The Education Department plans to dissolve the office that supports the country’s 5 million English learners.

The move comes as the Trump administration has called to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and to stop funding English language acquisition programs in the federal budget. The country’s English learner student population includes U.S. citizen children of immigrant parents as well as authorized and undocumented immigrant children, communities that are reeling from the .

The Office of English Language Acquisition . Last August, the Department that many states and school districts rely on to protect the rights of immigrant students.

Education Department officials said dissolving the office and assigning its work to offices doing related work would be better for English learners.

In an emailed statement, Assistant Education Secretary Kirsten Baesler said the changes would align work across teams within the department, reduce administrative burden, and “empower states to design integrated supports.”

“English Learners should never be treated as a siloed program, set aside as an afterthought,” Baesler said. “When English language acquisition is embedded across core priorities like literacy, academic content, educator preparation, and accountability, it receives the seriousness and sustained focus it deserves.”

The Education Department informed Congress of the changes in a February letter. first reported on the moves and the letter Tuesday.

According to the letter, distribution of federal Title III money that helps states educate English learners will be handled by the same office that distributes other large federal programs such as Title I.

�հ��ܳ���’s calls for eliminating Title III funding as a separate program, even as he also signed an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States. Congress last year disregarded a similar budget proposal and .

Training programs for teachers who work with English learners will move to the Office of Effective Educator Development Programs, the letter said. Language programs for Native American and Alaska Native children will move to the Office of Indian Education.

The changes do not affect the rights of English learner students under federal law. However, many advocates and educators said the office played a critical role in ensuring federal funds were spent appropriately and in sharing best practices and new research.

More of that responsibility now . While the Education Department says that shift is appropriate, many school districts historically have failed to meet the needs of English learners, leading to lawsuits.

The Education Department is in the process of , while programs related to educating Native American students are moving to the Department of the Interior.

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

Ironically, the announcement comes as the administration is aggressively inserting itself in state and local education decision-making through a little-known administrative process. 

A General Services Administration that would require almost all applicants for federal funds to certify compliance with federal laws, executive orders and regulations — including non-discrimination laws — would also mandate adherence to the administration’s interpretation of what is discriminatory. In doing so, the announcement suggests that the Trump administration is interested not just in enforcing the law, but in discouraging efforts to increase diversity in education and beyond. 

The document treats “diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility” initiatives as potentially discriminatory, including, for example, statements used by many employers to encourage applicants from various backgrounds. It rejects what the administration calls “cultural competence” requirements, potentially imperiling teaching practices that connect instruction to students’ backgrounds. And it would likely ban questions asking applicants to describe how they have overcome obstacles, as colleges are increasingly doing in the wake of the 2023 Supreme Court ruling striking down affirmative action in admissions. States and school districts found in violation of the proposed requirements would be subject to funding reductions, civil liability or even criminal prosecution — stark consequences for refusing to conform to administration policy. 

The GSA’s proposal flies in the face of studies showing that teacher diversity benefits all students.

demonstrates that student and teacher diversity in schools and colleges helps Black, Hispanic and other traditionally underserved students achieve in school and beyond. As FutureEd noted in a , when students of color have teachers of color, attendance, academic achievement and college enrollment increase and disciplinary infractions decline. 

The research has an important bearing on the performance of the nation’s schools, given that students of color comprise more than 50% of public-school enrollment nationally, while nearly 80% of teachers in the country’s schools are white.

White students also benefit from having teachers of color. In a of four East Coast school districts, white students who studied under a teacher of color reported working harder and being more confident in their abilities than those who did not. Among the potential reasons for the greater engagement: Teachers of color were more likely to believe that student intelligence is malleable rather than fixed and to address student misbehavior in ways that didn’t damage classroom climate.

For their part, teachers value diversity in their ranks. In a national survey of K-12 teachers conducted for by the RAND Corp., 81% of participants said it is “important or extremely important” for students of color to be taught by teachers of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, and 79% said it is “important or extremely important” to have colleagues of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Of course, subject matter expertise and effective teaching experience should be paramount in hiring decisions. And anyone who receives federal funds should comply with non-discrimination law. But the GSA announcement would put at risk diversity initiatives that are valuable in schools and would seemingly pass legal muster. 

It’s the latest administration move against diversity in education. Weeks into President Donald �հ��ܳ���’s second term, the Department of Education canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in grants awarded under the previous administration that had already been distributed and sought in part to increase educator diversity. 

Then, the department issued a that sought to eliminate DEI programs in school districts and institutions of higher education. It was subsequently struck down by the courts, and the department of Education dropped its appeal in January, only weeks before GSA’s proposal was released. This suggests that the administration is trying to achieve through administrative means what it failed to accomplish with last year’s letter. 

If the Trump administration wants to ensure appropriate enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in education, it has the tools to do so through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Unfortunately, the administration last year downsized OCR dramatically, leading a federal court to the reinstatement of hundreds of staffers so the agency could fulfill its duties. And staffing levels at the EEOC are down more than since the end of fiscal year .

The resulting cutback in civil rights enforcement under the Trump administration has been dramatic. As of December, OCR had , compared with 16,500 at the end of the Biden administration. 

Rather than staffing the federal government to enforce civil rights laws, the administration seems to be trying to weaken diversity efforts in schools by intimidating state and local educators with the threat of lost funding, criminal prosecution or civil liability into preemptively complying with its priorities, as it with its Dear Colleague Letter last year. 

But that tactic not only contradicts research on the value of educator diversity; it takes authority over teaching and learning out of the hands of the very leaders McMahon says she wants to empower. 

It was the first-ever cancellation of grants for , a federal program that has helped disadvantaged students across the U.S. enter college and graduate since 1964. While a district court judge recently ruled the Trump administration’s move illegal, TRIO staff and advocates say the loss of funds is hindering thousands of students’ chances to have a successful future after high school.

More than at various colleges around the country shuttered after the Trump administration canceled in September. The , which represents 1,000 colleges and nonprofits that participate in TRIO, sued the government weeks later.

“TRIO comes under existential threat about once every 10 to 15 years,” said Kimberly Jones, the council’s president. “Even during the first Trump administration, there were calls for cuts to the program. But this is the first time we’ve seen grants canceled within our programs and canceled without going through the due process that should be afforded to them.”

In January, a district court judge of the council and the administration to reconsider the grants for colleges that joined the lawsuit. Jones said the government still needs to comply and that there’s no timeline for when funding might be restored. 

The Trump administration canceled funding for a variety of local TRIO , including Talent Search, which exposes students in grades 6-12 to colleges and future career options, and assists high schoolers with college entrance exams, financial counseling and tutoring. Funding for Upward Bound, which brings high schoolers to universities for intensive courses during the school year, was also halted. The other half of TRIO’s services are programs for college students, veterans and adult learners.

In 1980, TRIO was standardized in the and Congress mandated that two-thirds of participants come from low-income families in which neither parent graduated from college. The organization currently serves around 875,000 students in 3,500 programs.

Jones said the affected programs were targeted because of the federal government’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion. Some were flagged solely because staff worked from university DEI offices.

The University of California Berkeley’s Talent Search program closed last fall, affecting more than 1,500 students from 14 public schools.

“My team had already gone into schools, done introductory meetings, created workshops, and we had already started helping seniors with their college applications and everything,” said Keyanna Hatcher, the university’s TRIO director. “The immediate pause on the program was completely detrimental to everything that we had already established with our school sites and partnerships.”

Seniors were in the middle of completing college applications when Talent Search shuttered. Low-income and first-generation students were suddenly without key resources before applications were due Nov. 30 — the deadline for California state universities. 

Middle school students lost access to STEM projects and university visits. Ninth graders no longer have TRIO workshops on how to be competitive for college. Berkeley staffers who were a permanent fixture in local middle and high schools are gone. 

“We were actually helping to supplement school staff, because some of our schools have counselors with caseloads of 700 students,” Hatcher said. “We were taking some of that load off and were helping meet with students so that they actually get more individual attention.”

The University of New Hampshire closed its Talent Search program in October after losing grant money, affecting more than 1,200 students from sixth to 12th grades in 29 schools. Close to a dozen staffers who worked with students in their schools were fired.

“It’s going to affect how many students are applying to colleges here in New Hampshire,” said Jes Crowell, the university’s TRIO director. “They aren’t going to have the assistance from (the staff) who normally sit down with them and help them apply, help them with financial aid and scholarships. That’s just not going to be done.”

Nearly 68% of Talent Search students enroll in college immediately after high school, compared with 56% of low-income students not in the program, according to a 2022 report. Upward Bound produces similar positive , with 74% of the 19,549 participants who graduated high school in 2022 enrolling in college. 

The report shows that nearly 43% of Upward Bound students in 2022 received a bachelor’s degree within six years, compared with 11% of low-income students not in the program.

Junior Angelina Dang said she had never imagined a future that included college until she joined Upward Bound two years ago through South Seattle College in Washington state. As a first-generation student, Dang figured she’d enter the workforce right after high school, like the rest of her family.

“Coming from a low-income family, if I hear other low-income families are telling me that this is helping them, I’m obviously interested,” she said. “When I first joined, I was like, ‘This isn’t probably going to help me.’ But I’ve had so much support — I know what I want to do for my future. I know what I need to do for my future.”

Dang said South Seattle College’s TRIO office has provided food that her family can’t buy, staff who support her through decisions about her college future and academic services that have improved her skills in the classroom. 

South Seattle College — which lost funding for its adult learner TRIO services — is where she takes dual-enrollment courses through Upward Bound. The program also helped her visit potential colleges. She plans to transfer to the University of Washington to pursue studies in wildlife biology.

“The support of being able to be at South Seattle College and also visit other schools — it was like, there’s a world outside of high school,” she said. “I don’t want to exaggerate, but I think if I never joined Upward Bound, I don’t know where I would be.”

Anthony Bonner is facing looming uncertainty. A single dad living in Memphis, Tennessee, he fears he may soon no longer qualify for benefits through the  (SNAP)—aid that can be used like cash to purchase groceries. 

Until now, Bonner has been able to receive SNAP aid for himself and his son regardless of whether he was working. New regulations, part of Donald �հ��ܳ���’s , are about to change that. 

Under the , parents with minor children   must work or volunteer at least 20 hours per week to receive SNAP. Bonner’s son, Braylon, turns 14 in late February. The typical 13-year-old boy, who plays the trumpet and enjoys basketball and Roblox, may soon be the only one in his two-person household to qualify for food aid.

As a self-employed barber, Bonner’s hours fluctuate, leaving him unsure whether he’ll meet the 20-hour-a-week minimum. It’s a struggle acutely felt by single parents who are the sole earners in their household.

“Nobody should be worried about where the next meal is coming from,” said Bonner, who is already anticipating changes to how he shops and how his family eats. “I might have to really figure out how to stretch it,” he added, referring to the limited funds he said he’ll have for groceries.

With the new rules in place, around 2.4 million Americans could lose assistance within the next few years, according to estimates from the 

The new requirements fail to factor in people who don’t work in fields with consistent hours, said Ed Bolen of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research and policy institute.  “It can be a pretty harsh rule for people who work in jobs that don’t always have nice, solid, consistent 20 hours a week,” he said. 

Leighton Ku, the director of the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University, told Prism, “There’s this sort of presumption that people who are getting SNAP benefits are undeserving people, and that the way you show that you are deserving is that you work.” 

It’s a perception familiar to Bonner.

“I get the sentiment that if you don’t work, you don’t eat. But our bodies need food. Our bodies need water, that’s a necessity,” he said. “Whether a person works or not, people should be able to eat. Families should be able to eat.”

In light of the new SNAP changes, Bonner recently took on a second job to boost his hours. As a community organizer for the nonprofit , he’s employed through a three-month pilot program. If his contract ends in March, he will likely no longer meet the SNAP work requirements.

Failure to meet new requirements for any three months in a three-year period will result in a loss of benefits for able-bodied adults without dependents under the age of 14.

About 1 in 8, or 41.7 million, Americans rely on SNAP, according to the latest figures from .

“You’re taking the people who not only, in many cases, have the fewest skills and the most difficulty getting jobs, but who are probably the most reliant on food assistance, and you’re saying specifically you can’t get it,” Ku said.

A  from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that among workers participating in SNAP, most have jobs with low wages. The study noted that low-paying jobs often have scheduling practices that contribute to workers’ unstable incomes.

Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization, said the documentation needed in order to prove the required work hours will also be a challenge for some. “There’s a leap between being in compliance with this policy and proving that you are,” Bauer said.

Bauer and Ku said that the SNAP program has long faced bureaucratic hurdles, with excessive paperwork and documentation often preventing people from accessing benefits even when they qualify.

Da’jion Lymore, a single father of a 6-year-old, knows this firsthand. After moving from Missouri to Georgia, he was forced to restart his SNAP application. As a self-employed multimedia specialist, verifying his income has been a challenge. Now, he’s stuck in limbo without any SNAP benefits, even though he technically qualifies.

As he waits for his benefits to come through, Lymore works hard to stretch every ingredient for his son. 

“I make sure I use everything,” he said, “making sure he gets everything he needs, making sure he’s full with every meal. He’s a growing boy; some days it’s definitely surprising how much he eats.”

Bonner had a message for lawmakers who voted to restrict benefits. 

“Look at your constituents. Really look at us. Stop looking at the numbers, look at the people,” he said. “The policy that you’re making is really hurting us.”

Proponents of  for SNAP deny accusations of cruelty.  

“To me, work is not a punishment,” said Angela Rachidi of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. “It’s sort of an expectation that we all have for ourselves and should have for the rest of society, if you’re able-bodied and don’t have caregiving responsibilities.”

But a  from the Economic Policy Institute found that for low-income adults, the main barriers to work are economic conditions outside of their control, and that work requirements in the past have failed to boost work in significant ways. 

“They have other barriers, like child care needs, and other problems in their lives that make it difficult to find work,” Ku said. 

That argument doesn’t persuade Rachidi. “You could argue if high school-age kids even need caregiving,” she said of the broadened work requirement for parents with children over the age of 14. 

Bonner is astonished by that assertion. “It’s ridiculous to expect a child to be able to suffice by themselves,” he said. “If I left [my son] alone and said go ahead, go fend for yourself, he’s not gonna make it. No 14-year-old kid is prepared.”

Rachidi predicted that tighter work requirements could expand to other safety net programs, such as housing assistance. 

Bonner, meanwhile, tries to talk to his son about how to best prepare for the uncertainty that lies ahead. “You may have to reach out and extend help to others,” he tells Braylon, knowing that people in his community may be facing similar uncertainties. In Georgia, Lymore said his neighbors have come together through Facebook groups to organize a market stand where people can leave food for each other, such as fresh eggs, produce, and bread. “The community definitely helps each other out in this time of need,” he said, filling the gaps the government no longer meets.

