A new initiative from the University of Vermont hopes to address the shortage of mental health professionals available to support the state’s youth.

Known as the Catamount Counseling Collaborative for Rural Schools, the program plans to train and place 52 school counselors, social workers and mental health clinicians in rural schools throughout Vermont for the next five years.

Recent surveys from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found rising levels of depression and anxiety among Vermont middle and high school students. 

Despite this, Vermont lacks an adequate number of mental health professionals. In 2023, the state’s Workforce Development Board estimated a need for 230 more providers to meet growing demand. 

The new Catamount Counseling Collaborative for Rural Schools aims to address the gap. 

Through the program — funded by a $3.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education — University of Vermont graduate students are expected to contribute at least 25,000 clinical hours annually to support rural communities.

“Vermont mental health needs are pervasive and complex and they’re currently underserved and this is a way to reach them,” said Anna Elliott, associate professor of counseling.

Elliott, the principal investigator for the grant, has experience running a similar initiative in Montana, where she spent five years developing a program to support rural communities with mental health professionals. 

A key part of the program, Elliot said, is to encourage graduates to continue working in rural schools or mental health facilities after completing their training. She said she tailored the program to Vermont’s unique needs. This included analyzing various statistics from community needs assessments on issues such as suicide rates, substance use disorder and the stigma associated with seeking mental health services, ensuring the program aligns closely with the landscape of Vermont’s mental health needs.

“One of our primary goals in setting up the training program was attending to students’ reports that they often didn’t feel prepared to go and work in a rural environment,” she said. “Having an intensive and intentional training program that sets them up to really understand what they’re walking into and how to be prepared and how to ask for support incentivized students to stay, so we’re hoping to replicate that here.”

The program offers a stipend to those who remain in their assigned schools for at least one year, helping to ease potential barriers like securing a full-time job or finding affordable housing.

In Montana, Elliott said she noticed some graduate students couldn’t stay in rural schools due to limited funding for permanent positions. Other challenges, including housing and job security, also made it difficult for them to remain in these high-need areas.

“I’m taking the model that I did in Montana and integrating that in with the community schools model to not just say, ‘here’s a couple graduate students that will be here for a year’ but let’s actually take a systemic look at what’s happening in the school — what are the needs, resources, barriers and strength,” Elliott said.

To address these challenges, the program focuses on recruiting graduate students who already come from rural areas. By offering low-residency options, the program allows these students to complete much of their coursework remotely. This means they can stay at home rather than moving to campus, making it easier for them to balance their studies with their existing commitments.

“This grant provides significant opportunity to bring students into the helping professions who might not otherwise have access to this kind of specialized training,” said Danielle Jatlow, a co-principal investigator and social worker who coordinates UVM’s bachelor’s of social work program, in a press release from the university.

UVM faculty, including program co-leaders Robin Hausheer and Lance Smith, both associate professors of counseling, are starting outreach to rural schools. They hope to place graduate students in schools as early as this semester, according to the release.

“There are people and kids that are getting served this year that might not have been otherwise,” Elliott said in the release. “So that feels like everything.” 

This story was originally published on VT Digger.

The launch of the North Star Fellowship, an initiative to help train school leaders in their efforts to develop more charter schools in the state, is the latest push for more school choice options in Connecticut.

The fellowship was created out of a partnership between education organization Latinos for Educational Advocacy and Diversity, or LEAD, which has been a strong proponent in an ongoing struggle to open a charter school in Danbury, and The Mind Trust, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit that has opened over 50 charter schools in Indiana in the last 18 years.

“We need something that is transformational and disruptive,” said Jose Lucas Pimentel, the CEO of LEAD, who noted that students of color, particularly Black and Latino students, continue to trail behind their white peers in almost all academic metrics.

“We realized that 30 years have gone by. Three decades waiting for things, and changes, and conversations, and forums, and speaking and nothing has happened and things have gotten worse,” Pimentel said. “We believe, unless somebody suggests some other way, that a charter school … can be a very creative way to empower leaders, like ourselves, to create a model tailored to our communities.”

The creation of more school choice options has proven to be a controversial issue, with advocates arguing that existing public schools aren’t serving all students’ needs and opponents countering that charter schools take away funding from the public school system, which is already stressed with limited resources.

Under the fellowship, four people — with a preference for Connecticut residents — will receive a full salary with benefits for up to two years as they undergo “personalized coaching and support from a network of educational and executive leaders,” collaborate with a cohort, travel and engage with other charter schools across the country.

The group will also have access to “expertise and feedback on the school development, Connecticut charter approval, launch and local community engagement processes,” according to the North Star website. Applications opened in late October and fellows are anticipated to be chosen in the spring.

“I think that every community has different needs and we want to encourage everybody from all demographics to apply,” Pimentel said. “What we’re looking at in the fellowship are innovative schools that are not just traditional college prep — almost the same additional school — but things that prepare kids right out of high school to have life-changing jobs, that can really transform communities, because we have just seen a stagnation, especially in the Latino community.”

The initiative may face challenges, as Connecticut is the only state in the country that requires legislative approval in the creation of charter schools, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Despite an initial approval from the state Board of Education, some charter schools can get delayed or stuck in the legislative process if lawmakers decide not to fund them.

This has been the case for over a handful of years in Danbury, and recently in Middletown, after both schools were left out of the state’s two-year budget during the 2023 legislative session after hours of debate and some lawmakers voting against party lines. A new budget approval process begins in January for the next biennium.

In the past, Sen. Julie Kushner, D-Danbury, and leadership from the Connecticut Education Association, the largest teachers union in the state, had been vocal opponents of charter school expansion in Connecticut. 

Kushner and CEA officials did not respond to recent requests for comment.

But during the 2023 legislative session, Kushner said she believed funding was the biggest barrier for traditional public schools and that a charter school would not be a solution for districts facing overcrowding or large populations of high needs students.

“There are people like myself and others within the community that have decided the best approach would be to resolve those issues of overcrowding and underfunding by working on improved funding for our traditional public schools,” Kushner told The Connecticut Mirror in a March 2023 interview. “That has been the focus of a lot of [our] opposition. We should invest in really finding good solutions for the whole student population, as opposed to a charter school solution, which would really only address a very small percentage of the student population.”

In 2023 written testimony for a proposed bill that would have removed the legislature from the charter school approval process, the Connecticut Education Association also argued charter school funding has outpaced that which is provided to traditional public schools and “for some [charter schools] cannibalizing the public school systems in urban districts (and beyond) is the goal.”

The bill, which made it out of two committees but ultimately failed, was opposed by Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown, who had a proposed charter school in his district in 2023. His opposition to the Capital Preparatory Middletown Charter School garnered strong criticismfrom members of the local community, including from NAACP membership.

Lesser, in an interview last week with the CT Mirror said he didn’t “consider himself a charter opponent,” but that “there are different dynamics around the state.”

“I think there have been places where charters are what community is looking for, and they may work, but wherever you’re looking to change the environment, you should be fundamentally listening to the community in their wants and needs,” Lesser said, adding that there needs to be continued efforts to strengthen traditional public schools and “make sure that everyone is entitled to a world class education.”

Lesser also said he didn’t know much about the launch of the North Star Fellowship, but did express reservations about a partnership with an out-of-state organization.

“The fact they’re looking to bring in out-of-state activists sort of seems like just one more effort to impose a top down solution on Connecticut’s educational system,” Lesser said.

But, Pimentel said the Indianapolis organization was “invited by an organization that is on the ground and that has deep roots in Connecticut.”

“Most of us were raised here. Some of us were born here, lived our entire lives here,” Pimentel said of his team. “They didn’t come to us, … we went to them and convinced them to come because what they had that we didn’t is the expertise in running fellowships that work. We have the communities. We have the leaders that want to be trained. … [The fellowship] is the most homegrown you can possibly get.” 

Pimentel said he hopes the fellowship begins “to spread a conversation that needs to be had,” where charter schools aren’t “pitted against traditional schools the way they are now,” and that instead it offers an avenue that promotes innovative curriculum. 

“I’m not a proponent of all charter schools and some of the legacy ones that been there from the beginning,” Pimentel said.

“We are a proponent of new kinds of charter schools that are transformational. … I believe that the gap is going to widen and our people are going to be left behind, and instead of kind of just sitting there and always asking someone else to do something about it, we wanted to pilot a kind of school that will really meet the need of this population,” Pimentel added, referring to the state’s growing number of multilingual and other high needs students.

Pimentel also said, despite challenges in Danbury and Middletown, that not all charter schools are controversial, pointing to the 2023 approvals of Edmonds Cofield Preparatory Academy for Young Men in New Haven and Norwalk Charter School of Excellence in Norwalk.

“I think that what the fellowship tries to do more is not try to get bogged down into the Danbury issue, because the Danbury issue has not been replicated everywhere else. Most of the state does not have issues with charter schools,” Pimentel said. “We sometimes focus so much on the place that it’s not being accepted, but we see schools doing amazingly well and getting along really well with the ecosystem of schools in their districts, and that’s what we want.”

This story was originally published on CT Mirror.

Diversifying the science, technology, engineering and math fields has long been a top priority of many universities and tech companies. It’s also a goal of the National Science Foundation, the biggest funder of university-led research and development in the U.S.

During the 2023-2024 school year, Florida schools removed nearly twice as many books than the year before following challenges from parents and community members.

Schools removed 732 titles during the 2023-2024 school year, on top of 386 removed the year before.

Twenty-three districts contributed to the list, with Clay, Indian River, and Volusia counties making up significant portions.

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The removals stem from state laws requiring school boards to adopt protocols for screening books deemed to be pornographic or contain sexual content.

Florida book removals have been the subject of lawsuits claiming censorship and limiting freedom of expression.

“There are no books banned in Florida, and sexually explicit materials do not belong in schools,” Florida Department of Education Communications Director Sydney Booker said in an email to the Phoenix. She added that of the more than 700 books on the list, some of the same titles have been counted in multiple districts.

The number of book challenges may have been too high in the eyes of legislators.

A law passed earlier this year, after the reporting period for the above data, could lower the number of challenges in the years to come. HB 1285 limits nonparents living in a school district to one book challenge per month.

PEN America report

Less than two weeks ago, PEN America released its tally of books that had been removed from Florida school libraries during the 2023-2024 school year.

