per-student funding had been steadily increasing over the past dozen years, from when its ranking was near the bottom of states amid the Great Recession.

How bad was it then? In 2010-11, the Golden State ranked 50th, behind only Utah in spending, according to , which preceded the law center鈥檚 reporting using similar metrics.

Then, in 2012, threatened with further cuts to education, state voters approved a temporary income tax increase on the wealthiest Californians and renewed it in 2016. (In November, state voters will be asked to make the tax permanent.) California began to climb the per-student funding ranking: By 2017, it rose to 37th, just behind Kentucky, putting it close to Texas and Mississippi and lagging far behind Northeastern states, according to ELC鈥檚 first report in 2019.

Study shows California distributes its funding equitably

Comparing public school funding among states is complex. States鈥� tax structures, per-capita economic output and poverty rates differ, as do their funding formulas for assisting higher-poverty school districts.

A state鈥檚 average per-pupil funding tells only part of the story, particularly in California, where a district鈥檚 funding is tied, through the Local Control Funding Formula, to the proportion of low-income students, English learners and foster and homeless children. Districts in the bottom quintile receive nearly $6,000 less per enrolled student than the highest-funded districts in California in 2024-25.

In its report, in addition to looking at funding levels per student across states, the law center has looked at two other factors:

• Equity: how well funding is redistributed to low-income and high-needs districts
• Effort: how much a state makes education funding a priority relative to its capacity, measured by the percentage of state gross domestic product (GDP) spent on public education

Benefiting from rising overall per-pupil funding, California has moved to the forefront in efforts to distribute funds to districts where they are most needed. On the law center鈥檚 measurement of funding equity, California rose from 6th place to 2nd, behind only Utah. In 2017, it ranked 9th.

The funding distribution measure, said Education Law Center researcher Danielle Farrie, 鈥渋s meant to show 鈥� if states provide greater funding in higher-poverty districts versus lower-poverty ones.鈥�

California鈥檚 equity ranking increased steadily as it phased in the Local Control Funding Formula, enacted in 2013.

A greater funding advantage for lower-income districts yields a greater score. The law center鈥檚 report shows high-poverty school districts in California receiving 42% more funding than districts with the least poverty received an A ranking. In contrast, its neighbor to the north, Oregon, earned an F: its higher-poverty districts received 18% less funding than higher-income ones.

Some states have comparatively high funding, but are rated poorly on funding distribution. Illinois, for example, gets an 鈥淎鈥� on per-pupil funding, ranking 8th among states, but a 鈥淒鈥� on distribution, ranking 35th. Connecticut is the sharpest example of this pattern, near the top in per-pupil funding 鈥� but at the very bottom in funding equity, because districts鈥� funding relies on local property taxes, favoring high-property-value suburbs over poorer urban districts.

鈥淭wo things can be true: You can have an equitable funding formula on the books, but have inequitable funding,鈥� said Farrie. Having a big investment in education 鈥渄oesn鈥檛 mean that it鈥檚 distributed equally.鈥�

Not a top state priority by 鈥榚ffort鈥� metric

Let鈥檚 look at 鈥渆ffort.鈥�

California鈥檚 rise in the ranks for funding effort (the percentage of the state鈥檚 GDP going toward public school spending) is partly attributable to other states鈥� decline. Many states, according to Farrie, have 鈥渄ecided to cut income taxes and corporate taxes,鈥� so that 鈥渆ffort is down because they鈥檙e not capitalizing on new economic activity.鈥�

As California鈥檚 rank rose in 鈥渆ffort鈥� from 35th nationally in 2016-17 to 20th in 2022-23, the percentage of GDP spent on public education in the state only increased from 3.08% to 3.23% during that time.

And unlike most states, California鈥檚 tax receipts soared from the boom in high-tech profits following the pandemic, and K-12 benefited.

Nonetheless, in the latest report, California ranks lower in per-student funding than some other states viewed as its peers, including those with large urban areas and a high cost of living. New York, for example, spent 4.4%, and Illinois spent 4.3% of their GDP on education. The Golden State did not rank as low as states toward the bottom, however, such as Texas with 2.6% and Florida with 2.1%, both getting an 鈥淔鈥� grade, compared with California鈥檚 鈥淐.鈥�

As a relatively high-cost, , California鈥檚 20th-place ranking in effort indicates a capacity to increase funding for K-12 education either by raising revenue or shifting spending priorities. Two key contrasting measures of education funding 鈥� teacher pay and the average number of students per teacher 鈥� underscore the limits of California鈥檚 funding.

Tops in teacher pay, but also tops in cost of living

During the past decade, as its per-student funding rose, California surpassed New York in paying teachers the highest salary: $101,084 in 2023-24 compared with New York鈥檚 $95,615 (unadjusted for inflation). California鈥檚 average starting teacher pay of $58,409 was the second-highest, according to the . The numbers exclude benefits, including state and local contributions to retirement and medical coverage, which add about a third to the average salary.

But higher educator salaries have been undermined by a spiraling cost of living in California that erodes the value of those pay increases. Adjusting teacher pay for the state鈥檚 cost of living, using a formula that factors in housing costs, shows an erosion of more than $10,000, larger than any other state, including New York.

Class sizes in California remain among the largest

Class sizes historically have been large in California. Although the ratio has improved in the past five years, California鈥檚 class size remains among the highest in the nation. Its teacher-student ratio is similar to states with much lower education spending 鈥� only Nevada, Utah and Arizona have a higher ratio 鈥� and California鈥檚 2025 rate of 21 students per teacher is almost double New York鈥檚 teacher-student ratio of 11.

Paying teachers well to attract and retain them is a challenge in a high-cost state. Reducing class sizes to the national average in California would require a substantial increase in funding. New York manages to do both by spending $29,440 per student in 2022-23, the most in the nation and $10,000 more per student than California.

鈥淚t is painful,鈥� he said, 鈥渁nd some of you have moved two to three times to find a school for your child.鈥�

His passion for the issue was one of the reasons he wanted to chair the education committee when Republicans took control of the Senate in 2024. That same year, he issued pointing to the nation鈥檚 sagging performance in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and advocated for more phonics-based instruction. His staff is now working on a far-reaching literacy bill that would ensure federal funds are spent on the programs that follow the science of reading.

But Cassidy might not be in Congress to see the culmination of his efforts. In his race for re-election, he faces three primary challengers, including Rep. Julie Letlow, who, unlike Cassidy, has secured President Donald Trump鈥檚 endorsement. 

Louisiana Treasurer John Fleming and Mark Spencer, who calls himself a 鈥済uns and Bible conservative鈥� are also on the ballot May 16, but the real race is between Cassidy, Fleming and Letlow. the vote could be close.

鈥淭his is a three-way race and anything can happen,鈥� said Robert Hogan, a political scientist at Louisiana State University. It鈥檚 rare for an incumbent senator to lose in a primary. The last one was moderate Republican of Indiana in 2012. At this point, Hogan said, there鈥檚 no guarantee Cassidy will even get to a runoff.

The first sign that Cassidy鈥檚 bid for a third term was in trouble came when he voted in 2021 to of inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6 that year. 鈥淭he country is more important than any one person,鈥� he said in a brief statement at the time. As Trump eyed his return to the White House, Louisiana lawmakers in 2024 changed the election law so that only registered party members or those who are unaffiliated can vote in a party鈥檚 primary. Previously, open primaries allowed Cassidy to pick up support from voters on the left. 

The move, Hogan said, was meant to squeeze out so-called RINOS, or Republicans-in-name-only. To MAGA Republicans, Bill Cassidy hasn鈥檛 been loyal enough. 

Gov. Jeff Landry, who , has complained that Cassidy supported 鈥渓iberal Obama judges鈥� and listened to 鈥淣ever Trumpers.鈥� While Cassidy, a physician, voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services, he continues to express disagreement with Kennedy鈥檚 statements that cast doubt on vaccine safety.

鈥淟ife is lived forward, and so what I have to do is do my best to reassure the American people that vaccines are safe,鈥� he last fall without answering whether he regretted voting in favor of the secretary鈥檚 nomination. The two clashed again over vaccine research when Kennedy testified before the committee. Those who support Kennedy鈥檚 positions on public health issues are .

鈥楾he same language鈥�

On other issues, the incumbent continues to voice his allegiance to Trump鈥檚 agenda. He launched an investigation into Massachusetts over allowing a trans female to compete on a girls鈥� track team. The president 鈥渟igned an executive order to restore fairness for women and girls. I’m demanding that states comply,鈥� he posted on X.

Following Trump鈥檚 State of the Union address in February, all the ways he has 鈥渨orked with President Trump.鈥� But to Trump, it appears, the vote to impeach is all that matters.

鈥淭his administration is completely blinded by their need for retribution at any cost,鈥� said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, who has been pushing for updating federal policy on literacy. Cassidy, she said, is 鈥�100% principally aligned鈥� with what Education Secretary Linda McMahon wants to accomplish, but the administration 鈥渄oesn鈥檛 think very strategically around those things.鈥�

Three years ago, Rodrigues didn鈥檛 consider Cassidy an ally. 

He was among the five GOP senators in late 2022 who objected to her involvement in a parent council launched by former Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. The organizations chosen to participate, they argued, were 鈥渓iberal advocacy groups鈥� out to 鈥渘ationalize our education systems.鈥� 

But Rodrigues and Cassidy found common ground on solving the nation鈥檚 literacy crisis. He has greeted busloads of parents that the advocacy organization has brought to Capitol Hill over the years to share their stories.聽

鈥淚t was almost like he connected with his people,鈥� she said, 鈥渂ecause they all spoke the same language.鈥�

Letlow, first elected to the House in 2020, has also focused on parents鈥� concerns. she backed in 2023 aimed to give parents more say over curriculum and library materials, require schools to notify parents about violent incidents at schools and increase transparency into district budgets. The bill passed the House, but never received a vote in the Senate.

A former university administrator, Letlow supports Trump鈥檚 plan to . But her stance on diversity, equity and inclusion before she entered politics gave Cassidy a reason to question whether she鈥檚 sufficiently loyal to Trump.

Conservative news outlets dug up a of Letlow interviewing to be president of the University of Louisiana at Monroe in which she said it was 鈥渟hameful鈥� that the institution didn鈥檛 have more women faculty members. While she didn鈥檛 get the job, she said establishing a DEI office would have been one of her first moves. 