When he declared in March 2025 that he wanted the Education Department “closed immediately,” it wasn’t just a sound bite. It was a promise. A promise to dismantle the one system meant to protect the children this country has always underserved: Black children. The ink on the Emancipation Proclamation might be old, but the mindset that fought it never really went away. It just put on another suit.

After emancipation, freed Black families built schools with their own hands. They hired teachers, scraped together funds and insisted that their children would learn to read even if they had to do so in secret. The backlash was swift and violent. White mobs , , and state lawmakers passed inequitable that kept Black students in crumbling classrooms with hand-me-down, tattered books.

By 1980, after decades of states proving they couldn’t or wouldn’t by Black and poor students, the federal government stepped in. President Jimmy Carter created the Education Department to make sure that every child, no matter where they lived or what color they were, had a fair shot at learning.

I think of my grandson, an autistic Black boy with an individualized education plan who depends on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and other federal programs. Without these protections and funding that come from the federal level, the system will fail children like him. States don’t have an excellent track record of protecting students with disabilities, especially Black boys. When we remove federal oversight, we aren’t saving money. We’re sacrificing children.

As a former public school teacher, I’ve seen firsthand what happens when education depends on ZIP codes rather than fairness: Wealthy, mostly white districts keep thriving. Meanwhile, schools that serve Black and brown kids are stuck under leaking ceilings, flipping through worn-out books older than their teachers.

And yet here we are in 2025, watching the federal government try to hand over the keys to the states. Thousands of education workers are out of work, civil rights offices are closed, and the Trump administration appointees have completely gutted oversight.

They’ve shut down seven of the 12 regional offices for the department’s Office for Civil Rights and attempted to lay off employees, only to try to bring back some of those workers. All this chaos means fewer investigations into discrimination, fewer checks on racist discipline policies and fewer protections for Black children who are already suspended and expelled at rates than their white peers.

Now we are supposed to trust states to do the right thing? The same states shouting “local control” are banning DEI programs, censoring Black history and whitewashing textbooks. AP African American Studies. Texas once approved a curriculum that called enslaved people “.” Local control isn’t reform. It’s cultural erasure disguised as policy.

Black children are the first to feel the sting. To this day, our kids attend schools with fewer resources, larger class sizes and outdated materials. Federal programs like Title I and IDEA keep those schools alive. Without them, special education funding dries up, class sizes balloon and talented teachers walk away. Take them away, and you widen that gap on purpose.

When you strip education from federal protection, you don’t get freedom, you get chaos. You get 50 different versions of what a child is worth, determined by 50 governors with 50 different agendas. We’ve seen this movie before.

There is no shortage of credentials in the U.S. labor market. There is a shortage of matched skills and reliable pathways. Job openings remain despite cooling in some places. Even so, a persistent share of young adults are , signaling weak attachment to both employment and further training.

This gap is not a 2025 phenomenon. For decades, policymakers have invested in education while assuming that labor market integration would follow. The evidence suggests otherwise. The impacts of education by field, institution and completion status; and many credentials deliver little labor market value relative to their cost. Treating enrollment and completion as success metrics has obscured whether programs actually improve employment and earnings.

CTE was intended to create clearer routes into work. The shows positive effects on several high school outcomes, limited and uneven evidence on postsecondary and earnings outcomes, and large gaps in what has been rigorously evaluated.

Many CTE programs are well intentioned and well funded, yet weakly connected to labor demand. Program offerings frequently lag local employer needs. Credentials are not always portable across firms or regions. Accountability focuses on compliance and participation rather than job placement and earnings. Students complete programs without clear signals about whether those credentials will translate into work. Employers remain skeptical of what certificates represent.

These outcomes are not accidental. They reflect governance. The Department of Education was designed to administer grants, regulate institutions and ensure access. These are necessary functions, but they are not sufficient for building labor market pathways. Education agencies are not structured to continuously track employer demand, validate occupational skill standards or adjust programs based on employment outcomes. 

By contrast, the Department of Labor already operates systems that define success in labor market terms, including placement, earnings and retention under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.

Shifting CTE administration toward Labor aligns authority with objective. To ensure that this move is not just symbolic, policy should be governed by institutions that measure and manage those outcomes. The lesson for CTE is not ideological. It is operational. Here are three design choices.

First, employer leadership must be real, not advisory in name only. Employers should hold decision-making authority over occupational standards, credential validation and program relevance, with transparent governance and conflict of interest rules. Without employer control and input into the curriculum, pathways drift toward provider convenience.

Second, funding must be tied to outcomes that matter. Completion alone is insufficient. Programs should be evaluated on job placement, earnings, retention and progression, adjusted for local labor markets. Chronic underperformance should lead to canceling or revising programs.

Third, the system must allow for competition among multiple providers. Community colleges, employer consortia, nonprofits, high-schools and high quality private providers should operate on equal footing — even if they pursue the goals differently. 

Of course, pathway rules should be periodically reviewed and reauthorized, and the Labor Department is well-suited to provide review. Labor markets change faster than education systems. Sunset provisions force adaptation and prevent regulatory accumulation that freezes outdated models in place.

Critics often argue that tighter alignment with labor markets narrows education and reduces flexibility. The evidence suggests the opposite. The current system narrows options by steering students toward with uncertain payoffs while offering limited transparency about outcomes. expand choice by allowing students to compare pathways based on real consequences rather than marketing or tradition.

A well-designed pathway system does not lock individuals into a single occupation. It creates stackable credentials, portable skills and bridges to further education. It treats employment not as the endpoint of learning but as a core component of it.

The on education governance offers a cautionary lesson: Incentives matter. Systems respond to what is measured and rewarded. When accountability emphasizes inputs and compliance, organizations optimize for those metrics, even when outcomes suffer. 

The federal transition to Labor creates a rare policy opening. It acknowledges that education policy cannot substitute for labor market policy when the objective is work. Whether that acknowledgment leads to better outcomes depends on follow through. Structure matters. Incentives matter. Governance matters.

If CTE continues to be governed as education with different labels, results will not change. If it is governed as labor market infrastructure, it can finally function as intended.

The Trump administration says it’s planning to freeze about $10 billion in federal support for needy families in California and four other Democrat-run states, as the president .

The plans come on the heels of the Trump administration , citing fraud allegations against daycare centers in the state.

The state’s Democrat governor, Tim Walz — who ran for vice president against Donald �հ��ܳ���’s ticket in 2024 — announced Monday he was dropping out of running for reelection. He pointed to fraud against the state, saying it’s a real issue while alleging Trump and his allies were “seeking to take advantage of the crisis.”

On Monday,  that the administration was expanding the funding freeze to include California and three other Democrat-led states, in addition to Minnesota. Unnamed federal officials cited “concerns that the benefits were fraudulently funneled to non-citizens,” The Post reported.

Early Tuesday, President Trump alleged that corruption in California is worse than Minnesota and announced an investigation.

“California, under Governor Gavin Newscum, is more corrupt than Minnesota, if that’s possible??? The Fraud Investigation of California has begun. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP,” the president wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

He did not specify what alleged fraud was being examined in the Golden State.

LAist has reached out to the White House to ask what the president’s fraud concerns are in California and to request an interview with the president.

“For too long, Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch,” said an emailed statement from Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which administers the federal childcare funds.

“Under the Trump administration, we are ensuring that federal taxpayer dollars are being used for legitimate purposes. We will ensure these states are following the law and protecting hard-earned taxpayer money.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office  on social media, arguing that since taking office, the governor has blocked $125 billion in fraud and arrested “criminal parasites leaching off of taxpayers.”

Criminal fraud cases in CA appear to be rare for this program

Defrauding federally funded programs is a crime — and one LAist has investigated, , which surrounded meal funds.

When it comes to the federal childcare funds that are being frozen, the dollar amount of fraud alleged in criminal cases appears to be a tiny fraction of the overall program’s spending in California.

A search of thousands of news releases by all four federal prosecutor offices in California, going back more than a decade, found a total of one criminal case where the press releases referenced childcare benefits.

, brought in 2023, alleged four men stole $3.7 million in federal childcare benefits through fraudulent requests to a San Diego organization that distributed the funds. All four pleaded guilty, with one defendant sentenced to 27 months in prison and others sentenced to other terms, according to authorities.

It appears to be equivalent to one one-hundredth of 1% of all the childcare funding California has received over the past decade-plus covered by the prosecution press release search.

Potential impact on California families

The plans call for California, Minnesota, New York, Illinois and Colorado to lose about $7 billion in cash assistance for households with children, almost $2.4 billion to care for children of working parents, and about $870 million for social services grants that mostly benefit children at risk, according to unnamed federal officials  and .

In the largest category of funding, California receives $3.7 billion per year. The program is known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.

 ”It’s very clear that a freeze of those funds would be very damaging to the children, families, and providers of California,” said Stacy Lee, who oversees early childhood initiatives “at Children Now, an advocacy group for children in California.

 ”It is a significant portion of our funds and will impact families and children and providers across the whole state,” she added. “It would be devastating, in no uncertain terms.”

About 270,000 people are served by the TANF program in L.A. County — about 200,000 of whom are children, according to the county Department of Public Social Services.

“Any pause in funding for their cash benefits – which average $1000/month – would be devastating to these families,” said DPSS chief of staff Nick Ippolito.

Ippolito said the department has a robust fraud prevention and 170-person investigations team, and takes allegations “very seriously.”

It remains to be seen whether the funding freeze will end up in court. The state, as well as major cities and counties in California, has sued to ask judges to halt funding freezes or new requirements placed by the Trump administration. L.A. city officials  with that, including shielding more than $600 million in federal grant funding to the city last year.

A union representing California childcare workers said the funding freeze would harm low-income families.

“These threats need to be called out for what they are: direct threats on working families of all backgrounds who rely on access to quality, affordable child care in their communities to go to work every day supporting, and growing our economy,” said Max Arias, chairperson for the Child Care Providers United, which says it represents more than 70,000 child care workers across the state who care for kids in their homes.

“Funding freezes, even when intended to be temporary, will be devastating — resulting in families losing access to care and working parents facing the devastating choice of keeping their children safe or paying their bills.”

Federal officials planned to send letters to the affected states Monday about the planned funding pauses, the New York Post reported. As of 3 p.m. Tuesday, state officials said they haven’t gotten any official notification of the funding freeze plans.

“The California Department of Social Services administers child care programs that help working families afford safe, reliable care for their children — so parents can go to work, support their families, and contribute to their communities,” said a statement from California Department of Social Services spokesperson Jason Montiel.

“These funds are critical for working families across California. We take fraud seriously, and CDSS has received no information from the federal government indicating any freeze, pause, or suspension of federal child care funding.”

This was originally published on .

This is being packaged as a way to streamline the department’s work. But out here in rural America, where I’m from, it’s clear that this kind of chaos will hurt the most vulnerable students first.

Under the plan, the Department of Labor will be responsible for overseeing K-12 programs. The Department of the Interior will run Native American education programs. The Department of Health and Human Services will ​​take over campus-based child care programs for college students. The State Department will assume international education and student-exchange functions, including programs that support global language and area-studies partnerships. And the administration has hinted that it will announce the transfer of additional programs in the coming months. 

There will be no clear authority, little technical assistance provided to districts like mine in rural areas, blurred accountability and conflicting priorities. This will interrupt funding and services that will wreak havoc on student outcomes.

Rural districts already operate with limited staff and underfunded central offices. In many places, one superintendent will be handling Title I, special education, federal grants, transportation, food service and student services all on their own — often while also overseeing district operations. Now, imagine telling that same superintendent that instead of leaning on the Department of Education for guidance, they must contact Labor for help with one set of programs, Interior for another, HHS for a third and the State Department for others. That’s not reform; it’s an obstacle course.

In addition, these agencies all use different payment systems, which only complicates the flow of funding to districts. I have extensive experience working with the G5 payment system, the Department of Education’s central online platform for managing grant funds. I’ve used earlier versions under multiple administrations — Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden. While no system is perfect, G5 has been relatively straightforward and predictable. When issues arise, there’s a clear structure for technical assistance and problem-solving.

That predictability would be lost. Requiring districts to navigate multiple payment systems across different agencies will introduce unnecessary complexity, slow reimbursements and increase the risk of errors. Small rural districts don’t have the administrative capacity to manage multiple federal accounting systems, and even short delays can disrupt payroll, special education contracts and student services.

These delays mean postponing reading interventions, suspending behavioral health services for vulnerable students or holding off on hiring staff. Since the creation of the Small Rural School Achievement program in 2001, which provides grants essential to bridging rural funding gaps, I hadn’t experienced a single delay in federal education funding — until this year. This is clear evidence that instability in Washington quickly reaches rural communities.

The students who rely most on stable federal support are the ones most harmed when a system enters a period of chaos. These include children with disabilities, Indigenous students, English learners and kids from low-income families. They depend on programs that require consistency, not fragmentation. If the Trump administration’s plan proceeds, those services will be stalled and undermined and could even vanish into bureaucratic gaps. 

If the administration really wants to support states, there are common-sense steps that won’t plunge schools into chaos, such as streamlining federal grant applications, reducing duplicate reporting requirements, updating outdated data systems and expanding technical assistance. These are practical changes that could make life easier for school staff and families.

At the end of the day, rural America survives on stability. We know what happens when a barn collapses or a herd scatters — everyone suffers, and it takes much more effort to bring things back under control than it would have taken to fortify the structure in the first place.

The same principle is true here. Breaking up the Department of Education and scattering its shards throughout the federal government isn’t reform. It’s disruption. And rural schools, tribal communities and vulnerable students will be the ones who pay the steepest price. 

Colorado officials say money that helps 18,000 low-income families pay for child care could run out by Jan. 31 if federal officials don’t lift the freeze they’ve imposed on funding for several safety net programs in five Democrat-led states.

If that happens, some children could go without care and some parents would have to stay home from work. State lawmakers could cover such a funding gap temporarily, though Colorado is facing a significant budget crunch.

The Trump administration announced the freeze on $10 billion in child care and social services funding for Colorado, California, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York in a press release Monday.

In letters sent to the two Colorado agencies that run the affected programs, federal officials said they have “reason to believe that the State of Colorado is illicitly providing” benefits funded with federal dollars to “illegal aliens.”

The letters didn’t cite evidence for that claim and a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services didn’t respond to questions from Chalkbeat about why federal officials are concerned about fraud in Colorado.

Spokespeople from both state departments said by email on Tuesday they’re not aware of any federal fraud investigations focused on the programs affected by the funding freeze.

The five-state funding freeze follows a federal crackdown in Minnesota after a right-wing YouTuber posted a video in late December alleging that Minneapolis child care centers run by Somali residents get federal funds but serve no children. It’s not clear why the other four states have gotten the same treatment as Minnesota, but all have Democratic governors who have clashed with President Donald Trump.

In a New Year’s Eve social media post, Trump called Colorado Gov. Jared Polis “the Scumbag Governor” and said Polis and another Colorado official should “rot in hell” for mistreating Tina Peters, a Trump supporter and former Mesa County clerk who’s serving a nine-year prison sentence for orchestrating a plot to breach election systems.