By PEN America’s count, schools removed about 4,500 books from Florida libraries. The methodology between the freedom of expression advocacy organization and the state differs, though.

PEN’s list includes books temporarily removed while awaiting a final decision from the school board, and administrative removals, another method to take books off shelves.

The state’s count includes only books removed by school boards and does not include books removed pending challenges.

By PEN’s tally, Florida removed more books than any other state during the previous school year.

One lawsuit filed by major book publishers and several authors of removed books argues state definitions of “pornographic” and “describes sexual content” are unconstitutional and have resulted in censorship.

The publishers argue that “vagueness and ambiguity result in overbroad interpretations of [the law’s] prohibition on content that describes sexual conduct and chill protected speech.”

The Florida Department of Education stands by the limitations put on school libraries.

“Once again, far left activists are pushing the book ban hoax on Floridians,” Booker said. “The better question is why do these activists continue to fight to expose children to sexually explicit materials.”

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and X.

Some of Michigan Democrats’ long-sought charter school reforms could come to fruition by the end of the year.

The party wants to use its lame duck session to pass legislation that would create more financial transparency for charter schools by making financial audits and individual expenditures available to the public. Also on the table is a bill that would prohibit the private for-profit companies that manage many charter schools from leasing or selling property to the schools they run.

Charter schools have been in Michigan for nearly 30 years – the state was among the first in the nation to pass laws allowing them. They were pitched as a tool of innovation in public education and a means to give parents more school options. Critics say their results are mixed.

Michigan’s charter schools, which are also known as public school academies, faced legal challenges early on from opponents who contended that charters weren’t public schools and shouldn’t receive public funding.

Charters must follow state and federal education law.

Charter schools often hire for-profit education management organizations, or EMOs, to run the entire operations of a school, or handle specific tasks like finance or human resources.

The private EMOs are not subject to the same public information laws as traditional public schools. Unlike traditional public schools, for instance, charter schools often aggregate their expenditures into a single line item for “purchased services,” which can make it difficult to track their spending.

Democrats have been skeptical of for-profit EMOs, saying they pocket tax dollars instead of investing the funds in classrooms. Republicans have opposed efforts to increase transparency in charters’ operations, however, arguing it could hinder the schools’ growth.

The history of charter schools in Michigan is long and complex. Here is a timeline of some major events:

This story was originally published at Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

The Federal Trade Commission has accused a company that makes AI-powered security screening systems for some 800 schools across 40 states of promoting false claims about its ability to detect weapons and keep kids safe. 

Evolv Technology, which sells AI-powered “weapons detection” systems to schools and other businesses, made deceptive claims to customers about its ability to detect all weapons accurately and efficiently, the commission alleged in a complaint filed Tuesday in federal court. 

Schools make up half of Evolv’s business, according to the complaint, even though the publicly traded company may be best known as a security staple at stadiums and for a pilot program in New York City’s subways earlier this year that yielded dismal results.

“The FTC has been clear that claims about technology — including artificial intelligence — need to be backed up, and that is especially important when these claims involve the safety of children,” Samuel Levine, director of the commission’s bureau of consumer protection, said in a media release. “If you make those claims without adequate support, you can expect to hear from the FTC.”

Evolv’s marketing materials promote its scanners as high-tech alternatives to metal detectors, but the complaint argues the company made inaccurate assurances about the product’s ability to reduce false alarms, cut labor costs, eliminate the need for people to remove innocuous items from their pockets — and its capability to detect all weapons.

The company announced late Tuesday it had reached a settlement with the commission that did not involve any admission of wrongdoing or monetary penalties but would give certain K-12 customers a 60-day window to cancel the remainder of their current contracts.

The eligible districts account for 8% of all Evolv customers, according to a media release, and deploy 4% of its scanners. Cancelling those contracts could impact $3.9 million of its annual revenue.

“This resolution allows us to focus on a small segment of our school customers to ensure they remain satisfied with” Evolv’s scanners “and allows us to move forward without distraction,” Mike Ellenbogen, the company’s interim president and CEO, said in the statement.

Evolv has claimed that it uses AI to scan for the unique “signatures” of tens of thousands of weapons, allowing it to distinguish “all the guns, all the bombs and all the large tactical knives” out there from everyday items like keys and laptops. 

In its release, Evolv framed the FTC inquiry as focusing on past marketing materials and not the efficacy of its AI technology, but it also said the company would “refine the way it markets its technology, highlighting capabilities and limitations.”

School safety consultant Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, told The 74 that school leaders have increasingly turned to weapons detection systems to signal to parents that they’re taking proactive steps to keep students safe. 

“Some may have unknowingly created the very result they hoped to prevent: A quandary, as they may have to explain to their school communities why they bought technology that may not be delivering what was implied or promised to them and their school community,” he said. 

The scanner’s efficacy — including its wherewithal to prevent campus violence — has faced pushback for several years, particularly by IPVM, an independent security and surveillance industry research group that tests and evaluates products. Some of the schools the group researched had false alarm rates of up to 60%. 

Last year, a high school student in Utica, New York, filed suit against the company after he was stabbed in a campus hallway by a classmate who brought a knife past an Evolv scanner without detection. The school district had spent $3.7 million on the scanners from Evolv, a Massachusetts-based company backed by big-name investors including Bill Gates and Peyton Manning. The company boasts its artificial intelligence-equipped devices can screen up to 1,000 students in 15 minutes — 10 times faster than traditional metal detectors. 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams led a pilot program of Evolv’s scanners inside some New York City subway stations this year, which was met with opposition from civil rights groups who argued it was unconstitutional and impractical to screen millions of transit users daily. Over the course of a month, the scanners across 20 subway stations had 118 false positives and recovered 12 knives. They didn’t detect a single firearm. 

The company on Tuesday pointed to two incidents last month where Evolv scanners detected guns that students were attempting to bring into their Kentucky and Illinois high schools.

As AI becomes a buzzword in education technology, the FTC in February warned companies against exaggerating the prowess of their artificial intelligence offerings, adding that “false or unsubstantiated claims about a product’s efficacy are our bread and butter.” 

The latest round of student test scores show fewer Missouri public school districts and charter schools in jeopardy of losing accreditation, though this year’s data won’t immediately affect how schools are graded.

Based on annual performance report scores released Monday for the sixth iteration of the Missouri School Improvement Program, or MSIP6, there were 343 districts and charters that improved when compared to an average of their scores over the previous two years.

A total of 71 districts and charters scored in the provisionally accredited range, and four charter schools scored below 50%, which is the unaccredited range.

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“It’s something that we’ve been waiting for. Ever since the pandemic, we have looked at scores (and seen declines),” Commissioner of Education Karla Eslinger told reporters in a press conference. “Finally… we’re starting to see the fruits of our labor. We’re starting to see where we are making progress.”

MSIP6, which launched in 2022, has been lauded as “more rigorous” and descriptive than prior versions of the program. Previously, many districts scored above 90%, whereas now their scores are more evenly distributed along a bell curve.

The score is a snapshot of student performance in end-of-course exams and statewide standardized tests along with an assessment of district continuous improvement plans.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education originally planned to base classification decisions on scores this year but will instead make decisions from three-year composite scores. Districts’ accreditation cannot be lowered from MSIP6 scores until 2026.

Based on composite scores for the three years of MSIP6 data, two charter schools are in the unaccredited range. The State Board of Education will determine accreditation status based on other factors, like superintendent qualifications and financial health.

Lisa Sireno, assistant commissioner of the Office of Quality Schools, told reporters the department switched to composite scores for classification this spring.

“They’re more stable measures as they contain more data,” she said. “They are less susceptible to extreme changes from year to year.”

For smaller districts, a composite can protect them from volatility while the individual score gives a look at the last school year’s work.

Craig Carson, assistant superintendent of learning of the Ozark School District, said it is “autopsy data.”

“This is data that tells you about where you’ve been,” he told The Independent. “The data we really use are the day-to-day data inside our classrooms.”

Ozark is part of the Success Ready Students Network, which is a group of school districts compiling alternative methods of accountability. This year, the districts are showing the first draft of their plan, in the form of informational dashboards available on their websites.

“We are using a descriptive (report) that is found on our website, and it gives so much more information to our public about how our students are doing in the day to day, and it really emphasizes growth,” Carson said.

He believes that the next iteration of the Missouri School Improvement Program will spring from work the Success Ready Students Network is doing.

“We are now building the momentum we need to really involve real-world learning with competency-based education and make sure that every student leaves being success-ready,” he said. “The excitement around that and the synergy of those school districts are creating, that will eventually turn into what MSIP7 will be.”

Similar to Carson, Maplewood Richmond Heights School District Superintendent Bonita Jamison reiterated that the scores are a limited look at a district.

“That data only tells one story, and there are stories that are not seen and reflected in those numbers, where the impact on the lives of children and their families are profound,” she said.

Benchmark assessments serve the district better to see needs and fill them quickly, she said.

Maplewood Richmond Heights is one of the top-scoring districts this year, amassing 97% of points possible. Just three others fared better.

She points to “shared accountability and ownership” from the entirety of the district’s staff — including a custodian who doubles as an attendance monitor to encourage parents to get children to school.

She has theories why other schools didn’t score as well, mainly a teacher recruitment and retention crisis hitting poorer, urban schools hard.

Eslinger, in last week’s press conference, told reporters that teacher vacancies “make performance and improvement challenging.”

“We know that with fewer educators, more and more courses across the state are being taught by student teachers and by folks that are substitutes that maybe have not really been trained on the specific content area,” she said. “We’ve got work to do there.”

In 2024, 37% of Missouri educators in their first year of teaching were inappropriately certified for the course they were teaching and over 10% over courses were taught by someone inappropriately certified.

Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on Facebook and X.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Compared to others who have held the post, Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to run the U.S. Department of Education, has a resume thin on school expertise. She made that clear when she auditioned for her first education leadership job in 2009.

“I don’t come before you today as an educator,” she told a Connecticut legislative committee reviewing her appointment to join the State Board of Education. “I make no bones about that.”

She said her plans to teach French after college fell away when she became pregnant with her first child, Shane, according to a transcript reviewed by The 74. And she defended the place where she spent the bulk of her career, as head of a worldwide pro wrestling enterprise, even as one member called it a detriment to “the fabric of our society.” 