She has since , saying that DEI efforts were 鈥渉ijacked by the radical left and turned into indoctrination.鈥�

Fleming, a former Congressman and then Trump adviser, as a 鈥減roven MAGA conservative鈥� who didn鈥檛 鈥渃ut and run鈥� from the administration after Jan. 6.

The Louisiana Senate seat is considered safe for Republicans. Whoever emerges as the party鈥檚 nominee is expected to win the general election in November. But neither Letlow nor Fleming would be in line to chair the education committee. 

If Cassidy loses and the GOP stays in control of the Senate, that job would likely go to Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, said David Cleary, a former Republican education staffer for the Senate and now a principal with The Group, a Washington lobbying firm. 

Those with more seniority than her would be highly unlikely to give up their current leadership posts, Cleary said. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky chairs the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, if she wins re-election in November, 鈥渨ould never鈥� leave her position as chair of the appropriations committee, he said.

Murkowski, considered a GOP moderate, to shutter the Education Department. In March, she with Cassidy to make it easier for students to find funds for college. 

But the window to get a literacy bill passed could close if Cassidy doesn鈥檛 return to the Senate next year, said Rodrigues with the National Parents Union. 鈥淚t鈥檚 going to be kind of back to the drawing board.鈥�

The appeal, published last fall, was unexpected in part because Duncan 鈥� who served in the Obama cabinet from 2009 to 2016 after a well-regarded stint as CEO of Chicago Public Schools 鈥� spends much less of his time opining on national K鈥�12 politics than he did a decade ago. His daily focus is now directed at reducing gun violence through the work of , a nonprofit he helped found in the city where he was raised.

But even more surprising was the substance of Duncan鈥檚 broadside, which pitched the Education Freedom Tax Credit to Democratic officeholders and voters as a 鈥渘o-brainer鈥� tool to give struggling students a chance to receive a better education. The $1,700 scholarships, available beginning in January, are federally funded through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and can only be accessed in states that opt in. 

Among Democratic governors, only one has given his assent to the program thus far, and Senate Democrats have already introduced legislation before it even takes effect. But while he remains a passionate critic of President Trump, whom he calls a would-be autocrat, Duncan sees potential in the kind of school choice offering that his party has spent decades opposing. He believes the magnitude of post-COVID learning loss, disproportionately borne by children already facing huge disadvantages, necessitates the philosophical shift. 

The argument is part of a broader critique of Democrats鈥� education stances over the last decade, which have veered significantly from the model of accountability-based education reform that Duncan practiced in both Chicago and Washington. Like fellow Chicagoan and Obama administration veteran , he believes his party has largely conceded the issue of K鈥�12 schools to Republicans and allowed students to suffer in the partisan crossfire. In March, he signed on as a senior fellow at the advocacy group Democrats for Education Reform. 

鈥淲e’re adrift, it’s killing us politically, and it’s killing our kids,鈥� he told 社区黑料鈥檚 Kevin Mahnken. 鈥淚’m deeply troubled by what’s happening to kids, and by what’s happening to us because we’ve lost any vision for education.鈥�

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

社区黑料: Your op-ed last fall encouraged Democrats to participate in the Education Freedom Tax Credit. That seemed like your first major intervention on national K鈥�12 issues in a while. What was behind that decision?

Arne Duncan: I don’t actually think it was that dramatic. I’ve been out there 鈥� maybe not writing, but doing four or five panels at the ASU+GSV conference every year, and traveling to speak. My day job is gun violence in Chicago, so I’m not doing this all day, every day, but I didn’t see the op-ed in that way.

It was striking that you expressed a view that very few other Democrats hold. I’m only aware of one Democratic governor, Jared Polis of Colorado, who has opted into the program.

Let me try to speak to that by saying a couple of things. 

First, I was personally impacted by ICE here in Chicago. seeing horrific abuses, including things I’ve never seen before. I try to fight gun violence and gang violence every day here 鈥� last year, we were lucky to have the safest year here in 60 years 鈥� but I’ve never seen a gang in Chicago as well-armed and well-financed and violent as ICE. What they did to innocent people, citizens and non-citizens, was unbelievable.

So if I have a choice between sending a tax dollar to fund ICE to attack our people, or keep it in my state to help a child get more summer school, or tutoring, or whatever it may be, that’s not a close decision for me. That’s as plainly as I can put it: One hundred times out of 100, I would rather help kids struggling in my home state to catch up and have a chance to be successful in life, instead of sending another dollar to D.C. to fund ICE to come attack us.

But in the op-ed, you didn’t just make an argument to keep away as much revenue as possible from the Trump administration. You see a positive good flowing from this federal program providing more money for kids’ educational costs, right?

One hundred percent. There’s no loss of funds from our state’s taxpayers, it’s all additive. I don’t have the math in front of me right now, but hundreds of millions of dollars, or even billions of dollars. And that’s if only 20% or 30% of people took advantage of the program, which is a conservative estimate.

Pre-pandemic, we had tens of millions of kids who were way too far behind. Coming out of the pandemic, it’s gotten even more catastrophic. You saw last year’s NAEP results, which were devastating, but I just don’t see the sense of urgency out there. I don’t see people pulling their hair out and asking, 鈥榃hat more can we do to help kids catch up?鈥� If I have a chance to help the kids who are farthest behind, and to do it now, it’s a moral obligation: Let’s help these kids who are so incredibly far behind before we lose them. 

I don’t want to lose that generation of talent, not for our economy and not for our democracy, but that’s what we’re in danger of. I think the chronic absenteeism rate in Chicago is 41%; just think of four out of 10 kids missing a month or more of school every year! What are we going to do, just say that school is optional? 

I’m trying to help you understand how simple this is to me, and what an obvious moral choice it is. To say to all of these kids, 鈥業 have a chance to give you more money for summer school, or afterschool, but I’m going to send it all to Trump鈥� 鈥� are you fucking kidding me? It’s inconceivable.

What would you say to people who say this policy will inevitably undermine public schools, or who fear that private schools receiving public funding could discriminate against gay or trans kids? These are of these programs.

Of course, you need all kinds of guardrails. There’s no free lunch with public money, and there needs to be accountability. If school admissions are discriminatory, that’s a nonstarter. 

But in every state, 90-plus percent of kids go to public schools, and they’re going to remain in public schools. This is a program to supplement what they get because we’re not giving them enough. I’m trying to give them longer days, Saturday school, summer school. Our dosage of education ain’t working because it’s insufficient for what they need to build a better life. Obviously, governors can and should put parameters on use so that organizations that discriminate against students or families can’t receive the money. It’s not that hard.

Have you personally recommended to Gov. Pritzker that Illinois participate in the program?

He’s been an amazing partner working on violence in Chicago, but I haven’t had that conversation with him. 

I’m happy to talk to current governors, but we have 38 gubernatorial elections this year. With a nonexistent Department of Education, and dysfunction in D.C., all the action is at the state level now. Whether it’s sitting governors, or candidates, or people thinking about running, I’m happy to share my perspective. There are a lot of other perspectives they should hear, but there’s a huge opportunity here.

What’s the downside risk on education for Democratic officeholders and candidates right now? 

There are three reasons I’m concerned. First, overall student performance is devastatingly low, as I’ve mentioned. Second, going into the last election, Republicans were . It’s inconceivable to me, but education was a losing issue for Democrats. And that election was so close, you could argue that our party’s lack of leadership on education helped to give the presidency to Trump. Had we been winning on education in those states, maybe that would have been just enough to tip the election our way. 

Finally, the only bright spots on NAEP are coming from red states. To me, that’s an embarrassment. How is it possible that the states showing the most progress on student results are all red states? We should be deeply ashamed. I’m watching all of this and feeling like we’re lost. 

In education, you need four things: You need goals, you need strategies to achieve your goals, you need metrics to measure them and you need public transparency and accountability. If you asked anyone on our side what our goals are, our strategies or metrics, we don’t have any of those things. We’re adrift, it’s killing us politically, and it’s killing our kids. So if you ask why I’m speaking out more, that’s why. I’m deeply troubled by what’s happening to kids, and by what’s happening to us because we’ve lost any vision for education.

There is good evidence that the polling outlook has improved for Democrats since 2023, when that swing state polling was conducted. How big a disadvantage do you really think education will be for the party? Is this an issue that voters will care about more than, say, the economy?

I’ve been blessed to work for two political leaders, Mayor Daley in Chicago and Barack Obama. I know how lucky that was. Both of them ran on education, both talked about it every day, and both put their time and resources and reputation on the line to improve education. To me, it’s not a coincidence that they were wildly popular politicians.

If the other side is selling fear and culture wars, and we’re selling nothing, we’re conceding the issue. Everyone’s worried about their kids right now, everyone’s worried about the economy, and everyone’s worried about democracy. For me, high-quality education for everybody is the answer to all of that. I look at those two extraordinarily successful politicians, and you couldn’t talk about their legacy without mentioning education. Good policy helped them politically.

So it’s a mistake to not run on education, not lead with it, not learn from those examples of politicians who put their sweat, blood, and tears into the issue. It was the right thing for the city of Chicago and the country, and guess what? It was also good for them politically.

And you don’t see Democrats emulating them?

That’s what I’m telling you! We have no goals. I can’t be more explicit about the fact that we don’t have an education agenda, and that is incredibly troubling to me. You can quote me on that.

We need those four things I just mentioned, and we need to run on education. It’s the right thing for our kids, and it’s the right thing for our communities and local economies to have graduates instead of having dropouts. We need to own this. The fact that we’ve conceded that education leadership to Republicans, who are selling crap and pitting people against each other 鈥� that’s just untenable to me.

It seems as though the GOP is pursuing the same goal it’s had for many decades 鈥� private school choice 鈥� but the Democrats have kind of let go of the rope with respect to questions like academic standards, accountability and forms of public school choice like charter schools.

I’d disagree with you on the Republican side because I think it’s more insidious than that. They’re pushing hate and divisiveness, like attacking trans athletes. This is not neutral territory. They are pitting people against each other because it’s a winning strategy for them to divide and conquer. They’re attacking the most vulnerable by gutting the Office of Civil Rights at the Education Department, which fights for the kids who are the most abused and traumatized. 

I hate that that’s a winner politically, but it is. But I don’t want to wrestle in the mud with them and fight those battles. I want to create a plan to help all kids and tell parents that we care desperately about their future, that we want them to have access to education beyond high school. Let’s have these conversations and be honest about it. 

I’m out talking with parents all the time, and it resonates when you’re speaking to them. Parents don’t care about systems. They care about their kid, their school, their classrooms, and that’s what we’ve got to speak to them about.