The federal freeze will affect three main funding streams in Colorado that together bring in about $317 million a year. They include $138 million for the Colorado Department of Early Childhood for child care subsidies for low-income families and a few other programs.

The subsidy program, known as the Colorado Child Care Assistance program, helps cover the cost of care for more than 27,000 children so parents can work or take classes. It’s mostly funded by the federal government with smaller contributions from states and counties.

The other two frozen funding streams go to the Colorado Department of Human Services and pay for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, and other programs.

In the letter to the Colorado Department of Early Childhood, federal officials outlined new fiscal requirements the state will have to follow before the funding freeze is lifted. They include attendance documentation — without names or other personal identifiers — for children in the child care subsidy program.

A state fact sheet issued in response to the funding freeze said funding for the child care subsidy program would be depleted by Jan. 31. It also outlined several measures already in place to prevent fraud or waste, including state audits, monthly case reviews by county officials, and efforts to recover funds if improper payments are made.

The state said it is exploring “all options, including legal avenues” to keep the frozen funding flowing.

Six Democratic state lawmakers, most in leadership positions, released a statement Tuesday afternoon calling the funding freeze a callous move that will make life more expensive for working families.

“We stand ready to work with Governor Polis and partners in our federal delegation to resist this lawless effort to freeze funding, and we sincerely hope that our Republican colleagues will put politics aside, get serious about making life in Colorado more affordable, and put families first,” the statement said in part.

The statement was from Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie; Senate President James Coleman; House Majority Leader Monica Duran; Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez; Rep. Emily Sirota; and Sen. Judy Amabile.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

A jump in immigration enforcement arrests under the Trump administration is having a detrimental impact on America’s child care system, reducing the number of immigrant workers available and prompting mothers with young children to leave their jobs as they scramble for stable care.

That’s according to by the Better Life Lab at the nonprofit , which examined how increased arrests during the first half of the year by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has had a ripple effect on a women-led child care workforce where .

The report estimates there are roughly 39,000 fewer foreign-born child care workers since Trump took office in January. There are also 77,000 fewer American mothers of preschool-aged children in the workforce since that time, a result that researchers found is tied to the impact of ICE arrests. Mothers have already been .

“It’s not surprising that we find that disruptions to the child care market vis-à-vis an increase in immigration enforcement has led to a decline in the number of foreign-born workers, and because of the disruptions in the child care market, this has led to spillovers in the labor market for mothers with kids more generally,” said Chris M. Herbst, one of the authors of the report and a professor of public policy at Arizona State University whose research includes the economics of child care. “These kinds of immigration-induced disruptions have had negative labor market implications.”

The group analyzed and newly compiled ICE arrest data between September 2023 and July 2025 and found that immigrant labor — both among foreign-born and U.S.-born child care workers — decreased as arrests spiked this year and workers tried to avoid being targeted by ICE agents. The report estimates ICE arrests rose more than threefold between December 2024 and June of this year — from just over 8,300 to more than 29,000.

The dynamics also appear to be shifting some workers away from formal center- and home-based employment settings toward private households in work as a babysitter, nanny or au pair. Those shifts may reduce the total number of spots a day care can offer.

“Pay is often under the table, and there’s no formal regulation of this sector,” Herbst said. “We don’t know if it’s high quality, if it’s low quality, how good the pay is — but what it is is less visible, and workers may feel less vulnerable as a result.”

The drop in foreign-born child care workers is most pronounced among highly educated immigrants and those from Mexico. There’s also a 30 percent decrease among Hispanic workers, particularly Mexican workers, born in the United States. ICE agents .

“ICE arrests are having chilling effects on groups that are not eligible for deportation,” Herbst said. “U.S.-born workers of any race or ethnicity are not eligible for deportation, and the fact that we’re seeing reductions in U.S.-born employment among Hispanics, in particular Mexicans, speaks potentially to this chilling effect that ICE is having on these workers.”

Herbst said the administration sold mass deportations on the theory that they would unclog the labor market and create more job opportunities for Americans. That’s not what is playing out in the child care industry, which shows how immigrants and U.S. citizens don’t always compete for the same jobs.

“When a foreign-born worker is not showing up to work anymore because they’re scared, it makes the U.S.-born worker in that program — it makes it more difficult for them to do their jobs because they are doing complementary tasks rather than serving as substitutes for one another.”

The changes to the child care workforce are also impacting employment opportunities among U.S. mothers with preschool-aged children, especially White mothers and those who are highly educated.

“Parents, mothers in particular, rely on having stable child care available in order to work. And 

when you increase instability in the child care market, essentially by ramping up immigration enforcement, you’re scaring the heck out of a lot of workers who are no longer going to show up,” Herbst said. “Because of that, the nation’s ability to provide child care services has declined. Families can no longer find the needed child care to go to work, and as a result, we’re seeing in the data, there are fewer mothers employed.”

This is not the first time researchers have examined the impact of immigration enforcement on child care. aimed at checking the immigration status of people arrested by local police and in effect between 2008 and 2013 also force and among American mothers with young children.

Trump has made mass immigrant deportation a central policy during his second term. The scope of related arrests and subsequent detentions has included people without criminal backgrounds, including and people, and reached into locations once deemed sensitive by the federal government like schools, hospitals and churches.

�հ��ܳ���’s policy decision to rescind “sensitive location” status for places like day cares has translated into more immigration enforcement arrests near centers. A recent arrest of a day care worker inside a Chicago area center as children watched .

Immigration arrests are expected to continue in the new year. Congress approved a massive tax law last summer that for immigration enforcement, including for detentions and deportations. Researchers believe as ICE hires more officers and ramps up arrests, the child care sector could be further harmed.

Herbst said he expects disruptions not just to the child care sector but to other industries that are immigrant intensive.

“What I hope our paper does is start to get people thinking about the trade offs involved in this kind of immigration enforcement policy,” he said. “It’s been sold to us as a policy that’s going to be a boon for American workers, for U.S.-born workers. But I think what we’re finding is that there are trade offs.”

was originally reported by Barbara Rodriguez of . .

There is a new cost to hiring an international worker to fill a vital but otherwise vacant position in a California classroom: $100,000.

In September, the Trump administration began requiring American employers to pay a $100,000 for new H-1B visas, on top of visa application fees that amount to $9,500 to $18,800, depending on various factors. These visas allow skilled and credentialed workers in multiple job sectors to stay in the U.S. On Dec. 12, California joined 19 other states in for instating the “unlawful” fee, according to Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office.

Most foreign workers on H-1Bs in California work in the tech sector. But California also relies on H-1B visas to address another issue: a nationwide teacher shortage and a for staff in dual-language education and special education in K-12 districts.

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Data from the California Department of Education shows school districts filed more than 300 visa applications for the 2023-24 school year, double the amount from just two years earlier. Educators and school officials say its overseas workers on visas are highly skilled, instrumental in multilingual education, and fill positions in special education.

Now education leaders are sounding the alarm that the high additional fee for overseas workers will worsen the strain on California’s public education system.

International employees fill a much-needed gap for school districts

California continues to face an ongoing teacher shortage. In 2023, California K-12 schools staffed 46,982 positions with employees whose credentials did not align with their job assignments, according to from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Another 22,012 educator positions were left vacant that year. Of total misassignments and vacancies, around 28% were in English language development and 11.9% were in special education.

California school districts have also resorted to hiring teachers who haven’t yet obtained certain credentials, according to a study by the nonprofit . Facing a need for teachers, school districts have found that trained professionals from other countries are willing — and qualified — to take classroom jobs that would otherwise go unfilled.

In 2023, in the Bay Area east of San Francisco, West Contra Costa Unified School District had 381 misassigned positions and 711 vacancies, according to the commission. So the district turned to foreign educators, hiring about 88 teachers on H-1B visas — a majority from the Philippines, Spain and Mexico — to teach in mostly dual-language and special education programs, said Sylvia Greenwood, the assistant superintendent for human resources at the district.

“With our shortages in special ed, they were a good fit for our district. And so, therefore, we kept that pipeline open and brought teachers here from the Philippines to support our students and our students with special needs,” Greenwood said.

The decline in the number of credentialed special education teachers continues to worsen. Between 2020 and 2024, the number of credentials earned to teach special education decreased by almost 600 across California, according to from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. The number of temporary permits and waivers granted by the commission increased by about 300 during the same period.

Francisco Ortiz, the president of United Teachers of Richmond and a teacher at Ford Elementary School in West Contra Costa, said the workload for teachers in the district will increase if West Contra Costa Unified is unable to bring in new international teachers.

This would create “greater instability” for students, he said, adding, “It’s going to have a great impact in special education, which is already on fire.”

California school district officials say they are unsure they can pay the new fee to fill hiring gaps with international employees. West Contra Costa officials said they do not know yet who will be responsible for paying the new fee: the district, international teachers themselves or another party.

“We are a district that is dealing with a structural deficit as well, and so that cost, in a lot of ways, is going to be very difficult for our district or really any school district, to be able to take that on,” said Cheryl Cotton, the superintendent for West Contra Costa.

Pasadena Unified, in Southern California, filed about a dozen applications for H-1B visa sponsorships in 2024. Now the district, facing a $27 million , will require those applying for H-1B visas to pay for it themselves, according to district spokesperson Hilda Ramirez Horvath. She said foreign employees will also no longer receive other types of financial support, including legal or filing fees related to immigration processing.

Language programs benefit from international teachers

District officials are also worried about the cultural costs of losing international educators. Educators on H-1B visas make dual-language public schools possible, giving families in California a unique multicultural education that sticks with their children for life.

Kelleen Peckham, a mother to two children in West Contra Costa, said she chose to transfer her daughter to Washington Elementary School in Richmond because it has a dual-language immersion program that teaches students to speak and read Spanish.

Peckham also plans to send her son, who will start kindergarten next year, to the same school even though it takes the family an extra 15 minutes to drive there.

“My husband’s family is from Mexico, and so [their] grandmother, on one side, only speaks Spanish,” Peckham said. “It’s important for [them] to be able to communicate with [their] family and extended family.”

She said if the dual-language immersion program at Washington Elementary doesn’t survive, she would consider transferring her children back to the school in their neighborhood.

Fee spells ‘Keep Out’ to foreign workers

Within weeks of the fee’s , a coalition of international worker groups, unions and religious organizations the Trump administration, alleging the fee would inhibit staffing in education, medicine and ministry services.

“It’s essentially a giant ‘Keep Out’ sign for prospective individuals looking to utilize the visa process to be able to come to the United States and fill these roles and provide these services,” said Laura Flores-Perilla, an attorney with the Justice Action Center, a Los Angeles-based immigration litigation group representing the coalition in its lawsuit.

“It’s not just going to hurt these individuals who have this pathway to do this, but it’s also going to hurt employers within the United States,” Flores-Perilla said.

Although the fee , many international teachers are feeling less welcomed to work and live in the states. A.F., an international elementary school teacher in the West Contra Costa Unified School District, said many teachers are still concerned the federal government will announce new policy changes that could force them to leave the U.S.

“I feel like it’s a form of discrimination to impose [a] $100,000 fee for teachers,” A.F. said.

A.F., who is currently on an H-1B visa, asked to only give his initials because he fears speaking publicly will affect his ability to receive a green card in the future. He immigrated from the Philippines to California five years ago on a J-1 visa before transferring to an H-1B visa at the beginning of 2025. J-1 visas allow visitors to temporarily stay in the U.S. to participate in certain programs, including teaching, studying, conducting research and more, according to .

A.F. said the district previously paid for all of his immigration costs for his H-1B visa, which amounted to more than $3,700 for processing fees and an immigration attorney.

The future is uncertain for H-1B visa hopefuls

H.R., a physical education teacher in West Contra Costa who works on a short-term J-1 visa, said he moved his family from Mexico to the U.S. three years ago to work at one of the district’s high schools because he felt it would be safer to raise his daughter in the U.S. H.R. requested to use only his initials because he doesn’t want to jeopardize his ability to apply for the H-1B visa in the future.

“My biggest reason [for moving] is my daughter,” he said. “Me and my wife decided that it would be a good chance for her [and] a big opportunity to learn the language and to grow up in a different environment.”

H.R. can’t apply for the H-1B visa because he missed the deadline and West Contra Costa Unified is now unlikely to pay for his immigration fees. After his visa expires in June 2026, H.R. will move back to Mexico with his family and reapply for the J-1 visa in hopes of returning to California.

“Everybody says here that they need teachers in California … but they don’t want to do anything to [help us stay] here,” H.R. said.

At the Los Angeles Unified School District, spokesperson Christy Hagen said in an email to CalMatters that the recent visa changes have not yet impacted the school’s hiring of educators on H-1B visas. Hagen said the district’s immigration experts were “still evaluating the effect of this order.”

Maria Miranda, a representative for United Teachers Los Angeles — the union for Los Angeles Unified teachers — said the district had, as of mid-November, not provided any guidance to its educators or schools on how H-1B visa hopefuls would be supported.

Flores-Perilla, the attorney bringing the lawsuit against the Trump administration, says no hearings have been set in their case yet. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has now also brought a over the $100,000 fee, arguing that the proclamation overrides provisions of the and harms U.S. employers.

For now, districts will have to wait on the results of either lawsuit to potentially see some relief in immigration costs.

“It’s absolutely unfeasible to be able to pay this fee [and] to be able to actually bring in prospective employees in their fields and industries, so it’s going to hurt everyone,” Flores-Perilla said.

Sophie Sullivan and Alina Ta are contributors with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

This article was and was republished under the license.

While the federal education bureaucracy has room for improvement, this move should alarm anyone — across party lines — who understands the central purpose of Title I: to mitigate the effects of poverty on learning and ensure that every child has a fair chance at a high-quality education.

Title I was not created to build workforce pipelines or meet short-term labor market needs. It was created to address inequities in schooling. Relocating it to the Department of Labor – an agency with little experience in K-12 education, little familiarity with school improvement or academic intervention, and no core mission related to teaching or learning – fundamentally undermines its purpose.

Title I administration relies on specialists who spend their careers understanding the complexities of school improvement, early literacy, bilingual education, assessment, family engagement, data reporting and civil rights enforcement. These professionals interpret federal law, develop guidance that districts depend on, monitor state implementation, help local leaders navigate compliance challenges and support research-based strategies that improve academic outcomes for children in poverty. Their work is rarely visible to the public, but their expertise is vital to the day-to-day functioning of thousands of schools.

When these positions are eliminated or scattered across agencies, the federal government loses not only staff but decades of institutional memory. Labor does not have personnel trained to advise districts on effective reading interventions, to monitor support for English learners, or to help states build equitable accountability systems.

Nor does it have the infrastructure to provide guidance on the complex interdependence of Title I with federal programs governing students with disabilities, teacher training or English learners. That expertise cannot be rebuilt quickly. And the predictable result will be confusion, inconsistency and weaker oversight.