But she also had strong opinions about the ills of American education — in particular, growing racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps — and what it would take to reverse them. 

“I think that every child ought to have the opportunity for equal education,” she said. “That means that their teachers should be equally prepared to teach, that the curriculum ought to be the same across the board.”

McMahon’s views fit squarely into the era’s GOP mainstream. Republican President George W. Bush, who had just left office, embraced the belief that the federal government played a critical role in uplifting students in low-income communities. That was the heart of No Child Left Behind, the landmark reform law that held schools accountable for reducing achievement gaps. She was a fan of public school choice, particularly charters, but considered private school the realm of families who could “afford it.” 

Fifteen years later, McMahon’s nomination signals just how far the GOP has strayed from seeing the federal government as an instrument for improving education. She’s chair of a conservative think tank that seeks to eliminate progressive ideas in the classroom and says parents should be able to spend public funds on any school they choose.

“The Department of Education was really focused on substantive policy challenges, like teacher evaluation and persistent socioeconomic and racial achievement gaps,” said Patrick McGuinn, an education and political science professor at Drew University in New Jersey, who wrote a book on NCLB. “These problems all still exist, but now the conversation has just completely shifted to things like [transgender] bathroom access and book bans.”

McMahon’s time on the board was brief, about a year — a moment that offers little insight into how she would approach the nation’s top education post. Some accused her of using her seat as a stepping stone to Congress, a perch she failed to reach in two separate bids. Others saw her leap into politics, including her role in Trump’s first administration, as a chance to escape the high-profile image of her estranged husband Vince McMahon, who built World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE, into a $9 billion empire.

Whether her service on the state board matters to senators who will shepherd her confirmation remains to be seen. The fact that she erroneously stated that her degree was in education when she completed a questionnaire for that position might resurface.

To Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, the incoming chair of the education committee, her two years as head of the Small Business Administration could “obviously help.” 

During her tenure, she promoted the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which benefited employers, and hustled to distribute disaster relief to businesses in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017. She was a “quick study,” said Molly Day, spokeswoman for the National Small Business Association.

“She didn’t come … with a vast experience in the small-business world, but she got up to speed on what SBA does and why their programs are important,” Day said. But its budget, just over $1 billion, is a small fraction of the $238 billion allotted to the education department. “The two agencies are so vastly different, and I suspect the directive from the White House …will also be very different.”

Some senators will also question whether she’s fit to oversee an agency responsible for protecting students from sexual misconduct. In a lawsuit filed in October, she and her husband were accused of looking the other way while young boys working for WWE were sexually molested by a one-time announcer for the organization. 

“A cabinet post could be seen as a way to cement her own legacy away from [Vince], especially given his recent legal issues,” said CarrieLynn Reinhard, a communications researcher at Dominican University in Chicago and part of a network of academics who study pro wrestling.

‘Lost trust’

McMahon, a leader of Trump’s transition team, donated over $10 million to his campaign, heading up a super PAC, America First Action, and shaping the agenda for a second term as chair of America First Policy Institute. Until recently, it was a lesser-known think tank, but its K-12 policy positions echo familiar GOP talking points: promoting universal school choice, tying fewer strings to federal funds and splitting the education department’s key functions across multiple agencies. 

Trump has also nominated its founder Brooke Rollins to serve as agriculture secretary. And Laurie Todd-Smith, who leads the institute’s Center for Education Opportunity could be “in the mix for a position at the department” as well, said Heath Brown, an associate professor of public policy at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. ”Her very recent statements about the department are in agreement with the longstanding views of conservatives.”

Shortly after the election, Todd-Smith reposted a thread on X about how to gut the department “down to the studs.”

Neither the Trump transition team nor the institute responded to requests for comment.

McMahon’s evolution tracks that of the GOP as a whole, from a party that joined with Democrats to give the federal government the power to hold schools accountable to one that is deeply partisan and mistrustful of intervention from Washington.

The Obama administration’s efforts to prescribe specific school reform policies contributed to the shift. The department’s Race to the Top competition, a $4.3 billion effort that pushed states to adopt Common Core standards and tie student test scores to teacher evaluations, came under frequent attack.

While on the Connecticut board, McMahon voted to apply for a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help states compete for those funds. But times have changed. Bill Gates became the subject of debunked COVID conspiracies about implanting microchips through vaccines, and conservatives now accuse the foundation of promoting left-wing ideology in schools

To many GOP governors, those Obama-era policies demonstrated blatant government overreach. 

“People did not like education, and the performance of their schools, reduced to test scores,” said Neal McCluskey, director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. “And they did not like the federal government starting to dictate even what would be taught.” 

The architects of NCLB say conservatives place too much blame on the department for flat and declining achievement. Sandy Kress, who advised Bush, said it’s “lazy thinking” to say there’s been no progress in student achievement since 1979, when the department began. Data shows there were both periods of growth on the National Assessment of Educational Progress as well as decline. Fourth grade math, for example, saw a steady increase in average scores between 1990 and 2009. Performance was flat for the next decade and then dropped after the pandemic.

“The department in and of itself isn’t much of a causal agent,” he said. 

But the school closures and mask mandates that marked the pandemic only intensified feelings that officials in Washington were out of touch. Suddenly, conservatives’ calls to eliminate the department became more central to the GOP agenda. 

“It’s not about Republicans hating education. I think that’s often how it gets portrayed,” said Neeraja Deshpande, a policy analyst with the Independent Women’s Forum, a conservative organization. “It’s more that Republicans have lost trust in these institutions to do a good job of educating children.”

One reason the nation saw a rightward shift in this year’s election, including among Blacks and Hispanics, she said, was because parents in low-income minority communities questioned why their children’s schools were still closing for COVID outbreaks in early 2022. Families in wealthier neighborhoods, meanwhile, opted for private schools.

Remote learning gave parents a window into what students were learning — material that didn’t always align with conservative views. With many parents already reeling from months of remote learning, conservative groups like Moms for Liberty found a receptive audience when they said bureaucrats, from the top down, lacked transparency about “woke” curriculum, library books they deemed inappropriate for children and policies related to students’ gender identity.

Culture war battles also sparked a conservative backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion, which some blame for crowding out efforts to improve outcomes for minority students. The think tank McMahon chairs has slammed the Biden administration’s “whole-of-government” focus on equity and called for removing references to DEI in federal grants.

“The culture war attack on DEI has manifested itself into a disdain for anything that has to do with race, including talking about the very real disparities that exist in student achievement in our country,” said Stefan Lallinger, executive director at Next100, a progressive think tank affiliated with The Century Foundation. 

The right’s solution to failing schools — what they often call “education freedom” — finds support among minorities. A poll from EdChoice, an advocacy group, shows at least three-quarters of Black parents favor vouchers and education savings accounts, which can be used for homeschooling or private school. Black families in Arizona and Georgia have taken advantage of their states’ private school choice programs to open and attend microschools where they think their children are better served.

But others are concerned that the push for vouchers will contribute to segregation. Families with more means can make up the difference between a $7,000 ESA, for example, and the full cost of private school tuition. A recent ProPublica investigation identified 39 North Carolina private schools, most of them predominantly white, that have received over $20 million in state voucher funds in just the past three years. 

​​”It should not be controversial to say … that as a nation, we should be ashamed of racial segregation, economic segregation,” Lallinger said. “We used to be able to agree that those are not things that make America look good.”

‘A mandate on the table’

In 2009, McMahon voiced the same concern. 

“Segregation of schools is wrong and inappropriate and every child ought to have equal opportunity,” she told the committee voting on her appointment to the Connecticut board. A 1996 state supreme court decision in a long-running school desegregation case, she said, “clearly put a mandate on the table” to eliminate racial isolation for students. 

Her and her husband’s philanthropic efforts have focused on programs serving poor and minority students. Since 2017, tax forms show their family foundation has donated over $1 million to Achievement First, which predominantly serves Black and Hispanic students. During her confirmation hearing in Connecticut, she described the “enthusiasm and respectful demeanor” of students at the charter network’s Amistad Academy, which scores above those in the surrounding New Haven district and showed more growth in reading last year than its peers statewide. 

Other grant recipients include the Boys and Girls Club of Stamford, Connecticut, and a nonprofit named for Thad Bullard — also known as WWE star Titus O’Neil, who overcame homelessness to become a successful NFL football player before his switch to pro wrestling. Funding from the McMahons went toward an annual event where 30,000 students received backpacks, school supplies, haircuts and health checkups.

Phuong Nguyen, executive director of the Tampa, Florida-area Bullard Family Foundation, said she’s never met the McMahons, but their donation “helped us tremendously … by funding the largest back-to-school bash in the country.”

Projecting WWE’s service to the community — and its talent — was critical to McMahon, said Lowery Woodall III, an expert on the wrestling industry. Several years ago, he invited filmmaker Barry Blaustein, director of the 1999 documentary Beyond the Mat, to speak to his class at Millersville University in Pennsylvania, where he’s an associate communications and theater professor. 

The behind-the-scenes look offered an honest portrayal of issues like steroid abuse and the physical damage wrestlers endure in a spectacle that, due mostly to intense lobbying efforts from the McMahons, isn’t regulated like pro sports. But what stuck in Woodall’s mind was how Blaustein described Linda McMahon’s reaction to the film. She complained that the footage missed the fun and camaraderie the “superstars” experience outside the ring. 

“She had a very particular vision that was important to her to put out into the world about the company,” he said. “She was willing to overlook all of the very real issues that might exist … to support that vision.”

A decade later, she left WWE to enter politics, allowing her, Woodall said, to move “away from the shadow and the specter of Vince McMahon” and the company’s scandals. Those include allegations of sexual assault and sex trafficking against her husband, which led him to resign as head of TKO, owner of WWE, this past January.

Most recently, the nation heard from McMahon when she spoke at the Republican National Convention. In her five-minute speech, she didn’t mention schools once. But Kress and others hope she’ll use her influence with Trump to address stubborn achievement gaps, which only worsened during the pandemic.

“I hope she says, ‘Mr. President, we should believe in results. You got a lot of votes from African Americans and Hispanics, and you care about lifting people up,’ ” he said. “The move from where we were to where we are is not necessarily permanent. I think it’s well past time for the pendulum to swing back.”

The 74’s senior writer Kevin Mahnken contributed to this report.

Disclosure: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to The 74.