Do you think it’s possible to swerve around the cultural fights? As you mention, some of these social controversies 鈥� the inclusion of trans athletes, but also things like accelerated learning in places like San Francisco 鈥� are quite important to people, and they seem to leave Democrats wrong-footed. I don’t think those issues can be ignored.

I’m worried about 100% of kids. The trans athlete issue affects, what, 0.0001% of kids? It’s insignificant, but somehow it becomes a good political issue for Republicans. Which I hate because, again, it’s attacking the most vulnerable. I just want to put out a proactive agenda that says that we care about 100% of kids, we’re not happy with reading scores now, we’re not happy with chronic absenteeism and we’re not doing enough. 

We have to be honest with parents because parents are smart: 鈥榃e want to help every child find their path, and we need to partner better with you because you’re always going to be kids’ first and most important teachers. How can parents and teachers and students come together and do things differently?鈥� And, to go back to the first issue we talked about: 鈥楤y the way, here’s some additional money to help your students! What would it take for them to learn biology in the summer?鈥�

You think that conversation wouldn’t resonate? You think it wouldn’t get parents to say, 鈥楾hese guys actually care about me and my family?鈥� We can do this. We have to do it.

Do you find it notable that on education right now may well be a fellow Chicagoan, Rahm Emanuel? What do you make of his reemergence as a potential presidential candidate?

We all come at this in different ways. I’ve done a couple things with him, and we agree on some things and disagree on others. But what I appreciate about him 鈥� whether he runs for president or not, and I know he’s looking at it 鈥� is that he’s . I just want everybody, Republican or Democrat, talking about this. 

Rahm sees there’s a void there, a gap, and he knows how important it is. Like Mayor Daley, he ran Chicago, and they both know that you can’t have a great city without a great public education system 鈥� just like you can’t have a great country without a great public education system. He’s lived this, and I appreciate him elevating the issue in ways that many others don’t. 

I’m much less interested in the specific policies in schools because I’ve traveled the country, and what works in Montana might be very different from what works in Mississippi or West Virginia. What I want is for governors, congressmen, senators, and presidential candidates to run saying that education is what they care about, and that they’ll hold themselves accountable to that. That would be nirvana for me.

When President Trump returned to the White House, you expressed serious fears about his plans for the Education Department. A year later, would you say those fears have been realized?

It’s pathetic. It’s so sad.

Last year, I was on a flight going to speak at [the education conference] ASU+GSV. When I got off the plane, my phone is blowing up with messages saying, 鈥榊ou’re not going to believe it, but Linda McMahon is talking about steak sauce. She’s talking about A1.鈥� [In a discussion of innovation in schools, the education secretary the abbreviation for artificial intelligence with the name of the popular condiment.] I had to walk into a session that afternoon thinking about that.

Think about someone leading the Education Department who is so divorced from what’s going on in the world that they literally don’t know what AI is. It was in her notes, and she literally didn’t know. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so revealing about what Trump thinks. Trump aspires to be an autocratic leader. What every autocratic leader needs to do is attack and dismantle education. Whether it’s the assault on higher education or the gutting of the Department of Education, what is most scary to autocratic leaders is to have people who can think critically and discern information from misinformation. There’s nothing he’s done that is of any surprise.

This is much bigger than just dismantling the Department of Education, which is horrible in its own right. It’s part of a strategy of attacking education, and it’s what [outgoing prime minister Viktor] Orban did in Hungary. So it’s important that your readers understand that what’s at stake is not just about this department and that department. The way authoritarian leaders win is by becoming the only source of truth.

Why did slave masters kill slaves that learned how to read? Because they knew that reading is powerful. It’s the same throughline here: Why is Trump going after education? Because he knows knowledge is power.

Given the ongoing series of political controversies in your hometown, are you concerned about school governance in Chicago?

Yes. When I was superintendent, I answered to seven board members who were appointed by the mayor. They now have 21 board members, and I don’t know anyone in life who ever wanted 21 bosses. That’s a few too many.

I worry that it’s been set up for failure. They’re working through it, but I can’t think of a major, high-functioning company with 21 bosses who each have their own constituents. As the district recently went through a CEO search, I talked to some very high-quality people across the country, and none of them were interested because of the governance. So it’s scaring away talent.

A private meeting between the Senate education committee and Education Secretary Linda McMahon was canceled Wednesday after Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, a Democrat, invited the press to listen in. 鈥淚 was unwilling to accept the notion that the discussion of matters of this magnitude, that matter so much to Virginians, could only be behind closed doors,鈥� he told reporters.

He said he was willing to back down if the secretary would commit to appearing before the committee within the next six weeks. In December, Democrats to participate in a hearing to discuss efforts to shut down the Department of Education, but that hasn鈥檛 happened. Following passage of the 2026 budget in January, Congress asked to meet regularly with officials for updates on the interagency agreements with other agencies, but Kaine added that he鈥檚 unaware if those have taken place.

鈥淚n my view,鈥� he said, 鈥渢he secretary and other leaders have pursued a strategy that is unlawful in taking programs within the Department of Education that are statutory in nature and sort of willy nilly ending them, shrinking them or handing them over to other agencies.鈥�

In , GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the committee, said 鈥淒emocrats will not dictate the terms of today鈥檚 meeting and have lost the chance to speak to the Secretary today.鈥�

McMahon hasn鈥檛 appeared before the committee since her confirmation hearing over a year ago. On X, : 鈥淚t鈥檚 disappointing that instead of a productive conversation about the state of our nation鈥檚 students and the steps we鈥檙e taking at the Department of Education to reverse this trend and break up the bureaucracy, this became about producing another media clip for MSNBC.鈥�

It was only three months ago that Congress the Trump administration鈥檚 last attempt to slash education spending and roll an array of programs into a block grant.

From the reception that some members of the Senate Appropriations Committee gave U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Tuesday, it appeared not much has changed. 

Both Republicans and Democrats grilled the secretary over the Trump administration鈥檚 plan to cut funding for rural schools and programs that help low-income students enter and complete college. 

Consolidating $220 million for rural education with 16 other programs 鈥� including literacy grants, education for homeless students and afterschool programs 鈥� into a $2 billion Make Education Great Again grant program would 鈥渦ndermine the goals of helping our K through 12 schools,鈥� Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, chair of the committee, told McMahon. 鈥淧rotecting rural schools and rural communities has always been one of my top priorities.鈥� 

Throughout the two-hour hearing, McMahon defended the president鈥檚 $76.5 billion , saying that although 鈥渋t is a reduction,鈥� the block grant proposal 鈥� a long time goal for conservatives 鈥� would give states more say over how to spend federal dollars. The so-called MEGA grant program will prioritize reading and math, McMahon said, and 鈥渦nleash momentous opportunity for every child to realize their God-given potential.鈥�

The budget would maintain funding for Title I, serving high-poverty schools, at $18.4 million, and boost spending for students with disabilities by over $500 million. 

But the proposal includes a 35% cut to the Office for Civil Rights and eliminates some programs completely. Those include $428 million in services for migrant children and what is known as TRIO, a batch of programs that prepare students for higher education as early as middle school. 

鈥淚 oppose the administration’s proposal to 鈥� eliminate a program that enjoys robust support and has made such a difference in the lives of children,鈥� Collins said, noting that three of her staff members would not have attended college without TRIO.

She was among the six Republicans and six Democrats who sent McMahon earlier this month objecting to how the department has altered two of the TRIO grants to direct students toward the workforce instead of college. 

鈥淐ollege is not the only solution for everyone,鈥� McMahon told the members.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, cited data showing that low-income, high school students who participate in Upward Bound are more than twice as likely to earn a bachelor鈥檚 degree by age 24 than their peers who don鈥檛 participate. 

鈥淭he stats from these programs are pretty damn impressive,鈥� he said. 

Even Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who has authored that would eliminate the Education Department, called TRIO a “sensitive area鈥� and urged McMahon to consider the committee鈥檚 concerns. 

Other Republicans praised the secretary for continuing efforts to shut down the department in the face of extensive criticism.

鈥淵ou are so cool, literally and figuratively,鈥� said Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana. 鈥淭hey call you names, and you just ignore them.鈥�

鈥�50 years of progress鈥�

To some Democrats, McMahon has also turned her back on parents who don鈥檛 want to see special education offloaded to another agency. The secretary said her team still hasn鈥檛 decided what would happen to programs that fall under the Individuals with Disabilities Act. Some might go to the Department of Labor, while others could go to the Department of Health and Human Services, she said.

鈥淚’ve gotten a petition from thousands of parents, educators, advocates who are concerned that will really undermine 50 years of progress in making sure the rights of children and students with disabilities are met,鈥� said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, ranking member of the committee.

Both Murray and Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut clashed with McMahon over the way her staff has handled civil rights enforcement. 

鈥淗ow do you defend that not a single child in Connecticut got a positive resolution from the Department of Education for their discrimination claims?鈥� Murphy asked her. 鈥淪eventy of them had disability claims.鈥�

While he鈥檚 not on the committee, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent, released a calling McMahon鈥檚 OCR 鈥渢he least productive in over a decade.鈥� The document notes that the office reached 鈥渮ero resolution agreements for students facing serious traumatic incidents including sexual harassment, sexual violence, seclusion, restraint, racial harassment and discriminatory school discipline.鈥�

He cited a January government watchdog report showing that putting OCR staff on paid leave last year, after she tried to fire them, cost taxpayers at least $38 million. 

McMahon insisted that the administration was ramping up efforts to address such complaints and seemed confused that the president calls for a $49 million cut to OCR, bringing the budget to $91 million.

鈥淭hat’s a floor number,鈥� she said. 鈥淗opefully we’ll have the ability to increase that number.鈥�

She ordered OCR staff on leave to return in December to address a backlog of cases, and is supervisors and attorneys for regional offices. An internal memo, shared with 社区黑料, shows the regional directors would go to Denver, Seattle and the D.C. offices. But according to an OCR attorney, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, there have been 鈥渓ots of departures鈥� among those McMahon brought back. 

鈥極verdue for a debate鈥�

Some who watched the exchanges between McMahon and the committee Tuesday were struck by the level of bipartisanship over the TRIO program.

鈥淚t shows the kind of Congressional support these programs have built up over many years, and the strong constituencies they have behind them,鈥� said Maureen Tracey-Mooney, associate director of FutureEd, a Georgetown University think tank. Previously, she led K-12 policy development for the Biden White House.

