This story was produced by The 74, a non-profit, independent news organization focused on education in America.

This summer parents were supposed to have a bit more financial breathing room while their children were out of school. The government rolled out Summer EBT, the first new federal food assistance program in decades, for its inaugural year, providing qualifying families $120 per school-aged child to help them afford groceries during the summer while going without school meals to help feed their kids.

Nearly 21 million children are eligible for the program, but there are early warning signs that many families were unable to take advantage of the benefits.

A prominent challenge is that the enrollment process was opaque and complicated enough that hundreds of thousands of families may miss out altogether, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars unclaimed and sent back to the government, according to policy consultant David Rubel, who has done extensive research on the Summer EBT program as well as its predecessor, the Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) program, which gave parents money to cover meals while children were learning remotely.

The experience for families

Erika Marquez’s family was one of many that were unable to access the funding. Marquez has four children — three of them attend school programs and one, her infant, is at home. Her husband, who she is separated from, told her that he received a letter saying that Summer EBT benefits were coming, but said he got no further instructions about how to actually claim the funds. “He didn’t know who to contact, how to contact them, or anything for that matter,” she said.

[Related: Grandfamilies disproportionately at-risk for food insecurity, advocates say]

Summers are always harder for her family to make ends meet — when her three school-age kids are home, they miss two daily meals they would have gotten for free at school. Marquez was hopeful that the Summer EBT money coming in would help cover that gap this year, but when her family couldn’t access the funds, they suffered. Marquez works full time and says that to ensure that her children have what they need, she has to follow a strict budget to cover all of their expenses, and this was a particularly difficult summer. Living in Las Vegas, Nevada, which experienced the hottest summer on record, her electricity bill went through the roof after cranking the air conditioning. Normally it costs her about $100 to $150 for the season; this summer she says it was about $400.

Without help from the new food assistance program, Marquez says she had to ignore those utility bills and prioritize groceries so that her children had enough to eat. “It’s just hard when you hear your child say, ‘Mom, my stomach is rumbling,’” she shared. “It’s more important to be able to make sure that my children are fed.” She had to skip paying for electricity for two months, landing her on a payment plan, which has added fees on top of the bill itself. Had she received Summer EBT for her three children, that would have come to $360 — almost the same cost as her electricity bill, she noted.

California missed out on $1 billion earmarked for P-EBT.

Many other parents have found themselves in a similar situation to Marquez this season. In California, according to the state’s response to a FOIA request made by Rubel, 281,690 Summer EBT cards were returned due to a wrong address and went unused between June 1 and Aug. 31. In a state where 1 in 5 residents is food insecure, this is troubling, especially given that during the pandemic

Propel, a financial technology company that helps low-income Americans with banking and public benefits, administered a survey of low-income families in August, which revealed anecdotal evidence that backs Rubel’s finding that some eligible families had trouble getting the money. The survey surfaced scattered reports of barriers to access. “No, haven’t received yet,” one respondent from Missouri wrote, adding, “It would help me not having to skip meals to feed my kids.” Another from Michigan wrote, “No, it would make a big difference. We haven’t received them yet, or the card.”

Most of the families that received Summer EBT dollars got their cards automatically through a process known as streamlined certification. States enrolled them without them having to take any action if they were on certain public benefit programs, including free and reduced price school lunch, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. In some states, if a family already had an EBT card for SNAP benefits, for example, the money was automatically loaded onto it; other states decided to send out separate cards.

Families Must Enroll; Many Don’t

But a number of eligible families didn’t automatically receive the benefits. For example, families that don’t participate in other programs, but whose children do qualify for free and reduced price meals at school, are eligible for Summer EBT, but they must enroll, which has proven a challenge. In part, that’s because in 2020, Congress made school meals universally free so families did not need to enroll, but that expired last fall, and some parents are out of practice with signing up. In the 41 states without universal school meals, many parents are failing to sign up for free and reduced price meals, let alone Summer EBT. Meanwhile, nine states have passed universal school meals, requiring no paperwork during the school year, so parents had to know to sign up for Summer EBT separately.

Kelsey Boone, senior child nutrition policy analyst at the Food Research & Action Center, an anti-hunger nonprofit, said that, anecdotally, her organization has heard that while the streamlined application has had a lot of success getting benefits to families, states are seeing “lower than expected application return rates” for everyone else. Kansas, for example, had received more than 2,000 applications for Summer EBT by mid-September even though the Kansas Department for Children and Families estimates there are more than 100,000 families that are eligible for the program but have to enroll.

[Related: ‘It’s hard to focus’: Schools say American kids are hungry]

One problem is that some states haven’t created statewide applications specifically for Summer EBT, making it challenging for parents to figure out where and how to apply, and some have buried the applications deep in their websites. Another is that outreach to let parents know what they have to do “has not been as robust as it could be,” Boone said. She added that states don’t always have up-to-date addresses for households, particularly for low-income families who tend to move a lot, so any mail or even the EBT cards themselves may not reach parents. In at least some states, she noted, school districts weren’t even aware they had to tell parents to sign up.

The same problems plagued the P-EBT program. When summer P-EBT cards were distributed in 2022 and 2023, about $1 billion in benefits went unclaimed by eligible families, according to Rubel’s research, and about 4.5 million cards were either expunged or at risk of being expunged. Instead of conducting extensive outreach to make sure parents knew about the benefits and how to claim them, Rubel was told that:

Many state departments of education put the information on their websites and left it to parents to find it.

The problem with Summer EBT promises to be even more acute. Families had 274 days to realize they were missing out on P-EBT funds and sign up for the benefits, and if they spent at least a dollar the clock would reset, giving them another 274 days. The Summer EBT program gives families just 122 days from the date the money is loaded onto a card to spend it all before it’s forfeited and sent back to the federal government. “This is a very short window,” Rubel said. Nebraska started sending expungement letters in early September. Rubel estimates most of the money will be gone by the end of November.

Deadlines Extended, But Outreach is Needed

The good news is that states have been allowed to push application deadlines back so more families can apply and receive their money before it gets forfeited. In an email response to a question about the timeline, a USDA spokesperson said that the agency provided “additional flexibility” to allow all states that participated in the program this year to extend their application deadlines to ensure “sufficient time for applications to be submitted and processed.” The spokesperson said the agency will work with each state individually to determine the “appropriate” amount of time a state can extend a deadline.

Some states have already taken the agency up on the offer. Kansas and Oregon both announced they would push their deadlines to apply back.

But Rubel insists that school districts must do outreach to ensure eligible families get the money they’re owed before it’s too late. “They have the capacity, they have the infrastructure,” he said, adding that districts have up-to-date contact information for families. “They need to be prodded a little bit to help their families.”

It’s all the more urgent because the families that did receive Summer EBT dollars saw a huge benefit.

In Propel’s August 2024 survey, fewer families reported that they had to eat less, skip meals or were unable to buy the food they wanted as compared to August 2023. Fewer lacked household essentials, owed money on utility bills, or had their utilities shut off; fewer were evicted or lived in unstable housing. Summer EBT “was life saving,” one respondent said. “I didn’t know where my next meal was coming [from].” Another said, “It helped tremendously with groceries for me and my daughter right when we really needed it.”

“This money really can mean the difference between having food on the table and not having food on the table for a family during the summer,” Boone said.

There is a chance to fix this problem before next summer starts. First, advocates hope more states will decide to join the Summer EBT program, ensuring more families can participate. In 2024, 13 states opted out, but Alabama, for example, has already said it will join in 2025. The application window for next summer is currently open and will remain so through next August. For the states that participated this year, there are lessons to be learned about expanding accessibility. “There’s a lot of discussion about that right now,” Boone said. Some of that is about how states can improve their outreach, including putting more resources into it, trying to reach families in a multitude of ways and offering better customer service.

“So many of our problems are so hard to fix,” Rubel said. “This is a really easy one to fix.”

[Related Grant Opportunity: Farm to school program planning, education and edible garden grants]

***

Bryce Covert is an independent journalist writing about the economy. She is a contributing op-ed writer at the New York Times and a contributing writer at The Nation. Her writing has appeared in Time Magazine, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, the New Republic, Slate, and others, and she won a 2016 Exceptional Merit in Media Award from the National Women’s Political Caucus.

This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.

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Source

The Center for Native American Youth (CNAY)

Summary

“The Center for Native American Youth (CNAY) at the Aspen Institute is proud to release Center Us: A Native Youth Survey Report, published in celebration of Native American Heritage Month. Throughout 2023, CNAY gathered data from approximately 1,000 Native youth participants to better understand their needs and priorities in areas including culture, resource access, mental health and civic engagement. Eight focus groups with 65 youth from different regions of the United States helped to center their perspectives and voices in the development of the report.

Key Report Insights:

• • Native youth who feel culturally educated are four times more likely to see themselves as capable of making a difference than those who do not.
  • Lack of trust and a feeling that “nothing ever changes” leads to apathy towards voting in U.S. elections.
  • Native youth in rural communities struggle to receive the funding resources necessary to make higher education seem plausible.
  • Healthcare in tribal communities is preferred to healthcare in non-tribal communities.

“These findings emphasize the ongoing need to support Native youth through cultural engagement and improved access to resources in community, both of which are essential for fostering positive life outcomes,” said Cheyenne Brady-Runsabove, report writer and associate director of youth programs. “It is our hope that all those whose work directly or indirectly influences Native youth will leverage this data to make informed, impactful decisions that benefit them and their communities.””

Read Full Report →

[Related: Native Americans turn to charter schools to reclaim their kids’ education]

[Related: Healing the children of Horse Nations]

View Youth Today's Report Library

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This story was originally published by the Georgia Recorder.

President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education will be far easier said than done.

As Trump seeks to redefine U.S. education policy, the complex logistics, bipartisan congressional approval and redirection of federal programs required make dismantling the department a challenging — not impossible — feat.

It’s an effort that experts say is unlikely to gain traction in Congress and, if enacted, would create roadblocks for how Trump seeks to implement the rest of his wide-ranging education agenda.

“I struggle to wrap my mind around how you get such a bill through Congress that sort of defunds the agency or eliminates the agency,” Derek Black, an education law and policy expert and law professor at the University of South Carolina Joseph F. Rice School of Law, told States Newsroom.

“What you can see more easily is that maybe you give the agency less money, maybe you shrink its footprint, maybe we’ve got an (Office for Civil Rights) that still enforces all these laws, but instead of however many employees they have now, they have fewer employees,” Black, who directs the school’s Constitutional Law Center, added.

What does the department do?

Education is decentralized in the United States, and the federal Education Department has no say in the curriculum of public schools. Much of the funding and oversight of schools occurs at the state and local levels.

Still, the department has leverage through funding a variety of programs, such as for low-income school districts and special education, as well as administering federal student aid.

[Related: What might happen if the Education Department were closed?]