Clarification: An earlier version of this story contained a quote suggesting that Linda McMahon and her husband Vince might seek pardons from President-elect Donald Trump. A president can only grant pardons for federal criminal offenses.

But across the country, when it comes to education, voters rejected those policies loudly and firmly. As the founder of Red Wine & Blue, a community of over 600,000 diverse suburban women, I hear from women all the time who don’t want right-wing extremist groups coming into their school districts to impose their vision of so-called parents’ rights. The vast majority of moms believe in America’s public schools, want to work with their children’s teachers to make education better and are sick of a vocal minority wasting time and resources on culture war chaos. 

But I don’t just say this because it’s what I see in my group chats and hear in conversations at the bus stop. Of the common-sense candidates — those standing up to attacks on history lessons about race and age-appropriate sex ed — who were supported by my organization in school board races across the country, 69% won. And in some states, that figure is even higher: 78% of our 45 candidates won in 15 Michigan school districts, and 86% of our 14 candidates won in six Virginia districts — an especially gratifying result given that Virginia became ground zero for the uproar over so-called Critical Race Theory in 2021.

Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Mo Green, a Democrat and former superintendent of Guilford County Schools, won the statewide race for superintendent of public instruction over homeschooler Michele Morrow. Morrow was a Republican Moms for Liberty candidate who has described public schools as “indoctrination centers” and urged people not to send their children to them; called for the assassination of national leaders; and demanded military intervention to keep then-President Donald Trump in power on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump may have won the presidential race in North Carolina, but Morrow’s slogan, “Make America’s Schools Great Again,” clearly didn’t resonate with the majority of voters who want to build up their public schools, not tear them down.

It’s true that different parents and families have different values and concerns — and that’s okay. If there’s a book you don’t want your kids to read, then don’t let them read it. I believe in providing students with accurate, age-appropriate sex education, but I also believe in allowing parents to opt their kids out if they alone want to have those conversations. But I don’t think one parent should be able to take those opportunities away from everyone else’s kids. American public schools should be, at their core, places where all students should feel supported and safe. And while extremists have come in from outside communities to gain power, divide and control people, most voters want none of it. 

If you zoom out and examine other election results, you see similar trends. Republicans spent at least $215 million on political ads attacking the trans community — including trans children who attend public schools — on issues ranging from sports to health care. But there is no evidence that these ads swayed voters at the ballot box. In fact, an October poll found that a majority of likely voters (including a plurality of Independents, by a 23-point margin) thought they were “meanspirited and out of hand.” Likewise, a post-election poll of voters in eight Senate battleground states found that those who saw the ads found them “intensely off-putting” and that they failed to impact candidate support. 

In four states — including three that voted for Trump — voters rejected Republican priorities for education. Ballot measures to expand voucher programs, which shift money from public to private schools, failed in Colorado, Kentucky, Nebraska. In Florida (the home of Moms for Liberty), voters defeated a state constitutional amendment to make school board elections partisan.

MAGA politicians will ignore these rejections at their own peril. Many parents remain concerned about their students and the state of the public schools. And when I sit down and talk to them, we almost always realize that we have far more in common than what separates us. We don’t want a loud minority telling us how to raise our children. We don’t want books about Anne Frank or Martin Luther King Jr. to be banned. We certainly don’t want kids to be bullied just because of who they are. It’s time to tune out the claims of MAGA mandates and get to work with teachers and administrators for the good of all students.

But new data suggests that’s changing. 

In a recent national survey of 20,000 parents, respondents said they trust communication from their children’s teachers more than any other source of information to judge whether their kids are on track. That was the case regardless of whether parents thought their children performed on grade level. 

The finding came as a surprise to Bibb Hubbard, president of Learning Heroes, a nonprofit that helps parents understand student achievement data. In past research, including surveys her own organization has conducted since 2017, parents have listed grades as the primary indicator of student performance. 

“For the first time, grades are not the number one factor,” she said. “Teachers really are on the front lines in terms of communicating to families about where their kids are.”

As one who urges schools to level with families about student progress, Hubbard zeroed in on that point among the trove of data that 50CAN, a national education advocacy organization, released in October. 

One reason for the shift, she said, is the falling importance of grades as a dependable measure of learning. Long before COVID, research and news reports pointed to examples of grade inflation: While grade-point averages have steadily increased, objective measures of performance like ACT scores remained flat. States and districts further relaxed grading standards during the pandemic, and parents took notice. The growth of online communication apps that allow teachers to update parents throughout the year on children’s progress have also lessened report cards’ influence, Hubbard said.

“Just putting the grade in the portal is not going to be sufficient for any parent right now,” she added. “They want that connection. They want that relationship.”

At Kickapoo High School in Springfield, Missouri, Algebra teacher Cicely Woodard said she tries to be as specific as possible when grading assignments by labeling tests with the skills students are learning — like exponents — so parents don’t have to guess. But she also leans on parents to understand why students might be struggling.

“I’ll say, ‘This is what I’m observing.’ Then I’ll be quiet and listen,” she said “I can learn so much from parents who know their children really well.”

Almost 30% of parents in the 50CAN survey said they rely on that type of communication from teachers more than any other source of information. Report card grades were second, with 20%. 

Parents who believe their children are performing below grade level value that interaction with teachers even more than those who think their kids are at or above grade level, the data shows — 36 to 28%. During the 2023-24 school year, parents who thought their children weren’t meeting expectations were more likely than others to communicate with teachers outside of parent-teacher conferences, talk to their school’s principal and consult with their child’s guidance counselor.

They also want their kids to get additional instruction. If they had the time or money, parents who think their children are below grade level would choose tutoring over organized sports and art, dance or music lessons, the survey showed. But a higher percentage of those parents also said tutoring was too expensive or wasn’t available in their community.

“They are engaged. They care about their kids, and they are not getting the support that they necessarily need,” Hubbard said.

Melony Watson, a mom of six in Fort Worth, Texas, said she’s barely looked at report cards in two years. She felt misled when one of her daughters kept making the honor roll even though she couldn’t read. 

“I’m a proud parent, sitting there clapping and jumping up and down because my baby’s walking across the stage, getting certificate after certificate,” Watson said. But by third grade, she told her daughter’s teacher that she saw signs of a learning disability. Her daughter wrote letters and numbers backwards and out of order. “They’re like, ‘No, no, she’s just a COVID baby. She’s going to be a little behind.’ ”

Watson ultimately quit her job as a substitute teacher and homeschooled her daughter for a year before enrolling her in a different school. Now, with her children in third through 12th grade, she is in frequent contact with their teachers, especially in eighth grade algebra and ninth grade social studies. 

“I get weekly updates to know what test my child has failed,” she said. “I have made myself known. If those teachers think that you don’t care, they’re not going to go the extra mile.”

‘Tipping point’

Parents aren’t the only ones who think grades provide a less-reliable predictor of success than standardized tests. Several universities, mostly Ivy league institutions, have reinstated standardized test requirements for admissions after dropping them during the pandemic. 

“I do think that it is possible that we are nearing a tipping point with regard to grade inflation,” said Adam Tyner, who wrote about the issue in a recent commentary for the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, where he is national research director. “Maybe parents are also starting to see teacher-assigned grades as a less valuable signal.”

To Hubbard, the results suggest that teachers need better training on discussing test scores with parents. Surveys of teachers conducted by Learning Heroes show educators often fear either that parents won’t believe their children are behind or that administrators will overrule their grading decisions.

“It needs to be an expectation for teachers to have ongoing communications with families — which takes time, training and support,” she said. “Otherwise, families will continue to be sidelined in being able to most effectively support their children’s learning and development.”

By Marissa Yelenick

Active shooter drills in Maryland schools will be different next school year under a new set of state guidelines meant to limit the impact those drills have on the mental health of students.

The new guidelines are designed to prohibit trauma-inducing elements like imitation of gunfire or explosions. They also require school systems to notify parents in advance when students will be practicing what to do in the event of an active shooter in their buildings.

The new guidelines were released by the Maryland Center for School Safety this fall, ordered by a new state law requiring the center to draft new parameters and create a new process for collecting and analyzing data on their effectiveness. The center will also look into the psychological impact the shooter drills have on staff, parents and students.

Parts of the guidelines — including bans on gunfire and the requirement to notify parents — have already gone into effect because they are explicit in state law. The full set of guidelines will be put into effect at the beginning of the academic year in 2025.

“The mental health crisis that we see in our young people is undeniable,” said Del. Jared Solomon (D-Montgomery), who sponsored the measure in the House earlier this year. “As we normalize having to deal with school shootings, we are creating more anxiety and more issues among young people.”

While schools have long practiced safety drills, active shooter drills are relatively new, following the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School, according to the guidelines.

While school systems have made an effort to keep students safe by implementing active shooter drills, concerns have been raised across the country about the impact these drills have on student’s mental health. This led to the April passage of the Maryland bill, as well as an executive order signed by President Joe Biden to increase federal guidance on the subject.

Maryland’s new guidelines, released in October, call for unified terminology between districts to discourage miscommunication between the school system and the relevant public. They intend to increase communication between staff and students to create an open dialogue where everyone feels comfortable raising concerns, as well as creating a diverse planning team who will work on planning the drills and doing a post-analysis of how it went and any shortcomings it faced.

The guidelines emphasize that active shooter drills are not a one-size-fits-all matter, and should be adjusted to fit the age group.

“These are going to be part of a young person’s life for the foreseeable future, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t do them in a way that is both trauma-informed and age appropriate,” Solomon said. “It’s really important that the way school systems do these types of events reflects a care and age appropriateness of the grades that are being impacted.”

The guidelines also recommend that a mechanism be established to pause or stop the drill when necessary, for schools to notify parents before and after all drills to increase trust and communication, and to allow students and staff who feel uncomfortable to opt-out of the drills.

The lead sponsors of the bill, Solomon and Sen. Cheryl Kagan (D-Montgomery), felt that the impact guns have on today’s children needs to be mitigated as much as possible, and worked to balance a focus on their safety while prioritizing their mental health.

“The law that Del. Solomon and I sponsored and passed tried to walk the fine line of thoughtful preparation that isn’t traumatic,” Kagan said. “And we also had to consider parents and community members who are understandably alarmed and concerned when they see the impact of these drills … Our concern was that [the drills] were not being strategic in how they were handled, and were actually causing trauma for those involved.”