Narrowing the federal role to workforce preparation overlooks the broader civic, academic, social and developmental purposes of schooling. A child’s education is not simply a supply-chain function of the labor market. Title I was created to provide additional resources to schools serving students with the fewest opportunities: resources that fund literacy coaches, paraprofessionals, after-school tutoring, community school coordinators, summer learning programs, bilingual aides and social workers.

These efforts help children succeed academically and thrive as full members of their communities. They cannot be replaced by job-readiness activities, nor should they be justified only through workforce logic.

The students most harmed by this shift live in every corner of the country. In rural communities, Title I dollars support small schools that would otherwise be unable to hire reading specialists or maintain adequate transportation. These schools often have only one or two central-office staff members to manage federal programs. When reporting requirements or compliance expectations shift suddenly to a new agency unfamiliar with school operations, rural districts have little capacity to absorb the confusion. That leaves teachers and students vulnerable.

In suburban districts, Title I is often the lifeline that enables supports for rapidly changing demographics. Many suburban schools now serve increasing numbers of multilingual learners, low-income families and students experiencing housing instability. Title I funds help these districts build systems of early intervention, family engagement and academic support that would otherwise not exist. When federal guidance becomes unclear or inconsistent, these districts struggle to maintain those programs.

Urban districts depend on Title I at an even larger scale. Large-city schools use these funds to support community school models, mental health services, after-school programs, restorative justice initiatives and partnerships with nonprofits. They also rely on clear federal guidance to ensure that high-poverty schools receive their fair allocation of state and local funds in addition to Title I dollars, a safeguard called “supplement, not supplant.” Because Labor lacks the expertise or commitment to enforce this rule, inequities within districts will widen and children in red, purple and blue districts will suffer.

As a child of a low-income, single-parent family, my brother and I benefited directly from Title I funding in the 13 public schools we attended. Title I paid for more teachers, for literacy programs, books in our classrooms, after-school programs, breakfast, free and reduced-price lunch and even band instruments that allowed us to participate until we could afford to purchase our own.

Both of us entered the workforce at young ages, taking part time jobs in middle and high school. Both of us continued to work through college. And both of us have Title I to thank for providing funding and accountability mechanisms to the local districts we attended. Despite the financial instability and numerous moves, public schools and the educators serving in them offered us resources, programs and stability we otherwise would not have experienced.

Those advocating for the elimination of the Education Department insist that because Title I funding will continue, nothing fundamental will change. But funding without coherent and responsible oversight is functionally weaker funding.

Dollars do not implement themselves.

They require an expert federal partner, capable state agencies and local leaders who understand how to use those funds wisely. When the federal partner is replaced by an agency without educational expertise, the quality and equity of implementation deteriorate. That deterioration will disproportionately impact the very communities and families Title I was created to support.

Improving the federal role in education is a worthy goal. Streamlining bureaucracy, clarifying guidance and eliminating redundancies can make federal programs more effective. But dispersing the Education Department’s core functions across agencies that lack expertise is not reform, it’s abandonment. The nation’s commitment to public schooling as the foundation for increasing educational access and economic opportunity is too important to place in the hands of a department ill-equipped to uphold it.

At issue: a working list of “professional” programs that require advanced degrees and licenses. Circulated online last month, it amounts to just 11 fields, including doctors, dentists and attorneys, among others.

Left out are virtually all other professions that, in many cases, require advanced degrees and licenses. 

The proposed change is part of a GOP effort to trim not just student debt and federal spending but college costs more broadly. 

In practical terms, enrolling in a “professional” program would give students the ability to borrow up to $50,000 per year in federal loans, or $200,000 over the course of their graduate school career. By contrast, programs that don’t fall into one of the 11 fields would give students access to just $20,500 a year, or $100,000 total. That often doesn’t cover the cost of a graduate education, advocates say, leaving students to rely on families or expensive private loans.

“It is a bad situation for a lot of professions,” said Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president for government relations at the , which represents college presidents. The council has over the list, saying the U.S. Department of Education should broaden it to include, among others, nurses, social workers and many kinds of teachers.

In a , the American Association of Colleges of Nursing said it was “deeply concerned” by the department’s proposed definition, saying it “excludes nursing and significantly limits student loan access.”

In a statement, Education Department spokeswoman Ellen Keast blamed social media “misinformation” about the rule-making process for confusion about the administration’s moves. Much of the uproar has spread via videos on sites like and .

Keast said the plans are still in development, and that reducing lending limits will reduce students’ costs. “We expect that institutions charging tuition rates well above market prices will consider lowering tuition thanks to these historic reforms,” she said.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, told The 74 the student debt crisis “will not be solved by making arbitrary judgements about which professions ‘deserve’ support. Lifetime and annual borrowing caps hit career-changers and graduate students hardest, especially as the cost of higher education continues to rise.”

AFT also represents nurses, librarians, higher education faculty and graduate students who teach and do research.

Dina Kastner, public policy and advocacy manager for the National Association of Social Workers, said federal loan limits “will really have an impact” on social work students.

“For people who are going to graduate school — particularly in a profession like social work, where a graduate degree is needed for a lot of the work that social workers do — it’s definitely a problem,” she said in an interview. 

The association has been hearing “consistently” from members since details about the changes began trickling out, she said.

A consensus or a ‘stranglehold’?

While the effort is part of a broader one by Congress in President �հ��ܳ���’s to limit the burden of graduate student debt and cap federal borrowing, details of the two categories actually took shape as the Education Department initiated the rule-making process, said ACE’s Fansmith.

Department representatives proposed that instead of trying to figure out all of the programs that fit under the “professional” category, they would rely on a list of 10 professions originally cited as “examples” — and declared that those are eligible for the higher borrowing limits. 

“You would think it’s an oversight, because the actual statutory language says these 10 are ‘examples,’” Fansmith said. “Essentially, what they said was, ‘We are going to do the minimum possible,’ in part because they’re really trying to limit how much students can borrow.” That, despite the fact that in several fields, such as education and nursing, employers are facing huge demands for highly trained workers, he said. 

After two weeks of talks, Fansmith said, negotiators agreed to add an 11th category to the “professional” list: clinical psychology.

He called the process “completely crazy” and not what Congress intended for the lending program. “This administration is kind of shooting ourselves in the foot and doing something that’s going to have really lasting harm until it’s overturned.”

In its statement, the department did not directly address the process it followed, but in a “Myth vs. Fact” , issued Nov. 24, it called the proposed limits on lending “commonsense” and said a negotiating committee offered “a consensus definition” for the two categories — one that it says is now being bent out of shape by fear-mongering “progressive voices.”

The department said federal data indicates that 95% of nursing students borrow below the annual $100,000 loan limit “and therefore are not affected by the new caps.”

It also noted that it “has not prejudged the rulemaking process and may make changes in response to public comments” over the next few months.

That hasn’t stopped professional groups from protesting in advance. The nurses’ association said that, as of 2022, more than one in four RNs planned to leave nursing or retire over the next five years. One in five holds a master’s degree or higher, it said, and demand for nurses with advanced degrees — in clinical specialties, teaching and research — “far outstrips the supply.”

‘Drowning in debt’

The move to limit lending comes, in part, from a conservative belief that expanding financial aid via big federal loans not only creates a debt problem for students — it also allows universities to quietly inflate costs as many students borrow the entire amount needed to attend.

The idea is sometimes called , after former U.S. Education Secretary William Bennett. In 1987, he wrote that increases in federal aid had “enabled colleges and universities blithely to raise their tuitions, confident that Federal loan subsidies would help cushion the increase.”

Nearly 40 years later, the idea lives on: In 2023 when Republicans in Congress to lower college costs, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said, “Our federal higher education financing system contributes more to the problem than the solution. Colleges and universities using the availability of federal loans to increase their tuitions have left too many students drowning in debt without a path for success.”

Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, in October said Congress’s budget bill, which will Grad PLUS loans as of July 2026, has bring costs down. As an example, he said Santa Clara University School of Law next fall will give incoming full-time students a guaranteed $16,000 tuition scholarship, renewable for up to three years, the duration of the program. That amounts to an effective $16,000 cut in net tuition, he said.

The relationship between credit availability and tuition rates is difficult to track directly, but a few studies have found a connection. In 2015, economist David O. Lucca and colleagues changes in subsidized loan maximums had an effect on tuition, especially for “more expensive degrees, those offered by private institutions, and for two-year or vocational programs.” Other studies have found the effect more pronounced in .

By contrast, in 2017, , who studies college costs at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, law school tuition rates and found “far less evidence for the Bennett Hypothesis than I expected to see.” 

He offered several explanations, among them that law schools that raise tuition by more than competitors may see declines in applicants and revenue, and that greater availability of federal loans simply shifts students’ debt out of private banks and into the public system: In 2003, he noted, 36% of law students took out private loans. By 2011, five years after Grad PLUS loans debuted, it was just 5%.

Kastner of the social workers’ association said limiting how much graduate students can borrow, combined with the of Grad PLUS loans, is “a double whammy” for students. As a result, many will be forced to rely once again on private banks, which demand higher interest rates and offer fewer protections if they can’t pay loans back.

Asked if she had sympathy for the effort to lower students’ debt burden by restricting graduate borrowing, Kastner replied, “I don’t see it that way. I think it’s just making things more difficult for students.”

Kastner herself struggled to get her degree in the mid-1990s. By the time she began her social work career in Chicago in 1997, her debt amounted to about $40,000. Her monthly payment: $600, the equivalent one semi-monthly paycheck. 

She eventually got help from her parents to pay back her loans, but said squeezing new professionals will present “a real challenge,” especially for first-generation students “who may not have the family resources to really help them bridge that gap.”

ACE’s Fansmith said the department should be considering policies, such as income- based repayment and long-term loan forgiveness, that could actually address budgetary and student debt problems “without simply saying, ‘You can’t access the education.’”

He noted that the final rules, slated to take effect in July, won’t be written until early next year. In the meantime, he anticipates heated public comments from nurses, social workers, educators and other professions. 

“It wouldn’t be shocking to see Congress step in,” said Fansmith. “Nurses are, understandably and appropriately, a really sympathetic group.” And everyone sees the need for more of them, he said. “So these kinds of decisions that are really harmful for our country, honestly, might get re-evaluated.”

New international students enrolling at U.S. colleges declined sharply this fall, a concerning development for universities that rely on those students for research, tuition revenue and the diversity they bring to campus culture. It could, however, create more space for U.S. residents at those campuses.

Enrollments of new international students were down 17% compared to fall 2024, according to a report released Monday by the Institute of International Education, which surveyed more than 800 colleges about their fall 2025 enrollments. The institute, a nonprofit organization based in New York, publishes an annual report that examines the enrollment of international students. 

The fall data was not broken down by state, so the scale of decline in California is unclear. At USC, which enrolls more international students than any other California college, overall enrollment of international students is down 3% this fall, according to a campus spokesperson. That includes returning and first-time students, so the drop could be much higher for new arrivals. USC this fall enrolls about 12,000 international students, or 26% of its total student population, according to the college. About half of those students are from China. 

The declines come amid a changing landscape for international students under the Trump administration, which has delayed visa processing, created travel restrictions and pressured some campuses to recruit and admit fewer students from other countries. The colleges surveyed this fall by the institute cited visa application concerns and travel restrictions as top factors in the decline. 

“We are confronting major headwinds with what I would say are poor policy decisions that the administration is taking. And that is creating a climate for international students that signals that you’re not welcome here,” said Fanta Aw, CEO of NAFSA, a nonprofit for international education and exchange.

President Donald Trump has said that he wants to lower the number of international students at U.S. colleges to leave more room at those campuses for U.S. students. “It’s too much because we have Americans that want to go there and to other places, and they can’t go there,” he said earlier this year, referencing the number of international students at Harvard and other universities.

For the full 2024-25 academic year, new international student enrollments were down by 7%, driven by a 15% drop among new international graduate students, compared to 2023-24. However, the number of new undergraduates was up by 5%. Trump took office in January, just before the start of the spring semester at most colleges. 

In the U.S., students from India were the largest group of international students, accounting for 30.8% of all international students, followed by students from China, with 22.6% of enrollments.

In the 2024-25 academic year in California, the largest share of international students were from China, and they made up 35.4% of enrollments, followed by students from India at 20.9%. Overall enrollment of international students in California was down 1.1% in 2024-25. 

USC enrolled the most international students of any California university, followed by four University of California campuses: Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego and Irvine. According to the report, the total number of enrolled international students were: 12,020 at Berkeley, 10,769 at UCLA, 10,545 at San Diego, and 7,638 at Irvine.

Across the state, international students make up about 7% of enrollments at four-year colleges, . They make up a large share of graduate students, accounting for 31% of graduate students at UC campuses, 15% at private nonprofit universities, and 12% at California State University campuses. 

Freya Vijay, 20, a third-year student from Canada studying business administration at USC, said she always planned to come to the United States for college. 

“In terms of business and just the economy, you have Wall Street, you have New York, Chicago, L.A., and San Francisco, all these big cities that dominate what’s going on in the world,” she said. “So immediately, in terms of opportunity, my mind was set on the States.” 

In addition to visa and travel restrictions, the Trump administration has directly requested — or threatened, as some have called it — California campuses to limit enrollments of international students. The administration’s compact offer to USC last month would have forced the university to cap international enrollment at 15% for undergraduates and limit enrollment from any one country to 5%.

, which also would have required the university to make a number of other changes, including committing to “transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” 

Separately, in a settlement proposal to UCLA, the Trump administration calls on the campus to ensure that “foreign students likely to engage in anti-Western, anti-American, or antisemitic disruptions or harassment” are not admitted. UCLA is still in negotiations with the administration and has not yet reached a deal. The Trump administration has charged the campus with antisemitism and civil rights violations. 

Even amid the turmoil, experts say they expect California universities to continue recruiting international students. Julie Posselt, a professor of education at USC’s Rossier School of Education, noted that at research universities, much of the research is being carried out by international graduate students. 

“Especially in STEM fields, international students are really central to the research functions of universities,” Posselt said. “Enrolling international students is not optional. It is absolutely a part of the fabric of what makes universities great.” 

On top of that, colleges have financial incentives to enroll international students. That’s especially true at UC campuses, which charge international students and students from other states much higher rates of tuition than California residents. In the 2026-27 academic year, new international and out-of-state undergraduates at UC will pay nearly $52,000 in tuition, more than triple what in-state students will be charged. Nonresidents in graduate programs also generally pay higher rates than residents.

Facing pressure from the state Legislature to make more room for California residents, UC in 2017 passed a policy to cap nonresident enrollment at 18%, with a higher percentage allowed for campuses that were already above that mark. But the system still gets significant tuition revenue from nonresidents, including international students, which UC says supports the system’s core operations and helps to lower the cost of attendance for California residents.  

In a Nov. 10 interview with Fox News, Trump seemed to acknowledge the importance of international students, saying colleges might “go out of business” without them.