She added that the programs that McMahon aims to wrap into the MEGA program 鈥渇ocus on the most vulnerable student groups.鈥� 

Those would include students who need after-school care and are currently served by the 21st Century Community Learn Centers program. 

鈥淲hat do you do once they leave the classroom when they’re so young and they can’t obviously take care of themselves at home?鈥� asked Republican Sen. Shelley Capito of West Virginia.

McMahon responded that it would be up to states to decide whether after-school programs are a priority for them.鈥淲e’re certainly overdue for a debate about how to best support our nation’s students,鈥� Tracey-Mooney said. 鈥淏ut I think we are unlikely to see a rigorous engagement in Congress with these ideas through the budget process.鈥�

A circulated by researchers at Brown University revealed that, following a spate of immigration raids and arrests that began with Trump鈥檚 inauguration in January 2025, absences among foreign-born students in one northeastern school district rose by almost 40 percent. Notably, the trend took the form of a lasting negative impact in day-to-day attendance rather than a temporary drop in the wake of particular enforcement actions. 

Andrew Camp, a research associate at Brown鈥檚 Annenberg Institute and the paper鈥檚 lead author, said he was surprised to discover that the consequences of political change were so durable, extending through the end of the 2024鈥�25 academic year. The lingering increase in absenteeism would likely require more work from educators and administrators to draw children back to schools, he added.

鈥淚f this just happens the day after an event, you might say, ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do, and throw up your hands,’鈥� Camp said. 鈥淏ut if it happens even when there’s nothing going on in the community, that indicates that it might be a more persistent problem that requires a more considered outreach effort.”

The results dovetail with those of other recent research, each pointing to clear and immediate downward pressure on attendance resulting from in immigration enforcement. That push has seen personnel from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement school buildings, though they have detained family members .

A study released last summer pointed to similar developments in California鈥檚 Central Valley, over the past year. The author, Stanford University economist Thomas Dee, said the observations of the Brown team support his own findings and underscore 鈥渢he serious academic harm that ongoing immigration raids inflict on students and schools.鈥�

鈥淥bviously, increased absenteeism implies lost learning time,鈥� Dee wrote in an email. 鈥淗owever, I also view the impact of immigration raids on student attendance as a leading indicator for other downstream effects, such as lost learning and stress-induced mental-health challenges.鈥�

The mid-sized urban setting examined in Camp鈥檚 work (pseudonymized as 鈥淟iberty City鈥� to preserve the privacy of residents and district employees) differs from the agricultural region Dee focused on, but mirrors some of its demographic features. Approximately 40 percent of the community鈥檚 population was born outside the United States, and roughly two-thirds identify as Hispanic or Latino.

The authors employed an unusual strategy to conduct their study, collaborating closely with both the Liberty City school system and a local immigrant advocacy organization. From the former, they received information on thousands of students鈥� birthplaces that was originally collected when they enrolled in school; from the latter, a detailed log of immigration enforcement actions, including arrests, recorded in the community beginning last January.

Camp argued that using countries of origin to track students potentially targeted by immigration sweeps was less 鈥渂lunt鈥� than other methods. Some foreign-born pupils may not perceive much risk from increased enforcement activity, he acknowledged, either because they live in the U.S. legally or they feel their families are likely to evade the scrutiny of federal authorities. But alternative proxies for immigration status, such as English Learner status, are themselves imperfect measures of vulnerability 鈥� earlier research has repeatedly shown that of English Learners around the country are U.S. citizens.

Comparing attendance figures from 2024鈥�25 to the same numbers from the previous school year, Camp and his colleagues found that Liberty City students born outside the U.S. became much more likely to miss school once President Trump took office. While foreign-born students were, somewhat surprisingly, slightly more likely to be marked 鈥減resent鈥� than their U.S.-born classmates in 2023鈥�24, that gap disappears from the data the next year. In total, foreign-born students鈥� likelihood of being absent on any given school day rose by over one-third, from 5.9 percent to 8.1 percent.

Two further nuances stood out from the overall picture. First, attendance declined to a considerably lesser extent among the youngest learners: The effects on children enrolled in pre-kindergarten and elementary school largely fell below the benchmark of statistical significance, but the absence rate of high school juniors jumped by six points on average. The contrast indicates that older, more independent students may have started skipping school on their own initiative, even as parents largely continued dropping their kids off.

Additionally, the team observed that the attendance phenomenon was not primarily driven by 鈥渁cute鈥� reactions to enforcement actions like raids. Absences ticked upward by only 0.6 percentage points on days when such events took place within Liberty City, and they were not significantly higher the next day. In other words, the baseline level of school attendance was consistently lower throughout the winter and spring, not just when fears of imminent actions were triggered.

What鈥檚 more, the 37 percent boost to absences was seen in a jurisdiction that is broadly welcoming to immigrant families. Liberty City officials convened public meetings to allay residents鈥� fears after Trump was reelected in November 2024, and the district does not share information on students鈥� immigration status with ICE. That implies that attendance could deteriorate further in less supportive environments.

鈥淎s these events are ongoing, the district is being so active about calling home and communicating, ‘We know there’s been an arrest in the community, but it’s not a raid, and they’re not going after you or your kids,’鈥� Camp said. 鈥淪o if anything, I would guess these effects are a bit of an understatement of effects that we might see in Nebraska or Arkansas.”

Viri Carrizales, founder and CEO of the advocacy group ImmSchools, remarked the paper鈥檚 findings are in line with what she has heard from districts and charter networks, some of which have reported attendance drops of 20 percent. To reverse the damage, she said in an email, school leaders needed to establish 鈥減rotocols and policies that clearly protect students鈥� constitutional rights.鈥�

鈥淧rotecting access to education is not optional; it is a legal and moral responsibility that schools must uphold for every child,鈥� Carrizales wrote. 鈥淎 school can no longer be a school when its classrooms are filled with empty seats.鈥�

On Monday, the justices rejected a in which parents Jeff and January Littlejohn alleged that a Leon County middle school violated their rights by supporting their child鈥檚 gender transition from female to male without their knowledge. The decision comes after the justices declined to hear two similar cases, one from last week and another from in March. 

For now, their decision means that the court might end its term without taking up one of the most contentious issues in education 鈥� the debate over whether state and district policies that aim to protect the privacy of LGBTQ students violate parents鈥� rights to direct the upbringing of their children. 

In March, the conservative majority sided with California parents who argued that districts should proactively inform parents if their child wants to change their gender identity. But in that case, they only reinstated a lower court decision to temporarily block schools from keeping such information private. They have yet to address the substance of the arguments on either side of the issue.

鈥淭his does require a full briefing and a full decision on the merits,鈥� said Katie Cosgrove, counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, a conservative law firm representing a that recently asked the Supreme Court to hear another case related to parental notification. 鈥淭he court needs to make some clear clarifications on this parental rights issue.鈥�

The court鈥檚 decision comes as the House is expected to vote this week on that would require schools to alert parents if students ask to change their preferred names or pronouns as well as the sex-based facilities they use. Those in favor of parental notification say districts have kept parents locked out of one of the most consequential decisions in their children鈥檚 lives. 

But advocates for LGBTQ students, , say students questioning their gender identity face of violence, poor mental health and unstable housing if they鈥檙e not ready to be open with their families.

In her dissent in , the other California case, Justice Lynn Kagan, one of the three liberals on the court, also argued that the justices should have let the lawsuit run its course in the Ninth Circuit. The conservative majority, she wrote, was 鈥渋mpatient.鈥� 

鈥淭he court resolves the issues raised through shortcut procedures on the emergency docket even though it has had 鈥� for months now 鈥� the option of doing so the regular way, on our merits docket,鈥� she wrote.聽

The newest case on that list is the Rocklin Unified School District鈥檚 lawsuit against California鈥檚 Public Employment Relations Board. In 2023, the district, north of Sacramento, began requiring schools to notify parents if their child wants to use a name or pronoun for facilities that doesn鈥檛 align with their sex at birth.

The board, on behalf of the teachers union, filed an unfair labor charge against the district, saying that the policy essentially changed the terms of teachers鈥� employment and should have been negotiated. The union won in a state appeals court and the California Supreme Court declined to hear the case. That鈥檚 when Liberty Justice Center asked the U.S. Supreme Court to step in.

Cosgrove called the lawsuit a 鈥渁 super interesting intersection of parental rights and the union and administrative board overstepping its authority.鈥�

鈥楾hey sought to help the child鈥�

But most of these cases have been brought by parents.

It took the court several months to decide whether to take the Littlejohns鈥� case. The justices rescheduled it for their conference days 10 times after initial briefs were submitted last fall. 

The dispute with Florida鈥檚 Leon County district, which encompasses Tallahassee, began in 2020. The Littlejohns told Deerlake Middle School that their child, A.G., was being treated by a therapist for gender confusion, and to continue treating the student as a girl. But A.G. asked the school counselor to use the name 鈥淛鈥� and 鈥渢hem鈥� pronouns. The lawsuit states that school officials continued to support A.G.鈥檚 social transition, including holding a meeting to create a 鈥渟upport plan,鈥� without the Littlejohns鈥� knowledge.

In multiple filings in the case, the district says that once the Littlejohns objected, school officials gave them the plan and invited them to be present at all future meetings with the student.

The parents sued the district in 2021, but lower courts ruled for the district and dismissed the case. Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, considered one of the most conservative circuits in the federal court system, the educators鈥� actions did not 鈥渟hock the conscience,鈥� in a legal sense.

鈥淒efendants did not act with intent to injure,鈥� the court said. 鈥淭o the contrary, they sought to help the child.鈥�

Meanwhile, for the Trump administration, became a symbol of the fight against such district policies. She was among President Donald Trump鈥檚 special guests when he addressed Congress in 2025, and she鈥檚 a at Do No Harm, a nonprofit that opposes gender-affirming healthcare, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery.

The district argued that the case was moot.

Since the Littlejohns sued, Florida, like , passed a parental rights bill that says schools can鈥檛 鈥渋nfringe鈥� on parents鈥� fundamental rights. As a result, the district revised its policy to say that school staff can鈥檛 鈥渋ntentionally withhold information from parents unless a reasonably prudent person would believe that disclosure would result in abuse, abandonment, or neglect.鈥� 

Brian Dittmeier, director of LGBTQI+ Equality at the National Women鈥檚 Law Center, said that because of the Florida law, a similar dispute probably wouldn鈥檛 happen today. He added, however, that 鈥渢hese issues have to be sorted out at the local level.鈥�

鈥淎 single federal standard,鈥� he said 鈥渋s not going to resolve the tension that we see between some families and schools on this issue.鈥�

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.