Axing the department would require those programs be unwound or assigned to other federal agencies to administer, according to Rachel Perera, a fellow in Governance Studies in the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.

Perera, who studies inequality in K-12 education, expressed concern over whether other departments would get additional resources and staffing to take on significantly more portfolios of work if current Education Department programs were transferred to them.

The shut down process and Project 25 agenda

Sen. Mike Rounds introduced a bill last week that seeks to abolish the department and transfer existing programs to other federal agencies.

In a statement, the South Dakota Republican said “the federal Department of Education has never educated a single student, and it’s long past time to end this bureaucratic Department that causes more harm than good.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposed a detailed plan on how the department could be dismantled through the reorganization of existing programs to other agencies and the elimination of the programs the project deems “ineffective or duplicative.”

[Related: How could Project 2025 change education?]

Though Trump has repeatedly disavowed the conservative blueprint, some former members of his administration helped write it.

The agenda also calls for restoring state and local control over education funding, and notes that “as Washington begins to downsize its intervention in education, existing funding should be sent to states as grants over which they have full control, enabling states to put federal funding toward any lawful education purpose under state law.”

Title I funding

Title I, one of the major funding programs the department administers, provides billions of dollars to school districts with high percentages of students who come from low-income families.

Black pointed to an entire “regulatory regime” that’s built around these funds.

“That regime can’t just disappear unless Title I money also disappears, which could happen, but if you think about Title I money — our rural states, our red states — depend on that money just as much, if not more, than the other states,” he said. “The idea that we would take that money away from those schools — I don’t think there’s any actual political appetite for that.”

‘Inherent logical inconsistencies’

Trump recently tapped Linda McMahon — a co-chair of his transition team, Small Business Administration head during his first term and former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO — as his nominee for Education secretary.

If confirmed, she will play a crucial role in carrying out his education plans, which include promoting universal school choice and parental rights, moving education “back to the states” and ending “wokeness” in education.

Trump, according to his plan, is threatening to cut federal funding for schools that teach:

• “critical race theory;”
• “gender ideology;” or,
• “other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children.”

On the flip side, he wants to boost funding for states and school districts that adhere to certain policy directives.

That list includes districts that:

• adopt a “Parental Bill of Rights that includes complete curriculum transparency, and a form of universal school choice;”
• get rid of “teacher tenure” for grades K-12;
• adopt “merit pay;”
• have parents hold the direct elections of school principals; and
• drastically reduce the number of school administrators.

But basing funding decisions on district-level policy choices would require the kind of federal involvement in education that Trump is pushing against.

Perera described seeing “inherent logical inconsistencies” in Trump’s education plan.

While he is talking about dismantling the department and sending education “back to the states,” he’s “also talking about leveraging the powers of the department to punish school districts for ‘political indoctrination,’” she said.

“He can’t do that if you are unwinding the federal role in K-12 schools,” she said.

[Related Grant Opportunity: Education improvement research grants]

***

Shauneen Miranda is a reporter for States Newsroom’s Washington D.C. bureau. She covers education policy and other congressional developments. Miranda previously covered breaking news for Axios, where she produced nearly 300 breaking news and original feature stories on politics, policy, extreme weather, education, tech and health. Prior to that Miranda worked as a reporter for CNN and NPR.

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. 

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The Trump administration has promised big changes, but the president can’t make them alone

This story was originally published by The Hechinger Report,

By now, you know about the endless speculation on whether the incoming Trump administration might close the U.S. Department of Education. It remains just that: speculation. Congress would have to be involved, and even a Senate and House controlled by the same party as President-elect Donald Trump would not necessarily go along with this idea.However, in a statement about his nomination of Linda McMahon for education secretary, Trump underscored his campaign pledge to disband the department, saying, “We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”

The mere specter of shuttering an agency that commands more than $200 billion has led parents, students, teachers, policy experts and politicians to wonder about (and in some cases plan for) the possible effects on their children and communities.

Collectively, state and local governments spend far more on education than the federal government does. With federal dollars connected to many rules about how that money can be spent, however, the Education Department does play a significant role in how schools and colleges operate.

Deleting the agency would not undo federal law providing money for students in rural places, with disabilities or who come from low-income families, but doling out that money and overseeing it could get messy. This week, Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota introduced a bill to unwind the Education Department and spread its work across other federal agencies.

The questions

The Hechinger Report tried to answer some of the questions raised by the possible dismantling of the department, consulting experts and advocates on student loans, special education, financial aid, school lunch and beyond.

Nothing is out of the realm of possibility, however complicated. A much smaller agency that guided Congress on science, the Office of Technology Assessment, simply had its budget set to zero back in 1995 — and just like that, it was gone.

The Education Department, created in 1979, reaches far wider and deeper, into essentially every community nationwide. Its impact is felt not so much in what students are learning every day but whether their schools or the government can:

• pay for the special equipment or training that might be essential for some students with disabilities;
• pay for an extra teacher to work with struggling readers;
• pay for a student from a low-income household to get federal grant money for college;
• forgive federally backed college student loans.

At the same time, many education programs, as well as some that touch schools, exist entirely outside of the Education Department. For example, it doesn’t run or oversee:

• the education of students whose parents live on military bases, managed by the Defense Department;
• the education of students who attend school on Native American reservations, managed by the Interior Department;
• school lunch or breakfast programs, managed by the Agriculture Department;
• the biggest child care programs for low-income families, managed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Early education

What would happen to federal early education programs?

The most well-known and biggest federal early childhood programs, Head Start and the Child Care Development Block Grant, are not a part of the Education Department — they’re administered by the Department of Health and Human Services. So they would not be directly affected by an Education Department shutdown.

But Education does oversee and pay for some smaller early learning programs and early childhood research. For example, the Preschool Development Grant — Birth through Five, provides funding for state early learning programs and is overseen jointly with HHS. Other programs, such as Promise Neighborhoods and Full Service Community Schools, also address the early years and family support.

The Education Department also is home to several research centers that focus on young children, many of which conduct long-term students or research aimed at improving the lives of infants and toddlers with disabilities. Those programs, if they were not cut, would have to move to another agency.

K12 Education

What happens to Title I and other money that the department doles out?

Closing the Education Department would not undo it. Title I — a program established in 1965 that provides money to schools with large numbers of low-income students — is part of federal law. If the Education Department were to be eliminated, the most likely scenario is that Title I money would flow through another federal agency. Major cuts to the program are unlikely.

While Trump and others close to him have said they would like to cut federal education funding streams like Title I, any cuts would need to go through Congress — where that funding has broad political support among both Republicans and Democrats. That is especially true for Title I: Almost all school districts in the country get a share of that money.

So it’s unlikely Title I “would ever see an actual cut, and certainly not a substantial cut,” said Nora Gordon, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. She said even members of Congress who are hostile to other federal programs that allocate funds for low-income families would be reluctant to defund Title I.

[Related: Unlikely Trump can actually eliminate Education Department, experts say]

Do I have to worry about special education?

There would be bureaucratic upheaval if another agency took on oversight of education of students with disabilities, but the special education law itself, and the money allotted to it, would not change without an act of Congress.

The law now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was passed in 1975, four years before the Education Department was formed. At that time, it was administered by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now known as the Department of Health and Human Services department).

About 7.5 million children are now served under the IDEA. For fiscal 2024, the department oversaw about $14 billion in funding for school-aged children, with smaller pots of money going to infants, toddlers, and other special education-related programs.

Through the Education Department, the government sets rules for states, districts and schools about how children should be identified for possible disabilities and how families, parents and schools should work together to create a child’s “individualized education program,” a menu of the supports and services they should receive.

Does this mean everyone will get a private school voucher?      

Regardless of the future of the Education Department, Trump could, with the support of Congress, take some action to expand school choice nationwide. Republicans in their official party platform made universal school choice, in every state, a top priority. The idea didn’t go far under Trump’s first education secretary, but political headwinds may make it easier for him to achieve some policy wins this time.

[Related: What education could look like under Trump and Vance]

During the first Trump administration, then-Secretary Betsy DeVos pushed to expand school choice, largely through charter schools and private school vouchers. Congress, however, ignored her budget request in 2018 for $400 million to fund their expansion. A year later, DeVos pitched $5 billion in tax credits for individuals and businesses that contribute to scholarships for students to attend private schools. Trump resurrected the idea in early 2020, and again as an option for parents frustrated with prolonged school closures during the pandemic. A bill to create the tax credits died in committee.

As part of the agenda for his next term, Trump has pledged to allow families with a 529 college savings plan to spend up to $10,000 a year per child on homeschool education. The GOP also wants to expand education savings accounts, or ESAs — a polarizing program that allows families to pull their children out of public school and use a portion of state per-pupil funding on private school tuition, homeschool supplies and other educational costs. At least a dozen states since 2020 have created ESA programs, with some offering universal enrollment regardless of a family’s income level and with few restrictions on taxpayer money being spent on religious education.

Rural opposition has stalled such legislation in states like Texas, and voters in November rejected school choice measures on ballots in three states. But in recent years, the Supreme Court has expanded the religious rights of parents and sectarian schools. Trump’s next education secretary is also likely to have an easier time clearing school choice legislation with Republican control of both the House and Senate.

[Related: School choice may have its biggest moment yet]

What would happen to school lunch, and free and reduced-price school lunches?

Nothing. Eliminating the Education Department would likely have little or no impact on the school lunch program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, not the Education Department, runs the vast National School Lunch Program, although the data collected by schools about the number of students who qualify for low-cost or no-cost breakfast and lunch powers a lot of the education agency’s work. About 30 million kids participate in the program on a given school day — including students at public charter schools and some nonprofit private schools.

During Trump’s first term, as part of a collection of pandemic-related measures, he approved providing school lunches to all students, regardless of their household income. Several states have since kept up that effort since the pandemic option expired, offering free meals to all students no matter their family earnings. And a growing number of schools in other states now offer meals to all students if a large enough number qualify for free lunches. Earlier this year, a Republican budget proposal, called Fiscal Sanity to Save America, said that option should be eliminated.

Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, created by the conservative Heritage Foundation, but that document also calls for reining in spending on school meals. “Federal school meals increasingly resemble entitlement programs that have strayed far from their original objective and represent an example of the ever-expanding federal footprint in local school operations.”

What happens to education research and the tracking of students’ academic achievement?

The work of the Institute of Education Sciences, the research and statistics arm of the Education Department, is mandated by law and would not disappear overnight even if the agency were abolished. IES collects and aggregates data from more than 19,000 school districts around the country to give the public a national picture of our decentralized educational system, from counting the number of students and dollars spent on schools to tracking class sizes and years teachers stay in the job. IES disburses millions of dollars each year to researchers to develop new ideas for improving instruction, and it evaluates programs afterward. One-fourth of IES’s $800 million a year budget goes to administering the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which is an important yardstick for measuring academic achievement among fourth and eighth graders.