One active shooter drill that occurred in Solomon’s district served as a driving force for his involvement.

“Families were literally getting texts from their kids saying, ‘I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again,’ and it was a drill. They didn’t know,” said Solomon. “There was no requirement prior to this for a school or a school system to notify families before or after.”

Additional motivation for the bill included shared experiences from other parents Solomon spoke to, he said. Many shared their frustrations at the lack of foresight they had into when the drills would be taking place and what would happen during them, which prevented parents from having appropriate conversations with their children to prepare them.

Starting in January, schools will distribute a new survey made by the National Center for School Mental Health to gather feedback from staff, parents and students on how effective the drills are, and the mental impact they have on all involved.

“The goal is not to create fear but to instill confidence and preparedness,” said the guidelines from the Maryland Center for School Safety. “By working together as a community, schools can foster safe and supportive learning environments.”

This story was originally published on Maryland Matters.

WASHINGTON — During Donald Trump’s first term as president, he was reluctant to speak boldly about school choice.

That’s according to Kellyanne Conway, an aide to the president back then, and one of his former campaign managers. “He would say ‘Aren’t we the ones who say it [education] is local? Why would the president of the United States bigfoot all that?’”

Expect that reticence to be a thing of the past, Conway told the audience at an event last week devoted to promoting the benefits of school choice — from sweeping education savings accounts in the style of programs in West Virginia and Arizona to charter schools and microschools. On the campaign trail, Trump already has been vocal about his embrace of parental choice. “We want federal education dollars to follow the student, rather than propping up a bloated and radical bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.,” he said at a rally in Wisconsin last month.

(To be sure, Trump did issue an executive order near the end of his first term offering states the opportunity to use federal money to create school choice programs. When I looked into it a few years ago, I couldn’t find any state that had taken him up on the offer.)

Conway urged participants at the post-Election Day gathering to speak a certain way in their advocacy to lawmakers going forward. “Lead with solutions not problems. The problems can be the second part of the sentence, or maybe the second paragraph.” The panelists — including the founder of a group of charter schools for students with autism in Arizona, the leader of a private school for boys in Alabama and the head of a foundation that supports microschools — were all winners of the Yass Prize, fueled by billionaire Jeff Yass and run by the Center for Education Reform.

She also urged the crowd not to make school choice about teachers unions, “which is fun to do, especially this week but it doesn’t educate another child.” (The National Education Association, the nation’s largest labor union, generally has opposed private school vouchers and has been celebrating the defeat of school choice measures at the ballot box in three states. “The decisive defeat of vouchers on the ballot across multiple states speaks loudly and clearly: The public knows vouchers harm students and does not want them in any form,” NEA President Becky Pringle said in a statement.) 

Lawmakers who need convincing aren’t holding out just because of union pressure, Conway said. In Texas, for instance, rural lawmakers worried about the effect of vouchers on their schools have repeatedly voted down or torpedoed plans in that state that would allow parents to use public money for private school tuition. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott helped elect enough new members in place of those rural holdouts, however, that school choice may soon be a reality in his state.

The school choice event at the Ronald Reagan Building in D.C. was notable for the range of people it featured, including parents and pastors, people who are white, Black and Latino, and several Democrats, including Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and state Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams of Pennsylvania. Some of the speakers told stories about opening their own charter schools and private schools. They urged the president-elect to take action on choice, including allowing federal subsidies for school meals for children in low-income families to follow those kids to private schools or other settings outside public schools.

In Congress, with Republicans taking hold of the Senate and expected to retain control of the House, lawmakers already have proposed legislation that has, until now, mostly been a nonstarter. Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who is likely to become chair of the committee that oversees education in his chamber, introduced a bill this session that would give families and corporations tax credits if they contribute to groups that give scholarships to students to attend private or parochial schools. It would target students whose families earn no more than 300 percent of the area median gross income. Cassidy’s wife, Laura, runs a charter school for children with dyslexia in Baton Rouge.

“I think that there’s going to be a real opportunity to promote innovation in school choice,” Cassidy said. “There is great promise in this administration, and I am looking forward to working with them.”

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

Mississippians who are dead set on enacting private school vouchers could do like their counterparts in Kentucky and attempt to change the state constitution to allow public funds to be spent on private schools.

The courts have ruled in Kentucky that the state constitution prevents private schools from receiving public funds, commonly known as vouchers. In response to that court ruling, an issue was placed on the ballot to change the Kentucky Constitution and allow private schools to receive public funds.

But voters threw a monkey wrench into the voucher supporters’ plans to bypass the courts. The amendment was overwhelmingly defeated this month, with 65% of Kentuckians voting against the proposal.

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Kentucky, generally speaking, is at least as conservative or more conservative than Mississippi. In unofficial returns, 65% of Kentuckians voted for Republican Donald Trump on Nov. 5 compared to 62% of Mississippians.

In Mississippi, like Kentucky, there has been a hue and cry to enact a widespread voucher program.

Mississippi House Speaker Jason White, R-West, has voiced support for vouchers, though he has conceded he does not believe there are the votes to get such a proposal through the House Republican caucus that claims a two-thirds supermajority.

And, like in Kentucky, there is the question of whether a voucher proposal could withstand legal muster under a plain reading of the Mississippi Constitution.

In Mississippi, like Kentucky, the state constitution appears to explicitly prohibit the spending of public funds on private schools. The Mississippi Constitution states that public funds should not be spent on a school that “is not conducted as a free school.”

The Mississippi Supreme Court has never rendered a specific ruling on the issue. The Legislature did provide $10 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds to private schools. That expenditure was challenged and appealed to the Mississippi Supreme Court. But in a ruling earlier this year, the state’s high court did not directly address the issue of public funds being spent on private schools. It instead ruled that the group challenging the expenditure did not have standing to file the lawsuit.

In addition, a majority of the court ruled that the case was not directly applicable to the Mississippi Constitution’s language since the money directed to private schools was not state funds but one-time federal funds earmarked for COVID-19 relief efforts.

To clear up the issue in Mississippi, those supporting vouchers could do like their counterparts did in Kentucky and try to change the constitution.

Since Mississippi’s ballot initiative process was struck down in an unrelated Supreme Court ruling, the only way to change the state constitution is to pass a proposal by a two-thirds majority of the Mississippi House and Senate and then by a majority of the those voting in a November general election.

Those touting public funds for private schools point to a poll commissioned by House Speaker White that shows 72% support for “policies that enable parents to take a more active role in deciding the best path for their children’s education.” But what does that actually mean? Many have critiqued the phrasing of the question, wondering why the pollster did not ask specifically about spending public funds on private schools.

Regardless, Mississippi voucher supporters have made no attempt to change the constitution. Instead, they argue that for some vague reason the language in the Mississippi Constitution should be ignored.

Nationwide efforts to put vouchers before the voters have not been too successful. In addition to voters in Kentucky rejecting vouchers, so did voters in ruby-red Nebraska and true-blue Colorado in this year’s election.

With those election setbacks, voucher supporters in Mississippi might believe their best bet is to get the courts to ignore the plain reading of the state constitution instead of getting voters to change that language themselves.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

In 12 days, it will be three years since the deadly Oxford High School shooting robbed Michigan of the lives of four students. Parents of the victims of the shooting gathered Monday in Oxford for a news conference to call on the state to open an independent investigation into the events that led to the shooting.

The gunman, who was a student at the school when he opened fired on students and educators on Nov. 30, 2021, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole at the end of 2023 for the deaths of four students. The shooter’s parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, were also held legally responsible for the shooting in a landmark criminal prosecution for their role in making it possible for their 15-year-old son to commit a mass shooting. The parents were sentenced earlier this year to 10 to 15 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter.

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But as other families prepare for Thanksgiving and start early Christmas shopping, parents of the shooting victims are imploring the state to investigate other entities — namely the school’s leadership — into what their role was in not preventing the tragedy.

“We are not going anywhere. We will do whatever it takes to drive change, because it’s not a matter of if a school shooting happens again, but when,” said Steve St. Juliana, father of Hana St. Julianna, a student who was killed in the Oxford shooting at age 14.

It’s not enough that the shooter and his parents have been held criminally responsible. The parents of the victims said much more needs to be done to understand what happened at Oxford and how other families can be spared the pain of another school shooting in the future.

The shooting could have been prevented had the school responded appropriately to the shooter as a potential threat as he gave several warning signs, asserted one investigation by Guidepost Solutions which concluded in 2023. Nearly half of the individuals investigators requested to talk to did not speak with investigators. Lawyers for Oxford Community Schools, as well as the teachers union discouraged school employees from cooperating in the investigation, the report said.

To implement real change, not simply gun safety legislation as the Michigan Legislature has enacted, the state must find out exactly what happened that permitted a 15-year-old student to open fire on his classmates and teachers at school where the community should be safe, said Buck Myre, father of Tate Myre who was killed in the shooting at age 16.

“This has always been about change — period — nothing else. It’s time for our state government to investigate this. Stop hiding; stop making excuses. A Michigan public school was the scene of the shooting. Kids’ lives were lost. Kids were shot. A teacher was shot. Every kid in school that day has a shooting badge, a shooting badge that they will heavily carry on their chest for the rest of their lives,” Myre said. “Don’t we want to learn from this?”

There is an epidemic of school shootings that are killing children, St. Juliana said. And if the state doesn’t want more carnage, state agencies need to work together, stop pointing fingers, and get to work on a revelatory investigation.

“We should not have to be sitting up here repeatedly saying, ‘Do a damn investigation.’ I’ll paraphrase the governor of Michigan ‘fix the damn system,’” St. Juliana said, referring to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s signature call to “fix the damn roads.”

“Forget about the roads. Keep our kids safe,” St. Juliana said.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel responded to the parents’ requests for a state investigation, pointing out that her office has offered several times to perform an investigation and the Oxford School Board, Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office and Oakland County Sheriff’s Office have rejected her requests.

The parents of Tate Myre, Hana St. Juliana, Justin Shilling and Madisyn Baldwin are not simply calling for further prosecutions, but for the state to examine the systems that could prevent a future shooting. Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said in an emailed statement after the press conference Monday that a comprehensive, state-led investigation has the potential to provide that.

“We are not aware of any mechanism for our office to refer a matter to the Attorney General’s office when it has not been presented to our office,” McDonald said. “And what the families are asking for is much broader. We are not aware of any action needed by my office to activate the Attorney General’s authority, but we will do everything possible to enable such an investigation. And my office will fully cooperate with any such investigation.”

Nessel said the protocol for her office to perform an investigation is to respect local authority, not use her jurisdiction to supersede local or county level criminal investigations. She added that the Attorney General Department will only join or take on leadership of a criminal investigation or prosecution after local authorities have referred the case to her office.

Both McDonald and Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard have her personal phone number, Nessel said, but neither have requested the attorney general’s involvement, although she is still willing to investigate

“We share in the families’ fatigue over the constant finger-pointing and scapegoating in these investigations and wish our offers to participate at any level had been accepted years ago for my office to conduct an investigation,” Nessel said. “At this point, nearly three years after the tragedy [it] will definitely be more difficult than if it had been allowed to begin when our earliest or repeated offers were initially made.”

McDonald sent a letter and legal opinion on Oct. 9 to St. Juliana in response to his and other families asking for criminal charges against Oxford District members. In the documents, which were provided to the Michigan Advance by St. Juliana, McDonald says Nessel has the authority to perform an investigation without an invitation.

“The Attorney General’s Office holds a wide range of powers, which include the investigatory powers that were held at common law. In addition to the investigatory powers, the Attorney General’s office is equipped with its own Criminal Investigations Division — meaning it not only has the authority, but also the resources to investigate potential violations of Michigan law,” McDonald wrote to St. Juliana.

Parents on Monday talked about the Attorney General’s Office’s ability to subpoena some of the individuals within Oxford Schools who did not talk with Guidepost Solutions’ investigation. Nessel addressed what she called confusion over what her office is allowed to do. She said her subpoena power can only be triggered when there is probable cause to believe criminal acts were committed.

In McDonald’s letter to St. Juliana, she says although parents have requested charges be filed against individuals at Oxford Schools, she has “not seen evidence that would allow me to bring charges against any of those individuals.”

“… neither my office nor Guidepost can conduct a criminal investigation,” McDonald said in the letter to St. Juliana. “I can only make decisions based on the information provided to me by law enforcement, and Guidepost must rely on the cooperation of individuals who have information to share that information.”

• Steve St Juliana letter re investigative authority
• AG Authority Memo

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and X.

In a ruling denying immediate relief to the student, filed Wednesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Levenson said nothing about the case suggests teachers at Hingham High School were “hasty” in concluding that the student and a classmate had cheated by relying on AI. He also said the school didn’t impose particularly heavy-handed discipline in the case, considering that the students had violated the school district’s academic integrity rules.

An attorney for the family on Friday noted the ruling is merely preliminary and that “the case will continue” with more discovery. But a former deputy attorney general who follows AI in education issues said the likelihood of the family winning on the merits in a trial “look all but over.”

After an Advanced Placement U.S. History teacher last fall flagged a draft of a documentary script as possibly containing AI-generated material, the pair received a D on the assignment and were later denied entry into the National Honor Society. The group’s faculty advisor said their use of AI was “the most egregious” violation of academic honesty she and others had seen in 16 years.

Jennifer and Dale Harris, parents of one of the students, sued the district and several school staffers in September, alleging that their son, a junior at the time and a straight-A student, was wrongly penalized. If the judge didn’t order the district to quickly change his grade, they said, he’d risk not being admitted via early admission to elite colleges.

He has not been identified and is referred to as “RNH” in court documents.

The complaint noted that when the students started the project in fall 2023, the district didn’t have a policy on using AI for such an assignment. Only later did it lay out prohibitions against AI. But in court testimony, district officials said Hingham students are trained to know plagiarism and academic dishonesty when they see it. 

While he earned a C+ in the course, the student scored a perfect 5 on the AP US history exam last spring, according to the lawsuit. He was later allowed to reapply to the Honor Society and was inducted on Oct. 15. Ultimately, the school’s own investigation found that over the past two years, it had inducted into the Honor Society seven other students who had academic integrity infractions, said Peter S. Farrell, the family’s attorney.

In his ruling, Levenson said the case centered around simple academic dishonesty, and that school officials could reasonably conclude that the students’ use of AI “was in violation of the school’s academic integrity rules and that any student in RNH’s position would have understood as much.”

The students, he said, “did not simply use AI to help formulate research topics or identify sources to review. Instead, it seems they indiscriminately copied and pasted text that had been generated by Grammarly.com” into their draft script. 

Levenson said the court doesn’t really have a role in “second-guessing the judgments of teachers and school officials,” especially since the students weren’t suspended. Farrell on Friday said he expected the case to continue, but Benjamin Riley, founder of Cognitive Resonance, a think tank that investigates AI in education, said the judge’s ruling suggests the family’s chance of winning in a trial are slim. Riley, a former deputy attorney general for California, said the issue at the core of the case isn’t “the whiz-bang technology of AI — it’s about a student who plagiarized and got caught. The judge’s decision explains at length and in detail how the school district had academic integrity policies in place, as well as a fair process for resolving any issues arising under them.” 

Everyone in the district, he said, “followed these rules and imposed an appropriate (and frankly light) punishment. As is often the case, few will see the diligent and quiet work of thoughtful educators at Hingham Public Schools, but I do — and I’m hoping they felt good when this decision came down. They should.”

Had the family not sued the district, Farrell said, it wouldn’t have come to light that he had been “treated differently than other students admitted to National Honor Society” who had academic integrity infractions on their record. He also noted that the school admitted the student into the National Honor Society within a week of a hearing in the case last month. “The timing of that action was not a coincidence.”

Hingham Public Schools did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

The commission tasked with studying Delaware’s funding formula for public education on the heels of a report suggesting spending should be increased by upward of $1 billion annually has a large hill to climb.

That’s hampered by an information gap, after a recent survey determined that a large number of the commission members don’t feel they have enough of a grasp on the current or proposed funding systems to formulate a plan.

In recent years, Delaware has come under scrutiny for the way its public education system is funded. Advocacy groups like the Delaware NAACP and Delawareans for Educational Opportunity filed a lawsuit arguing that the state’s education system did not provide an adequate education to all students and therefore violated their rights.

A national consultant, the American Institutes for Research, completed an independent assessment of education funding in Delaware as part of the 2020 settlement from that case, where it recommended that the state increase spending by as much as $1 billion to meet its 2030 educational proficiency goals.

After both Democratic and Republican members of the State Senate’s Education Committee raised concerns in a March meeting over how the sum would affect taxpayers, however, the legislature chose to create the Public Education Funding Commission (PEFC) to examine the recommendation.

In its Nov. 13 meeting, the commission released its anonymous survey about whether Delaware should try to reform and improve the longstanding unit count formula that determines state funding support for public schools statewide, or scrap it altogether and create a weighted student formula that many other states have moved to in recent years.

About 48% of respondents said they were neutral, not sure or needed more information. In comparison, 33% voted for improving the current system and 19% voted for creating a brand new system. Ten members of the 31-member commission, which includes legislators, Cabinet leaders, teachers, principals, support professionals, and community advocates, did not respond to the survey.

State Senator and Commission Chair Laura Sturgeon (D-Brandywine Hundred) made it clear that she wished the PEFC’s first two meetings would have provided the “foundational knowledge” necessary to make a decision to rebuild or remodel the current system.

The PEFC’s next two meetings will focus on how public education funding works in Delaware, and specific examples of what a total rebuild would look like, compared to a remodel with small or large changes. Sturgeon added that she hopes people will feel more comfortable choosing a direction after the December and February meetings.

Commission members’ need for more information comes after discussions about pushing back the timeline for issuing final recommendations, which frustrated some advocates who argue that the state has been debating and studying the issue for nearly 20 years without making substantive changes.

The commission was slated to submit its first set of recommendations by Oct. 1, 2025, to be considered in the governor’s recommended budget for Fiscal Year 2027. However, the commission previously discussed submitting its recommendations in July 2026 instead, which would delay possible funding until the budget for Fiscal Year 2028.

Although future meetings aim to provide more knowledge, some members were quick to point out that their peers should be doing their own research on the public education funding system rather than waiting for the information to be given.

“Today, a lot of us have been really quiet, but we really need that input if we’re going to move forward and if we’re going to make these transformational changes that we really want in our education system, because it’s too important for us to sit back, be quiet and wait,” said commission member Marcus Wright, who is also a member of the Seaford School District Board of Education. “We’ve got to go out, we’ve got to do the work. We got to do some research on our own as well.”

Wright called on members to lean on those who are on the commission to help “gain the knowledge that you need so that we can move forward.”

Wright also pointed out that the commission doesn’t have much time to form its recommendations, and that the work is too important to do in two-hour blocks once every month.

Sturgeon agreed and called on members to voice their opinions more and said that the commission has also provided reading materials to help people feel more comfortable with the topic.

“I know we’re all super busy, and so just encouraging you to read what you can or ask questions,” Sturgeon said. “Call us, meet with us, meet with whoever, and then when you feel like you understand it well enough please voice your opinion, and please don’t be afraid of having an opinion and then changing your mind later.”

This story was originally published on Spotlight Delaware.

Like learning to read by third grade, taking eighth grade math is a pivotal moment in a child’s education. Students who pass Algebra 1 in eighth grade are more likely to sign up for more advanced math courses, and those who pass more advanced math courses are more likely to graduate from college and earn more money. “Algebra in eighth grade is a gateway to a lot of further opportunities,” said Dan Goldhaber, an economist who studies education at the American Institutes for Research, in a recent webinar.

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

A collection of surveys of teachers and principals, conducted by the research organization RAND, suggests three problems at the poorest middle schools, which are disproportionately populated with Black and Hispanic students. Many don’t offer algebra at all. Their teachers have less training and math expertise, and they describe how they spend classroom time differently than teachers do at wealthier schools. That means the most advanced students at many middle schools in poor communities don’t have the opportunity to learn algebra, and many students at high-poverty schools aren’t receiving the kind of math lessons that could help them get ready for the subject. 

In 2023 and 2024, RAND surveyed more than 3,000 school principals and almost 1,000 math teachers across the country. The educators are part of a specially constructed national sample, designed to reflect all public schools and the demographics of the U.S. student population. A working paper analyzing some of the survey findings was released in October 2024. (That analysis was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report.)