“You don’t want to cut half of the people, half of the students from all over the world that are coming into our country — destroy our entire university and college system — I don’t want to do that,” he said. 

International students also bring diverse perspectives and “a richness to the campus culture,” said Stett Holbrook, a spokesperson for the University of California system. “That’s something we really appreciate and try to cultivate.”

At USC, the presence of international students from more than 130 countries means there are “innumerable opportunities at USC to encounter different perspectives” and “experience new cultures,” a spokesperson said in a statement. 

Vijay, the USC student from Canada, said she regularly boasts about USC to friends, adding that she hopes attending remains an option for other international students. 

“I always think it’s just such a great opportunity and that no international student should ever take it for granted,” she said. “I wish other internationals could experience it.”

This was originally published on .

As a disabled American, it’s hard to express how profoundly this piece of legislation has impacted my life. Without it, I would likely be living in an , deprived of the rights and opportunities I have now. As the IDEA turns 50 this month, attacks from the Trump administration threaten to undermine the protections it provides millions of Americans like me.

The IDEA stems from the Supreme Court’s decision, which quashed the racist “separate but equal” doctrine and heralded the desegregation of American public schools, with Chief Justice Earl Warren segregation as a “denial of the equal protection of the laws.”

Disability advocates took notice of the decision, arguing that segregation based on disability is also inherently unequal. This led to a case called Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Children (PARC) v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1972, where a federal court ruled that disabled children have a right to education. Three years later, the IDEA was passed.

Thanks to the new law, I attended public school from pre-K through 12th grade, receiving vital services that prepared me for college and a robust career. Each year, my parents and I met with teachers and other specialists to carefully negotiate services and develop an individualized education plan, or IEP, that ensured my experience at school remained equitable.

It wasn’t until high school that I realized how important these meetings really were. From accessible buses to physical therapy to participating on my high school track team, the IDEA funded services so that I could continue learning alongside my non-disabled peers. It even ensured that I received adaptive driver’s education training during my junior year. Without the support these services provided me during my formative school years, I have no doubt I’d be in a much different place today.

Alarmingly, the Trump administration is now trying to eliminate the protections and services that the IDEA guarantees. For example, racial minority students with disabilities are often when they’re young and in later years, leading them to miss out on key early interventions. This can lead to Black and brown disabled students being placed in segregated classrooms and receiving punishment at higher rates.

In 2016, the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services finalized a rule requiring states to follow procedures to improve monitoring of schools that are disproportionately identifying and punishing disabled racial minority students. In August 2025, the Trump administration’s Department of Education to reverse that rule. If successful, it would likely mean a spike in educational discrimination against disabled Black and brown students who are already struggling.

The current administration is also attempting to eliminate IDEA funding by consolidating funding with other programs in a block grant and letting states decide how to spend those dollars.

Obtaining IDEA evaluations and services is already difficult, since it often requires parents to fight on behalf of their children. My parents spent countless hours pushing schools to provide the right services so that I could attend and fully participate in school and after-school activities. I was lucky enough that my parents had the resources and knowledge to fight for my rights under the IDEA.

Many don’t have the time, resources, or knowledge to successfully negotiate with schools, which leaves many disabled students to navigate their education through significant barriers.

My education led me to become the senior director at a policy think-tank in Washington, D.C. I’ve had the privilege of speaking before Congress and even a vice president to advocate for disabled people. But I fear the opportunities afforded to me may vanish for the next generation of disabled students in the U.S.Disabled people are already twice as likely to be and live in than non-disabled people. Obtaining an education is ways to help disabled people secure a stable income—and by weakening the IDEA, the Trump administration is trying to take those opportunities away. As the rates of rise, it’s more important than ever for us to protect and fund this essential civil rights law.

Do we really need to worry about elementary and secondary schools anyway? They can simply get tossed into the Department of Labor. Those who work on special education? Plop them over there in Health and Human Services. 

In this vision of dismemberment, the word “education” is scrubbed from any U.S.-led effort to improve our country. The concept of teaching and learning is not important enough to garner federal attention anymore. 

Instead, it’s about kids envisioned as workers, with a little bit of health care sprinkled in to make sure their bodies can do the work needed once they grow into adults. This not only acts against Congressional will and statute, it is disastrous for America’s competitiveness and our standing in the world. It is disrespectful to America’s families. And it is catastrophic for our kids and the generation behind them.

Today’s students are facing a future that demands new wells of knowledge, skills and ingenuity to address the unknowns of an AI-infused and climate-changed world. Today’s parents worry that their children will never get the education they need to compete with AI, get good jobs and feel fulfilled in their work. Many of today’s teachers are coping with classrooms of children experiencing fear and trauma while also under pressure to use new technologies and become AI-literate as soon as possible.

Take reading. We have all heard how so many of today’s children are struggling to achieve proficiency in reading, as scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress are in troubling decline. In an AI-driven world, schools need to help students overcome these reading challenges and build traditional literacy skills and powers of comprehension. And they need to help students acquire digital literacy skills so they can not only read what ChatGPT spits out but also know how to vet it. 

This is a combination that only comes with well-prepared teachers given training and resources to support students at different levels, with different needs. This is not about sitting kids at a desk and telling them to read “Hop on Pop” so they someday can read instructions for a low-wage job. 

To say that states can do it all on their own is folly. Imagine 50 states with 50 different agencies, many of which are held together by small numbers of people, all trying to manage thousands of school districts without guidance. District and state leaders need and want help to apply best practices for funding early literacy specialists in districts, helping English learners read and respond to complex texts, responding to parent inquiries and protecting students’ rights. 

There are now decades of scientific research — much of it led by great American minds — on what it takes to build school, home and informal learning environments that engage kids and spark learning. Educators are eager to learn effective strategies for stimulating the deeper thinking that comes with a quality education and is needed to succeed in a complicated world. Other countries, from China to Germany to Paraguay, are using that research on effective teaching and learning to equip their young people for the challenges ahead. The U.S. should be leading in education, not ceding ground.

The materials distributed in the Department of Education’s Tuesday talk about “interagency agreements” as if this is as easy as moving someone to a new cubicle. The truth is anything but, and the cost and inefficiencies across funding streams, accountability and new workloads are easy to see. 

It is not hard to predict chaos and confusion for the next several years as government officials try to figure out how these interagency agreements will work. That is time that should be used instead to strengthen our education system and help states and localities with all the guidance and assistance and funding they need. That is time to ensure that we aren’t leaving out students who may happen to have a disability, who have been discriminated against, or who happen to live in a low-income school district. 

Think about it: Do we really want to be a country without a Department of Education in the 21st century?

For the 29th time so far this year, Arizona is suing the Trump administration, this time to block the U.S. Department of Education from cancelling public service student loan forgiveness for employees of government agencies and organizations that help undocumented immigrants, promote diversity, equity and inclusion or take part in political protest.

“Public service should never be weaponized for political games,” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a statement. “This rule undermines the very spirit of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and threatens workers who dedicate their careers to public service. I’m proud to join my fellow attorneys general in suing to block it.”

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On Monday, Mayes joined a coalition of 21 other Democratic attorneys general challenging the new rules from the U.S. Department of Education. The states asked a federal judge in Massachusetts to declare the rule unlawful and block the department from implementing it.

The rule, finalized Oct. 31, allows the department itself to decide that agencies or organizations are ineligible for student loan forgiveness if the Trump administration says they have a “substantial illegal purpose.” The rule is scheduled to go into effect in July 2026.

But the Department of Education’s description of an illegal purpose is based on its own ideological agenda, the attorneys general wrote.

“In seeking to crack down on specific activities disfavored by this Administration, the true intent behind the Rule is clear,” the attorneys general wrote. “The Department seeks to chill the activities of public service employers by discouraging their employees from what it deems objectionable forms of public service.”

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program was created by Congress in 2007 to encourage professionals to go into public service careers with lower pay than private sector jobs, where they might not otherwise be able to pay off their student loan debt. After 10 years of regular payments while working in public service, the federal government forgives remaining student loan debt for those in the program.

“Over the years, (the program) has enabled more than one million public servants to pursue careers that might have otherwise been out of reach,” Mayes’ office wrote in a statement. “For state governments, (the program) is a critical tool to recruit and retain qualified professionals in vital fields like education, health care, and law enforcement.”

In addition to the lawsuit from the attorneys general, a group of more than a dozen cities, labor unions and nonprofit organizations from across the country in federal court in Massachusetts on Monday seeking “to restore the promise that a bipartisan Congress made to public-service workers and their employers in establishing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program nearly 20 years ago.”

The Arizona Education Association, the largest teachers union in the state, was unavailable for comment, but its parent organization, the National Education Association, joined in the suit alongside other labor unions.

“The new rule imposes harsh and illegal restrictions, makes repayment less affordable, and silences the voices of educators and other beneficiaries of the programs,” NEA President Becky Pringle said in a statement. “We refuse to stand by while politicians trap dedicated educators in generations of debt.”

Congress was clear, the attorneys general wrote in their lawsuit, that all government employees — except for elected members of Congress — were eligible for public service student loan forgiveness.

The states have benefited greatly from the loan forgiveness program, Mayes and the other attorneys general argued, because it helped them to recruit “first responders, early childhood educators, librarians, nurses, public defenders, and public prosecutors” who might otherwise have gone to work in the private sector to ensure they could pay off their student loans.

“Residents and State employees have planned their lives and careers around receiving (federal student loan) forgiveness,” the attorneys general wrote.

The loan forgiveness program applies to a wide range of workers beyond those employed by state government and municipalities, including those who work for some nonprofit organizations.

“To be clear, (the public service loan forgiveness program) is not merely a convenient recruitment tool for State employers,” the attorneys general wrote. “For many employees with debt loads that reach into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, (the program) is the only reason they can afford to work in public service in the first place.”

In March, Trump issued an executive order instructing the U.S. Department of Education to change eligibility rules for the public service loan forgiveness program based on the administration’s view of “substantial illegal purpose.” The new rule disqualifies employees of government entities or organizations that “aid and abet” violations of federal immigration law, support protests against the Trump administration or back gender-affirming care for transgender youth. (The administration denigrated health care for trans children as  the “chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children or the trafficking of children to so-called transgender sanctuary States for ‘purposes of emancipation from their lawful parents.’”)

The attorneys general argue that �հ��ܳ���’s executive order and the Department of Education rule attempt to give power to the department that has not been conferred to it by Congress.

“The Department redefines ‘qualifying employer’ in a sharp departure from the corresponding definition of ‘public service job’ that Congress put in place in 2007 — and that has remained substantively intact since then — but provides no adequate justification for this grant of unfettered discretion,” the AGs wrote.

The rule also targets state government entities while exempting federal government entities, without explanation, the attorneys general claimed.

“Put simply, the Final Rule is nothing more than a laundry list of this Administration’s policy priorities designed to attack lawful conduct it does not agree with,” the attorneys general wrote.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com.

A White House decision to add $100,000 to the price of a work visa, allowing employers to hire from overseas for hard-to-fill positions, has California’s technology industry and other businesses reeling. But another group is also on edge: the state’s schools.

California employs more teachers on H-1B visas than any state except Texas and North Carolina, according to a National Education Association . Last fiscal year, 506 U.S. school districts employed 2,300 H-1B visa holders.

The demand for the visas from California school districts has grown over the last seven years as the state’s schools, facing teacher shortages, have turned to overseas teachers to help fill openings.

Last school year, 294 H-1B visas were granted to the state’s school districts, compared to 193 in 2018-19, according to the California Department of Education. The visas are typically good for three years with a possible three-year extension. 

But the new $100,000 charge for the H-1B visa is beyond what most districts can afford.

“For these small, resource-limited districts, a $100,000 fee would be entirely cost-prohibitive and would effectively close off one of the few pipelines for qualified teachers,” said Yuri Calderon, executive director of the Small School Districts’ Association.

Until Sept. 21, school districts and other employers paid application and processing fees of about $3,700 for the visa, depending on their size. But that was before President Donald Trump  adding the $100,000 fee, effective two days later. 

The increase is meant to prevent the replacement of American workers with lower-paid workers from overseas, according to the proclamation.

 Although the fee increase may not immediately impact school districts, because it will not be levied on renewals or extensions of existing H-1B visas, it will have repercussions in a few months when school leaders begin to hire for the next school year.

Rural districts could take a hit

The $100,000 fee could be especially devastating to small school districts already facing , Calderon said.

“Rural and geographically isolated communities are increasingly dependent on international, fully credentialed teachers to fill positions that have proven nearly impossible to staff,” Calderon said. “This is particularly true in the case of middle and high school math, science and special education.” 

More underprepared teachers

The Vallejo City Unified School District has more than 20 teachers working on H-1B visas this school year, said Hattie Kogami, director of human resources at Vallejo City Unified. The district was granted 12 more visas last school year. 

District leaders had planned to hire 15 additional teachers from the Philippines on H-1B visas for the coming year, but only managed to hire nine before the new fee was levied.

“Our district is in declining enrollment, and so we’re dealing with the real struggles of cutting $40 million,” Kogami said. “So, we definitely don’t have a hundred thousand dollars to bring in these six people or anyone else for that matter.”

That means the district, with a student population that is more than a quarter English learners, will probably have to hire more underprepared teachers. The district already hires between 20 and 30 teachers without the appropriate teaching credentials each year, Kogami said.

“We always have a ton of non-credentialed teachers,” Kogami said. “That’s why we started wanting to use the H-1B. Those people have been through a program; they know what to do.”

In 2022, an  found that nearly 1 out of 5 classes in California were taught by underprepared teachers working on emergency-style permits because of a shortage of credentialed teachers. Many of the shortages were in special education, math, science and foreign language classrooms.

Teachers with H-1B visas who have been  have at least a bachelor’s degree and have completed teacher preparation programs. Their college transcripts, certificates and licenses are evaluated by an agency approved by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing before they are issued a preliminary teaching credential.

Like all California teachers, they have to prove subject-matter competency, complete a CPR course and a U.S. Constitution course, and finish a two-year individualized program of mentoring and support called . 

The United States government limits the number of H-1B visas to 65,000 a year, with an additional 20,000 going to people with master’s or doctoral degrees. There have historically been more applicants than available visas, so the applicants are selected through a computerized lottery system. 

School leaders want an exemption

The Trump administration has already made changes to the $100,000 fee requirement, updating the  last week to clarify that the fee would not apply to people already in the U.S. under other visas who want to move to an H-1B visa.

Education leaders are hopeful that the Trump administration will go a step further and exempt schools entirely from the fee.

“Without such an exemption, this change could have a devastating impact on small school districts already facing severe teacher shortages,” Calderon said.

Relief could also come from lawsuits challenging the fee filed this month, including one by the U.S.  and another by a , employers and religious groups.

J-1 visa offers short-term option

The J-1 visa, also called an exchange visitor visa, is an option for school districts in need of teachers, but it has more stringent requirements that make it a difficult fit for low-performing school districts, Kogami said. She prefers H-1B visas because they can lead to a green card and permanent residency, which often means a long-term employee.