All three of these functions — statistics collection, research and assessment — theoretically could be transferred to other agencies, according to former IES director Mark Schneider, whom Trump appointed to a six-year term during the former president’s first term. Education research could shift to the National Science Foundation, which already awards grants for educational research along with the Education Department. The statistics unit, also known as the National Center for Education Statistics, could be folded into the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is the main statistical agency of the federal government. A new home for the NAEP test is less obvious.

Schneider said that talk of eliminating the Education Department may invite more scrutiny into what its research arm does. Advocates could try to capitalize on this scrutiny as an opportunity to lobby for an overhaul of the research division, he said.

Higher Education

What happens to student loans if the Education Department is abolished?

Student debt won’t disappear even if the Education Department does. The federal agency contracts with the loan servicers that manage nearly $2 trillion in student loan debt and oversees the programs that can lead to loans being forgiven, such as for teachers and people who work in public health.

“The terms and conditions of the loans don’t change just because the agency changes,” said Betsy Mayotte, president of the Institute of Student Loan Advisors, which offers advice and guidance on student loans to borrowers. If there is no Education Department, it’s likely that student loan oversight and debt collection would shift to the Treasury Department. “I expect that at least initially the servicers wouldn’t even change.”

Aside from that,Republicans in Congress, who will soon control both chambers, have proposed a College Cost Reduction Act, which would increase the amount of federal Pell grants for third- and fourth-year college students pursuing bachelor’s degrees in fields considered to be in high demand. It would also simplify the student loan repayment process and end certain kinds of loans available to parents, graduate students and low-income learners. It would hold colleges and universities, rather than taxpayers, responsible for loans on which their students have defaulted.

The Biden administration’s relentless and embattled attempts to forgive some student loan debt are almost certain to come to an abrupt end. Many have been blocked by courts anyway, and Trump and his allies have characterized them as an unfair transfer of wealth from people who didn’t go to college to people who did.

What about grants and aid for paying for college, and the FAFSA?

Even without an Education Department, it is unlikely that the Pell grant — which most low-income students use to help pay for college — would disappear. Congress controls who is eligible for Pell, so the Trump administration couldn’t decide on its own to change or take away the grant. Pell has long had bipartisan support in Congress, and it is very unlikely that a Republican-controlled Congress would get rid of a grant that is relied on by so many constituents.

House Republicans have, however, proposed changes to eligibility and the award amount. A version of the College Cost Reduction Act has a chance of passing since Republicans will soon control Congress. The bill would peg the Pell award to the median cost of a college program, instead of basing it on the particular cost of the program or college where a student is enrolled. In practice, this means students enrolled in a program that is more expensive than average, whether due to the price set by the institution or due to a higher cost of living in that area, could see their award reduced. In addition, the determination of financial need would no longer take into account a family farm where the family resides or a family-owned small business that has fewer than 100 employees.

McMahon, Trump’s nominee for education secretary, also supports changes to Pell. She wrote an opinion piece in September promoting what’s known as “short-term Pell.” Right now, for the most part, Pell can be used only to pay for education programs that last 15 weeks or more (about one semester). McMahon supports a bill, which has some bipartisan support, that would allow federal aid dollars to pay for short-term programs that train students for particular jobs.

Critics worry such an expansion could take Pell dollars away from traditional programs. They note many short-term programs (for example, welder and HVAC programs) are already Pell-eligible and that shorter programs, including many run by for-profit companies, often don’t have good results. A recent report showed no improvement in employment for students who used short-term Pell.

While last year’s FAFSA rollout was broadly criticized, there seems to be no appetite to further complicate students’ ability to access federal financial aid. In fact, the College Cost Reduction Act includes a requirement that would simplify and standardize college financial aid offers so that students have an easier time understanding and comparing them.

[Related: How four universities graduate their low-income students at much higher rates than average]

***

Reporting for The Hechinger Report:

• Jill Barshay, writes the “Proof Points” column about education research and data
• Meredith Kolodner, senior investigations reporter
• Jackie Mader, senior reporter
• Jon Marcus, senior higher education reporter
• Neal Morton, western education reporter
• Javeria Salman, staff writer and writes the Future of Learning newsletter
• Christina A. Samuels, deputy managing editor
• Nirvi Shah, editor

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

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Courtesy Senate.gov

U.S. Senator Mike Rounds during a Senate committee meeting, Dec. 2023.

This story was originallly published by the South Dakota Searchlight.

Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota introduced legislation Thursday that would eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and redistribute some of its programs across other federal agencies.

The “Returning Education to Our States Act” is the latest effort to remove the department by Rounds, who said he’s been pursuing the goal “for years.”

The Department of Education was established in 1979 during the administration of Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Rounds alleged in a news release that the department’s budget has swollen ever since then without improving education.

Rounds said:

“Local school boards and state departments of education know best what their students need, not unelected bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.”

Nevertheless, Rounds’ release also said “there are several important programs housed within the Department,” which the bill would redirect to other departments. The release went on to list 25 such programs.

Critics of similar proposals have raised concerns that eliminating the department could lead to inequities in education funding, oversight and access among the states.

Calls to eliminate the Department of Education have been boosted by Republican President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump recently issued a statement supporting the idea when he announced his plan to nominate Linda McMahon for secretary of the department. McMahon is a decades-long executive with World Wrestling Entertainment and was the head of the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first presidency.

Trump said:

“We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort.”

***

Joshua Haiar is a reporter based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He reports for South Dakota Public Radio and is SDPB’s journalism team lead of digital content. He specialize in multi-media/motion graphics and audio production. Haiar ‘s work has appeared numerous States Newsroom local news outlets across the country.

South Dakota Searchlight provides free news and commentary on critical issues facing the state. We seek to serve the public interest with accuracy, fairness, insight and civility.

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. 

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This story was originally published by ProPublica.

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Surveys find access to algebra is only one problem in schools where teaching quality is ‘less optimal’

Like learning to read by third grade, taking eighth grade math is a pivotal moment in a child’s education. Students who pass Algebra 1 in eighth grade are more likely to sign up for more advanced math courses, and those who pass more advanced math courses are more likely to graduate from college and earn more money.

“Algebra in eighth grade is a gateway to a lot of further opportunities,” said Dan Goldhaber, an economist who studies education at the American Institutes for Research, in a recent webinar.

Researchers are trying to understand why so few Black and Hispanic students and low-income students of all races are making it through this early gate. While 25 percent of white students passed algebra in eighth  grade in 2021, only 13 percent of Black students did, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Education.

A collection of surveys of teachers and principals, conducted by the research organization RAND, suggests three problems at the poorest middle schools, which are disproportionately populated with Black and Hispanic students:

1. Many schools don’t offer algebra at all.
2. Their teachers have less training and math expertise.
3. Their teachers spend classroom time differently than teachers do at wealthier schools.

That means the most advanced students at many middle schools in poor communities don’t have the opportunity to learn algebra, and many students at high-poverty schools aren’t receiving the kind of math lessons that could help them get ready for the subject.In 2023 and 2024,

RAND surveyed more than 3,000 school principals and almost 1,000 math teachers across the country.

The educators are part of a specially constructed national sample, designed to reflect all public schools and the demographics of the U.S. student population. A working paper, “Socioeconomic and Racial Discrepancies in Algebra Access, Teacher, and Learning Experiences,” analyzing some of the survey findings was released in October 2024.

The poorest 25 percent of schools had vastly different course offerings and teachers than the wealthiest 25 percent. Most strikingly, nearly a quarter of the highest poverty schools didn’t offer algebra at all to any eighth graders, compared with only 6 percent of the wealthiest schools.

Conversely, poor schools are much less likely to adopt an algebra-for-all policy in eighth grade. Nearly half of the wealthiest schools offered algebra to all of their eighth grade students, regardless of math ability, compared with about a third of the poorest schools.

Slide from a RAND webinar, “Racial and Socioeconomic Divides in Algebra Teaching and Learning,” presented in November 2024.

Math teachers at high-poverty schools tended to have weaker professional preparation. They were far more likely to have entered the profession without first earning a traditional education degree at a college or university, instead completing an alternative certification program on the job, often without student teaching under supervision. And they were less likely to have a graduate degree or hold a mathematics credential.

Slide from a RAND webinar, “Racial and Socioeconomic Divides in Algebra Teaching and Learning,” presented in November 2024.

In surveys, a third of math teachers at high-poverty schools reported that they spent more than half of class time teaching topics that were below grade level, as well as managing student behavior and disciplining students. Lecture-style instruction, as opposed to classroom discussion, was far more common at the poorest schools compared to the wealthiest schools.

[Related: Why expanding access to algebra is a matter of civil rights]

RAND researchers also detected similar discrepancies in instructional patterns when they examined schools along racial and ethnic lines, with Black and Hispanic students receiving “less optimal” instruction than white students. But these discrepancies were stronger by income than by race, suggesting that poverty may be a bigger factor than bias.

Slide from a RAND webinar, “Racial and Socioeconomic Divides in Algebra Teaching and Learning,” presented in November 2024.

Many communities have tried putting more eighth graders into algebra classes, but that has sometimes left unprepared students worse off.  “Simply giving them an eighth grade algebra course is not a magic bullet,” said AIR’s Goldhaber, who commented on the RAND analysis during a Nov. 5 webinar.

[Related: Thrown into the deep end of algebra]

Either the material is too challenging and the students fail or the course was “algebra” in name only and didn’t really cover the content. And without a college preparatory track of advanced math classes to take after algebra, the benefits of taking Algebra 1 in eighth grade are unlikely to accrue.

It’s also not economically practical for many low-income middle schools to offer an Algebra 1 course when only a handful of students are advanced enough to take it. A teacher would have to be hired even for a few students and those resources might be more effectively spent on something else that would benefit more students. That puts the most advanced students at low-income schools at a particular disadvantage. Go;dhaber said:

“It’s a difficult issue for schools to tackle on their own.”

Improving math teacher quality at the poorest schools is a critical first step. Some researchers have suggested paying strong math teachers more to work at high-poverty schools, but that would also require the renegotiation of union contracts in many cities. And, even with financial incentives, there is a shortage of math teachers.

[Related: Kindergarten math is often too basic. Here’s why that’s a problem]

For students, AIR’s Goldhaber argues the time to intervene in math is in elementary school to make sure more low-income students have strong basic math skills. “Do it before middle school,” said Goldhaber. “For many students, middle school is too late.”

***

Jill Barshay writes The Hechinger Report’s weekly “Proof Points” column about education research and data, covering a range of topics from early childhood to higher education. She also taught algebra to ninth-graders for the 2013-14 school year. Previously, Barshay was the New York bureau chief for Marketplace, a national business show on public radio stations. She has also written for Congressional Quarterly, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Financial Times, and appeared on CNN and ABC News.