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

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

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

In surveys, a third of math teachers at high-poverty schools reported that they spent more than half of class time teaching topics that were below grade level, as well as managing student behavior and disciplining students. Lecture-style instruction, as opposed to classroom discussion, was far more common at the poorest schools compared to the wealthiest schools. RAND researchers also detected similar discrepancies in instructional patterns when they examined schools along racial and ethnic lines, with Black and Hispanic students receiving “less optimal” instruction than white students. But these discrepancies were stronger by income than by race, suggesting that poverty may be a bigger factor than bias.

Many communities have tried putting more eighth graders into algebra classes, but that has sometimes left unprepared students worse off.  “Simply giving them an eighth grade algebra course is not a magic bullet,” said AIR’s Goldhaber, who commented on the RAND analysis during a Nov. 5 webinar. Either the material is too challenging and the students fail or the course was “algebra” in name only and didn’t really cover the content. And without a college preparatory track of advanced math classes to take after algebra, the benefits of taking Algebra 1 in eighth grade are unlikely to accrue.

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

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

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

This story was originally published by The Hechinger Report.

The state will close the West Virginia Children’s Home, a residential facility in Elkins for foster children, by the end of the year. The decision to close the 25-bed facility comes as the state is reliant on group homes to house foster kids and doesn’t have enough available beds.

The 25-bed residential facility, which serves youth ages 12 to 18 years old from any county, is operated by the Department of Human Services. The youth aren’t able to be served in a traditional foster home due to behavioral issues.

The West Virginia Department of Education operates a school on its premises.

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“There have been six to 10 students there for the last 12 to 18 months,” said Jacob Green, superintendent of  West Virginia Schools of Diversion and Transition, adding that three children currently reside at the facility. “There is a new program in Parsons run by Genesis [Foster Care and Adoption Services], and we will be moving resources there.”

Green added that the decision was made after talk of closing the facility for more than two years.

DoHS did not respond to questions for this story about why they will close the facility. Department Secretary Cynthia Persily told lawmakers last year that the West Virginia Children’s Home, built in 1909, had numerous safety concerns involving windows and doors that needed to be addressed.

Hundreds of West Virginia’s 6,135 foster kids are in group homes, according to state data. There is a shortage of foster homes, particularly for older children.

Lawmakers and advocates have said kids are continuing to be housed in hotels due to a lack of foster families and available beds in group homes.

Shanna Gray, is the executive director for West Virginia Court Appointed Special Advocates, or CASA.

“Too many children who come into foster care in West Virginia are currently residing in residential facilities, away from family connections,” she said. “It is our hope that the closing of this and other already identified unsafe environments for West Virginia children will force our systems to acknowledge other ways in addressing and curbing the unprecedented influx of children entering [the] foster care system, including building capacity of community support.”

When lawmakers last year discussed possibly closing the facility, Persily cited a state code that requires West Virginia to operate an “orphanage.”

DoHS did not answer a question about if a different facility would not meet the code’s requirement to house foster children.

An ongoing class-action lawsuit, filed in 2019, alleged the mistreatment of thousands of  foster children in DoHS care; the suit said that a disproportionate number of children were sent to institutions. DoHS requested a summary judgment in the suit in July, vowing they’d made improvements to the system that included recruiting more foster families. Attorneys suing the state said the problems persist and are planning for a trial in March 2025.

Correction: This story was updated to say that hundreds of West Virginia’s foster children live in group homes. 

West Virginia Watch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. West Virginia Watch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Leann Ray for questions: info@westvirginiawatch.com. Follow West Virginia Watch on Facebook and X.

While some capitalize on the independent schools’ flexibility to rearrange elements of the classroom day as needed, and many have developed teacher hiring and retention strategies, the report’s author says the main takeaway is that the most promising developments are the result of cultures that hold general and special educators jointly responsible for the success of all students. 

“It comes back to the idea that the whole school owns the experience of students with disabilities,” says Chase Nordengren, director of research for the nonprofit organization, which focuses on improving disabled children’s outcomes. “They make sure general education teachers feel as prepared to meet the needs of students with disabilities as special educators.”

This stands in marked contrast to the way special education services are typically delivered, with students with disabilities pulled out of regular classrooms to receive instruction and therapies that general educators frequently know little about. Though experts have long decried this approach, which flies in the face of research showing disabled children achieve more in integrated classrooms than when isolated, charter and district-run schools often resist becoming more inclusive. 

To that end, the new report makes recommendations aimed at helping charter schools — which typically enjoy a high degree of autonomy in exchange for meeting academic and financial performance targets — address persistent inequities in how students with special education plans are served. 

Charter authorizers — the organizations that grant schools permission to operate and oversee their performance — should consider offering the schools they supervise technical assistance and specialized expertise that standalone schools may struggle to acquire, such as teacher training and a central hiring pool. All schools, regardless of type, should find ways for general and special education staff to collaborate and collect and analyze data about students with disabilities, the researchers recommend.

Disability advocates have long complained that while over the last decade charter schools have become more accessible to families whose children need alternatives to traditional classrooms, little effort has been invested in identifying systemic improvements. 

Since 2008, the number of children with disabilities attending charter schools, which have historically enrolled fewer than their district-run counterparts, has risen steadily, from less than 8% to 11.5% in 2021, according to data from the Government Accountability Office and the U.S. Department of Education. Throughout that time, charters have enrolled 2% to 3% fewer special education students than traditional schools.

But even as enrollment has increased, outcomes for children with disabilities have barely budged, the center’s researchers concluded earlier this year, following a two-year investigation. On the whole, charter schools do not outperform their district-run counterparts, even though they exist in part to develop effective ways of meeting the needs of historically underserved students. Almost no special education students are given access to college-readiness classes and programs, for example.

Following the July release of a report on those poor outcomes, the center turned its attention to a survey of schools that, intentionally or not, enroll higher-than-average numbers of students with disabilities.

The new report describes some promising strategies. One 10-year-old Atlanta-area school enrolling grades 6 to 12, Tapestry Public Charter School, was founded on the principles of a longstanding but little-used strategy called universal design for learning. 

Broadly described, this means educators provide instruction in a variety of forms to enable all students — disabled or not — to engage with it. Staff have two hours a day to plan together and to collaborate with therapists, behavior specialists and other service providers. 

Half of Tapestry’s 266 students receive special education services, and all core classes are co-taught by a special educator and a general ed teacher. This allows for personalized, small-group instruction in which educators can identify and address individual skills gaps. 

“This both makes sure kids get the specific help they need and [aren’t] called out or singled out as needing it,” says Nordengren. “Everybody gets the support.”

A Washington, D.C., school serving 221 Black and low-income boys in grades 4 through 7, Statesman College Preparatory Academy was designed to provide structure for all of its students, including the 29% who need special education services. The school also employs a therapist who works one-on-one with staff.

“We can do personal development better than we can do professional development,” founder Shawn Hardnett told the center’s researchers. “And what we find is that people are better professionals because we’ve done personal work.” 

In New York City, Mott Haven Academy is a pre-K-8 charter school founded to meet the needs of students impacted by the child welfare system. One in four students has a disability, and a third lack stable housing. Drawing on mental health and behavioral supports, the school uses the same instructional approaches with all 451 pupils, whether they qualify for special education or not.  

Mott Haven uses its flexibility as a charter school to structure staff time to allow educators and disability service providers to collaborate. One example: Instead of pulling a single student out of class for extra help, a speech-language pathologist helped the child’s teachers redesign their instruction — strengthening the general education teacher’s skills. 

Other common strategies include hiring general ed teachers who want to work with children with disabilities and special educators, and investing in ongoing training. 

The 29 schools surveyed landed on similar strategies, but for the most part did so independently, as they sought ways to address their students’ varied challenges, Nordengren says. “What surprised me more than anything is how different these schools look from each other,” he says. “Each found a way to identify the particular needs of its students.” 

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided financial support to the Center for Learner Equity for this research and provides financial support to The 74.

Two-thirds of Ohioans support a universal free school breakfast and lunch program for all public school children, according to a Republican research firm.

“This is extremely rare in a time where voters are really reluctant to support further spending, either at the state or federal level,” Alexi Donovan, vice president of Tarrance Group Polling, said Monday during the Ohio Legislative Children’s Caucus monthly meeting.

This month’s meeting heard testimony on the importance of universal school meals and Tarrance Group Polling surveyed 600 Ohio voters about this topic in May.

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“It is clear from the research and the data over the years, universal school meals help students thrive, physically, mentally, socially and educationally,” said John Stanford, director of Children’s Defense Fund–Ohio.

In Ohio, 1 in 6 children, or about 413,000 kids, live in a household that experiences hunger. Despite that, more than 1 in 3 children who live in a food insecure household do not qualify for school meals, according to a 2023 report from Children’s Defense Fund-Ohio.

“We believe that in a country as wealthy as we are, we should not have hungry children,” said Lisa Quigley, director of Solving Hunger.

Exposing students to various fruits and vegetables through school meals helps them get a taste for “food that’s far more nutritious than what a lot of them are bringing to school,” she said.

“What we’re finding in the schools that are doing universal school meals, the food is getting better,” Quigley said.

National security

Children’s hunger is a national security issue, said Cynthia Rees, Ohio’s director for the Council for a Strong America.

The U.S. Department of Defense conducted a study in 2020 that found 77% of young people between the ages of 17 and 24 are ineligible for military service without a waiver. The most prevalent disqualification rate was for being overweight at 11%, above drug and alcohol abuse (8%) and medical/physical health (7%).

“It is critical to recognize that overweight and obesity can often be manifestations of malnutrition, food insecurity or the lack of access to affordable healthy foods often result in consuming cheaper and more accessible food, which often lack nutritional value,” Rees said.

The food insecurity rate for Ohio children is 15%, with some counties having rates up to 24%, Rees said.

“Increasing children’s access to fresh and nutritious food now, including through free school meals for all students, could help America recover from the present challenges and bolster national security in the future,” she said. “The military has a long standing interest in the health and nutrition of our nation’s youth.”

Universal school meals would eliminate the stigma of categorizing students who receive free and reduced meals and those that don’t, Rees said.

“Instead, all students can just have a meal together,” she said. “When we make school meals accessible to all, we remove that stigma.”

