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It’s that time of year again—it’s back to school season, and about time to start off another school year! While a new outfit or set of school supplies can definitely help get you off to a good start, so can a fresh perspective. August is a great time for students to evaluate their performance from the previous year, explore new ways to overcome challenges, and come up with a plan to stay on track for…
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When hackers hit a school district, they can expose student data like Social Security numbers, home addresses, and even disability and disciplinary records. Now, cybersecurity advocates warn that the Trump administration’s budget and personnel cuts, along with rule changes, are stripping away key defenses that schools need. “Cyberattacks on schools are escalating and just when we need federal support the most, it’s being pulled away,” said Keith Krueger, chief executive officer of the Consortium for…
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There were roughly 1.4 million pre-K-12 homeless students in the 2022-’23 school year in the U.S., according to the latest federal data. Education law defines homelessness as lacking a “fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence” — which includes families living doubled up with others. The federal law known as the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act allows students to stay in their school even when their housing takes them far from where they originally enrolled. McKinney-Vento provides…
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The outlook for federal spending on education research continues to be grim. That became clear last month with more cutbacks to education grants and mass firings at the National Science Foundation, the independent federal agency that supports both research and education in science, engineering and math. A fourth round of cutbacks took place on May 9. National Science Foundation observers were still trying to piece together the size and scope of this wave of destruction.…
Read More »Sueli Gwiazdowski, 24, says she switched high schools three times when she was growing up. She wanted to stay at her first school because she loved being on the speech and debate team – but the campus wasn’t wheelchair accessible. Her second school forced her to learn in a separate room, away from her non-disabled friends. “I had to fight my way out of that by going to a lot of…meetings and asserting that I…
Read More »in Art, Education, Music Education, News
In recent years, many school districts have had to make the difficult choice to eliminate art programs (drama, music, visual arts, photography, etc.) due to budget cuts and based upon state/national academic priorities that are more focused on math and English student achievement. The budget crisis came against the backdrop of the decade-long emphasis on math and reading as mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind law and other state initiatives and acts. For…
Read More »in Education, Mental Health, News
The Trump administration says it will stop paying out $1 billion in federal grants that school districts across the country have been using for student mental health funding, including to hire mental health professionals like counselors and social workers. The Department of Education is telling impacted districts that the Biden administration, in awarding the grants, violated “the letter or purpose of Federal civil rights law.” The grants were part of the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities…
Read More »The Trump administration says one of its primary goals in education is to expand school choice and put power back in the hands of parents. Yet it has killed the main way to track one of the most rapidly growing options – learning at home, or homeschool. The Education Department began counting the number of homeschooled children in 1999, when fewer than 2 percent of students were educated this way. Homeschooling rose by 50 percent…
Read More »The U.S. Education Department’s role in helping students with disabilities may be changing soon. President Trump has said his administration is going to move “special needs” to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), an agency that recently announced its own drastic cuts. His administration hasn’t specified exactly which programs will be moved, and whether IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, is among them. The conservative policy playbook Project 2025 does propose…
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As Education Secretary Linda McMahon was busy dismantling her cabinet department, she vowed to preserve one thing: the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card. In early April, she told a gathering of ed tech companies and investors that the national exam was “something we absolutely need to keep,” because it’s a “way that we keep everybody honest” about the truth of how much students across the country actually…
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