This story about eighth grade math was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

This story also appeared in Mind/Shift.

Disclosure: The “Socioeconomic and Racial Discrepancies in Algebra Access, Teacher, and Learning Experiences” analysis was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report.

The post Three reasons why so few eighth graders in the poorest schools take algebra appeared first on Youth Today.

This story was originally published in The Virginia Watch.

West Virginia’s foster care system needs money and mandated changes to improve its outcomes for children, according to Republican lawmakers who on Nov. 11 laid out grim realities of the overburdened system.

The state leads the nation in the rate of children coming into foster care.

West Virginia’s child welfare system has struggled to keep up with the crisis.

Courtesy WV Legislature

Del. Jonathan Pinson, R-Mason, deputy majority whip

“It’s almost four times higher than any other state,” said Del. Jonathan Pinson, R-Mason, who is a foster parent. “That ought to get our attention as the Legislature.”

There are 6,008 children in state foster care; many are teenagers. There aren’t enough Child Protective Services workers, foster homes or services for kids.

“The system is much larger than that when you take in the consideration the families who need help to keep CPS from taking the child, kids aging out and kids who are adopted,” said Del. Adam Burkhammer, R-Lewis. He is also a foster parent. “You’re looking at a bigger need than 6,000.”

Department of Human Services leaders say they’ve made improvements to the foster care system, but lawmakers said there’s more that must be done for children. Republicans in the House and Senate have a laundry list of needs, and Burkhammer stressed that the state must prioritize beefing up prevention programs to keep additional kids from needing the system.

Will Price/West Virginia Legislative Photography

Del. Adam Burkhammer, R-Lewis, presents on the foster care system to the Joint Standing Committee on Health during legislative interims on Monday, Nov. 11, 2024 in Charleston, W.Va.

There are federal funds being left on the table that the DoHS hasn’t utilized, he noted. But, services for children — like substance use treatment for parents and behavioral therapy — will still need state funding.

“The funding never scares me,” said Senate Finance Chairman Eric Tarr, R-Putnam. “It’s just a matter of when we appropriate the money, that we know it gets to what it’s supposed to. That’s always been a challenge with DoHS.”

He continued, “If it’s a caucus priority, then it will be in the budget.”

Nearly one in eight infants born in West Virginia between 2020 and 2022 had in utero exposure to opioids, stimulants and/or cannabis.

Del. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, noted that many of those babies could end up in the foster care system without early intervention services.

“If we really don’t address preventative services, we’re going to keep beating our heads against the wall,” he said. “We need to address that in the budget bill when we’re prioritizing what needs to be cut and what needs to be funded … It’s going to keep getting worse.”

DoHS says they’ve improved foster care, lawmakers call for more

A 2019 class-action lawsuit alleged widespread problems in the system, including a lack of permanent homes for children, kids sent to unsafe institutions and overburdened CPS workers who couldn’t keep up with caseloads.

In July, DoHS requested a summary judgment in the lawsuit, saying they’d hired more CPS workers and recruited more foster families.

Senate and House Republicans in a work group focused on foster care reform said months of looking at the system showed continued inadequacies. Their findings showed a lack of urgency in serving children and that DoHS needed to be more transparent about how they’ve handled child abuse and neglect cases.

There still aren’t enough CPS workers.

“There are 79 openings out of 390 CPS workers,” Burkhammer said. “That leads to high caseloads … I believe it, ultimately, leads to poor quality and attention to our children.”

Funding continues to be a struggle, Burkhammer added.

“Sometimes the money is there and the bills are not being paid in a timely manner,” he said.

Courtesy WV Legislature

Sen. Vince Deeds, R-Greenbrier

Burkhammer, Pinson and Sen. Vince Deeds, R-Greenbrier, presented foster care legislation they hope lawmakers will consider during the 2025 legislative session. Their ideas included improvements to a voucher program for foster parents that would ensure kids have enough clothes. Another bill would increase the pay rate for guardian ad litems, which are court-appointed attorneys who represent the best interests of the child.

“Every guardian ad litem has at least 41 active cases on top of their other legal work,” Pinson said. “If we’re going to retain excellent attorneys for the children we take custody of, we’re going to have to pay them.”

Lawmakers also drafted legislation focused on improving DoHS transparency in how it responds to abuse and neglect referrals. There would be new and more timely data requirements, including that audio files connected to referrals be kept for a year. The department would be required to quickly and publicly share some information in cases involving a child’s death.

DoHS faced backlash earlier this year for how it handled the apparent starvation death of 14 year old Kyneddi Miller. Reporters were denied records, and state leaders had conflicting, limited, and combative responses to questions about whether the state knew about Miller prior to her death.

“Everyone wants the best for our children, and I believe this bill will help us do that,” Deeds said.

***

Amelia is an investigative reporter for West Virginia Watch. Her coverage regularly focuses on poverty, child welfare, social services and government. Previously she reported for West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Mountain State Spotlight, Report for America, Charleston Gazette-Mail, The Tennessean, and WOWK 13News,

West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. 

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TOPEKA — The court-appointed monitor for Kansas’ settlement of a foster care lawsuit challenged the state’s reliance on “sleep-only” housing because the practice didn’t contribute to satisfactory outcomes for children and distorted statistics on the number of youths in stable residential settings.

Monitor Judith Meltzer, senior fellow with the nonprofit Center for the Study of Social Policy, said Kansas was supposed to have remedied years ago problems with temporarily holding foster children in offices, motels and other unsuitable locations. The issue came to light in 2017 during the administration of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, but continued under Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly.

Meltzer told the Kansas Legislature’s foster care oversight committee that placement of children in sleep-only settings was an attempt to artificially deflate the number reported as not having been moved to a stable foster home.

“We think it masks the extent of the problem of their instability.”

“They have a bed for the night, but they need to be out of the foster parents’ house during the day,” Meltzer said. “We’re very concerned about this practice and that these children appear in the data to have stable placements because they returned to the same foster home every night.”

She said it was widely accepted that emergency or short-term placements contributed to “the instability of children and exacerbated the trauma of family separation.”

Kansas Reflector screen capture/Kansas Legislature’s YouTube

Judith Meltzer, senior fellow with the nonprofit Center for the Study of Social Policy, said for the third consecutive year Kansas had failed to meet goals of a legal settlement designed to improve services to foster care children.

Brenna Visocsky, director of Kansas Appleseed’s Just Campaign, explained:

Some Kansas children in sleep-only arrangements had to be out of foster homes each day by 6 a.m.

In some instances, the Kansas Department for Children and Families and their private contractors allowed these children to spend portions of the day at school or in unlicensed day centers before returning to a foster home in the late evening.

“We want to make sure these kids are in legitimate stable placements,” Visocsky said. “It is crucial that DCF and their case management partners take accountability for the continued negative realities our foster youth face in their care.”

Kansas Appleseed was among several groups that filed a class-action lawsuit, known as McIntyre v. Howard, against Kansas in 2018 to challenge the state’s poor treatment of foster children. The lawsuit led to a negotiated settlement in 2020 and an agreement on methods of measuring progress and deadlines for gradually making improvements.

Laura Howard, secretary of the state Department for Children and Families, said the agency was striving to improve its ability to place foster children in stable environments. She said it was important to acknowledge how chaotic the state’s foster system was when she became secretary nearly six years ago.

“We had reports, not just of youths sleeping in offices, but youths being driven around in cars all night.”

The timeline set by DCF, Kansas Appleseed and the U.S. District Court for attaining agreed-upon goals in serving 5,800 foster children expires in December 2025.

It’s unclear if Kansas could meet that deadline for overhauling the large and complex privatized foster care system. Plaintiffs in the case have requested the federal court appoint a mediator to develop a corrective action plan that could add urgency to the state’s reform of foster care. If that mediation process were to fail, the plaintiffs have the option of returning to court and arguing the state was in breach of the settlement agreement.

Inside the numbers

On Wednesday at the Capitol, Meltzer said Kansas failed for the third year to comply with targeted improvements ordered by the court under the settlement.

“Overall, progress was disappointing,” she said. “It’s important to recognize this state has remained committed to meeting requirements of the settlement.”

“However, despite focused effort, it is far from meeting the majority of the anticipated final targets.”

Kansas was to end the practice of housing youths overnight in offices, hotels and other questionable spaces by 2021, but during 2023 there were 57 children who experienced 68 instances of sleeping in settings not licensed as child welfare placements. That was an improvement over 2022, but preliminary data on 2024 indicated that number was “substantially increasing.”

Meanwhile, foster children 0 to 18 last year averaged 7.9 placement moves per 1,000 days, which was 60% higher than the benchmark goal of five or fewer moves over 1,000 days. In 2023, 822 youths experienced 2,057 one-night placements, which was a 36% increase over the previous year.

Kansas Reflector screen capture/Kansas Legislature’s YouTube

Laura Howard, secretary of the Kansas Department for Children and Families, said the third annual court-ordered assessment of foster care reform in Kansas illustrated shortcomings with child placement, delivery of mental and behavioral health services and caseload size.

Documents analyzed by the court’s monitor showed the state experienced a decline in delivery of behavioral and mental health services.  The goal established in the settlement was for Kansas to gradually improve its rating from 80% served in 2021 to 85% in 2022 and 90% in 2023. Instead, the state reported complying with health needs of children in foster care 65% of the time in 2021, 70% of the time in 2022 and 52% of the time last year.

The monitor’s report noted Kansas lacked an effective statewide data collection system.

This meant it relied on a hodgepodge of antiquated data sources to figure out what was happening to foster children. Kansas must have quality data measuring performance and outcomes to hold contractors accountable, the report said.

In Kansas, 3,000 children in foster care were assigned to a caseworker grappling with 30 or more cases. Under the settlement, caseworkers were to have no more than 25 to 30 cases because larger caseloads hindered the ability of caseworkers to connect with children in their care. In July, DCF directed the system’s contractors cap caseloads at 15.

Howard, the DCF secretary, acknowledged shortcomings identified in the annual report but said the state had made meaningful progress in preventing children from entering foster care. In her time at DCF, the roster of foster children in Kansas fell from 7,600 in June 2019 to 5,800 in June 2024.

She said the state increased the number of children placed with relatives — with 54% of placements this year made with relatives. She said 87% of Kansas foster children were in a stable placement and 83% percent had no more than one residential move in the past 12 months. She said mental health crisis support was more readily available.

“Despite these bright spots,” Howard said, “we continue to fall short on a number of settlement performance goals, and from my perspective this level of performance is not acceptable. We have more work to do, especially for a cohort of youth who experience extreme placement instability.”

Poverty, cultural factors

Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, a Wichita Democrat on the Legislature’s foster care oversight committee, said it was frustrating Black children were overrepresented in the state’s system. Black children made up approximately 6% of the state’s population, but about three times that percentage were in foster care.