Ohio legislation

Last year’s budget bill allowed any student who qualified for free or reduced school breakfast or lunch got those meals for free during the 2023-24 school year.

Currently in Ohio, children are eligible for free or reduced school meals if their household income is up to 185% of the federal poverty line, which is $57,720 for a family of four, according to the United States Department of Health and Human Services.

State Reps. Darnell Brewer, D-Cleveland, and Ismail Mohamed, D-Columbus, introduced a bill earlier this year that would require public schools to provide a meal to any student that asks.

House Bill 408 would also ban a district from throwing away a meal after it was served “because of a student’s inability to pay for the meal or because money is owed for previously provided meals.” The has only had sponsor testimony so far in the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and X.

Updated on Nov. 21 —The Department of Education announced that beta testing of the 2025-26 FAFSA form has been completed, 10 days before its Dec. 1, 2024 goal. The official form is now available to all students and families. Those interested in completing the online form can do so at fafsa.gov. A paper form is also now available. 

The U.S. Department of Education (DOE) announced on Thursday, Nov. 14 the launch of the final stage of testing (Beta 4) for the 2025–26 Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) — which is on track to officially launch for all students and families by Dec. 1.

As part of the final beta testing, the DOE will open the FAFSA to all students and families under what they are calling “Expanded Beta 4” before the end of November.

“During that time, the Department will continue to carefully monitor the FAFSA form, overall system performance, and support operations, such as our contact center, and adjust operations as needed,” a DOE release says. “This will allow the Department to test the FAFSA system with higher volumes of users, while giving students an opportunity to submit online 2025–26 FAFSA forms before Dec. 1.”

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Once the DOE determines the “FAFSA system is operating smoothly with high volumes of users” during Expanded Beta 4, the 2025-26 FAFSA form will officially be released.

“Allowing more students to access the FAFSA form is the final state of beta testing as we prepare to officially launch the form no later than Dec. 1,” DOE Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said.

Since testing started on Oct. 1, more than 14,000 students have successfully submitted their 2025-26 FAFSA forms, according to the DOE release. The forms of those students have been processed, and the DOE has sent more than 81,000 records to more than 1,850 schools across 43 states.

“The Department has not found any critical bugs during the beta testing period, and the FAFSA system is working end-to-end,” the release says. “In addition, the Department has focused on addressing issues and improving the user experience in the application. Students and families are benefiting from these enhancements, leading to a satisfaction rating for beta participants of 95%.”

The beta testing for the 2025-26 FAFSA follows the rocky launch of the “Better FAFSA” earlier this year, which saw multiple glitches and delays and caused stress for students and families seeking help paying for college.

While many students experienced delays, students from mixed-status families, or those whose parents don’t have a social security number, were particularly impacted by the glitches. DOE officials previously told members of the press that “many” mixed-status students successfully submitted their applications during Beta 1, which started Oct. 1.

Beta 2 testing started on Oct. 15, and Beta 3 started in early November. The final stage of testing, Beta 4, started on Wednesday, Nov. 13, expanding the testing to thousands of additional students recruited by various community and education organizations.

“We are in a radically different and better place than last cycle,” FAFSA Executive Advisor Jeremy Singer told reporters during a call on Thursday. “Our systems have been fully tested, and they are ready to go.”

Singer said the Department has successfully tested this year’s application with several different subgroups, including active duty military members, veterans, students with dependent children, students experiencing homelessness, and students from mixed-status families.

On Nov. 15, the DOE is visiting a Texas prison with a community organization to assist incarcerated students with filling out the paper form, Singer said.

“We’ve been determined to make sure that last year’s delays and errors were not repeated again this year,” Kvaal told reporters.

Bennett College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington are participating in Beta 3 and 4 testing stages.

In addition to the expanded beta testing, the Department has also “significantly staffed up” its call center, Singer said, adding more than 700 agents since last January. Once the FAFSA officially launches, the Department also plans to offer extended hours at night and on Saturdays.

“This new phase of expanded Beta 4 gives us an opportunity to comprehensively test the FAFSA application at an even larger scale than we have to date,” Singer said. “We understand that after last year, we are still in the process of rebuilding trust with families, with institutions, and it led us to take these extra precautions.”

You can read more about Beta results and testing on the department’s website.

FAFSA resources

The Department recently released several new resources to assist students and families in completing and submitting the FAFSA form during the 2025–26 cycle:

• “Creating Your StudentAid.gov Account” Page: A new resource that explains what families and partners need to know about creating a StudentAid.gov account.
• Pro Tips for Completing the FAFSA Form: Updated tips for preparing to fill out and submitting the FAFSA form. This resource will also be linked from the StudentAid.gov Dashboard to promote easier access for students and their required contributor(s).
• Federal Student Aid Estimator: Provides an estimate of the 2025–26 Student Aid Index (SAI) and Federal Pell Grant eligibility calculation.
• “Who’s the Parent on the FAFSA Form?” Wizard: A new, stand-alone tool to help students and families determine who will need to provide contributor information on the 2025–26 FAFSA form prior to starting the application.
• Federal Student Aid YouTube Channel: FAFSA Videos: Updated videos to help students and families understand the importance of the FAFSA form, who is a FAFSA contributor, and what happens after submitting the form.

Here are other resources:

• Financial Aid Toolkit: Updated resources for school counselors, college access professionals, and mentors with information about the FAFSA process.
• FAFSA Issue Alerts page: A list of known issues with the form updated in real-time as bugs are fixed in beta testing.
• FAFSA videos: Updated videos to help students and families understand the importance of the FAFSA, who is a FAFSA contributor, and what happens after submitting the form:
  • What Is FAFSA®?
  • Why Do My Contributors and I Need Our Own StudentAid.gov Accounts for the FAFSA® Form?
  • Who Is a Contributor on the FAFSA® Form?
  • What Happens After Submitting Your FAFSA® Form?
• The College Foundation of North Carolina
• North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority
• Federal Student Aid

This article first appeared on EducationNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

In partnership with Fresno Pacific University and six school districts throughout Tulare County, the year-long program housed within the county’s California Center on Teaching Careers hopes to curb shortages that have left schools throughout the state with student to counselor ratios at 1:461, nearly double the recommended 1:250. 

Since its launch at the start of this school year, the School Counselor Residency project has provided one on one support to a small pilot cohort of twelve counselors and looks to expand statewide. Counselors in training earn a master’s of arts in school counseling and a $45,000 living stipend while being mentored by experienced counselors in their region. 

“Through this pathway, we’re truly able to grow our own, which means preparing individuals of our own communities who grew up here, who know parents … students of our own schools, to then be part of our system,” said Marvin Lopez, the Center’s executive director.

The program is hands-on, requiring 1,200 hours of clinical training and field experience, 400 hours beyond the required amount to obtain a credential. 

Like other residencies to boost teacher pipelines, the model aims to recruit a more representative pool by eliminating the financial barriers and loans professionals often take on to enter the field. 

Graduates of teacher residencies, which the SCR program has been modeled after, stay in their school districts at much higher rates than those who have entered through traditional or other alternative pathways, “stabilizing” the force, according to the Learning Policy Institute. The pools they recruit are also more racially diverse. 

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why launch this residency now, and what’s at stake without it? 

Marvin Lopez: I’m going to take you back a decade. In 2012, we began looking at residency models, specifically for teachers, across the nation. We spent six years looking at models in California, Chicago, New York City, to see what are best practices and spend time with some universities that have been running teacher residencies for some time. 

We realized we needed to bring a pathway like that to our area – we’re in this central region of the state in California, near Sequoia, Yosemite, Fresno, Bakersfield. It’s very agricultural, rural, low-income with many high needs schools. We realized that not only do we need a model like this for preparing teachers, but also mental health professionals – school-based social workers and school counselors. We tackled the entire ecosystem of our school. 

Through this pathway, we’re truly able to grow our own, which means preparing individuals of our own communities who grew up here, who know their communities, who know parents. The students who were students of our own schools to then be part of our system. 

To your question of why, when you look at the student ratio of school counselors and students in our area, it’s 1 to 460+, which is double what is recommended nationally. There’s a gap that we’re trying to close and bridge. By having this pathway in place, it’s allowing us to not only recruit from local talents, but also prepare them in a way that gives them a full year of clinical experience. The data doesn’t lie.

What challenges did you all come up against before launching, and what did you do to overcome them? 

As a new pathway, [it required] a lot of informing and educating school leaders about the benefits, and sharing retention data about residencies. I wouldn’t call it a challenge, it was a learning experience. 

How might this residency impact what you all are seeing with regards to the youth mental health crisis, particularly as you mentioned that this county you’re serving is predominantly high needs, schools that, as you mentioned, have large shortages of mental health support staff? 

We’re looking at the entire ecosystem of our schools and the workload that teachers have, specifically after the pandemic. The silver lining is that a lot of mental wellness issues came to light and the public are more open to conversation. It’s now more important and obvious that we do need more services; school counselors play a big role in that ecosystem as well as social workers. Providing another part of the support that our students need in the classroom, that’s the impact that we see. We’re providing more wrap-around support to our schools and students by preparing teachers, social workers, and school counselors through our residency model. 

I‘m wondering about the scale of this, what’s interest been like since you launched in September and how large of a cohort do you hope to recruit this first year? 

Initially our plan was to have a small pilot cohort of 8. We launched with 12, and now we’re getting requests from districts for next year already. It looks like that might double, and it’s because of the needs of our districts and the value they see added by having residents at their sites and the impact they’re already having with their students. 

Our goal is to actually scale up and expand our program throughout the state. We’re working closely with a couple of county offices around this work, and we are always willing to share best practices as well as guide and provide support to any other regions that are looking to implement a similar program. 

If you had to boil it down, what are three things that you think that folks who are taking on this kind of work should keep in mind? 

First, having a vision that’s student centered. Second, building and nurturing partnerships with your districts and universities. And ultimately, providing quality mentorship for the residents, working alongside district leadership to make sure that those individuals are the right fit for a school. 

Is there anything I haven’t asked you but that’s on your mind or just that you want me to know? 

Beyond the living stipend for residents, we also provide a stipend for the mentors that’s $4,000. That’s unique because they’re spending quite a bit of time throughout the year. It’s important to recognize the efforts that not only the residents are putting into this, but the mentors who play a huge component in this process.