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�

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� 

He co-sponsored this year that would give parents an ed-tech 鈥渞ight of refusal.鈥� A former English teacher, he was never a fan of the shift toward every student having their own laptop. Technology, he said, isn鈥檛 making students any smarter.

鈥淚n fact, we know it鈥檚 making them dumber,鈥� he said, expressing a view shared by parents across the country, especially those with students in the elementary grades. 

When his fellow lawmaker Rep. Leanne Harple read the bill, she imagined how tough it might be for teachers to accommodate such requests. An English teacher herself, she also speaks from experience. Her students do research online, where the information is more up to date than in books and academic journals. A 2024 American Federation of Teachers showed 83% of teachers use technology in the classroom daily.

The bill 鈥渨ould create, in some cases, a lot more work,鈥� she said. For every assignment, teachers would 鈥渉ave to create an alternative that鈥檚 completely analog.鈥�

Their opposing views on the topic reflect a growing national debate. Parents who advocated for bell-to-bell cellphone bans are now targeting Chromebooks and other ed tech. Influenced by researchers like Jonathan Haidt and Jared Cooney Horvath, who argue that cellphones and classroom technology have harmed students鈥� development, they鈥檝e mobilized in Facebook groups. They鈥檙e demanding pencil-and-paper assignments and asking teachers to excuse their kids from computer-based math and reading apps. Their pleas have sparked pushback from districts that for years have relied on technology for everything from curriculum to testing.

鈥淚n August, almost no one was talking about this, and now I’m having no other conversations,鈥� said Kelly Clancy, a mom of three in South Brooklyn, New York, who also serves on her local community education council. 鈥淭here’s a sea change in parents realizing that they don’t want their kids in front of screens.鈥�

She鈥檚 among those challenging the New York City schools鈥� use of digital programs. She refused to let teachers enter her kids鈥� work into , an AI tool from the curriculum company HMH that generates feedback on student writing. But when she tried to opt her children out of i-Ready, a widely used testing program from the company Curriculum Associates, she met resistance. The tests are a 鈥渂aseline component鈥� of the district鈥檚 assessment system, David Pretto, superintendent of District 20, wrote in an email. Her school鈥檚 principal, he said, 鈥渋s not in the position to exclude your child from universal screening.鈥�

Clancy didn鈥檛 take no for an answer. 

鈥淲e will get legal advice if necessary, but my children will not complete these,鈥� she wrote back.

In a statement, the district said any tool using student data 鈥渕ust undergo a rigorous 鈥� review process to meet strict privacy, security and compliance standards before it is approved for use.鈥� Officials urged parents to contact local schools with their concerns.

Across the country, the Seattle Public Schools has advised staff that 鈥渇amilies may not opt out of district-adopted digital curriculum,鈥� but a spokesperson for the district told 社区黑料 that 鈥渢his is an evolving landscape,鈥� and 鈥渨e will continue to review and update the guidance as needed.鈥�

Parents in Pennsylvania鈥檚 Lower Merion School District are also determined to keep their students off Chromebooks at school. 

鈥淭hey鈥檙e saying we can鈥檛, but we鈥檒l find a way,鈥� Yair Lev, a parent of two, said after a last month in which Superintendent Frank Ranelli said opting out wasn鈥檛 possible because the curriculum is computer-based.

Teachers, Lev said, are caught in the middle. He collected from five teachers, who said students often access gaming sites and YouTube during class, and even make video calls to students in other classrooms.

鈥淭here should be clear districtwide policies and parameters for when laptops should and should not be used, rather than leaving major decisions to classroom-by-classroom discretion,鈥� one wrote.

Not 鈥榦ur best moment鈥�

Lev, a cardiologist and professor at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, said he鈥檚 not opposed to technology. He consults for cardiology startups using AI and has taken the lead on AI use in his division at the hospital. But he and his wife realized that 鈥渒ids are being exposed to a lot of screens, and we decided to try to reduce it at home.鈥�

In some ways, he represents many of the parents pushing for tech opt outs. His children are young, and they鈥檙e starting school at a time when Haidt, a social psychologist, that cellphones and social media have harmed children鈥檚 mental health. Lev鈥檚 kids are also beginning their education after the pandemic, when parents are demanding more say over what鈥檚 taking place in the classroom and data breaches have compromised student privacy.

鈥淭he image of technology in schools that鈥檚 seared into every parent’s mind is the lockdown version of technology. It wasn’t our best moment,鈥� said Joseph South, chief innovation officer at the International Society for Technology in Education, which merged in 2023 with ASCD, a major curriculum organization. 

Until the pandemic, Elyssa East, a New York City mom, was raising her son screen-free. That became impossible during school closures. Around the same time, she learned that he had some learning difficulties and would 鈥渞eally fall apart when it came to any instruction on the screen.鈥�

Online math programs like Zearn and IXL made him feel 鈥渄efeated,鈥� she said, because they were assigned for remediation. 

鈥淗ere is this technology that’s supposed to help him, but it makes him feel even worse than a human teacher would,鈥� East said. 

She eventually switched him to a private school. She has opted him out of math apps and he writes on an old electric typewriter.

鈥嬧�嬧�滺e likes that a lot,鈥� she said. Compared to a laptop, 鈥渋t’s a totally different experience.鈥�

鈥楥aught in the crossfire鈥�

Some teachers have no problem with .

Dylan Kane, a seventh grade math teacher in Lake County, Colorado, near Aspen, went . Students, he wrote, are more focused, are completing more work and spend less time 鈥渇ussing with logistics,鈥� like connecting to the internet or forgetting their Chromebook at home.

Like many parents, he was influenced by Horvath鈥檚 . In his 2025 book, the cognitive neuroscientist argues that the widespread use of classroom technology has left students distracted and unable to retain information.  

But prior to January, Kane never had a parent request to opt their child out of using computers or specific software. Even during parent-teacher conferences this spring, his decision to ditch Chromebooks in class never came up.

鈥淚 work in a small, rural town that’s relatively low-income, not a lot of college-educated parents. I think much of the tech backlash from parents is coming from the more-online, higher-educated folks,鈥� he said. He thinks trying to accommodate individual parents鈥� objections would be tricky. 鈥淭eachers could be caught in the crossfire because they have to deal with district-mandated online programs and then potentially parent opt-outs.鈥� 

South at ISTE+ASCD said he鈥檚 heard plenty of 鈥渉orror stories鈥� about technology, like apps dominated by advertising and students spending class time 鈥渟hooting aliens鈥� on the screen. But those examples are often due to teachers using a program that was never vetted by their district or 鈥渟ome random kid who found a workaround,鈥� he said.

He and Richard Culatta, the organization鈥檚 CEO, added that moving through state legislatures that limit screen time don鈥檛 necessarily address parents鈥� other concerns like cyberbullying, protecting student data or improving the overall quality of instruction. 

Many of the bills require paper worksheets to be used instead of technology, said Culatta, who quipped that he often feels like he鈥檚 in a 鈥渢ime warp.鈥� 

鈥淭here鈥檚 no quality indicator,鈥� he said. 鈥淵ou could literally take any garbage worksheet and it would be fine.鈥�

鈥楻apid innovation鈥�

Opt-out requests have forced districts to be more thoughtful about how they use technology. 

The Worcester Public Schools in central Massachusetts is like a lot of districts. It went through 鈥渁 period of rapid innovation and tech acquisition鈥� prior to the pandemic to make sure 鈥渢eachers and students had the tools needed to be future-ready,鈥� said Sarah Kyriazis, director of the district鈥檚 Office of Innovation. 

Schools added even more ed tech tools during COVID lockdowns for remote and hybrid learning. Now some parents are questioning those decisions at a time of 鈥渘ational concern about data, privacy, security and screen time,鈥� she said. 

The district鈥檚 school committee has so far to allow parents to opt out of ed tech programs. But Kyriazis is collecting feedback from teachers on the apps they feel are most important for instruction. The goal, she said, is to whittle down the amount of data sent through online platforms to third-party vendors. Principals and teachers, she said, should be able to 鈥渟peak with parents about each app and its purpose in the classroom.鈥� 

Further west, the Northampton, Massachusetts, district is accommodating opt-out requests from about 12 parents. To do so, teachers must come up with activities that allow students to learn from the same curriculum as their peers 鈥渨ithout using the disputed programs,鈥� said Superintendent Portia Bonner. 

Laura Carney Erny, who has a second grader in the district, hasn鈥檛 tried to opt her son out of tech yet, but she鈥檚 thinking about it for third grade. Even learning which programs the school used took 鈥渕onths of back-and-forth emails鈥� with teachers and administrators, she said.

Parents say they don鈥檛 want to further complicate the lives of teachers, especially those who lack classroom aides. Northampton lost in 2024 who were paid with temporary COVID relief funds. 

鈥淚 don’t blame teachers for relying on tech because it’s an easy thing to do,鈥� she said. 鈥淪ome of these programs help keep the kids in their seats.鈥�

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, former teacher Kate Brody is among those who have opted their children out of practice sessions on i-Ready, now the subject of a over student privacy. She decided the program was a problem when her first grader couldn鈥檛 tear himself away from the screen to use the bathroom and started having accidents. 

鈥淚 used to teach full time,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 definitely don’t want to create a world where we’re asking teachers to do multiple lesson plans and monitor half the class on the computer and do analog lessons for the other half.鈥� 

It鈥檚 unfair to teachers to field opt-out requests every year, she said. That鈥檚 why, as a board member for Schools Beyond Screens, an advocacy group of parents and educators, she backs a that calls for limits on the use of technology for all students, especially in the early grades. The board will vote on the plan April 21.

鈥淩ight now,鈥� she said, 鈥渋t鈥檚 the Wild West.鈥�

As of last month, more than 2,400 claims were pending in the overseen by a judge in California. More than 10,000 individual cases and nearly 800 school district claims were pending across . And more than 40 have filed or joined lawsuits against the companies.

The lawsuits allege that the platforms were deliberately engineered to maximize addictive use among children and teenagers, and that the companies knowingly designed them to drive young people鈥檚 prolonged engagement, despite mounting evidence that they can be harmful.

Their recommendation algorithms amplify harmful material, the lawsuits allege. And weak age-verification systems have allowed underaged users broad access. The companies that run the platforms knew about these risks, they say, but failed to warn users and families about the mental health risks, often revealed by their own research. 

The companies have disputed these claims, maintaining that their platforms include safety tools. But one of them, Meta, which runs Facebook, acknowledged that the lawsuits could be costly, this year with the Securities and Exchange Commission warning investors that the lawsuits and mass arbitration demands could 鈥渟ignificantly impact鈥� its finances.

That could happen soon. In late March, two landmark verdicts came down within 24 hours of each other: On March 25, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube liable for designing that harmed a 20-year-old woman who started using them as a child. The jury awarded her $6 million. The companies that run Snapchat and TikTok were also named as defendants, but reached undisclosed settlements before trial.

A day earlier, a New Mexico jury for failing to protect kids from child exploitation and ordered it to pay $375 million for consumer-protection violations. 鈥淵ou add it all up and it could be hundreds of billions of dollars,鈥� social psychologist Jonathan Haidt recently.

As with the tobacco and opioid lawsuits, one major question is emerging: Where will the money go? Will the proceeds benefit children, or will they end up simply padding states鈥� and school districts鈥� budgetary bottom lines?

To answer this, 社区黑料 turned to Elizabeth Gaines, founder and CEO of the , a nonprofit focused on helping governments and communities figure out how to pay for programs and services that support children and youth. The organization doesn鈥檛 run the actual programs, but helps leaders and policymakers build sustainable funding systems to establish and keep these programs going, such as early childhood education, afterschool programs and mental health services.

It specializes in so-called 鈥渟trategic public financing,鈥� which pushes communities to examine how much they spend on children, how much they actually need and where they can find or generate more funding for, in Gaines鈥檚 words, 鈥渄eeper investments鈥� for kids. 

A lifelong child advocate, Gaines has worked in the field for 30 years, from think tanks to state-level advocacy. She founded the funding project eight years ago. 鈥淚 looked around and realized that no one at the national level was really focusing on the public financing of child and youth development and programs and services writ large,鈥� she said.

The project now tracks more than 300 federal, state and local funding streams that support children and youth from cradle to career.

Gaines began her career in her home state of Missouri, where she worked on ensuring one key goal: that proceeds from the 1998 benefited children. 

Spoiler alert: They didn鈥檛. A budget shortfall prompted lawmakers to redirect millions from the settlement into the state鈥檚 general fund. Gaines now admits, 鈥淲e did not get involved early enough in that process to really be able to shape the outcome of those dollars.鈥�

Nearly 30 years later, with thousands of cases focused squarely on the harms of social media, she is working to build a coalition of groups that can persuade governors, lawmakers, educators and attorneys general to keep the focus on uplifting kids, not filling budget holes. The coming legal settlements, she said, are payback for that harm. 鈥淎nd [when] they pay back in, it needs to go back into the public good.鈥�

社区黑料鈥檚 Greg Toppo recently sat down with Gaines for a wide-ranging conversation on her work and the 鈥済ame-changing鈥� potential of the social media payouts.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

First let’s talk about the tobacco payouts. You were in Missouri at the time. As you look back on that now, what were the mistakes?

The tobacco settlement was the Wild West. I remember we had $20 million that the governor and the legislature had committed, and they were like, “Yes, we’re going to put that towards positive youth development 鈥� and it’s going to be huge!” Back then, that was big dollars for Missouri. And then there was a little budget crisis, and the governor withheld those dollars. It was like, “Oh, sorry.” But that was happening all over the country at that time. There are some states that did a good job of setting tobacco settlement dollars aside and having a real method to how they dispersed them, but for the most part, those dollars went into the general fund and never really tracked in any significant way. 

What about the opioid settlements?

They’ve gotten better, and I think we’ve been really guided by in the opioid settlement, which was like, 鈥淗ere are the 10 things that these dollars are intended to be used for.鈥� And so states have taken that, some of them more seriously than others, as the funds roll out. 

So let’s assign a number, a score of one through 10 to the tobacco settlements in terms of where the money went. 

Writ large, that’s so hard. I mean, anecdotally, because I haven’t done a full research study, my sense is probably three out of 10. States weren’t putting funds towards something that was prevention-oriented or reinvesting in the community. 

I want to make sure I understand what the Children’s Funding Project does. I know what your objective is. I wonder: Do you have any leverage, or is this all just advisory? Are you on the outside looking in, saying, “Hey, governors, you should do this”? Or do you have power to make these things happen?

We have no real hard power in this. What we are attempting to do is go around and get regulations in place. And what we really need is to then replace that with deep investments in young people. We’re narrowing in on the attorneys general who are going to be at the table, because they’re leads among the states in the suits, making sure that they understand that it’s not just a settlement to punish the companies and then wherever those dollars go, so be it. There’s a safety aspect that they’re working on: Protect young people, change the platforms, make sure we’re not having faulty products like we’ve had. 

But then there’s a youth justice component to this too.  And people just haven’t gotten there yet. So I think we’re just ahead, honestly, of where zeitgeist is on this, and when we do get it in front of people, they’re like, “Yes, that’s where the money needs to go.” We’ve got a former attorney general who’s advising us on how the A.G. world works because it’s new to our field.

So no, we are not involved in the suits directly, and that’s intentional. That’s somebody else’s job. Our job, as the people who care about funding for kids, is to focus on making sure that money goes to the right place.

So let’s talk about that. What are the things we should be buying with it?

Spokane, Washington, has this thing that they started out of their schools called . Basically what this buys is some joy and some curiosity and some investment in things for a group of young people that have kind of had a rough decade. It’s not been awesome to be a young person. And so this is to say, “You want to learn to play the trumpet? You want to learn to code? You want to learn to build trails out in the woods? Whatever it is that’s speaking to you as a young person, we want to put an infrastructure in place that actually allows you to go and explore that.鈥� And so they’re doing it in Spokane, which is great. 

You talk about a “rough decade” for young people. It sounds like you want to offer them opportunities that maybe even their predecessors, their parents, didn’t have. 

I will just say this: There are special cases where young people have gotten to do it. I ran youth programs 30 years ago. The program that I ran became one of the very first . And there are people who I hired that work there to this day who are incredibly talented youth workers, who now for generations have been saving young people and really helping them find their calling. And to have young people in relationships with talented adults who know how to do that 鈥� and other talented young people, what we call “near peers,” who can provide that kind of guidance 鈥� is something we’ve never had.

21st Century Community Learning Centers have basically been since years ago. It’s kind of crazy to think that we’ve never invested more than a billion dollars in that as a country.

If you went to an attorney general, and they said, “Just lay it all out for me,” what are the possibilities? Obviously there is a constituency that will say, “Just give the schools more money.” Just make classes smaller, improve buildings, put in HVAC, and on and on and on. Pump money into the system. Do you find yourselves in opposition to that?

They should, just as a matter of course, pay for HVAC systems for our schools, and so using this special pot of money to do that is not going to have the intended impact that we want to have. And given the direct link between the harms related to youth mental health and what we know about investing in prevention and upstream opportunities,  this is a chance to really make a significant investment in those kinds of things. So the coalition that we’re building is really trying to bring together the people not only that are in the comprehensive afterschool funding community, but into sports and play, outdoor education, arts, civic engagement leadership, youth in service types of activities. There’s a bunch of stuff that’s always been underfunded. This is a chance to quadruple down on it.

Quadruple down? 

Well, I’ll just go ahead and admit it’s going to be more than that. 

You’re talking about the harms of social media, and obviously thinking of ways to to remedy that. Who are the people you would work with to make some of these things happen?  

Let me be clear: We are really trying to coalesce any organization. Largely they’re community based organizations. There’s the names that people know: the Boys and Girls Clubs and the Y’s, but there’s also really organically grown, community based organizations that, in many cases, are the most effective at reaching young people that are hard to reach in the places where they are. And those folks have always just done that work and found ways to do it, but have been deeply underfunded. And so if I was the boss of social media litigation, I would say investing in those homegrown, local organizations would be a really powerful thing to do. We’re trying to bring all of those folks to one table, and then there’s going to have to be state-by-state approaches. 

Could you envision a landscape where offering funding to public schools is in opposition to the Girl Scouts or the Campfire Girls or Boys and Girls Clubs?  

Certainly that could happen. But our intent is to make this like what they’ve done in Spokane. That’s superintendent-led. I think the schools are going to have to get that this is an opportunity to really do some things that they get pressured to focus on, when really they have a job to do already and they can’t seem to layer the social-emotional well-being of young people on top of what they’re trying to do. 

I was talking to somebody today about something totally unrelated, and they used the term “human flourishing.” That sounds kind of like what you’re talking about.

Yeah. I mean, listen: With the onset of AI and the way that the world is shifting, I think there’s going to be a huge need that becomes so clear for folks about just the value of being human and how we raise good humans. It’s going to become increasingly important.

You talked about attorneys general. Are there any who you feel are leading the way?

You probably saw [New Mexico Attorney General] , the New Mexico case, which is not actually part of the larger case, . [A jury in March found that Meta had failed to protect young users from child predators on Instagram and Facebook.] It was the first one at the state level out of the gate that has gotten an early verdict. And it was pretty powerful. He was only looking at one set of harms related to child exploitation. So just on that one harm alone, they said was owed. And then if you extrapolate that to all the other harms, it’s significant. Certainly Kentucky’s, A.G., Colorado鈥檚, California鈥檚. But it’s a truly bipartisan group of A.G.s that are leading on this. 

These strike me as not just life-changing numbers but just system-changing numbers. I mean this has a potential to really just change how we even consider what’s possible. 

That’s the point, and that’s, I think, why people get very excited about this as a solution, as a chance to really dream and to get young people excited and engaged. 鈥淕ame-changing鈥� is how we’ve been describing it to the field. And we’ve got to stop thinking about just like, “Let’s fight for those little afterschool dollars that we’ve had all this time.” No, this is about a bigger play.

In February, the telehealth company , including clinicians who worked directly with students and families, leaving about 500 employees. 

The company lost one of its biggest customers, the Los Angeles County Office of Education, last year. It shortened its contract with the Chicago Public Schools because of “challenges securing funding,” a spokeswoman said. And several districts across the country have also either ended their business with Hazel or have contracts that expire later this year. 

they are 鈥渞estructuring鈥� the company to put it in a better position as it pursues more stable sources of funding, like billing Medicaid and private insurance, now that the federal relief funds some districts used have expired. Company spokeswoman Emilie Fetterley said no additional layoffs are expected 鈥渁t this time鈥� and that many states and districts plan to renew their contracts. 

But according to internal memos, by a news outlet covering mental health, CEO Iyah Romm said the company was losing 鈥渢oo much money鈥� to meet its goals. Since the expiration of the Los Angeles contract, the company has even, at times, absorbed the cost of services, Fetterley said. 

Some say the company faces a difficult road ahead.

There is a 鈥渕assive need鈥� to address student mental health and behavior issues, said Adam Newman, co-founder of Tyton Partners, a consulting firm focused on the education sector. Until the relief funds ran out, 鈥渢here were enough dollars in the system for schools and districts to find ways to underwrite these types of programs. But the risk has always been: What’s the durable funding model?鈥�

In Missouri, the Ferguson-Florissant district, outside St. Louis, ended its business with Hazel last year.

鈥淭hey were great to work with,鈥� said spokeswoman Onye Hollomon. Hazel served about 2,000 students in the district, which used COVID relief funds to pay for the program. 鈥淥nce that phased out, we had to make that cut.鈥�

Los Angeles spent more than $28 million in one year to make Hazel available to the county鈥檚 80 districts, according to GovSpend, a data company tracking payments to government agencies. It funded its deal with the company by tapping a $389 million . Between March 2022 and May 2024, 804 schools in the county referred 9,337 students for services, according to data Hazel provided to the county. Of those, 4,162 students received at least one visit, with students participating in an average of six visits. Fetterley said once a student is referred to Hazel, parents don鈥檛 always follow through with a visit or may seek help elsewhere.

In addition to taking a loss on services for some students since last year, Hazel has relied on billing insurance, including Medi-Cal, the state鈥檚 Medicaid program, and contracts with individual districts. Leaders are currently negotiating contracts with districts for next school year. 

Hazel is also one of eight providers approved for a new program that allows 700 districts throughout California to be reimbursed for services by Medi-Cal or private insurers. It participates in a similar in Iowa, and in Nevada, the Clark County School District uses Medicaid funds to pay for Hazel services, but that ends in June. A spokesperson said the board has not yet decided whether to renew it.

鈥楳ade their mark鈥�

Telehealth programs, delivered through schools, were expanding long before the pandemic. They offer families convenient access to a remote doctor or therapist while preventing students from missing school for appointments that often turn into full-day absences. Hazel Health, founded in 2015 by health care executive Josh Golomb, was part of that growth. 

鈥淭elehealth providers have made their mark in school-based health care,鈥� said Nirmita Panchal, a senior policy manager at KFF, a nonprofit focusing on health policy. 鈥淭hey eliminate transportation barriers, where students may not be able to physically get to a provider.鈥�

During the pandemic, when learning and work suddenly went virtual, telehealth programs for schools . of school-based health centers showed that during the 2020-21 school year, more than 80% of respondents offered telehealth services, up from 19% in 2016-17. 

The financial landscape has since changed. A lot of districts are now cutting budgets to close deficits. GovSpend, which doesn鈥檛 capture all district spending, shows a decline in payments to , a similar company, since 2023, while , another virtual mental health provider, saw a more stable influx of funds from 2024 to 2025. 

Among providers, however, Hazel Health stands out. The company, which serves 6,000 schools in 21 states, initially focused on primary health care, with physicians prescribing over-the-counter medications for routine symptoms like stomach pain or headaches. In 2021, the company broadened its model to provide mental health services and respond to 鈥渞ising unmet student needs and limited access to care,鈥� Fetterley said. 

In Florida鈥檚 Duval County schools, Brittany Beimourtusting reached out to Hazel last school year when she was going through a divorce. Her middle child, she said, was having trouble adjusting.

鈥淚t was a single-parent household all of a sudden, and I thought, 鈥楬ow am I supposed to get him to get help because I think he could use therapy,鈥� 鈥� she said. The provider, she said, met with him about five times and helped him open up about what he was feeling. 鈥淚t was definitely worth it.鈥�

But when Superintendent Christopher Bernier looked for ways to save the district some money last year, a $1.4 million payment to Hazel was on the list.

鈥楢 connected system鈥� 

Four years ago, the startup鈥檚 future looked bright.

It attracted over $50 million from investors, including Fiore Ventures, founded by Walton family heiress Carrie Walton Penner. As recently as last year, Hazel was still eyeing growth. It made two acquisitions, including , which offers family therapy, to further expand mental health services. 

鈥淭ogether, we are building a connected system that supports children from their classrooms to their kitchen tables,鈥� wrote Andrew Post, then 贬补锄别濒鈥檚 president, in October. But he has since resigned, writing this month that it was time to turn to the 鈥渘ext chapter鈥� in his career.

贬补锄别濒鈥檚 was supposed to run through the end of 2027. Now it will end on June 30. Still, district officials said the layoffs have had no impact on the services students receive. In a pilot program that began in March 2025, the district made mental health services available to 84 high schools. As of January, 420 students had taken advantage of the program, the district said.

In December, Destiny Singleton, the honorary student member of the Chicago Board of Education, told members that students don鈥檛 always feel comfortable talking to school counselors about personal issues because those staff members are often focused on academic performance and preparing for college. That鈥檚 why talking to an outsider can be helpful. But she added that students at the district鈥檚 larger high schools are often unaware that Hazel is even an option.

Some Chicago parents, however, are wary of Hazel and say families don鈥檛 always know what they鈥檝e agreed to when they consent to allowing their child to meet with a Hazel provider. In to Chicago district leaders last year, student privacy advocates said they were concerned about whether Hazel properly secures students鈥� private information. 

The company鈥檚 acquisition of Little Otter, , raises red flags because Rebecca Egger, its CEO, formerly worked for Palantir, a federal contractor known for using AI to assist the Department of Homeland Security in its . 

In a response to Chicago officials, Romm, the CEO, wrote that Hazel does not 鈥渟ell, share, or use student data for any commercial purpose,鈥� and that it 鈥渄oes not have any relationship with Palantir, commercial or strategic.鈥�

Fetterley, the company spokeswoman, also said Hazel is in the early stages of rolling out chatbots to 鈥渟implify administrative tasks like scheduling for parents and clinicians,鈥� but that AI will never be a 鈥渟ubstitute for our human providers.鈥�

Even so, some districts see a much higher demand for in-person rather than virtual clinicians. In Broward County, Florida, where Hazel provides medical services, but not mental health support, 179 students completed a telehealth visit between August and December last year, according to district data. Over that same time period, more than 134,000 students visited a school clinic.

鈥淧arents want nurses,鈥� Cynthia Dominique, chair of the District Advisory Council and a parent in the district, told the school board in March. As a nurse practitioner, she questioned how a provider working remotely can diagnose and treat most common symptoms, like congestion or a sore throat.

鈥淚 can’t ask the registrar from the front desk, 鈥楥an you look in the kid鈥檚 mouth and tell me what you see?鈥� 鈥� she told 社区黑料. 鈥淭hey don’t know what they’re looking for.鈥�

For district leaders, however, 贬补锄别濒鈥檚 ability to keep kids from missing school provided an effective selling point.

During a 2023 meeting, Duval County School Board Member Darryl Willie said the program had saved the district 4,000 鈥渃lassroom hours鈥� during the 2021-22 school year.

鈥淲e’re talking about making sure we’re focused on reading, writing and math,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he only way we can do that is if students are in school, in classrooms, sitting in seats.鈥�

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

Over the past few decades, that has generated a growing tension among parents and educators, who have begun questioning the .

But a new kind of funding scheme may turn that dynamic on its head: A finds that a different approach to buying classroom technology may not only be workable but, in many cases, produces results that traditional contracts don鈥檛. Called outcomes based contracting, the model ties what companies get paid, at least in part, to whether students actually learn.

The findings, from the nonprofit groups and the , also come as school budgets are tightening after COVID relief funds dried up and district leaders find themselves under growing pressure to justify spending. 

The report examined a group of school districts piloting an outcomes based model. It finds that the arrangement offers a new way to determine whether tech is actually working for kids, since it dictates that a portion of vendors鈥� payments depends on meeting a set of agreed-upon student benchmarks. If students don’t reach them, vendors don鈥檛 collect the full contract amount. 

But the model also builds in a layer of shared accountability: Districts must commit to making sure students use the tools at the levels, or “dosage,” necessary to produce results.

Brittany Miller, the center鈥檚 executive director, said that forces everyone to take implementation seriously.

鈥淲hat this model does is it tells everybody across the ecosystem: 鈥楶rioritize this,鈥欌�� she said. 鈥淵ou have to get to this level of implementation integrity, which translates into dosage, in order to actually have a meaningful experience for a student.鈥�

Kids 鈥榥ot getting the dosage they need鈥�

Before looking at whether a tech product improves student outcomes, Miller said, there’s a more basic question that districts rarely ask: Are students using these tools at all?

The answer is often, 鈥淣o.鈥� 

The report found that more than 65% of purchased ed tech licenses typically go unused, with school districts paying full price for products that sit idle. But districts participating in the outcomes based pilot met dosage requirements for as many as 95% of students. Overall usage rates were typically 10 times higher than under traditional contracts.

鈥淲e talk a lot about dosage, and kids not getting the dosage that they need,鈥� Miller said. 鈥淎nd that, to me, is a proxy for being a responsible consumer of tech: Are our kids actually using it in a way that will drive outcomes?鈥�

Miller said part of what drives the usage shift is that both districts and vendors share a direct financial stake in students actually using the products. Under the model, if a student falls behind on usage, the district must find out why and get that student back on track. If they don鈥檛, there鈥檚 a record of that and the district is on the hook for payments, even if the student鈥檚 achievement didn鈥檛 improve. 

It鈥檚 only fair in cases like these, she said. 鈥淭he provider wasn’t able to prove that their product worked because kids didn’t actually use it.鈥�

Beyond usage statistics, the report found that districts in the pilot reported greater instructional coherence. Technology was being used with more intention tied to specific learning goals rather than as a general add-on to existing lessons. And teachers were more deliberate about how they integrated tech into their instruction.

Miller, who formerly led large-scale tutoring implementation in Denver Public Schools, said she has sat in classrooms and watched students working with these products, typically supplemental literacy and math tools. She said many of them can make a difference, but only if used properly. 

鈥淲e’re talking about technology that has the ability to help students pronounce words correctly, support their fluency and break down words for them,鈥� she said. 鈥淚n mathematics, we’re talking about students using technology to really try different ways of solving problems and getting them exactly what they need in the moment.鈥�

The report also found that tech companies benefited from the model in unexpected ways: Because outcomes based contracts require detailed, real-time data on how students are using a product, companies got access to information about their tools鈥� effectiveness that most standard contracts never generate.

Fewer tools, better results

Perhaps most counterintuitively, the report found, districts that rely on outcomes based contracting actually end up buying fewer tech products.

That鈥檚 because the process of building such a contract requires district leaders to clearly define what problem they鈥檙e trying to solve, what success looks like and whether a given product is actually the right tool for the job. That level of scrutiny, said Miller, produces a kind of natural audit.

鈥淲e’ve seen in a lot of districts as they’ve taken this on, the number of ed tech tools they’re purchasing just [goes] way down at the district level,鈥� she said.

In one district, Miller said, officials found they鈥檇 purchased licenses for more than 1,000 tools. As they examined the list they said, 鈥淚f there is not a clear reason and purpose that we’re using this in the classroom that’s actually driving student learning, then we’re not going to pay for that tool anymore.鈥�

She added, 鈥淚t just shifts the mindset of the system to really say, 鈥楲et鈥檚 look at what we鈥檙e purchasing more carefully, figure out what is and isn’t working, and start to cut down on the noise.鈥�

The center, based at the , grew out of research conducted at Harvard University’s under economist Tom Kane, who in 2021 a small group of tutoring providers and school districts to examine whether outcomes based contracting 鈥� already used in healthcare and workforce development 鈥� could be adapted for K-12 education. 

The project eventually moved to the foundation, with Denver among the early participants. Miller was a district leader at the time and got involved in the work that Denver was piloting on tutoring. 

As of February, Miller鈥檚 center had worked with 87 education institutions ranging from school districts to state education agencies and tracked results for more than 63,000 students.

In addition, six states 鈥� California, Texas, Florida, Arkansas, Indiana and Louisiana 鈥� have launched initiatives around the model. Together they represent more than 28% of total U.S. K-12 education spending, constituting a potentially fundamental shift in how schools spend money. That shift, Miller said, could have a huge impact on children鈥檚 achievement if educators are asking the right questions. 

鈥淭here’s a student at the end of the day that’s being served by this,鈥� she said. 鈥淗ow are you really humanizing their lived experience in the classroom and making sure that they’re achieving the outcomes that we know they’re able to?鈥�

鈥淭hese support systems are what students really rely on,鈥� one girl told the board. 鈥淎s someone who struggles a lot with being overwhelmed and anxious, sometimes I just need someone to talk to.鈥�

The layoffs will help reduce an $8.6 million budget deficit, due in part to the loss of 350 students. 

Sarah Neville, a board member in the Boston-area district, knows one reason enrollment is down. Under federal law, districts can鈥檛 ask whether students are U.S. citizens, but almost 90% of the 5,700-students are Latino and 47% are English learners. The state education agency estimates that the population of English learners in Massachusetts schools has since 2024. Officials from Chelsea and other metro-area districts say as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents conducted raids in last fall.

鈥淲e’re low hanging fruit for ICE because so many of our folks are undocumented,鈥� Neville said. 鈥淲hen they say, 鈥榃e’re going to go target Boston,鈥� you find the vans actually hanging out in Chelsea.鈥�

The district is among several across the country now confronting the financial impact of the Trump administration鈥檚 immigration enforcement efforts. Whether students are absent from school, families have been detained, or they鈥檝e left the district or the country on their own, the empty desks add up.

Districts no longer have federal COVID relief funds to fall back on, and many already saw steep enrollment declines during the pandemic. The Chelsea board is one of asking the legislature for one-time grants to help address the shortfall. With fixed costs like payroll and contracts with vendors, a sharp drop in enrollment 鈥渃reates chaos,鈥� Neville said.

In Texas, officials from , and several districts in the are among those who say the immigration crackdown has contributed to further enrollment loss and, with it, potential drops in state funding. 

Districts鈥� heightened concerns over finances come as conservatives increasingly argue that American taxpayers shouldn鈥檛 be footing the bill to educate undocumented students in the first place. 

During a heated , members of a House judiciary subcommittee argued that the U.S. Supreme Court should overturn , a landmark 1982 ruling in a Texas case that guaranteed children a right to a public education, regardless of citizenship status.

鈥淭he financial costs of Plyler are undoubtedly staggering, clearly representing a significant burden on localities,鈥� said Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, who chaired the hearing. 鈥淏ut it isn’t just fiscal costs we should be worried about. Our nation’s classrooms routinely deal with illegal alien students, many of whom know little to no English and may struggle with other learning disabilities.鈥�

Pointing to Census Bureau figures, a from the subcommittee estimated that educating non-citizen students in U.S. schools costs about $68 billion a year. But during the hearing, Democrats highlighted of providing students access to education, like $633 billion paid in state and local income taxes and contributions to the U.S. economy worth more than $2.7 trillion.

The witnesses included James Rogers, senior counselor with the conservative America First Legal Foundation, who called the Plyler opinion 鈥漞gregiously wrong from the start鈥� and an example of judicial overreach. He predicted that the current conservative majority on the court would overturn it if given the opportunity. Republicans in like have proposed legislation to collect students鈥� immigration status. If one of those bills passes, opponents are expected to challenge it in court.

But Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said that excluding undocumented students from school or charging tuition would mean 鈥渙nly certain classes of children whose parents can afford to pay are entitled to the blessings of liberty and the hope of a better future.鈥� 

Thomas Saenz, president and general counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, warned that at a time when chronic absenteeism remains above pre-pandemic levels, non-citizen children wouldn鈥檛 be the only ones out of school if the court overturned Plyler.

鈥淚t will extend beyond the families to peers and ultimately it will be impossible to enforce truancy laws,鈥� he said. 鈥淎ny child who doesn’t want to be in school will know to simply say 鈥業’m undocumented.鈥� 鈥�

The 鈥榖ottom line鈥�

For now, most Texas districts want to hang on to as many students as possible.

鈥淲hen you’re a rural school district, every kid has a big impact on your bottom line,鈥� said Kevin Brown, executive director of the Texas Association of School Administrators. 鈥淲hen you lose five or 10 kids, you have to cut programming. You can’t cut teachers, so you have to start looking for other ways to do it.鈥�

He expects to see a request during next year鈥檚 legislative session to allow for some 鈥渢ransition period鈥� before funding drops, but 鈥渨hether something passes is another question.鈥�

In California, where state funding is based on districts鈥� average daily attendance, Gov. Gavin Newsom last October that would have added immigration enforcement as one of the emergencies that triggers a waiver of the funding rule. The change was unnecessary, he said.

In Minnesota, districts are still hoping for some relief. On their behalf, a national nonprofit to temporarily suspend a state law that requires districts to drop students from the rolls if they鈥檝e been absent for 15 straight days. The legislation allows exemptions for emergencies.

, in which the Trump administration deployed roughly 4,000 ICE agents to the Minneapolis area, 鈥渘o doubt qualifies as a calamity that would trigger application of the exemption,鈥� leaders of the National Center for Youth Law wrote to state House and Senate leaders last month. 

Fridley Public Schools, outside Minneapolis, has lost 20 students because of the 15-day rule.聽

鈥淪ome of our children have been in an apartment for 14 weeks and haven’t been able to leave,鈥� Superintendent Brenda Lewis said on a recent webinar. 

Roughly 100 more have left since the surge, possibly taking advantage of the state鈥檚 open enrollment policy to relocate to other districts. The loss means a $1 million hit to the district鈥檚 $51 million budget. The district also missed out on $131,000 in meal reimbursements from the federal government because low-income students weren鈥檛 in school to eat breakfast and lunch, Lewis said. 

Fridley鈥檚 enrollment would have been down another 400 students if the district hadn鈥檛 quickly implemented a virtual learning program, Lewis said. But federal agents used the device distribution process to apprehend those they suspected to be undocumented, she said. 

鈥淲e had ICE agents arresting people because they knew they were coming for the Chromebooks,鈥� said Lewis, whose district is part of against the Trump administration over its policy of allowing immigration enforcement near schools and other 鈥渟ensitive鈥� locations. 鈥淚CE agents will board your buses. They’ll board your vans. They’ll pull the vehicle over and start interviewing children about immigration status. By interviewing, I mean interrogating.鈥�

鈥業n-your-face presence鈥�

The Trump administration recently such actions in an effort to end a government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security. Julie Sugarman, who studies immigration policy affecting K-12 schools at the Migration Policy Institute, said a 鈥渓ess-aggressive鈥� approach near school grounds would likely lead some missing students to return. 

鈥淭he in-your-face presence absolutely is causing people to stay home,鈥� she said.

The Chicago Public Schools last fall saw steep declines in attendance that coincided with , according to by Kids First Chicago, an advocacy group, and the Coalition for Authentic Community Engagement, representing multiple nonprofits. On Sept. 29, the Monday after enforcement activity began, nearly 14,000 students at schools serving high percentages of Latino students were absent, the report showed. 

The district uses enrollment counts from the early part of the school year to make budget and staffing decisions. If students missed school on those days, or if the district eventually dropped students out for extended periods, those absences could affect funding, explained Hal Woods, chief of policy at Kids First Chicago.

District leaders can only estimate how many undocumented students are entering, or leaving, their schools, and that鈥檚 a problem, Mandy Drogin, a senior fellow at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, said in testimony before the House subcommittee. She blamed that warned districts against asking for students鈥� or parents鈥� citizenship status for enrollment purposes. 

While many English learners are U.S. citizens, she called out districts under state takeover, like and nearby , which have English learner populations above 30%, according to the state. 鈥淚llegal students,鈥� she said, are impacting schools as a whole. 

鈥淭eachers are being forced to 鈥� do Google Translate on their phones,鈥� she said. 鈥淎ll of these things obviously impact the total education system, and the taxpayers are left holding the bag.鈥�

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat, said immigration enforcement affects all students. He pointed to Willmar, Minnesota, about 150 miles west of the Twin Cities and the site of a Jennie-O turkey plant that employs many . It鈥檚 the town where ICE agents in a Mexican restaurant and then returned to detain the owners and a dishwasher. 

In December, as rumors of an ICE raid spread, hundreds of kids, including white students, stayed out of school, Superintendent Bill Adams . 

鈥淚 remember walking in the hallways going, 鈥楬oly God, where are all the kids?鈥欌�� said a district employee who declined to speak for attribution due to the sensitivity of the topic. 鈥淚t was eerie.鈥�

In October, Adams said enrollment in the 4,400-student district was down by over 170 students, amounting to a loss of more than $4 million. To make up for some of that gap, the district is it used to teach independent living skills, like cooking and doing the laundry, to older students with disabilities. 

鈥淚t’s just hit our community really bad,鈥� the employee said.