“A lot of times social workers remove children just because they’re poor,” Faust-Goudeau said. “They remove children just because their culture is different. The way that we do things might be different from the white social worker who is visiting the home, so they remove children.”

Republican Sen. Molly Baumgardner of Louisburg echoed Faust-Goudeau’s conclusions and called it grievous a disproportionate number of children of color were entering foster care in Kansas. She said minority children stayed longer in foster care and were not as quickly adopted. She said it was harmful when children from southcentral Kansas were relocated to foster homes across the state, because it made family visits nearly impossible.

Rep. Susan Humphries, a Wichita Republican on the foster care panel, said it was a disappointment DCF hadn’t proceeded quickly on upgrading IT systems to better administer foster care cases.

“I would suggest if this was a private business that we would be able to do it more quickly,” she said. “I know government has bureaucracy. I’m just going to say that. This has gone on way too long.”

Republican Sen. Renee Erickson of Wichita said she was anxious Kansas was missing deadlines outlined in the binding agreement.

She said dedicated people were working on behalf of foster care children, but there should be more urgency in state government to comply with the deal.

“It’s felt to me, being on this committee, a little bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic,” Erickson said. “When I look at the data and all of the efforts and we continue to lose ground and sink a little more every year at the expense of these children, it’s unacceptable.”

***

Tim Carpenter has reported on Kansas for 38 years. He covered the Capitol for 16 years at the Topeka Capital-Journal and previously worked for the Lawrence Journal-World and United Press International.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. 

The post Kansas foster care compliance report raises concern with ‘sleep-only’ placement of children appeared first on Youth Today.

State auditor will investigate the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to get at the root causes.

This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education.

After receiving what she called “numerous” complaints about foster children in Kentucky sleeping in office buildings without supervision by trained staff, state Auditor Allison Ball said Tuesday the Office of the Ombudsman will investigate.

Calling it an “ongoing crisis” that is “years” in the making, Ball said the ombudsman will investigate the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to get at the root causes.

Terry Brooks, the executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, said the problem isn’t new — and solving it won’t be  simple or cheap. He said:

“It involves a “niche population” of high-needs youth who likely need specialized care.”

“It’s not typically 5-year-old kids who look like they fell off a TV commercial,” Brooks said. “You’re talking about older kids, teenagers, high levels of acuity, probably some special needs, probably with a history of aggressive behavior. I’m painting a portrait of a young person who we definitely need to care for, but we know it’s going to take creativity and resources to be able to do that.”

A spokesperson for the auditor said the office thinks the practice has “been going on for two years and has affected about 300 children, but we’ll know exactly once we dig in.”

The Cabinet for Health and Family Services’ response

The cabinet said in a statement that it has “taken action to address the challenges that come with placing youth with severe mental and behavioral problems or a history of violence or sexual aggression with foster families or facilities.”

“We’ve publicly addressed this many times with lawmakers and have offered more funding to secure additional safe, short-term care options for youth,” a cabinet spokesman said. “When one of these placements are necessary, we work to make sure each youth has a safe place to stay until a placement can be made.”

“We urge those interested in becoming a foster parent to help us meet the needs of all our youth, please visit KyFaces.ky.gov.”

In 2023, The Courier Journal reported that a shortage of available and willing foster families was a factor in the state’s decision to house some youth in a Louisville office building. WDRB reported earlier this year that the practice has continued, despite concerns raised by a Louisville judge.

“My office has continued to receive numerous complaints of foster children and teenagers sleeping on cots and air mattresses in office buildings, often not supervised by trained staff,” Ball said in a statement. “I have instructed the Ombudsman’s Office to investigate this issue to uncover the problems associated with this ongoing crisis.”

“The vulnerable children of Kentucky deserve to be placed in nurturing environments where they are provided with the resources, stability, and care they need,” Ball said.

Staff are still trying to confirm how many office buildings are involved.

A spokesperson for Ball said, “We can confirm that this is not exclusively a Jefferson County issue.” 

Sleeping in an office building can compound trauma youth already have experienced, Brooks said. “It certainly is not going to create a positive childhood experience,” he said. “It’s going to create more adversity to kids who have already experienced too much adversity.”

Kentucky ‘can’t do this on the cheap’

Kentucky needs more families to foster, but it also needs a better system to support children who can’t be placed, Brooks said. Kentucky must “incentivize” — through higher wages and reimbursements — a “willingness to take on tough cases.”

Lawmakers can look to Tennessee, he said, which has faced similar problems and responded by increasing  payments to foster parents and wages to state staff working with higher-needs children.

[Related: White House unveils new policies to transform child welfare]

“They have just owned the fact that,‘if I’m getting paid $15 an hour, I’m probably not going to be volunteering to get bitten, spit on and other issues with tough kids,’” Brooks said.

Another solution Kentucky should consider, Brooks said, would be  to create triage centers — safe, secure, designated spaces — to temporarily house children who can’t immediately be placed.

[Related: Former foster youth are eligible for federal housing aid. Georgia isn’t helping them get it.]

“If the General Assembly cares about those kids sleeping in offices as much as (CHFS Secretary Eric Friedlander) and Auditor Ball, then they’ve got to take action,” Brooks said. “And it can’t be rhetorical. It has to be resources. So I don’t know if that is looking at existing resources, I don’t know if that’s taking the big swing (and) reopening the budget, but you can’t do this on the cheap.”

***

Sarah Ladd is a covers health and health policy reporter for the Kentucky Lantern. She has reported internationally as well as domestically with bylines in News from the States, Kentucky Lantern, USA Today, The Courier Journal and more. 

Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. 

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This article was originally published in The Conversation. 

As more states legalize marijuana, researchers are examining the effects of legalization on society. Angus Kittelman, an assistant professor of special education at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Gulcan Cil, a senior statistician at Oregon Health & Science University, decided to look at the effects of cannabis dispensaries being located near schools. They discuss their research in the following Q&A with The Conversation education editor Jamaal Abdul-Alim.

The interview

Is it bad when a school is located near a dispensary?

Courtesy Angus Kittelman

Angus Kittelman

Yes, it’s not good for a couple of reasons. When cannabis dispensaries are near middle schools, students are more likely to receive office discipline referrals for substance use. When students get sent to the office, they lose valuable instructional time in the classroom.

Adolescent cannabis use is also associated with many negative health effects, such as poorer cognitive functioning and increased risks for developing mental health or substance use disorders. Students who use cannabis are also less likely to complete high school or go to college.

With the legalization of recreational cannabis sales in many U.S. states, there are more cannabis outlets and greater access, which can be concerning for families and schools. In our recent study, for example, we found that the number of office discipline referrals for substance use increased in middle schools after legalization of recreational cannabis in the state of Oregon in 2015. But this increase was only when there were recreational outlets within a 1-mile radius of the schools.

Middle school students receiving an office discipline referral for substance use is relatively rare. An average middle school had three to four referrals of substance use per year. But those near an outlet experienced a 44% increase after legalization and had one to two additional referrals on average each year.

What’s causing the increase in referrals?

Courtesy Gulcan Cil

Gulcan Cil

Great question. We analyzed student substance referrals after excluding referrals for tobacco and alcohol. We observed increases in substance referrals in Oregon schools after the statewide legalization of cannabis in 2015, compared with the trends in similar states with no legal cannabis at the time. We then examined whether having a cannabis dispensary within a 1-mile radius was associated with an increase in referrals.

We cannot say with certainty that the increase in all substance use referrals were from cannabis use. However, we know that cannabis is among the most common substances adolescents reported using. In a nationwide survey, for example, 8.3% of eighth graders reported using cannabis. That’s compared with 12% for vaping nicotine/tobacco and 15.2% for alcohol.

[Related: Vaping — These Colorado schools will get $11.7 million of Juul lawsuit settlement money for education and prevention]

Besides potentially providing easier access to the product, when there are more legal cannabis stores in certain neighborhoods – and increases in signs and flyers advertising for it – it may make kids ignore or downplay the health risks. Increases in exposure to cannabis marketing is associated with adolescents being more likely to use cannabis.

Isn’t a 1-mile radius a rather large area?

Students often travel a mile or two to get to school. And those in middle schools are more likely to walk to school compared with students in elementary or high school. Therefore, even though adolescents are too young to legally buy cannabis themselves, having a cannabis outlet nearby makes it easier for them to obtain it from a friend or purchase it from a stranger.

ksana05/Shutterstock

Middle schoolers are more likely to walk to school than their younger and older peers.

What can be done?

We recommend that school staff look for patterns in student discipline referrals for substance use. If the substance use is occurring in certain school locations, such as playgrounds, hallways or bathrooms, staff can then supervise these areas better.

Schools may consider implementing proactive and preventive strategies to support students engaging in substance use. These can include having school counselors provide drug resistance skills training programs or programs that teach students how to manage emotions and to resist stressful situations.

***

Angus Kittelman is an assistant professor at University of Missouri-Columbia’s Department of Special Education. His research areas include positive behavioral interventions and supports with an emphasis in high schools, implementation science and systems change, and implementing and evaluating school-based interventions for students with emotional and behavioral problems. In 2023, he was a recipient of the Initial Researcher Award from the Association of Positive Behavior Support.

Gulcan Cil is a senior statistician and health policy researcher at the Center for Evidence-based Policy at Oregon Health & Science University and an Associate Scientist at Oregon Research Institute. Her expertise is in using data from administrative records for research and advanced statistical methods for improved causal inference. She is particularly interested in policy evaluation in terms of their impacts on individual behaviors and outcomes, and assessment of the effects of different environmental and behavioral factors on health. 

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

Disclosure: The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters.

Lauryn Lawson, 10, a fifth grader at Logan Elementary School in Northwest Philadelphia, likes trees and plants. So does her classmate Lawrence Butler, 11. They both take every opportunity they can to go outside and help tend the small raised bed vegetable garden on the school’s front lawn.

For one thing, planting and harvesting peppers and other vegetables “is more fun than being in the classroom,” Lawrence explained.

He also likes learning about what he eats and how they grow, like “broccoli, carrots, and lettuce,” he said.

On Tuesday, Lawrence, Lauryn, and other students were front and center with important city and state officials to highlight a half-million dollar grant to the Philadelphia school district for the planting and tending of trees on its property.

The grant

The $500,000 to the school district is part of $79.4 million in state grants to organizations and government entities that will help fund 307 environmental and recreational activities in 57 of the Commonwealth’s 67 counties. Philadelphia is receiving $5 million of that money for 17 projects.

The district’s grant will pay for the planting and upkeep of 600 trees on 30 school campuses, most of which are located in what is described as areas where it is important to focus on “environmental justice” due to poverty and other conditions that impact the quality of life. The money will also fund community engagement activities around the issue of conservation.

“We’re working to bring trails and parks close to people,” said Cindy Adams Dunn, the state secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, at the ceremony Tuesday to highlight the grant. “We try to make a difference in communities.”

The goal of her department and of the administration of Gov. Josh Shapiro, she said, is a park within 10 minutes of every state resident.

The Beginning of A Long-Term Plan

Philadelphia has a 10-year strategy to protect its tree canopy called the Philly Tree Plan. As one of the largest landowners in the city, the district is a big part of that initiative. The grant also involves several partners, including the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the Trust for Public Land, and the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation.

Parks and Recreation commissioner Sue Slawson recalled how she grew up in a part of West Philadelphia where some streets had trees, and others did not. This grant will allow her department to “educate youth on the importance of natural land,” she said.

Logan Elementary School, named after its Northwest Philadelphia neighborhood, is in a mostly rowhouse, low-income community where trees are often few and far between. The school is across wide and busy Lindley Ave. from Wakefield Park, one of the smaller pockets in Philadelphia’s extensive Fairmount Park network, the largest urban park in the country.

“We’re prioritizing tree planting in areas that need it the most,” said Matt Rader, president of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. State Sen. Art Haywood told the students that investing in trees at their school is testimony to their importance. “This investment of trees in your neighborhood shows that Black or white, rich or poor, we all have dignity,” he said.

[Related: ‘Not waiting for people to save us’: 9 school districts combine forces to help students]

Logan is also on the district’s list to get its asphalt playground updated and improved, a project in which the district is cooperating with outside partners, One is the Trust for Public Land, which is helping with Logan’s playground. Work will start in the spring and the new playground should be ready in two years, said the Trust’s Owen Franklin.

In her remarks, Dunn noted that the initiative will also help Philadelphia prepare for the country’s 250th anniversary celebration in 2026.

The Commonwealth and the country are divided, she said, not just by politics, but by access to green spaces, open sky and the great outdoors.

[Related: Q&A — Why this Memphis ELA teacher helped his students start a farmer’s market]

“The one place we can all come together is parks and trails,” she said. “Those are the places where we can reknit society and rebuild a united Pennsylvania. It gives me some hope.”

After the speeches, Lauryn and Lawrence and several other students helped officials plant a new tree on school grounds.

***

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. 

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

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Originally published by The 19th.

The nine multifaith families who sued over a Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in all public school classrooms are celebrating a federal district court ruling on Tuesday that found H.B. 71 to be unconstitutional.

Enacted in June, the legislation mandates that schools permanently display a Protestant version of the Judeo-Christian code of conduct, but a preliminary injunction issued by the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana on Tuesday will stop its implementation.

The injunction takes effect immediately, even though the defendants are appealing the decision.

Civil liberties advocates say that ignoring church-state separation in schools not only violates the Constitution by imposing religion on students but also risks exposing young people to harmful stereotypes about gender, race and the LGBTQ+ community. The Bible could be used to teach girls that wives must obey their husbands or to limit girls’ ambitions for their lives, they say. President-elect Donald Trump, however, plans to incorporate prayer into public education, according to his Agenda 47. It’s unclear if the courts will allow schools to implement his policy proposal.

The plaintiffs in Rev. Roake v. Brumley include the Rev. Darcy Roake and her husband, Adrian Van Young. The families represented are of Unitarian Universalist, Christian, Jewish and nonreligious backgrounds. The defendants include Cade Brumley, Louisiana’s state superintendent of education, and several state and local school officials.

In a statement, Roake said:

“H.B. 71 is a direct infringement of our religious-freedom rights, and we’re pleased and relieved that the court ruled in our favor.”

“As an interfaith family, we expect our children to receive their secular education in public school and their religious education at home and within our faith communities, not from government officials.”

Judge John W. DeGravelles found that the law violated the First Amendment along with years of Supreme Court precedent. In 1980, the high court ruled in Stone v. Graham that a Kentucky statute ordering the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms was unconstitutional. The First Amendment’s Establishment Clause bars the government from “establishing” a religion.

“First, Stone remains good law and is directly on point, and this Court is bound to follow it,” DeGravelles wrote in his opinion. “Second, even putting Stone aside . . .  Plaintiffs have adequately alleged that H.B. 71 fails to comply with the Establishment Clause.”

DeGravelles said that requiring the commandments to be posted in all classrooms year-round, regardless of course content or grade level, would…

…make schoolchildren a “captive audience” and coerce them “to participate in a religious exercise.”

Liz Murrill, the state’s Republican attorney general, said in a statement: “We strongly disagree with the court’s decision and will immediately appeal.”

The plaintiffs in Roake v. Brumley, who have children in public schools, are represented by the national ACLU, ACLU of Louisiana, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation. The law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP is involved as pro bono counsel.

[Related: Oklahoma’s superintendent orders public schools to teach the Bible – relying on controversial views about religious freedom]

Alanah Odoms, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana, said in a statement:

“Religious freedom — the right to choose one’s faith without pressure — is essential to American democracy.”

“Today’s ruling ensures that the schools our plaintiffs’ children attend will stay focused on learning, without promoting a state-preferred version of Christianity.”

Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement that the ruling will ensure that families, and not politicians, choose how their children engage with religion.

[Related: Chaplains could soon come into FL public schools, but other red states are rejecting the move]

“It should send a strong message to Christian nationalists across the country that they cannot impose their beliefs on our nation’s public school children,” Laser said. “Not on our watch.”

***

Nadra Nittle, is The 19th’s education reporter and a free lance journalist. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, El Paso Times, the Santa Fe Reporter and the Press-Telegram and online publications Vox and Civil Eats. Nittle also freelanced for The Guardian, Business Insider, Huffington Post, BBC News and NBC News. 

The 19th — named after the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution — is an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. Their goal is to empower women and LGBTQ+ people — particularly those from underrepresented communities — with the information, resources and tools they need to be equal participants in our democracy. Subscribe to their daily newsletter.

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This story was originally published by ProPublica.

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An experiment put remedial math students into ninth grade algebra and many succeeded

In the fall of 2019, four high schools in a San Francisco Bay Area district shook up many of their ninth grade math classes. Students had traditionally been separated into more than five math courses by achievement level, from remedial to very advanced, and the district wanted to test what would happen if they combined their bottom three levels into one. Half of the students in those levels were randomly assigned to learn together, and half remained in their traditional tracks so that researchers could compare the difference.

Students in the lowest level who were part of the experiment skipped remedial math and were able to learn algebra with the majority of ninth graders. The experiment also meant that average, grade-level students were learning alongside peers who lacked foundational math skills.

The risks

It was risky. Students sometimes end up with lower math scores when they’re pushed to do work that is too advanced for them; that’s why California ended an eighth grade “algebra for all” initiative a decade ago. Grade-level students can also be harmed if teachers try to accommodate weaker students by making the material easier.

But if the heterogeneous class avoided those pitfalls, the new math placement would give hundreds of students with low test scores in seventh and eighth grades a better shot at progressing to advanced math courses and college. Too often, these students feel stigmatized and demoralized.

“You’re giving students another ‘at bat’,” said Elizabeth Huffaker, a Stanford University researcher who studied this experiment for her doctoral dissertation.

The results

The results were promising, according to a paper that was made public in October 2024. Half of the remedial students in the mixed class passed the ninth grade algebra course and moved on to geometry with their classmates. The other half still had to retake algebra in 10th grade, which is when they would have taken it anyway, but their test scores in 11th grade were higher than similar students who had learned math in a separate remedial classroom in ninth grade.  Eleventh grade math achievement for remedial students who had taken ninth grade algebra was so much higher that the difference was equivalent to an extra year’s worth of math, according to the researchers.

Meanwhile, average students appeared to be unharmed. Those who had been randomly assigned to the new mixed level class had test scores in 11th grade that were no worse than those who had learned Algebra 1 separately.

Detracking and mixed ability classes

Some detracking advocates argue that everyone benefits from mixed ability classes, but there was no increase in test scores for higher achieving students in this experiment.

The vast majority of students in the mixed-ability classrooms would have been assigned to Algebra 1 anyway and relatively few were low achievers. It’s possible that there’s a point at which the concentration of low-level students becomes so high that it does negatively affect peers, the researchers said.

One researcher said it was successful for most students and with more instructional time, it would be even more effective.

In between the bottom students and the regular Algebra 1 students, there was a middle group of students who scored just below the cutoff for placement in Algebra 1 and were traditionally assigned to a double dose of algebra in ninth grade.

The results were more ambiguous for these students, whose instructional time was cut in half by giving them only a single dose of algebra in a mixed-level class. They were less likely to pass geometry in 10th grade, but they appeared not to be worse off later in 11th grade.

“One interpretation is that this was a pretty successful experiment for most students, but if you paired it with more instructional time, it would be even more effective,” said Huffaker.

It would be more costly, too, she said.

The experiment’s population

The Sequoia Union High School District, where this experiment took place, educates a wide range of students. It includes wealthy neighborhoods in Redwood City, Menlo Park and East Palo Alto, and low-income neighborhoods. Roughly a third of the students in the district are poor enough to qualify for the federal subsidized lunch program, and 15 percent are categorized as English learners. Almost half of the students are Hispanic, 11 percent are Asian, and a third are white.

This experiment did not include more advanced students who had already taken algebra in eighth grade or earlier. More than a third of the 2,000 ninth graders continued to be taught in separate geometry or Algebra 2 classes. A handful of extremely accelerated freshmen were in precalculus.

[Related: Why expanding access to algebra is a matter of civil rights]

That enabled this limited detracking experiment to avoid the community uproar that had engulfed San Francisco, where advanced students had been prevented from taking algebra in eighth grade and everyone was put into the same ninth-grade math class.

Results need to be replicated

Tom Dee, a Stanford education professor who conducted the math study along with his former graduate student Huffaker, said that this study shows that there are smaller things that schools can do between the two extremes of forcing all students into advanced coursework or barring any students from advanced coursework in the name of equity.

“If we accelerate everyone,” Dee said, “it could be harmful to kids who aren’t fully prepared for that acceleration. And if we decelerate everyone, it can be potentially harmful to the achievement of higher performing kids and cap the kinds of things they might do.”

“But it’s not the only arrow in our quiver,” Dee said.

[Related: Data science under fire — What math do high schoolers really need?]

Dee emphasized that this was just one group of students in one school district and the results would need to be replicated in other places before he would recommend the elimination of high school remedial math as a national policy.

A look inside the classroom

• It’s hard to tell what might have been the key to success in this experiment. It’s possible that half of the remedial students never really needed remediation and they were incorrectly placed because of their middle school math scores. At the same time, the district changed the way it taught in these mixed-ability classes and it could be those changes that made the difference. Better teachers might have volunteered to teach them. These teachers had extra training, and were given an extra non-teaching period each day.
• The school handled mixed abilities in an unusual way. Instead of differentiating instruction by giving different practice problems to different students, which is a common approach in U.S. classrooms, the teachers were trained to give the same problems to all students. Victoria Dye, Sequoia Union’s director of professional development and curriculum, told me that the district selected open-ended word problems that even a student with low skills could try, but that also provided a challenge to stronger students. (An analogy would be a game with simple rules, like Othello, which still provides a challenge to expert players.) Dye said that these “low-floor, high-ceiling” problems were selected to supplement the district’s curriculum, which emphasized procedural fluency and computations.
• Classroom math discussions took center stage so that students could discuss each other’s analysis. In one exercise, students each wrote down their reasoning and revised it several times. “It’s great because any kid can begin that and improve,” said Dye.
• To make time for problem solving and discussion, teachers streamlined the curriculum to emphasize key concepts. That meant cutting some algebra topics. Teachers made their own decisions on how to weave in a review of middle school concepts that students needed for algebra. Dye described this review as happening briefly on a “just-in-time” basis, not a reteaching of a full unit.

After effects

Today, remedial math has been eliminated in the district’s main high schools and nearly all students are in ninth grade algebra or a more advanced class, except for students with severe disabilities. The elimination of remedial math doesn’t fix everything.

[Related: US math teachers view student performance differently based on race and gender]

Many struggling students are still failing the subject and need more help. And it doesn’t reduce the huge disparities in math achievement inside school buildings. But it might help a large chunk of the most behind kids, and that’s particularly relevant after the pandemic when even more teens are woefully behind in math.

***

Jill Barshay writes The Hechinger Report’s weekly “Proof Points” column about education research and data, covering a range of topics from early childhood to higher education. She also taught algebra to ninth-graders for the 2013-14 school year. Previously, Barshay was the New York bureau chief for Marketplace, a national business show on public radio stations. She has also written for Congressional Quarterly, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and the Financial Times, and appeared on CNN and ABC News.

This story about ninth grade algebra was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

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This story was originally published by The Hechinger Report, a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic: education.

Published: Nov. 08 at 10:30am EST. For updated results follow links in each description.

Over the past few years, it’s become clear that states need more money to support kids. Pandemic-related aid is long gone, but effects from that era still linger, evident in persistent child care shortages and ongoing child behavioral and mental health concerns. Now, states are increasingly trying to generate new sources of money to support young children, although in at least one state, a ballot measure was designed to pull back on just these kinds of efforts.

At least a dozen measures were on ballots across the country Tuesday, proposing tax increases or new revenue streams to pay for child care and other child-focused services. Voters overwhelmingly chose to maintain or increase spending on these initiatives — though there were some holdouts.

Voters largely approved funding for children, though holdouts remain

Here’s a look at how early childhood fared this election tallied on Nov 8. For updated results follow links in each description.

Child care:

 Washington state: Initiative 2109 aimed to repeal a capital gains tax that passed in 2021 and has since provided child care subsidies and money for select child care programs. By failing, the tax and funding stream for child care will remain in place. FAILED

 Travis County, Texas: Proposition A called for a property tax increase to raise more than $75 million to create affordable child care spots and mitigate the loss of federal pandemic funds for local child care programs. PASSED

 St. Paul, Minnesota: The 2024 Early Care and Learning Proposal is a property tax levy aimed at providing public funding to child care. The city would raise $2 million the first year and add an additional $2 million each year until year 10, with this money going into a special early care and education fund that would help families cover the cost of child care. (The city’s mayor, Melvin Carter, said he was unlikely to enact the tax if it passed). FAILED

 Sonoma County, California: Measure I asked voters to approve a quarter-cent countywide sales tax to create a local revenue stream that would help pay for child care and children’s health programs, with a special emphasis on children who experience homelessness. The initiative gained over 20,000 signatures from registered voters to qualify for the November ballot. PASSED

 La Plata County, Colorado: Ballot Issue 1A will redirect up to 70 percent of revenue from a lodger’s tax toward child care and affordable housing. PASSED

 Grand County, Colorado: Ballot Measure 1A will increase the county’s lodging tax from 1.8 percent to 2 percent, with the revenue paying for tourism, housing and child care. PASSED

  Montrose, Colorado: Ballot Issue 2A will increase the city’s hotel tax and put 17 percent of the revenue toward local child care. PASSED

[Related: What convinces voters to raise taxes: child care]

[Related: A child tax credit, an early childhood department, and more money for K-12 schools: Illinois lawmakers pass 2025 budget]

Early childhood Health, education and well-being:

 Platte County, Missouri: The Platte County Children’s Services Fund measure calls for a quarter cent sales tax increase to create a revenue stream for mental health programs, including early childhood screening. PASSED

Pomona County, California: Measure Y aims to reallocate at least 10 percent of funds in an existing city general fund to create a Department of Children and Youth. The funds would also be used to pay for youth programs, child care and support for parents. LIKELY TO PASS

Santa Cruz, California: Measure Z proposed a $0.02 per ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages to raise funds that can be used for youth mental health and programs for children. LIKELY TO PASS

 Colorado: Proposition KK aims to establish a $39 million fund by imposing a 6.5 percent excise tax on guns and ammunition. While most of the money is directed at crime victim and veterans mental health services, $3 million will fund behavioral health services for children. PASSED

 Missouri: Amendment 5 would have established a new gambling boat license, with the estimated $14 million in revenue funding public school early childhood literacy programs. FAILED

 Nevada: Question 5 on the ballot this year gave voters the chance to exempt diapers from sales tax, starting on January 1, 2025. PASSED

[Related: Her child care center was already on the brink — then coronavirus struck]

[Related: More companies open on-site child care to help employees juggle parenting and jobs]

***

Jackie Mader covers early childhood education and writes the early ed newsletter. In her ten years at Hechinger, she has covered a range of topics including teacher preparation, special education and rural schools. She previously worked as a special education teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina, and trained new teachers in Mississippi. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, USA TODAY, TIME and NBC News. Mader has won several awards, including the Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Nellie Bly Award from The New York Press Club and a Front Page Award from The Newswomen’s Club of New York.

This story about ballot measures for child services was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, with support from the Spencer Fellowship at Columbia Journalism School. Sign up for the Early Childhood newsletter.

The post How child-focused ballot measures fared this election appeared first on Youth Today.

This story was originally published by the Hechinger Report’s Elementary to High School newsletter.

Voters in three states overwhelmingly rejected or repealed school choice measures related to allowing taxpayer dollars to be used for private and charter schools.

Nebraska, Kentucky and Colorado voting results

• In Nebraska, voters repealed a law that provided public money for school vouchers.
• In Colorado, residents voted against an amendment that would have enshrined a right to school choice in the state constitution.
• In Kentucky voters also rejected a pro-school choice amendment to the state constitution.

Kentucky highlights

When interviewing the people of Louisville, Kentucky, in the weeks leading up to the election, it’s noteworthy that even some parents who send their kids to private schools planned to vote against the measure. Louisville and Lexington, the two largest and bluest cities in Kentucky, are home to most of the state’s private schools. But 90 percent of the students here in the Commonwealth attend a public school, and the state has no charter schools.

Across the state, 65 percent of voters said “no” to the measure.

Rural counties also played a big role in the outcome of the vote, according to Peter Jefferson, a 17-year-old student at Henry Clay High School in Lexington who organized against school vouchers for the nonpartisan Kentucky Student Voice Team. He said,

“Rural schools give students unparalleled opportunities.”

“If our state were to pass this amendment, it could have been billions of dollars lost for education in Kentucky, and much of that in rural counties.”

Rowan County Senior High School senior Ivy Litton, a 17-year-old who also serves as a policy coordinator of the Kentucky Student Voice Team, credits a large part of the victory to students “standing up and saying something” about what would happen to their schools if the amendment passed.

“We don’t want vouchers…”

“Education is a bipartisan issue, and it doesn’t have to be so divided,” said Litton, who is from Owingsville, a small rural town in eastern Kentucky. “I think we made a clear statement that students and the people who matter in school, students and teachers, overwhelmingly, do not want these school choices. We don’t want vouchers, and we don’t stand for that, regardless of whether we’re Democrats or Republicans.”

***

Javeria Salman is a staff reporter for The Hechinger Report. She also contributes to all their newsletters and writes their Future of Learning newsletter covering K-12 education issues through the lens of innovation and technology. Salman’s work has appeared in Telemundo, The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, The Christian Science Monitor and the Solutions Journalism Network.

This story about school choice voting results was included in Hechinger Report’s Elementary to High School newsletter that covers emerging efforts to improve K-12 education.  

The The Hechinger Report is a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for all their newsletters.

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This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters.

Hannah Dellinger/Chalkbeat

Teacher Joshua Ferguson turned his classroom at Michigan’s Ypsilanti Community High School over to his students the day after the 2024 election.

“Doomed.” “Baffled.” “Scared.” “Happy.” “I don’t care.” “We are so cooked.”

Those were the reactions to the presidential election result that students scrawled on a white board Wednesday morning inside Joshua Ferguson’s 11th grade government class at Ypsilanti Community High School in Michigan.

Before he knew that former President Donald Trump had won a second term, Ferguson thought he would do a lesson on disinformation in politics. Instead, he gave students room to talk. The most important piece of this lesson, he said, was for his students to feel safe and heard.

“I think that’s my job as a teacher,” he said.

Educators across the country awakened Wednesday to the news of a second Trump presidency, then headed into school buildings where students were feeling everything from elation to shock to despair. Some had carefully scripted lesson plans at the ready. Others, like Ferguson, scrapped what they prepared and simply listened.

For civics and social studies teachers who had been monitoring the 2024 presidential election, Wednesday presented both a pedagogical challenge – and opportunity. Chalkbeat reporters fanned out to schools across the country to see how teachers approached this monumental day.

This story was reported by Caroline Bauman, Gabrielle Birkner, Hannah Dellinger, Jessie Gomez, Dale Mezzacappa, Amelia Pak-Harvey, Carly Sitrin, and Alex Zimmerman.

‘Why do people keep voting for Trump?’

Ahead of his 7:30 a.m. social studies class Wednesday, teacher John Winters had prepared a worksheet to spur conversation.

“As you know, [fill in the blank] has been elected as the next U.S. President,” the sheet read. “Please share your thoughts, feelings, concerns, questions, etc.”

[Related: Students want more civics education, but far too few schools teach it]

His students at Philadelphia’s Murrell Dobbins Career & Technical Education High School didn’t need much prompting.

“He IS a convicted felon and should’ve never been allowed to run ever again,” wrote one student.

People “don’t want to see a girl/woman be the president,” wrote another.

“Why do people keep voting for Trump? Especially people that he doesn’t even like and is racist towards?” still another wrote.

Dale Mezzacappa/Chalkbeat

John Winters teaches his American history class at Murrell Dobbins Career & Technical Education High School in Philadelphia the day after the 2024 presidential election.

The responses conveyed dismay and fear among some at the 800-student technical school, which is 89% Black and located in the city’s lowest income ZIP code.

At the end of the class, one junior held back to talk to Winters. Anxiety, even fear, was written all over his face as he struggled for words.

He asked a series of questions, like how many bills a president could pass and how an impeached president could be elected again. Winters answered but sensed there was something larger the boy wanted to know.

“I was born here, but I’m scared for my parents,” he said. “They’re from Haiti. It’s bad there right now.”

Winters reminded him that strongly Democratic Philadelphia has been a sanctuary city, meaning it doesn’t always cooperate with the federal government in enforcing immigration law. He told the young man to clarify with his parents their status. But then, reluctantly, he added: “I can’t lie, it’s a concerning situation.”

The boy put his head down, and slowly walked to his next class.

A rightward shift, especially among boys

At The Global Learning Collaborative, a high school situated in the deep-blue Upper West Side of Manhattan, students reacted to Trump’s victory with a mix of fear, ambivalence — and support.

More than 70% of the school’s students are Latino, and many expressed alarm over Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. But there was still a sizable number of students who supported the Republican candidate during a mock election held during a Wednesday morning assembly: 136 students voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, while 70 supported Trump.

[Related: Q&A: How organizers are harnessing the power of young Latino voters]

Junior Alix Torres said she has undocumented relatives and worries about his promise to ramp up deportations.

“I woke up kind of angry this morning,” Torres said, noting that she helped persuade some family members to vote for Harris. “I hope he hears the public and chooses to not go through with that. We built this country.”

Others at The Global Learning Collaborative said they supported Trump or didn’t have a firm opinion of him; nearly all were under 10 years old during his first presidency.

Alex Zimmerman/Chalkbeat

Senior Sara Otero is a devout Christian who cast a ballot for Trump.

Senior Sara Otero, who is 18, voted for the first time on Tuesday, casting a ballot for the former president. A devout Christian, Otero said she believed Trump would preserve religious liberty, though she hadn’t followed the election closely.

“I wasn’t as educated as I wish I was on the whole thing,” she said.

Harris decisively won New York City, but by a much smaller margin than Biden did in 2020. Civics teacher Martin Gloster said he has seen a rightward shift in political attitudes in his classroom.

“I think teenage boys are really attracted to that strongman presence,” he said.

Gloster said he has struggled with teaching contemporary politics, including the presidential debate in which Trump falsely suggested Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs. In a class that discussed the debate, one student had faced an arduous journey emigrating from Guatemala, while others were more sympathetic to Trump.

“It’s difficult because obviously I play it down the middle — Trump is just a different thing,” Gloster said. “I’m learning on the fly. I don’t have all the answers.”

Taking lessons from Gore’s 2000 concession speech

When Reid Stuart arrived for his first class on Wednesday, he had three goals for students: Give space to process this huge political moment, impart tools to combat misinformation online – and watch Al Gore’s concession speech from 2000.

“It’s an incredible speech, by a Tennessean, after a tense moment that calls for unity,” said Stuart, who teaches at Crosstown High School, a diverse public charter school in Memphis, Tennessee. “It feels relevant.”

His students in AP Human Geography settled into class, some joking with each other about the election and others speaking somberly.

Caroline Bauman/Chalkbeat

Reid Stuart and his students discuss Al Gore’s 2000 presidential concession speech Wednesday at Crosstown High School in Memphis, Tennessee.

Before watching Gore’s 2000 concession speech, Stuart asked: What did his students expect from a conceding presidential candidate?

“To show respect to the other candidate.” “To show respect for the system.” “To actually concede,” students chimed in.

Stuart then asked, “If you are Al Gore, how are you feeling?”

“Cheated.” “Mad.” “Unaccepting of loss.” “Bitter.”

Gore, a Democrat, gave his speech more than a month after the 2000 Election Day and after a historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling paved the path to victory for Republican George W. Bush amidst public confusion and outcry.

Stuart asked his students what they thought of Gore’s delivery and message.

“I think he was being sarcastic,” said one student. “Like you could tell he didn’t really believe what he was saying, and felt like he should have won, but he still called for unity and respect.”

As other students in the room nodded in agreement, Stuart said: “This is a hallmark of a free and fair election, that the person who lost, can get up there and offer a unifying message, even if he is bitter. Right?”

He noted that Harris was expected to give her concession speech later Wednesday. “I encourage you to watch it,” he told students. “See if she has the same message of unification and moving forward, even though you can guarantee she is feeling deeply about the loss.”

An election that turned on grocery prices and utility bills

Philadelphia social studies teacher Charlie McGeehan prepared for every election outcome – but, he admitted to his students Wednesday morning, “this is not what I expected.”

When he went to bed Tuesday night before midnight, McGeehan had anticipated explaining to the juniors and seniors in his classes about how long vote counting can take. About how we might not know the outcome of the election for several days. About the role deep-blue Philadelphia would play in deciding the election.

Carly Sitrin/Chalkbeat

Students comb through election results Wednesday at Academy at Palumbo in South Philadelphia.

By the time he woke on Wednesday, that plan was moot. So, he figured, let’s just give the students — many of whom had spent long hours working the polls the day prior — space to decompress.

Together, they combed through the election results guided by students’ questions like “How was the polling yesterday so surprising?” “Which state did the race ultimately come down to?” and “Does Kamala Harris have any path to winning at all?”

To that last question, McGeehan was straightforward: “No, she doesn’t.”

Many of McGeehan’s students at the Academy at Palumbo are first- or second-generation Americans or immigrants. On notecards, students laid out their more personal fears, ones they didn’t necessarily want to share with the class.

“As a woman and a child of an immigrant, I’m honestly scared” read one. “I saw a post saying how Trump pledged to launch mass deportation… which makes me feel like not researching more because of how much more sick stuff I might read,” said another.

One said “I feel great because Trump’s [positions] align with what I want. Especially with the issues of censorship, grocery prices, and utility bills.”

Carly Sitrin/Chalkbeat

Students at Academy at Palumbo wrote their thoughts and questions on sticky notes.

‘Kind of a very depressing day’

Nehemiah Legrand tried to eat dinner Tuesday but couldn’t finish. She was glued to her phone. She was up until 3 a.m.

The 13-year-old student at Enlace Academy, a pre-K-8 school in the International Marketplace area of Indianapolis, is an American citizen by birth whose parents are legally living in the country. The family fled Haiti after her older brother was kidnapped in 2020 amid the country’s political turmoil.

Still, Trump’s campaign rhetoric around immigration scared Nehemiah – and made her fear that her family would be deported.

“I just feel like today — it doesn’t feel normal,” she said, sitting in the school’s hallway on Wednesday, looking out the window at the rain. “People are not talkative or none of that. It’s very, very strange. It’s kind of a very depressing day. Because everyone just doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, and you can tell everyone is stressed.”

The presidential election has loomed large over her and her classmates at the school, where many students come from Latin America and Haiti. At this school, students have to grow up fast. Many carry trauma from their immigration to the United States, said lead social worker Hailey Butchart.

Now, students like Nehemiah are preparing for what the next four years with Trump — whose platform includes deploying “the largest deportation operation in American history” — will mean for them.

“A lot of the students I speak with have had a family member that has been deported, and they live with that fear as well,” Butchart said.

The power of social media in elections

On the morning after Election Day, Zy’Asia Weathers rolled over in bed to grab her phone on a nearby nightstand and scrolled through TikTok.

But instead of seeing videos of makeup reviews or the latest trends, Zy’Asia’s feed was filled with women and girls crying about the outcome of Tuesday’s election and the potential impact on female reproductive rights.

Jessie Gómez/Chalkbeat

Yanibel Feliz, the advisor of the Student Government Association at KIPP Newark Collegiate Academy, walks her students through a post-election discussion.

“People were even saying, like, very vague things, like, just thinking the worst of the worst,” added Zy’Asia, 17, a senior at KIPP Newark Collegiate Academy.

Throughout the school day Wednesday, Zy’Asia and her peers talked about other videos they saw, like people celebrating former president Donald Trump’s reelection and others questioning what his victory would mean for the nation.

Zy’Asia is also the president of her school’s Student Government Association, and on Wednesday, the group met to discuss the presidential outcomes. Yanibel Feliz, the advisor of the group, walked students through an exercise to discuss the election process, the outcome, and the effect of social media.

Some students said they were shocked about Trump’s victory because they had seen much support for Harris on social media.

“Sometimes, social media might paint a picture of how elections will go,” said Trinity Douglas, a junior at the school, during class. “But it has a big effect on our generation.”

‘I’m afraid what will happen to my family’

The icebreaker in Joel Snyder’s government classes on Wednesday was to respond to the prompt: “I am feeling … because …”

The responses were wide-ranging and included students who were enthusiastic about the election outcome and those who were disappointed the U.S. would not, after all, elect a woman as president.

In the few minutes they were given, students took pencil to paper and wrote that they were “shocked” to hear how well Trump did with Latinos, “furious” at what they saw as sexism in the results, and “concerned” that America had once again elected a man whose flaws and felony convictions are, by now, well known.

Some answers hit closer to home. “I am feeling uneasy,” one student wrote, “because I’m afraid what will happen to my family who are undocumented.”

Gabrielle Birkner/Chalkbeat

Joel Snyder holds up the book “You Call This Democracy?” by Elizabeth Rusch. Each student in Snyder’s AP U.S. Government and Politics class received their own copy on Wednesday.

Standing at the front of  his class at Ánimo Pat Brown Charter High School in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood of South Los Angeles, the teacher reminded his students that whether or not they are U.S. citizens, they have “the duty to be the protectors of democracy and of each other.” Snyder teaches about 140 students across five government classes, including one AP course. Of the roughly 600 students enrolled at Ánimo Pat Brown, almost all of them are Hispanic — their families hailing from Mexico, Guatemala, and elsewhere in Latin America.

Snyder also asked his students to write down one issue that they care about and how they think Trump’s election might impact it. The students chose abortion rights, the economy, constitutional norms, and, again and again, immigration. They shared their fears of mass deportations and stories of family members who had waited years for green cards they may never get.

“My main concern is how, even despite being a citizen, I still won’t be protected because my parents are immigrants,” Natalie, 17, a student in Snyder’s AP U.S. Government and Politics class, told Chalkbeat.

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This story was reported by Caroline Bauman, Gabrielle Birkner, Hannah Dellinger, Jessie Gomez, Dale Mezzacappa, Amelia Pak-Harvey, Carly Sitrin, and Alex Zimmerman.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to keep up with how education is changing across the U.S.

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