“We’re going to try to move all of our folks that we’ve hired that stay with us to green card status,” Kogami said.

Evelyn Anderson, principal of the l, likes the J-1 visa because it doesn’t use a lottery system to allocate the visas, and although the teacher candidate must be interviewed at the U.S. Embassy in their home country, they are seldom denied.

But she started helping some of her teachers move to H-1B visas to extend their stays after having difficulty finding teachers during �հ��ܳ���’s first term and during the Covid pandemic.

The Santa Rosa City Schools charter school is one of more than 50 similar schools in the U.S. that are accredited by the French Ministry of Education. One of the requirements is that all its teachers have French teaching credentials, which means most are from France or French-speaking countries.

Although the $100,000 fee for the H-1B visa isn’t impacting the Santa Rosa French-American Charter School directly, because school leaders haven’t hired teachers from overseas on the H-1B visa, Anderson, the principal, still has her concerns.

“When I do have to recruit the new teachers to come on a J-1, will they be hesitant because there is this overall feeling that the U.S. isn’t as welcoming?” she wondered.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Education Department is looking to move the $15 billion Individuals with Disabilities Education Act program outside of the agency, the Washington Post ���ճܱ���岹��.

In a statement to States Newsroom, department spokesperson Madi Biedermann did not explicitly confirm the report, but said the department is generally looking for ways to move its operations to other agencies. President Donald Trump has pledged to eliminate the Education Department.

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The agency “is exploring additional partnerships with federal agencies to support special education programs without any interruption or impact on students with disabilities, but no agreement has been signed,” Biedermann wrote.

Biedermann said Education Secretary Linda McMahon “has been very clear that her goal is to put herself out of a job by shutting down the Department of Education and returning education to the states” and that McMahon is “fully committed to protecting the federal funding streams that support our nation’s students with disabilities.”

�հ��ܳ���’s administration moved to lay off 465 department employees, including 121 at the , earlier this month amid the ongoing government shutdown.

A federal judge has  from carrying out the layoffs, but the ruling provides only short-term relief as legal proceedings unfold.

The department’s many responsibilities include guaranteeing a free public education for students with disabilities through IDEA.

Trump has already suggested rehousing special education services under the Department of Health and Human Services.

HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.�� in March that the agency is “fully prepared” to take on that responsibility.

Fully transferring responsibility for IDEA would require an act of Congress — a significant undertaking given that at least 60 votes are needed to break a Senate filibuster and Republicans hold just 53 seats.

Career and technical education is a lot more than learning to weld or draw blood.

It can expose kids to jobs they didn’t even know existed and help them figure out what they want to do with their lives.

It can also teach students concrete skills they can use on the job right after they graduate high school. But high school programs haven’t always lined up well with what employers are looking for, or prepared students for jobs available in their communities.

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The Trump administration wants to see career and technical education, or CTE, focus more on preparing students for jobs. To do that, that have been under the Education Department’s purview for decades and moved them to the Labor Department, which has historically focused on short-term job training for unemployed adults.

Trump officials say the end goal is to boost participation in the labor force, especially for the millions of young adults . The change, they say, will reduce the administrative burden on states and make it easier for states to centralize their own workforce development programs.

Jason Tyszko, a senior vice president for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, said there could be some short-term disruption, as well as some hard questions to work through. But if the end result is more accountability for programs and more young people in jobs, that would be a “win for families and learners.”

“We think the more alignment, the better,” Tyszko said.

But many career-technical education advocates, as well as Democrats in Congress, say this move is another step toward dismantling the Education Department. They fear there are simply too few staff in both the Education and Labor Departments to manage the transition, and they worry the change will end up steering kids toward short-term job training with fewer paths to advancement.

High school CTE programs can help create “a springboard for lifelong opportunity,” said Amy Loyd, who served as the assistant secretary over career and technical education during the Biden administration.

For example, students who take advanced manufacturing classes in high school can set themselves up for admission to a trade school, while teens who take college-level health care classes can often earn credit toward an associate or bachelor’s degree.

“One of the challenges that we in the career and technical education community have been working to combat is the still-pervasive stigma of career and technical education being for ‘those kids,’” she said. “I think by focusing on the shorter-term credentials we are again rebuilding this narrative that CTE is for kids who are not college material.”

Two agencies in charge of career-technical education

The Education Department says this change is in line with the calling for the consolidation of “fragmented Federal workforce development programs that are too disconnected from propelling workers into secure, well-paying, and high-need American jobs.”

In May, Trump officials that maintains the Education Department’s oversight authority for career-technical education, but hands over the day-to-day operations to the Labor Department. That includes distributing over $1 billion to states in Perkins funding, which pays for CTE programs in K-12 schools and community colleges, making compliance monitoring visits, and helping states and schools with technical questions.

this transfer of funds and responsibilities is illegal, and the proposal should have gone to Congress. Others in the career and technical education field say the Education and Labor Departments already work closely together and this move isn’t necessary to improve collaboration.

Anna Chappelle, the executive director of the Alabama Workforce Board, hopes what happens at the federal level resembles the transformation happening in her state. The share of young people who were not working or in school in Alabama was the highest in the nation in 2019, according to a .

In recent years, Alabama has , and has . In June, , who led that work under Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, as the second-in-command for CTE at the Education Department.

Alabama launched a state apprenticeship agency that . The state also for identifying which job credentials and career pathways are most valuable in different parts of the state — whether that’s the space industry in the north or the maritime industry in the south.

“When we have this separation, that keeps states siloed,” Chappelle said. “Being able to have credentials of value and workforce pathways in Labor, that is going to help people get the education and training that they need.”

She thinks the federal change will lead to more money for training and education programs, “rather than the bureaucratic red tape.”

But Loyd, who is now the CEO of All4Ed, a nonprofit that advocates for equity in education, worries there aren’t enough federal staffers left to provide the kind of “personalized and intensive” guidance her team of 80 once did.

The office “was really leaning into helping states think differently, to not just rubber stamp what always has been,” Loyd said. “I worry that all of that capacity-building, all of that partnership with the field, is ultimately hindered and gutted.”

to the Labor Department, but how many is unclear. The Education Department did not respond to questions. Chalkbeat received out-of-office automatic replies from multiple spokespeople due to the government shutdown.

Some advocates fear states and schools won’t get clear answers to questions about whether new ideas are allowable under the law or how to make sure CTE programs serve all students.

“​​If we had a question about kids with disabilities and CTE, we knew where to go,” said Braden Goetz, who served in the CTE office during the Biden administration and is now a senior policy advisor at the Center on Education and Labor at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “I’m concerned that in the Department of Labor they won’t have those resources.”

Some fear overemphasis on short-term job training

The Education Department has said its agreement with the Labor Department will integrate education and job training programs “with an employment first perspective, which places employers at the forefront of workforce development programs.” The document mentions “upskilling” students — a term that’s typically used to refer to retraining adults in the workforce, not kids in K-12 schools.

Some education advocates worry that sends the wrong messages to students about the purpose of career-technical education programs, and .

Loyd, the former Biden official, worries that folding CTE into the Labor Department’s work will lead to an overemphasis on helping students earn industry credentials that .

CTE programs to prepare students for jobs that are “high-skill, high-wage, or in-demand.” A heavier focus on short-term job outcomes could steer more students toward in-demand jobs that don’t pay very well, Loyd said, such as certified nursing assistants or home health care aides.

“I love programs like phlebotomy programs in high schools where students can earn meaningful certificates that can get them a job,” Loyd said. “But again, this should be a stepping stone,” she said, not the end game.

Tyszko, of the Commerce Foundation, says time will tell if kids get steered like that. He notes that the Labor Department does have experience connecting young people with apprenticeships, which .

“They’re very capable of supporting a set of activities in the field that promote career awareness and aren’t directly tied to job placement,” Tyszko said, adding it would be wrong to assume the Labor Department’s focus on short-term job training “would entirely consume” career-technical education.

The Labor Department also may be better positioned to hold CTE programs accountable for their outcomes in the workforce, and whether they actually match what employers want and need, he said.

Chappelle in Alabama says what programs kids have access to also affects whether they can make an informed decision about their path. The kind and quality of CTE programs offered at schools varies a lot depending on where kids live, and states and businesses share in the responsibility of closing any gaps.

“We are all working together to make sure we have what’s available for our students and our citizens to go up in life,” she said. “We’re not trying to keep people down. That doesn’t serve anybody.”

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

was originally reported by Barbara Rodriguez of .��

A new health report by the Trump administration claims it wants more people in the United States to breastfeed their babies. Experts on the topic and caregiving advocates have a few suggestions — including a federal paid parental leave policy that the nation currently lacks.

The recommendation on breastfeeding is one of dozens in the released this week that aims to address childhood chronic disease. The details are scarce for now, but it commits that two federal agencies — the Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services — will work to increase breastfeeding rates through and “other policies” that support breastfeeding parents. The agencies will also work with federal partners to develop policies to promote and ensure a safe supply of donor human milk.

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The MAHA report does not reference support for a federal paid parental leave program.

Experts agree that more breastfeeding is possible in the United States, but it will require the government to enact structural reform and to make financial investments — at a time when the president and his cabinet have proposed that could help.

“If we really want to tackle this issue, we know the solutions. We know the structural policies and investments it requires,” said Dawn Huckelbridge, founding director of the organization Paid Leave for All. “But instead of investing in working families they are slashing these investments and coming up with everything but the real fixes.”

About 84 percent of the 3.5 million parents who give birth each year in the United States initiate breastfeeding. But there is a major drop-off during the first months after birth, and fewer than 40 percent of U.S. infants are still receiving human milk when they turn a year old. Sixty percent of parents who begin breastfeeding report that they stopped sooner than they planned.

Rafael Pérez-Escamilla, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health who has extensively researched breastfeeding, said the high initiation rate shows that new parents are highly motivated. breastfeeding or pumping has health benefits to the nursing parent — it can reduce cardiovascular disease and rates of cancer — and the baby, whose immune system can be strengthened.

“So it’s not an issue that women don’t want to breastfeed. The issue is that the great majority, or half of the women who choose to breastfeed, cannot breastfeed for as long as they want. It’s not even as long as recommended, as long as they want. And it is because of these major structural barriers,” he said.

Pérez-Escamilla is one of several authors of a . That report, commissioned by Congress in 2023, offers evidence-based recommendations to improve and expand breastfeeding services and rates. Among its suggestions:

• A federal paid parental leave program
• More maternity services at designated that encourage breastfeeding
• More coordinated postpartum breastfeeding services between the federal government and states, since WIC is a federal program but is often administered by state and local health agencies
• Breastfeeding training in medical schools, nursing schools and other allied health professions
• Medicaid and private insurances need to cover more breastfeeding services and educate parents about the benefits available to them

The report was supported by a contract between the National Academy of Sciences and the health department that’s now led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. A spokesperson for Kennedy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new MAHA report.

The United States is the only high-income country in the world that doesn’t have a federal mandate for paid maternity leave — to breastfeed exclusively for the first six months and then to continue for at least two years. That’s , and it has been .

Among parents of color, breastfeeding rates are lower for Black women, Native American and Alaska Native women. It also impacts women with lower socioeconomic status, unmarried women, women living in rural areas and younger mothers. Many are more likely to work in jobs that do not provide paid parental leave. The United States currently only allows some workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid time off after the birth or adoption of a child — but the protections of are not available to all employees, and even with that in place many are unable to afford it.

“We know that a very high proportion, especially of very low-income women, many of whom are women of color, end up having to go back to work very, very soon after birth,” added Pérez-Escamilla. “So they just don’t even have a chance to get their milk properly established. They don’t have that social support that they need.”

A federal paid parental leave policy in particular could be a game changer. that parents who received 12 or more weeks of paid leave were more likely to initiate breastfeeding when compared to parents with no paid leave. Those with paid leave are also more likely to be breastfeeding when their child is six months old.

In California, a paid family leave law enacted in 2004 that ensured mothers up to six weeks of some paid leave to have increased the overall duration of breastfeeding by nearly 18 days, and the likelihood of breastfeeding for at least six months by 5 percentage points.

“Establishing the breastfeeding relationship and establishing the breastfeeding supply is the most important thing when it comes to be able to being able to breastfeed, and that needs to happen right after birth,” said Inimai Chettiar, president of A Better Balance, a nonprofit organization that has advocated for worker protections for pregnant and postpartum people.

Chettiar said that beyond support for paid family leave, enforcement of existing laws is also key. Her organization runs a free legal helpline where parents report workplace complaints that may be in violation of and , two federal laws that have protections for postpartum parents.

“There is a need for policies — and enforcement. Enforcement of those policies around giving women space and time, not just to pump but to establish breastfeeding,” she said.

Chettiar also pointed to a need for ongoing research into maternal health disparities. Complications from delivery — which can impact milk supply — happen more frequently to .

“Not addressing the racial disparities around this seems like a huge gap, and I don’t see how any kind of program that tries to increase breastfeeding can be in any way successful without addressing the underlying health disparities,” she said.

Huckelbridge said her organization is advocating for a federal paid leave law, because the state-level system that has emerged in recent years to provide paid leave to new parents — 13 states and the District of Columbia have laws that guarantee paid family leave programs, while other states have partnered with insurance companies to offer optional policies — are not enough for the people who don’t live in those states.

“That is increasing the divide between the haves and have nots,” she said. “Until we have a federal program that is truly universal, it’s going to be really hard to reach people who need it most.”

The fact that breastfeeding even got a mention in the MAHA report was welcome news to Cecilia Tomori, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University who has studied what it takes to increase breastfeeding. She was among the co-authors of the , and worked with Pérez-Escamilla on a series in that examines the impact of how infant formula is marketed to parents and its impact on breastfeeding. Kennedy has vowed and the MAHA report includes a blurb on developing new infant formulas.

“We welcome any opportunity to enhance support for breastfeeding, because it is indeed obviously crucial to maternal and child health, and really longer term outcomes,” she said. “In terms of how to implement changes that we need, there are many different ways to do that.”

Pérez-Escamilla said the administration’s focus on WIC can be a positive avenue, since the USDA, through the program, serves nearly half of all infants born in the United States. It offers low-income families a range of services, including a tailored food package and a peer lactation support program.

“The WIC program is clearly one of the key settings through which strengthening policies or new policies could be implemented,” he said.

But Tomori worries about cuts to other programs that provide food and nutritional support to low-income parents. President Donald �հ��ܳ���’s tax and spending law that he signed over the summer would , a separate program that helps poor families pay for groceries. , the federal-state health insurance program, also raised questions about the future of some related coverage for pregnant and postpartum parents.

“Food assistance makes a difference prenatally and postnatally,” she said. “If you want to influence health in a nation and to actually improve health over time, investing in supporting mothers and infants is one of the most effective strategies and provides the greatest return on investment. So anything that threatens that is going to have impacts on health.”

The MAHA report also called for promoting and ensuring a safe supply of donor human milk, a detail that Lindsay Groff finds promising. She is executive director of the Human Milk Banking Association of North America, a nonprofit organization that helps screen the donation of breast milk that can then be pasteurized and used in hospitals and outpatient settings to feed medically fragile children who are often in neonatal care. While the federal government inspects milk banks as food manufacturing facilities, the system is run by outside groups.

The issue intersects with breastfeeding. When a baby is born premature, a parent who intends to breastfeed may not be producing milk yet. Donor milk, which Groff called a “bridge,” helps fill that gap and increases the likelihood that a parent will be able to breastfeed later because the child may not be introduced to formula. The access can be lifesaving: Scientific evidence shows that using donor human milk can reduce cases of necrotizing enterocolitis, an intestinal disease that primarily impacts premature or very low birth weight infants.

Groff’s organization has advocated for that would increase federal funding for nonprofit donor milk. The bill includes setting up a mechanism for letting more people know about the role of human milk in saving lives and increasing breastfeeding.

“Having funding from the federal government could make a huge difference in our reach, in our ability to raise awareness — so that more people can donate milk, and more milk means helping more babies,” she said.

Pérez-Escamilla said it’s important to note that the solutions to increasing breastfeeding rates are multifaceted, and they require the federal government to work with states to ensure implementation of existing maternal health programs and new ones.

“It’s very complex. It involves, can you imagine: health care systems, social protection systems. It involves the education sector. It involves the employment and labor sector as well,” he said. “And it requires systems thinking and really understanding how to coordinate better.”

The Trump administration demanded that New York City scrap policies designed to protect transgender students by Tuesday evening or it will discontinue millions in grant funding earmarked for magnet schools.

That would affect about $15 million city officials were expecting from the federal government next fiscal year, which the city has used to support . City officials say they expected $36 million for the remaining duration of the grants. Federal officials said they would not revoke funds that have already been distributed.

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If the city doesn’t change its policies regarding transgender students, “the Department’s Office for Civil Rights cannot certify they are in compliance with all civil rights laws, and therefore cannot award the magnet school assistance program funding for the next fiscal year,” U.S. Department of Education spokesperson Madison Biedermann wrote in a statement Tuesday morning.

On Sept. 16, federal education officials that they were “deeply concerned” with policies allowing transgender students to participate in sports and use bathrooms and other facilities in accordance with their gender identity.

On Friday, city officials requested 30 days to consider whether to appeal the Trump administration’s decision to withhold the grant funding, though federal officials appear to have rejected that request in favor of a Tuesday evening deadline. Biedermann said the tight timeline was because the federal government must certify compliance with civil rights laws before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

The move represents one of the first known threats from the federal government to withhold funding from New York City’s Education Department in line with its contested interpretation of federal civil rights laws. The Trump administration has mounted an aggressive push to roll back protections for transgender students and has targeted districts in , , and .

Mayor Eric Adams in line with the Trump administration’s wishes. His comments appear to have opened an unusual rift with schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos, who recently said the current rules are consistent with the city’s values.

Craig Trainor, the U.S. Department of Education’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, asserted in the Sept. 16 letter that the city’s policies violate Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination at education institutions that receive federal funding. The letter singled out the magnet school grant program and was sent to at least three school districts, .

Shortly thereafter, Adams in public appearances and interviews, drawing strong rebukes from state education officials and civil rights groups who noted that state law and city guidelines forbid denying access to facilities based on a person’s gender identity.

Liz Vladeck, the city Education Department’s top lawyer, requested a month to consider challenging the Trump administration’s move holding up the grant funding.

In a , she asked the federal Education Department to “please explain the nexus between your interpretation of Title IX and the [magnet school] grant funding that is being discontinued.” The letter also asserts that the move “deprived the NYCDOE of the procedures and due process required by federal regulations.”

Adams has denied that the funding threat motivated his recent comments about bathroom policies and acknowledged he has little power to directly change them because they are enshrined in state law. But he has held to his position.

“I don’t know what parent of a little girl would be comfortable with a boy walking into the shower where their baby is,” he said in a Monday . “I’m just not going to support that.”

A spokesperson for Adams did not respond to a question about what showers the mayor was referring to, or if there were any examples of the city’s policies for transgender students causing problems in schools.

The Trump administration has in a bid to get him out of the mayoral race to help former Gov. Andrew Cuomo defeat Zohran Mamdani, a Queens assemblyman and the current frontrunner. A City Hall spokesperson previously denied that Adams’ new interest in reconsidering the city’s policies was related to a potential job in the Trump administration.

Aviles-Ramos, the schools chancellor who was appointed by Adams, has suggested city policies would not change, a rare instance of the schools chief diverging from the mayor’s messaging.

“To date, you know, those policies remain in place, and we’re going to continue to uphold them as part of our values here in New York City Public Schools,” Aviles-Ramos said during a .

City Hall and Education Department spokespeople denied there was any rift between the mayor and chancellor.

“Withholding funding that benefits all students — simply because of a specific policy we have no power to change — is unwarranted and wrong,” Kayla Mamelak Altus, an Adams spokesperson, wrote in a statement.

“While Mayor Adams may not agree with every rule or policy, we will always stand up to protect critical resources for our city’s 1 million students. On this issue, the mayor and chancellor are fully aligned: we must follow the law, support our students’ identities, and keep them safe at all times.”

City officials did not indicate how they plan to respond to the Trump administration’s latest demand that they change their policies by Tuesday evening.

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

The Trump administration won’t be handing out any blue ribbons to schools this year.

As President Donald Trump seeks to scale back the federal role in education in key respects, Education Department officials told state education agencies on Aug. 29 that they were ending the longstanding National Blue Ribbon Schools program, which honors high-performing schools and schools that have successfully narrowed academic gaps between student groups.

Madi Biedermann, a spokesperson for the department, said in the letter that the move was “in the spirit of Returning Education to the States” — a common refrain from Education Secretary Linda McMahon as the Trump administration has and .

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“State leaders are best positioned to recognize excellence in local schools based on educational achievements that align with their communities’ priorities for academic accomplishment and improvement,” Biedermann wrote. “Awards conceived by those closest to the communities and families served by local schools will do more to encourage meaningful reforms than a one-size-fits-all standard established by a distant bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.”

The decision appears to have been made abruptly: States had already nominated schools for the award. In fact, the deadline for states to sign off on their picks was just one week prior to the cancellation letter. In some cases states had informed schools that they had won, pending the official federal announcement.

the cancellation.

The Blue Ribbon program’s goal is to and . Winning the award typically brings positive attention and news coverage to schools, and is a badge of honor that can help attract new students, recruit teachers, and boost private fundraising.

Biedermann said the department is still encouraging states to recognize the schools they nominated for the 2025 competition. But she added that states can now get creative and tailor their own recognition programs to celebrate exemplary schools in certain subjects, or focus on new areas, such as success in preparing students for the workforce and apprenticeships.

Raven Hill, a spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Education, said the state is exploring next steps, but the pride that comes from national recognition won’t be easy to replace.

“The schools that receive the Blue Ribbon recognition are our crown jewels,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how long ago a school was recognized, they carry that pride. We can revive our state program, but it would be difficult to replicate the prestige.”

Terrel H. Bell, President Ronald Reagan’s first education secretary, created . Bell famously commissioned the study that became “,” which and spurred various reforms. Reagan also wanted to eliminate the Education Department at the time.

There have been other attempts to get rid of the program, including in 1992 when Congress defunded the program, leading to the abrupt cancellation of the competition. Letters and phone calls poured into Congress, , and funding was eventually restored.

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

It’s been about six months since the U.S. Department of Education sent a “” letter to all schools that receive federal funding, warning them that they could risk losing this money if they promote what the department calls “pervasive and repugnant” racial preferences.

and into the Trump administration, one thing is clear for those of us checking our crystal balls ahead of the school year.

There is a big difference between policy change aligned to winning an election and disruption for the sake of chaos.

The sent on June 30 that froze billions of dollars of funding across the education continuum in Republican and Democratic counties around the country the night before the funding was anticipated begs the overarching question facing those working in education:

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To state the obvious, the review of the federal funding could have been announced and conducted ahead of the date funds are normally made available, and the disruption could have been minimized.

Instead, leaders on the right and the left had to , , and respond to panicking constituents to move money Congress had already approved to be spent.

“The education formula funding included in the FY2025 Continuing Resolution Act supports critical programs that so many rely on. The programs are ones that enjoy longstanding, bipartisan support,” Republican U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia.

Many leaders on both sides of the aisle, including , a Democrat, are hoping for “a return to the predictable, reliable federal partnership that our schools need to serve students effectively.”

That remains aspirational as the federal Department of Education begins to be dismantled, , and local and state education agencies have to find ways to work with moving forward.

Recently at the summer convening of the National Governors Association, when Colorado Gov. Jared Polis asked U.S. Secretary of Education for clearer communication, she , “No guarantees from me that we’ll eliminate all the communication gaps that do happen.”

Our top 10 issues are not the ones featuring most prominently in the news cycle right now.

DEI continues to be in the news, and in case you missed it, over the summer EdNC published perspectives on DEI by a , a former , and an .

Cellphones and also continue to be highlighted in the media.

And we know there are many, many other issues you care about, including , , , , community schools, , , school performance and the , , the health of teacher and principal pipelines, , , and more.

As we head back to school, the EdNC team will continue to cover all of those issues, but here are the top 10 issues we think will frame this school year.

Access to education, opportunity, and the American dream

1. Access to education for immigrants without legal status

For more than 40 years, students without legal status to be in the country have been allowed to attend public schools free of charge in districts across the United States, and over time that has included access to early education and postsecondary opportunities.

cites reasons for this decision, including:

• Not wanting to penalize children for their presence in the country;
• Recognizing that many students will remain in the country, some becoming lawful residents or citizens;
• Not perpetuating “a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare, and crime;” and
• Concluding that “whatever savings might be achieved by denying these children an education, they are wholly insubstantial in light of the costs involved to these children, the State, and the Nation.”

The 74 recently reported, “From cradle to career, President Donald Trump has launched a comprehensive campaign to close off education to undocumented immigrants, undercutting, advocates say, the very reason many came to the United States: for a chance at a better life.”

Immigrants without legal status have had access to Head Start since a of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA).

“Head Start is the federally funded, comprehensive preschool program designed to meet the emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological needs of children aged 3 to 5 and their families,”  the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

“The Early Head Start program — established in 1994 — is the companion program created to address the same needs of children birth to age 3, expectant mothers, and their families,” says the DHHS .

On July 10, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said via , “Head Start is reserved for American citizens from now on.”

“For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

The policy shift, says the release, aligns with “recent Executive Orders by President Trump, including of February 19, 2025, ‘Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders,’ prioritizing legal compliance and the protection of public benefits for eligible Americans.”

finds, “These figures point to approximately 500,000 children under the age of 5 in poverty who have an unauthorized parent or are unauthorized themselves. Combining this estimate with an estimate that Head Start programs serve approximately 26% of the potentially eligible population, we anticipate that approximately 115,000 Head Start children and families could be impacted, or about 16% of total cumulative enrollment in Head Start programs in FY 2024.”

, “The U.S. Department of Education today announced it will end taxpayer subsidization of illegal aliens in career, technical, and adult education programs.”

The department that postsecondary education programs — “including adult education programs authorized under Title II of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014, postsecondary career and technical education programs under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006, and other programs when used to fund postsecondary learning opportunities” — also constitute “federal public benefits” subject to citizenship verification requirements.

“This policy shift threatens to undermine community development, workforce readiness, and economic mobility across the nation,” says a issued by , an alliance of American college and university leaders. “Many of the named programs are a central component of the nation’s community colleges and provide access for continuing and returning adult learners.”

In 1988 — after the U.S. Supreme Court decision that safeguarded access to K-12 but before the 1996 law that expanded access beyond elementary and secondary education — Dallas Herring, beloved and known as the father of North Carolina’s community college system, , “The twentieth century, by every standard of assessment, in the long view of history, must be considered one of the most remarkable in the experience of mankind. It is especially significant in education, for the opportunity to study and to learn has been extended during these times to almost all of the people everywhere in America. Total education is becoming a possibility as the people respond to the challenge of universal opportunity in education. The door, at last, is open.”

Herring also wrote — as the dawn of not just a new century approached but of a new millennium — that “it was clear that the open door is not enough.”

As the open door begins to close, Herring reminds us what is at stake. “Education of the masses of humanity, not only as economic beings, but especially as human beings, will be essential to the achievement of peace and prosperity,” he wrote.

Data from the  indicate that the nation’s population growth rate in 2023-24 was driven mostly by immigration.

and the District of Columbia have filed suit. North Carolina is not one of the 20.

2. Pathways to work are more important than ever

It is almost impossible these days to have a conversation about community colleges, postsecondary access, or attainment without the word pathways coming up.

Sometimes leaders are talking about “,” which is a college-wide approach to student success. Nationally, that work had been shifting from an .

A much anticipated to be published by Harvard Education Press in August, “More Essential Than Ever: Community College Pathways to Educational and Career Success,” promises guidance for college leaders and state policymakers.

The cliff notes, : “Community colleges today will need to make concerted efforts to strengthen pathways to post-completion success in employment and further education and thus ensure that students’ investment of effort, time, and money pays off.”

“” often refer to agreements between community college and four-year colleges and universities that improve transfer and graduation rates by improving the student experience.

. North Carolina is not one of them, and a recent essay says, “The debate over who and where bachelor’s degrees should be offered is too often driven by institutional priorities and policies set in the past…. Community colleges can play a central role in helping graduates achieve a bachelor’s degree. States and all colleges should support these low-cost, high-value degree pathways.”

But, both across the nation and our state, it is the pathways for students to enlist, enroll, or employ so they have access to a family-sustaining living wage that is the focus for many leaders, organizations, and initiatives.

And, in North Carolina, it is these pathways that are critically important to the .

Citing the 4.6 million youth between the ages of 16 and 24 who are , the (NGA) is focusing this year on getting students ready for jobs.

In partnership with NGA, recently its initiative, designed to “build a prosperous, competitive nation where everyone has clear pathways to good jobs, employers access the talent they need, and Americans at large scale can reach and stay in the middle class.”

 recently announced a new initiative called “” with the goal of increasing access to education and credential training that “pays off in the labor market.”

— a national network with the goal of having 4 million more youth in the United States on a path to economic opportunity by 2030 — has an impact fund that identifies opportunities to improve the experiences of students in high school to set them on a path to college and careers.

Much of this leadership at both the national and state level focuses on different experiences that expedite that pathway for students who want to go from high school or community college graduation straight into the workforce.

It is in this work where terms like work-based learning, apprenticeships, internships, co-ops, and credentials of value; approaches like graduation from high school in three years; and innovative initiatives like and the website come in.

In keeping with this trend, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond is implementing a to measuring success through its , “which broadens the definition of community college student success to include not only degree attainment, but also attainment of shorter-term credentials, such as certificates or industry licensures, successful transfer to a four-year institution, or persistence in enrollment beyond four years.”

According to a from the N.C. Community College System, beginning in July 2026, the new Workforce Pell Grant program will allow eligible students to use federal financial aid for short-term, high-quality training programs — some as short as eight weeks depending on instructional hours and program design. These programs lead directly to jobs in high-demand fields like health care, engineering and advanced manufacturing, trades and transportation, and information technology, says the release.

“This is a major step forward in making higher education more accessible and responsive to today’s workforce needs,” said Jeff Cox, president of the system.

With a community college system that is 58 strong; a nationally watched model for funding community colleges called ; , North Carolina’s accelerated college to career program; and a system whose again, all eyes are on North Carolina.

3. Exposing middle school students to college

A May 2025 asks, “Can middle schoolers handle college?”

When students at Valle Crucis School (VCS) were displaced after Hurricane Helene, stepped up to host Principal Bonnie Smith, her team, and 120 sixth through eighth grade students on the community college’s campus in Watauga County.

President Mark Poarch the middle school students were exposed through the experience to many positives and had the opportunity to learn more about college programs and how they connect to industries.

“I think there are a lot of silver linings in having them on a college campus,” said Poarch. So many that the community college’s foundation guaranteed a scholarship for all current VCS middle school students.

“It has brought new energy and new life to this campus unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” said Poarch.

In Haywood County, another model for exposing middle school students to college will launch in 2026-27.

The , developed in partnership with , will be academically rigorous and led by Lori Fox, the principal of . Under her leadership, the early college is among the best in the nation and an Apple Distinguished School.

with exposing middle school students to college, and the state is now pushing to create access for more students — not just high achievers. In that state, middle school students may in one community college course each semester free of charge.

Recent back here in North Carolina requires all middle and high school students in public schools to have career development plans.

���Ի��� report using North Carolina data explores a new measure of school quality called “high school readiness.”

“As the name suggests, the basic idea is to capture how well a middle school prepares its students for the next stage of their education by quantifying its effects on high school grades — or to be more precise, ninth-grade grade-point averages,” says this about the report.

4. Local, state, and philanthropic funding for the safety net for students and families

The different types of investments in pathways all share in common academic and/or social support for students.

recently passed by Congress cuts through the federal safety net that many in North Carolina and across the nation rely on, placing more of the responsibility on local and state governments.

An estimated 520,000 North Carolinians could lose their health insurance, according to this.

“When we think about Medicaid, we typically think about health insurance,” says an article published in about the impact of the policy change on schools. “But Medicaid is also among the largest funding sources for K–12 public schools, providing an estimated $7.5 billion annually to pay for essential services for student learning and development.”

Note that the above data is district data prior to Medicaid expansion in North Carolina.

Cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are “equally serious,” says Gov. Josh Stein. As many as 1.4 million North Carolinians — including 600,000 children — could lose food assistance. EdNC  the impact of cuts to SNAP by county in North Carolina.

According to , Stein also said, “the state has to be exceptionally conservative fiscally, meaning that we have to preserve the revenue sources we have to so that we can deal with issues like feeding hungry children, or ensuring that our health care system works for everybody.”

are waiting to see how the state responds before they consider how to address the gap in federal support. Others counties, like are moving ahead with funding free schools meals for all for the school year.

The advocacy of coalitions like has never been more important at every level of government.

School choice and the funding of public education

5. Wordsmithing school choice: Choice vs. fit, uniform vs. plural, quality vs. accountability, and the impact of churn

Choice in the context of “school choice” is a political term. It’s not how parents talk or think. All over the world, parents use the word “fit” to describe how they select a school for their child.

And fit is different for different parents. For some, it is about the teacher or the principal. For others, it is about attending school with kids from the neighborhood. For many, it is has to do with the type of educational experience the school provides.

Public schools continue to provide more opportunities for fit than any other educational sector.

In North Carolina, there are 115 school districts and 2,700 schools, including 208 charters, seven lab schools, three residential schools, and one regional school. Public schools offer an abundance of fit through the following types of school options: year-round, magnet, language immersion, single-sex, early college, career academies, virtual academies, community schools, alternative schools, and more.

Check out how Buncombe County Schools is explaining

EdNC continues to cover the inter-relationship of those two terms, and the choices parents are actually making to find the right fit for their students.

We monitor enrollment across public schools, private schools, and homeschools. So far, even with school choice expansion fully funded, at 84% — that’s 1,538,563 students.

We track the data on private school vouchers, called Opportunity Scholarships in North Carolina. So far, since school choice expansion, it is estimated that

The data will be important moving forward in understanding parent choice and student fit, but there are broader trends to be aware of.

In North Carolina, our state constitution mandates a “general and uniform system of free public schools.” In democracies around the world, according to the leading research on educational pluralism conducted by at the John Hopkins School of Education, uniform isn’t the north star and states don’t exclusively deliver education. But

Quality, not accountability, is the word of choice.

The legislature has charged the recently established — led by Jeni Corn and part of the at UNC — to recommend a nationally standardized test for use in third and eighth grade by private and public schools for 2026-27. For more information, see section 3J.23 of .

A necessary first step, that in and of itself does not guarantee quality or accountability. EdNC joined a delegation from California that was in looking at how the public schools there have more comprehensively partnered with religious schools, including in the areas of testing, professional development, and curriculum.

Berner talks about why school choice isn’t enough, and why academic content needs to change and expectations need to increase regardless of setting.

“To be blunt, a libertarian, let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom approach,” she says, is unlikely to move important data points at scale. She has interesting things to say about — think of the Jackson County made on the Wit & Wisdom curriculum under the leadership of Superintendent Dana Ayers.

Because fit matters to parents, with school choice comes more “churn,” sometimes also called “swirl.”

“There are real, tangible impacts on a students’ learning and wellbeing at every churn — especially mid-year,” says a recent titled, “School choice is great, but the churn it allows comes at a cost.” Researchers are educational navigators, formal transfer windows, and better, more accessible information about schools for parents making the decisions.

on how the race between Phil Berger and Sam Page will feature key differences in school choice between Republican candidates.

Berger favors what he calls “universal school choice.”

�ʲ�����’s says he believes school “vouchers should be targeted to families who need them most.” That means, writes Gronberg, “income caps on school voucher eligibility to help working families, not the wealthy” and “policies to prevent private schools from  due to vouchers.”

6. The relationship between education spending and teacher pay

Page also favors “raising teacher starting pay to $50,000 to keep North Carolina competitive,” which brings us to the relationship between education spending and teacher pay.

As the wait for the decision on school funding continues, given the changes at the federal level and the impact of Hurricane Helene, there is going to be even more pressure on state appropriations for education unless and until Republicans come to a different meeting of the minds on tax policy.

The N.C. Department of Public Instruction’s “” is our go-to source for information on education funding and budgets. North Carolina spent about $12.6 billion on public education in 2024-25, and almost 60% of that goes to instructional personnel and related services.

Nationally, studies find that school spending is up, but teacher salaries are not.

In 2024, the libertarian ��ܲ������������� that found inflation-adjusted, per-pupil spending had risen across the country — . “North Carolina’s inflation-adjusted education revenue grew from $10,806 per student in 2002 to $10,790 per student in 2020, a −0.1% growth rate that ranked 50th in the U.S.,” says the report.

Meanwhile, writes Chad Aldeman, an education analyst, “pay for other college-educated workers has risen steadily, leaving teachers behind.”

One consequence is that teachers are increasingly being priced out of housing in their district, Aldeman, citing by the National Council on Teacher Quality.

BEST NC has advocated for as well as that are already leading to higher pay for educators. Leah Sutton, who used to work for BEST NC, now leads the for DPI.

The Public School Forum of North Carolina has been convening a working group to study a . While that organization’s , the work is ongoing, led by Lauren Fox and Elizabeth Paul. A recent grant from the Kellogg Foundation — in addition to other funding — will support the study moving forward with the working group next scheduled to meet in September.

The support of legislators continues to be important.

In 2023, Senators Michael Lee, Amy Galey, and Lisa Barnes sponsored  that would convert North Carolina’s funding formula to a weighted student funding (WSF) model. In early 2025, Lee led a discussion about school funding at the .

“This is an incredibly important issue for education in North Carolina,” Lee said to his fellow legislators. “We have to move forward to get something done, and that will require us to work in a bipartisan way with Superintendent Green and the governor.”

�����پ��DzԲ�������,�� use student-based funding in their formula, and in some Republican states, more than $1 billion has been invested in the shift.

This issue is not new: One of WestEd’s supporting reports in the Leandro case addressed cost adequacy, distribution, and alignment of funding. It’s more than five years old now, but you can find it .

7. The health of district fund balances

�ճ���� — a commission within the state treasurer’s office — annually collects fund balance data for North Carolina’s 115 school districts. In an email to EdNC from the LGC back in 2020, fund balances were described as “a savings account that schools can use” if they have unanticipated expenses or opportunities.

In and , fund balances have been in the news as districts cope with accounting errors,

In western North Carolina, fund balances have been in the news as school districts rely on them to make ends meet given the decline in local revenue from the loss of tourism.

An interesting realization emerging from Hurricane Helene is that — which is a different problem.

Last year, EdNC published a 10-year look at fund balances for school districts.

is updated data through June 30, 2024, which is before both the Sept. 30, 2024 end of federal funding for COVID and Hurricane Helene. We are anxiously waiting to see the hit on fund balances that we anticipate in the June 30, 2025 data, which will likely be ready in early 2026.

The state of messaging and advocacy

In these polarized, politicized times, both messaging and advocacy are changing across party lines.

When school choice expansion was announced in spring 2023, then-Gov. Roy Cooper reacted by declaring a . By January, he had iterated his language, declaring 2024 . He visited more than child care centers, schools, community colleges, and businesses to highlight public education statewide.

The N.C. School Boards Association launched this “public education matters” .

Higher Ed Works changed its name to Public Ed Works and launched a for teacher pay.

Parents for Educational Freedom in NC (PEFNC) recently celebrated its , including a fireside chat with Secretary McMahon. Their website links to this to help parents navigate, and PEFNC now has a , including some who speak Spanish.

Charter schools are having to navigate being both public schools and part of the school choice movement.

A by The Carolina Journal in January 2025 found that 55.2% of those surveyed were dissatisfied with the quality of K-12 education students receive in local public schools, and it also found that 56.8% of those surveyed were comfortable sending their students to local public schools.

Now of Superintendent Mo Green’s strategic plan will include “Celebrate Why Public Education is the Best Choice” and “Galvanize Champions to Fully Invest In and Support Public Education.”

What’s the right mix of messaging, advocacy, and lobbying across all lines of difference to ensure adequate funding and continuous improvement at all schools for all students?

Sen. , R-Macon, tells constituents, “I can promise you what you won’t get. You won’t get things you don’t ask for.”

addressing the following key elements continue to hold promise at the local, state, and federal level, according to the Aspen Institute:

• Challenges and solutions must be easy to communicate and appeal to a broad base,
• Solutions are responsive to local context and garner local support,
• Parents, teachers, the business community, or politicians in higher office are willing to provide political cover for policymakers,
• Both sides can walk away claiming a win — even if each side’s “win” is different, and
• Using the media as an accelerant.

This year, we are paying close attention to how three important constituencies talk to the public and talk to policymakers: educators, business leaders, and parents.

8. From grass roots to grass tops, educators are finding different ways to lean in

Here are some examples of how educators at the local and state level are finding different ways to lean in to advocate with both the public and policymakers.

On Aug. 20, 2025, North Carolina’s educator-in-chief, Superintendent Green, will his strategic plan for public education, including community members, leaders, parents, and educators.

is dedicated to showcasing the exemplary work occurring within North Carolina’s public schools, fostering a culture of excellence, and advocating for the advancement of school leaders and public education across the state. Their strategy is working: They have a new , host regional trainings, and POY is now senior advisor for education policy to Gov. Stein.

In early 2024, the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) released a  whose first priority is “Grow Our Union.” The organization’s goal is to have 30,000 members by 2030.

A principal in Madison County is circulating a proposal for teacher-storytellers to help us “better understand the state of every school system in WNC and eventually the state.”

9. Will business leaders come together and align on issues that matter?

When I was growing up, it seemed to me like business leaders — think Hugh McColl, Eddie Crutchfield, Rolfe Neill — had a to both the governor and legislative leadership.

At the young age of 90, McColl recently said if he worries about something, it is about .

The plays a critical role in education and workforce advocacy.

is a nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of business leaders committed to improving the education system through policy and advocacy.

The (NCBCE) — a nonprofit that operates out of the office of the governor — works to make the critical connection between North Carolina employers and school districts through work-based learning.

The hosted a summit and continues to convene and inform business executives about the future of public education.

Nationally, the is an association of more than 200 CEOs. Jim Goodnight, , “spearheaded the creation of a national Business Roundtable report calling on business leaders to support and advocate for efforts to improve early learning and third-grade reading proficiency. In North Carolina, he rallied a group of CEOs to the cause.”

What if these leaders and organizations worked together, stood together more?

An example exists in philanthropy. Invest Early NC is an early childhood funders collaborative focused on outcomes for children and families prenatal to age 8 so children are healthy, safe, nurtured, learning, and ready to succeed by the end of third grade. The collaborative has adopted a bipartisan approach with public-private partnerships, lifting community voice to inform decision-making. The collaborative has staff, conducted a statewide landscape analysis, , and is now beginning to develop a 10-year plan.

This state loves being . Longer term, we need to strive to be #1 for students and workers for that trend to hold.

10. This era for parent rights is complicated for students

No doubt we are living in a political era that values parents’ rights.

“Parents are the most natural protectors of their children. Yet many states and school districts have enacted policies that imply students need protection from their parents,”  Secretary McMahon. “These states and school districts have turned the concept of privacy on its head –prioritizing the privileges of government officials over the rights of parents and wellbeing of families. Going forward, the correct application of FERPA will be to empower all parents to protect their children from the radical ideologies that have taken over many schools.”

For students, it’s more complicated than the politics.

Schooling is compulsory in North Carolina, and teachers stand in loco parentis, or in the place of parents, for the 1,025 hours that children are in our public classrooms each year.

But our students spend the other 7,735 hours of their year outside the classroom and the school.

In , you can see that one in 100 children in North Carolina now experience substantiated abuse or neglect by their parents, guardians, or caretakers.

And, in 2024, North Carolina’s chronic absenteeism rate was , up from 15% in 2018.

The Hechinger Report , “Absenteeism cuts across economic lines. Students from both low- and high-income families are often absent as are high-achieving students.”

North Carolina law urges and requires consideration of what is in the best interests of the child, prioritizing child wellbeing, safety, and development.

Ensuring their best interests has historically required a comprehensive approach across all settings where they spend time — home, school, faith, and community — with teachers, parents, ministers, and community leaders all serving as checks on each other.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .