Among longtime history teacher Karalee Wong Nakatsuka’s most prized possessions are two nearly identical T-shirts with very different meanings.

One comes from Philadelphia’s , celebrating our Founding Fathers’ signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and their fight for freedom from the British Crown.

The second is from in Washington, D.C., where an assassin killed President Abraham Lincoln 89 years after the Declaration’s signing. The Civil War, fought to free the nation’s nearly four million enslaved people, had effectively ended five days before the president was shot.

Both T-shirts bear the slogan: “Created Equal.”

It’s not lost on Nakatsuka, the child of Chinese immigrants, that the nation took its time bestowing the same universal gift from the Declaration — “All men are created equal” — on African Americans.

And this isn’t an abstract concept to her mostly Asian eighth-grade students at First Avenue Middle School in Arcadia, California, who are struggling to process news about birthright citizenship, and deportations in their Los Angeles suburb.

“From the beginning,” she said, “we talk about the Declaration.”

As its 250th anniversary nears, teachers like Nakatsuka face the challenge of bringing the nation’s founding documents and the Revolution alive while presenting an accurate account of what happened — and what it all means today.

Add to that the task of teaching in a politically divided nation that now holds a microscope to the founders, casting them as less-than-heroic slaveholders and capitalists even as advocates for patriotic education urge teachers to exalt them as God-like heroes.

At East Kentwood High School in Western Michigan, history teacher Matthew Vriesman takes an approach similar to Nakatsuka’s, challenging his students to look past their preconceptions of documents like the Declaration and ask: “Who was it originally for? Who is it for now?”

The 250th, he said, is a perfect time to get students to think deeply about the Declaration’s vision of “all men created equal” and ask: How’s that experiment going?

“If you really think about it, high school history class is an incredible opportunity,” Vriesman said. “This is the last time where people in this country are forced to sit and think and write about the founding values. This is the last time.”

Civics teachers ‘are not OK’

Americans in 2026 — and this generation especially — could probably use a lesson in those values.

Just 47% of adults in a recent survey could why the original 13 Colonies declared independence from Britain in 1776. And in a of Gen Z, the youngest of whom are now in high school, researchers at Tufts University found that they hold troubling attitudes toward democracy: Nearly one in three displayed “dismissive detachment,” with low confidence in our governing system and higher than average support for authoritarianism. Nearly two-thirds displayed a “passive appreciation” for democracy, saying they trusted the government but were complacent about politics.

As the Declaration’s 250th anniversary looms, teachers say they’re working in a climate of increased scrutiny and uncertainty. In a , more than half said teaching basic civics concepts now feels “difficult,” with nearly six in 10 worrying about potential backlash for teaching something the “wrong way.” About 20% said they’ve experienced actual backlash for lessons they’ve taught. More than one in three said they’ve changed or removed lessons they typically teach because of the climate in their school or community.

“Civics teachers are not OK, and that stinks, no matter what year it is,” said Emma Humphries, chief education officer of the nonprofit group iCivics, which produced the survey. “But it’s really awful when we should be in a more celebratory mood.”

The group designs curricula and games about civic education and history. In preparation for the anniversary, iCivics created a campaign called , which features the tagline, “We don’t stop teaching algebra when working with polynomials gets hard. Nor should we stop teaching civics when explaining the rule of law gets hard.”

Despite the pressures, teachers say they’re diving in, with about eight in 10 saying the Revolutionary period and the founding documents are “high priorities” for their classrooms. The founders, the Declaration and the American Revolution are by far teachers’ favorite historical topics, according to a 2024 survey by the .

No other topic even comes close.

Teaching ‘historical empathy’

As her fifth-graders toured the hushed galleries of the Revolution Museum in Philadelphia one recent morning, teacher Samantha Dowis watched as they thrilled to the muskets, the outfits and to Gen. George Washington’s actual tent, even if they were light on how it all fit together.

Their tour guide led them from room to room, and the students could easily tell her who Washington was and that he’d crossed the Delaware River to their native New Jersey. But at the Battle of Trenton exhibit, when asked who the were, not a single hand went up. (For the record: They were hired by the British to fight the Colonists.)

Dowis said she wasn’t worried. They’d barely begun learning about the Revolution, and were only now getting a sense that 2026 is somehow a significant anniversary.

For younger students, she and others said, the challenge in teaching history turns on getting and keeping their attention and emphasizing compelling narratives built around political ideals — while often battling against misinformation or just random bits they encounter online. 

“I feel like we teach them more now than when we were younger,” Dowis said. “They learn more content now than I remember from when I was in school.”

From an early age, kids understand concepts like voting rights, she said. So when the lessons turn to the colonies, realizing “they didn’t have a say in government” and rebelled, that resonates.

Dowis, who grew up nearby in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Bridesburg, said her students occasionally want to talk about fraught issues of race and slavery. She avoids politics if she can, but if students ask questions about how different races or groups of people experienced history, “we definitely talk about it. We make sure to hear everybody’s perspective, and not just one voice,” she said. By the time they leave fifth grade in Maple Shade, New Jersey, they’ve learned about enslavement not just in the American colonies, but among the Mayan, Incan and Aztec cultures, among others. 

While many adults learned history with a heavy emphasis on names, dates and significant battles, educators now often say they take a more story-centric approach that invites students to experience what’s often called “historical empathy,” putting people into the shoes of those who lived history. 

“The more we can put it in terms of everyday people, and help people relate to those individuals, we find, the more successful we can be,” said Michael Hensinger, who oversees K-12 education for the museum. “It can be really hard to relate to a general, a king, queen, somebody like that, which is often the lens through which a lot of history was taught when I was growing up.”

So the museum frontloads stories of everyday people, soldiers and citizens alike, who found themselves caught up in war, such as Joseph Plumb Martin, a Connecticut teenager who joined the state militia in 1776 and defended New York City before re-enlisting for the war’s duration.

The museum also highlights the story of London Pleasants, an enslaved 15-year-old in Virginia who in 1781 joined Loyalist forces under the command of Benedict Arnold. Two years earlier, the Crown had offered protection to slaves who fled to the British lines. 

“I think a lot of young people aren’t necessarily hungry for Revolutionary War history, but they are really fascinated by stories,” said Tyler Putnam, the museum’s senior manager for gallery interpretation. 

“Kids are curious,” said Lauren Tarshis, author of the young adult novel I Survived The American Revolution, 1776. “Right now, they’re going on YouTube and watching real stories about these things,” not all of them historically accurate. 

Tarshis’ deeply researched series has grown to 25 books since 2017. Instead of shying away from difficult topics in history, she said, young people invite them in if there’s hope at the end. 

The Digital History Group’s program leverages their curiosity with primary sources — maps, letters, paintings, diary entries — to help students answer key questions such as: Who actually at the Battle of Lexington on April 19, 1775? 

Students start with a painting commissioned 200 years later by the Lexington Historical Society that offers an heroic image of colonists fighting back against the British. Then they examine a 1775 engraving by one of the American fighters showing colonists fleeing the scene. After that they read an account from a British officer who admits his men were firing without orders but who believes the colonists shot first. Finally they read an account from colonists who, unsurprisingly, blame the British. Students must wrestle with competing accounts to try to make sense of it all.

“History has never been uncontested,” said Joel Breakstone, a former Stanford History Education Group director who co-founded the group.

‘A fundamentally good country’

In 2026, teachers like Vriesman, whose district sits south of Grand Rapids, Michigan , must also help students understand U.S. history through the lens of new federal immigration policies that undermine their sense of “created equal.” The area has seen several and arrests, prompting students recently to walk out of school .

Nonetheless, he said, each year he is impressed with his students’ willingness to embrace the Declaration’s ideals before he even tackles the document itself. His school district is among the most diverse in Michigan, with students from around the globe, bringing different religions, worldviews and life stories to class. But when pressed to share their beliefs, he said, virtually all hold “basic Enlightenment values.”

All of his students, “from Somalia to farm country,” say they agree that people should be able to raise their families how they’d like and not be afraid to live in a society based on who they are or where they hail from.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — “They literally create this before they even know what the Declaration of Independence really is,” he said.

That’s despite the fact that many students when they’re younger learn something more akin to a “founding myth” than actual U.S. history, said one of his students, 18-year-old Christina Le. 

“The founders are really seen as mythological figures in a sense, and they’re portrayed as more heroic,” she said. “But when you start studying them more, you see them more as flawed human beings who eventually brought that into the Constitutional Convention, even though they were trying to create these ideals.”

Le, whose parents emigrated from Vietnam around 1999, said it’s important to understand the founders as “men who were created through the context of the Revolutionary War.” They fought the war based on ideals of liberty, she said, but refused to acknowledge the broader issue of whose liberty they were fighting for. “And we’re kind of still seeing the effects today.”

Her classmate, 17-year-old Hawathiya Mulual, said she began thinking deeply about liberty and equal rights in middle school. She was just 11 in 2020, when police in Minneapolis killed George Floyd, triggering a racial reckoning nationwide around the use of police force on people of color. 

The child of Sudanese and Ethiopian refugees, Mulual said her interest in U.S. history and government took root “when you saw justice was so hard to achieve — why was it so hard to condemn those police officers involved?”

The 250th anniversary takes place at a time when history itself is under extreme political pressure. President Donald Trump last year signed an executive order pushing schools to promote “patriotic education,” and the U.S. Department of Education recently designed to promote “informed patriotism and love of country.”

Museums have protested as the administration pushes to rewrite historical displays to downplay the role of slavery. In Philadelphia, the National Park Service in January removed a set of large explanatory panels detailing the U.S. slave trade at the , where both George Washington and John Adams once lived. The city sued, and a federal judge, likening the administration to the propaganda-spewing Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s 1984, ordered the display to be while litigation over the move continues.

While 2026 may seem for many a far cry from the U.S. bicentennial celebration in 1976, when the nation came together for fireworks, concerts and parades of , the Revolution Museum’s Putnam, said not so fast: Politics divided those celebrations too. The festivities of 1976, he said, fell on the heels of massive American traumas, such as the 1960s fight for civil rights, the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and the Watergate scandal, which forced President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974.

What’s perhaps different, he said, is that this time around, a generation of historic scholarship has uncovered narratives of Native American, Black and women’s voices as  part of the nation’s founding. “Even though those people were advocating for inclusion in 1976, there wasn’t the sort of social or scholarly body of material to say, ‘Oh, you’re interested in Black soldiers? Here’s a book that will help you tell a Revolutionary story.’”

All the same, Trump has taken the opportunity to assert that U.S. students are “taught in school to , and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but villains,” placing teachers in a political bind that’s mostly undeserved, said Brian Kisida, an associate professor at the University of Missouri and codirector of its .

Kisida recalled giving a recent keynote address to the Missouri Council for Social Studies and wandering around the conference, listening in on teachers’ talks. “I thought there would be a little bit more left-wing-coded stuff” on offer, he recalled. “I didn’t see any of it.”

Actually, he said, he was impressed with many of the presentations. “I would categorize most of the stuff as actually really damned good,” he said. 

Kisida’s recent research suggests that how U.S. history is taught these days can’t easily be reduced to a definitive narrative. On the one hand, more than high schoolers say their teachers “often” or “almost daily” argue that America is a fundamentally racist nation. But more than half say their teachers regularly discuss the progress made toward racial equality since the 1970s.

He has that teachers, as a group, are actually more pro-America than the general public, with 62% saying the U.S. is “a fundamentally good country.” Just 55% of adults overall said the same. And 82% of teachers say it’s important for kids to learn about the U.S. Constitution and its core values, versus 75% of adults more broadly.

But Kisida, who studies civics education, said familiarity with the Constitution is not enough. Holding up a pocket-sized Constitution, he said, “The people that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, lots of them had these in their pockets.”

To go deeper, he said, we’ve got to understand why it’s important to enshrine ideas such as the . “We have to do a better job of explaining why these principles embedded in the Constitution and other American values are actually essential to democratic life and sustaining the American experiment.”

‘The whole story of our founding’

Vriesman, the Michigan history teacher, said that while teachers in most places worry about the school board looking over their shoulder, on a day-to-day basis they’re more worried about keeping students engaged. And most students, he said, can easily see through patriotic narratives. “If we describe a world to them that doesn’t actually resonate with their reality — some of the overly patriotic, ‘You have to know about these 10 guys who solved all the world’s problems’ — that’s not a compelling argument.”

His student Le laughed when asked about “patriotic history”. “I don’t really know how else to put it, but I think it’s stupid,” she said. Part of the fun of studying history is studying “struggle and resistance” — and the art, music and culture that they produce. 

“You don’t really love America and American ideals if you decide to ignore everything that America has done to rectify these issues that have been there since the beginning,” Le said. “I think that’s really the beauty of history. How boring would it be to only see one perspective, only one idea, that America has always been like this?”

By now, most students are well aware of the founders’ inconsistencies, said Will Colglazier, a history teacher at Aragon High School in San Mateo, California. They know that many were slaveholders who espoused equality but had a narrow conception of who it was for.

To deepen their understanding, he asks his students to double down on the details and read “a ton of documents” that, for instance, juxtapose Thomas Jefferson’s views on liberty with his views on slavery and race. They read a letter in which he writes of one of his slaves.

“You can’t unsee that,” Colglazier said. “You can’t unknow that once you read it. And I think that is something that’s new to them. It becomes more real and interesting.”

All the same, those details shouldn’t become a roadblock to learning about the founders, said Ian Rowe, CEO and co-founder of , a charter school in New York’s South Bronx neighborhood. 

In response to what he and others saw as of U.S. history, he helped create , which highlights stories of Black achievement from throughout our history. Rowe is also a senior fellow at the right-leaning , but the curriculum is not associated with the overtly conservative developed by Hillsdale College.

“You have to tell the whole story of our founding,” Rowe said, “warts and all. And you have to show how documents like The Declaration, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, all of it, have enabled the country to move in a direction that is unparalleled in the world.”

At Vertex, students each morning stand and recite the preamble to the Constitution: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Those 52 words are key to the school’s mission of self-improvement, said Rowe. They point to a key truth: “We are active participants in the development of our society. We are active participants in securing the blessings of liberty. It’s not left to someone else.”

OKLAHOMA CITY — A $2,000 teacher salary increase advancing through the Legislature has raised concerns among school district leaders of whether state funding will support its total cost.

The Oklahoma House approved the teacher pay raise, outlined in , by a vote of 92-1 on Tuesday, more than a month after . The legislation, which returns to the Senate for final review, would add $2,000 to the state-mandated minimum salaries for Oklahoma teachers and certified school employees.

Although lawmakers budgeted $100 million for the pay raise, some district leaders said their schools likely will have to pay out of pocket to cover the full expense, especially if they already pay above the minimum salary schedule for teachers.

The $100 million allocation is part of a budgeted for public education.

House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow, said the extra money should be sufficient for districts to raise their teachers’ salaries, regardless of whether they pay at or above state minimums.

“If districts are on the formula and pay above the minimum now with existing funding, they can pay them $2,000 more with nearly a quarter billion in new public education funding, $100 million of which is specifically dedicated for teacher pay,” Hilbert said in a statement.

Districts already paying above the state minimum wouldn’t be legally obligated to provide a full $2,000 increase. But, teachers in those districts still should push for a $2,000 raise, Hilbert and other legislative leaders have said.

The extra state funding coming to Midwest City-Del City Public Schools would cover just under 80%, or $232,000 short, of the cost to increase the district’s teacher salaries by $2,000, Superintendent Rick Cobb said.

Raising a teacher’s salary by $2,000 comes at a true cost of $2,500 when factoring in added teacher retirement expenses and higher payroll taxes, he said.

Although the district already pays well above the state minimum, Cobb said “I don’t think our teachers are going to accept us not giving them a $2,000 raise when we go into negotiations.”

“I know one of your questions is going to be about whether (lawmakers are) fully funding the raise, and in our case, they’re not,” he said. “So, I think that needs to be part of the conversation, too, is that our teachers are going to expect a $2,000 raise. Our teachers are making less than the cost of living increase that inflation is bringing into their lives. So, without an infusion into the salary schedule, their buying power is less and less every year.”

As district leaders put together a budget for the next fiscal year, Cobb said Mid-Del schools still are going to try to make a $2,000 raise work.

“I’m not sure exactly how right now, but we’re going to try,” he said.

The small northeastern Oklahoma district of Peggs pays at the state minimum but completely covers teachers’ retirement contributions, saving each educator $3,000 to $4,000, Superintendent John Cox said. Teachers in the rural district also “wear many hats” and are compensated for fulfilling multiple roles.

Cox, also a Republican candidate running for state superintendent, said he expects Peggs would have to pay a small amount out of pocket to cover the total cost of the $2,000 raise when considering retirement and fringe benefits.

The bigger challenge, he said, is affording the rising payroll while operational expenses, like bus diesel and maintenance, also increase year over year.

The state budget doesn’t raise funding for schools’ operational costs, even though lawmakers are in 2027-28.

“There’s a definite balancing act,” Cox said. “We’re required to pay the teacher pay raise. Then what do you do with operational costs and what do you forgo to be able to pay those teacher pay raises? What in the maintenance area and in the operational costs do you cut to be able to make those pay raises?”

State lawmakers touted the pay increase as the latest of multiple steps in improving Oklahoma teacher salary levels. The Legislature last approved teacher raises in 2018, 2019 and 2023.

Oklahoma’s current average teacher salary is fourth among all bordering states and second in the region when factoring in cost of living, . The average starting salary for teachers in the state is still ranked toward the bottom of the region, even when considering cost of living, the agency reported.

The state’s largest teacher union, the Oklahoma Education Association, said it is “grateful to lawmakers for making another investment into competitive teacher pay.”

“Even if districts already pay above the minimum, we hope that they will use the funding that will be provided by the state to give all teachers the full $2,000 raise,” the organization said in a statement Wednesday. “They deserve it.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

Florida teachers’ average starting salary increased between 2025 and 2026, although not enough to improve Florida’s nationwide standing, according to data from the National Education Association.

The national union’s for teacher pay put Florida’s average starting salary of $49,435 at 19th in the nation. It’s overall average teacher salary of $56,663 ranks 50th among the 50 states and Washington, D.C.

“In the past five years, my daughter has had her full roster of teachers for an entire school year only once,” Florida Education Association President Andrew Spar said in a news release. “
 These incidents are a disruption to her learning and, unfortunately, they’ve become the norm for far too many students across Florida.”

Average teacher pay rose by 3.3% between the 2024-2025 school year and the 2025-2026 school year, according to NEA data.

Mississippi was the only state with a worse average teacher salary in the most recent NEA report.

“When public dollars are diverted away from public schools, and teachers can’t afford to stay in the profession, it’s students who lose,” Spar said. “Public schools have been forced to cut essential services, lay off teachers and staff, and increase class sizes, all of which put students last.”

The NEA report also shows that Florida experienced among the biggest drops in public school enrollment between 2024 and 2025, more than doubling the national decrease in enrollment rate.

The FEA said the Legislature’s failure to pass a budget before the regular legislative session last year and this is “adding to the financial instability facing our schools and the teacher and staff layoffs seen across the state.”

California has the highest average teacher salary, $103,552. New York is second and Washington state is third.

In his budget recommendation , Gov. Ron DeSantis asked for $1.56 billion targeted for teacher pay raises, nearly 15% more toward increases than last year. The governor emphasized that the stand-alone item for teacher pay can ensure that money appropriated from Tallahassee goes to the classroom and benefits students.

The House and Senate initial budget proposals include similar dollar amounts, although lawmakers have not approved spending for the fiscal year beginning this summer.

In the , the state budget included about $1.25 billion in salary increases.

The Florida Department of Education pointed to the budget line item targeting teacher pay in response to a Phoenix request for comment on the NEA data.

Anyone familiar with NYC knows that while it has some of the most iconic green spaces in the world, from to the , it also has a shocking number of neighborhoods with almost .

This is where schoolyard transformations come in. Every NYC neighborhood has a public school, and most of them have outdoor yards. For years, various initiatives have taken those city-owned spaces, often covered in asphalt, and opened them up to millions of students and nearby residents for recreation and relaxation.

Nationwide, the Trust for Public Land and other partners have transformed — including New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Minnesota and California — over the past 25 years, playing a vital role and combatting by planting trees and replacing blacktop with permeable surfaces.

But there’s another, unexpected benefit from this work. It turns out that involving students in the design process has been a powerful lever for learning and leadership, unlocking children’s creativity while planting seeds of inspiration and ambition.

Engaging students as young as third grade gives them something they rarely experience elsewhere: genuine agency. For many, it may be the first time they’ve had a real say in shaping their everyday environment — and their first real encounter with collective decision-making and the democratic process.

It gives them purpose and ownership and helps them see how their input matters through consultation with an array of stakeholders, from school principals and city agencies to PTAs and community groups. 

Our design process starts with a schoolwide assembly where the project is explained and the outcomes explored. That is followed by a survey where every student can offer ideas about what the new playground might look like.

About 30 student volunteers are then selected to make up the design team — in cases where an elementary, middle and high school share a schoolyard, the design team will have representatives from all three levels.

During four sessions over a three-month period, students measure their schoolyards, visit completed projects for ideas and interact with landscape architects, general contractors, engineers and other professionals about the project — getting invaluable exposure to career opportunities along the way.

We emphasize to the students the importance of making the schoolyard design work

for everybody. They figure out what they want during the day, but they also have survey input from parents and other community members about how they’d like to use the space after school and on weekends.

The kids are often the ones who come up with the most innovative and impactful ideas. 

At a Bronx elementary school, girls loved playing basketball, but boys often took over both of the playground’s courts at recess. So the girls asked if one of the courts could be painted pink. Of course, anyone could play there. But the boys tended to avoid it, and the girls finally had an equal chance to play basketball in their yard.

At a Harlem elementary school, students wanted a space for braiding hair during recess, so they designed one: a two-tiered seating area built for exactly that. It’s the kind of idea no adult would have thought to ask for.

Meanwhile, at an elementary school in Queens, students wanted a wildlife viewing area, so they selected plants known to attract butterflies — such as lavender and Joe Pye Weed — and planted them in the schoolyard. They added birdhouses and bat boxes, too, turning a concrete corner into a small urban sanctuary.

The payoff of these transformed spaces extends well beyond recess, yielding numerous positive effects in the classroom. There’s research showing that exposure to nature can help . It can also lead to . 

That’s a fantastic perk for any public school. Now, imagine multiplying that across an entire city. In New York, more than 240 schoolyards have been reimagined throughout the five boroughs, but there are about 950 citywide, so there are plenty more waiting to be transformed.

The potential is enormous — not just for more equitable access to green space, but for young people to discover that they can make their voices heard, make a difference and actively shape the world around them.

CHIRENO — Every day, Courtney Bush has to figure out who can pick up her kids.

It’s not an easy decision, even after wrestling with it for years.

With no child care options or after-school programs in her rural East Texas town, Bush sometimes leaves work early. And when that isn’t an option, she calls her sister in Lufkin — which is about 34 miles away — or a friend in town.

Bush grew up in , otherwise known as Chireno, a rural community of about 1,300 at the south end of Nacogdoches County. Her children now go to public school there. Chireno is one of 263 chronic child care deserts in the state, according to , a nonprofit that advocates for greater access to child care, especially for the state’s youngest residents.

The report, released earlier this month, found East Texas is home to the most chronic child care deserts, ZIP codes that have lacked professional child care options for at least three years.

Children At Risk’s report has tracked child care deserts across the state. The lack of affordable, quality child care poses quandaries for Texas families — and the state’s economy. A U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation report estimated that the .

Kim Kofron, the executive director of early childhood education for Children at Risk and one of the researchers who analyzed the child care desert map, believes two things cause East Texas’ predicament: it’s mostly rural, so getting operations up and running, and keeping them so, is difficult; and while there is a population of younger families living in rural East Texas, there aren’t always enough children to keep a center open.

Child care, which often teaches children basic life skills as well as provides foundational knowledge in literacy, is to prepare children for kindergarten and the rest of their education. And more parents, moms especially, because they don’t have adequate resources. This is leading to a growing number of children in families who rely on state support.

Community members say there hasn’t been professional child care for younger children for more than a decade. Families often turn to friends and family to watch their children — a job that often goes unpaid and unregulated.

Jacqueline Woodson, a grandmother in Chireno, has become her family’s go-to child care provider.

“It’s been generational, us having families take care of the kids because there was nothing in the area for child care,” Woodson said. “People have to go all the way to Nacogdoches (city) to put their kids in child care.”

Improving access to child care is difficult. State lawmakers have tried to help parents pay for it, but that’s only one part of the equation. Kofron said the state needs to truly look at how the system operates and find ways to smooth speed bumps for providers and to simplify the process for parents.

Sherry Durham, the senior director of child care for Workforce Solutions Deep East Texas, doesn’t want to see regulations eased, because child care businesses deal directly with some of the most vulnerable Texans. But she does believe more can be done to tell providers about grant programs and mentorships that will help those people who want to open a child care center.

Kofron believes the state is on the right track to begin addressing some of these concerns. Lawmakers in 2025 called for to study the state’s child care landscape and come to the next legislative session in 2027 with recommendations for a path forward. Kofron hopes the new map will provide that task force with a foundation for those recommendations.

Child care deserts expanding

Using data from the Texas Workforce Commission, Children At Risk has published a map of child care deserts every other year since 2017.

A child care desert, generally, is a geographic region where families lack access to regulated child care centers. can be large-scale, serving dozens of children in classroom settings, or they can be home-based operations that serve only a handful of children at a time.

Children At Risk has four classifications for child care deserts.

The first is simply areas where the number of children who need child care is three times higher than the capacity of local providers. There are 413 of these across the state.

The second is a subsidy desert, where the number of children who need a scholarship, which is state-funded, is three times higher than the available scholarships. There are 884 of these.

The third is a Texas Rising Star desert, where the child care centers are not certified with the Rising Star program. Rising Star is a state program that enforces expectations for the quality of child care families receive. There are 938 of these.

And the fourth is a new classification this year: chronic deserts. These are areas where the need for child care has been three times higher than the available options for three years in a row or more. There are 263 of these.

There are four regions in the state struggling the most with chronic child care deserts: East, Deep East, Northeast Texas and the Brazos Valley. Combined, these regions stretch from the Louisiana border to College Station.

In the Deep East Texas workforce development region that includes Angelina, Nacogdoches and Polk counties, 52 of the 82 ZIP codes are deserts. Durham wants to eradicate those deserts, and she believes the way to do that is through improving communication.

Ideally, she would have the time to establish better connections with rural community nonprofits and churches so they can spread the word about what resources the state currently has to offer. However, she’s new to the job and came at a time when workforce solutions were undergoing some changes in leadership and mindset. But she believes that improved communication is on the horizon.

“Texas Rising Star and the Texas Workforce Development Group can offer support in the beginning to establish child care,” Durham said. “Whether it’s a larger center or a smaller home center with maybe five or six children, the same support is available to both.”

Parents may leave labor force

A lack of options in chronic deserts puts parents of young children in a precarious situation. Parents can either find a friend or a family member to watch their kids, or one parent can stay home.

The first option only works if there is someone around who can take on an extra child or two, and it’s not guaranteed. The second option is the path many families take, but it comes at a cost.

For Bush, whose children are now 6 and 11, a lack of child care options in Chireno over the years led her to job hop in search of a flexible schedule. At times, she could rely on friends or family members, often when they had chosen to stay at home to care for their own children, but she always felt guilty for asking so much of them.

She even left the workforce for six months because she didn’t have any better options. The small family relied on a single income, which just wasn’t sustainable.

“I feel like everybody has to work nowadays in order to make it,” Bush said.

More Texas children are growing up in low-income households. And this is putting a strain on Texas’ social safety net. There were 106 new subsidy deserts in 2025 that weren’t there in 2024, according to Children At Risk, which means the need for scholarships outpaced the available funding threefold.

Scholarships, also called subsidies, pay for part of the child care tuition for children who qualify. The child must be under 13, have working parents or parents in school whose income is below a certain threshold that is dependent on the number of children in the household. For example, the monthly income for a family with two children in must not exceed $5,216.

Income levels aren’t the only rule that governs who gets a scholarship. The providers who accept scholarships for kids must follow several protocols that govern a variety of topics, including pick-up and drop-off rules.

Lawmakers in 2025 designated to child care subsidies. The entire designation was eaten up by inflation costs and failed to provide any substantial improvement to the child care system.

Without adequate resources for employees, Durham worries companies won’t choose to move to Deep East Texas. And she worries that young East Texans won’t be prepared for kindergarten.

Child care can help prepare kids for school

Young children typically have five years before they go to a traditional school and those years are exceedingly formative.

“So if they live in a chronic desert for three or more years, that’s a majority of the child’s life in a desert,” Kofron said. “That is not only hampering mom and dad from going to work, it’s also hampering that child’s ability to get ready for kindergarten.”

Kindergarten readiness is a of a child’s success down the road. By the time a 5-year-old starts kindergarten, they should be able to speak clearly, recite their alphabet and correctly hold tools, such as pencils or scissors. They should also have some basic ability to regulate their own behavior.

While parents can ensure their children have these foundational skills, studies have shown that high-quality child care can give children a big step up. This is part of the goal of program — to establish a standard of education for children aged 0 to 5 that prepares them for that first day of school.

However, a growing number of counties lack child care facilities that are state-certified. There were 88 more rising star deserts in 2025 than there were in 2024, for a total of 938.

Improvements in South Texas

Despite the dire concerns registered by Children At Risk, there were some bright moments of success in Texas’ child care landscape.

Cameron, the Concho Valley and the Lower Rio Grande Valley saw the highest rate of providers being added to the Texas Rising Star roster. And 60 new providers were approved to accept child care scholarships in the last year, Children At Risk found, though the organization would like to see that number grow exponentially.

Plus, more home-based child care providers have opened across the state in the last year, which means there are more options for families seeking child care. There still aren’t as many providers as there were before 2020, but it is an improvement.

In Deep East Texas, Durham said she wants to hear from those at-home centers that aren’t registered yet, like Woodson, who takes care of her family’s youngest members. Durham wants to connect them with more state resources and which might provide a clearer picture of what options are available in rural communities.

Registering home-based centers could also give the state a better understanding of the region’s needs and make more informed recommendations for the future.

Durham said she’s optimistic for the future. She sees the conversation around child care growing and believes there is a legitimate interest in finding solutions.

Kofron is excited to see what the task force assigned to investigate the state’s child care subsidy program learns. She hopes that the task force looks at her organization’s data to inform their recommendations.

She wants them to deeply consider how the state governs early childhood education and what can be streamlined. Finding ways to simplify the process for child care providers and the families they serve could do a lot to improve the state’s system.

“And then it comes down to the funding,” Kofron said. “We have to make sure that we have enough funding in the system to give families the support they need so they can get back to work and support their families.”

This first appeared on .

School closures are an incendiary issue in nearly every corner of California, as enrollment declines and expenses climb. The topic has sparked parent revolts, teacher strikes and school boards’ desperate attempts to keep districts financially afloat.

And then there’s Orick.

The picturesque town in northern Humboldt County has a historic school with five classrooms, a gym, a vegetable garden and an expansive play field. Its current enrollment: nine. Its expenses: $118,000 per student per year, more than five times the state average. 

California has dozens of school districts with enrollments under 100 and higher-than-average expenses. Most of these districts are in remote areas miles from the next nearest school. But as urban districts grapple with the threat of school closures and the inevitable backlash from families and staff, rural schools face an even more heart-wrenching scenario: close the school and decimate the town.

“Close the school? It comes up all the time,” said Orick Elementary School District Superintendent Justin Wallace. “But I’d say it’s an equity issue. We have families who can’t afford a lot, and this school provides the most consistent setting for our kids. They’re safe, they’re well fed, they’re learning.”

Most of these rural towns once had booming local economies. Logging, ranching, farming, mining and other industries employed generations of families. In the 1960s Orick had 3,000 people and nearly 300 students in its school. There were seven lumber mills, grocery stores, restaurants, churches, even a movie theater. 

But as California’s economy changed and jobs in these towns vanished, many communities struggled to find a new purpose. In Orick, the lumber mills gradually closed, the National Park Service claimed much of the surrounding land and residents moved elsewhere. Now, Orick has about 300 people and an average household income that’s just under $39,000 a year — a third of the state average. According to Orick School’s , Orick residents “experience high rates of poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, domestic violence, substance abuse, and run-ins with the criminal justice system due to limited resources and high community rates of intergenerational trauma.”

‘Terrified’ of closure

In towns like Orick, the school serves as a savior, of sorts. It’s a community hub, one of the few sources of decent-paying jobs and a symbol of hope for the future. It’s a central part of the town’s identity. The school in Orick operates as a food pantry for the community, gives away clothes to families in need, hosts Narcotics Anonymous meetings and runs a toddler playgroup. The district bought a washer and dryer so residents have a place to do laundry.

Kimberly Frick is the fifth generation in her family to attend Orick School. She remembers when the classrooms were full, students won trophies and the town was like a close-knit family. Now she’s president of the school board and fights to keep the school open. Saving the school, she said, is tantamount to saving the town. 

She and Wallace scour the area to find new students for the school. Every time a new family moves to town, they visit and try to persuade them to enroll their children. Other community members chip in, as well, by fixing up homes, keeping the town clean and participating in the volunteer fire department, water district and other local services.

“I feel terrified about the possibility of the school closing. I’d hate to see it happen on my watch,” Frick said. “The facility is clean, safe, well maintained. We provide a high-quality, individualized education for each child.”

Orick, whose name originates from the language of the nearby Yurok tribe, sits in a lush valley along Redwood Creek, nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the Coast Ranges. A herd of about 60 elk roam through the town and are frequent visitors to the school play field. There’s a pizza truck, a small convenience store and a newly refurbished hotel. A rodeo draws crowds every July.

But much of the town is abandoned or dilapidated. A trailer park near the school is strewn with trash and broken furniture. Many of the buildings are boarded up. There’s no gas station. The post office is only open a few hours a day.

Budget breakdown

California funds its schools based on how many students show up every day. But small districts get most of their money in grants, in order to protect them from wild fluctuations in revenue. Last year Orick received $774,000 from the state and federal governments. The school gets extra money because so many of its students have high needs: all are low-income and more than half receive special education services. Some years, numerous students are homeless or in foster care.

Most of the budget goes toward salaries. The school has four full-time staff: two teachers, an administrative assistant and Wallace’s position, which includes serving as superintendent, principal, literacy coach and special education director. A janitor, cook, counselor, special education teacher and after-school teacher all work part time. Maintaining the school buildings is expensive: heating bills can cost $1,100 a month. So is transportation, because everything is far away. When the students take swim lessons, for example, a driver transports them 30 miles south to McKinleyville. Whatever funds are left over go toward student supplies and enrichment activities like field trips.

An obvious way for the state to save money would be to merge Orick School District with its neighbor, Big Lagoon Union Elementary District, 15 miles south. But the merged district would only save money on facility costs and one superintendent’s salary, totaling less than $200,000 a year, because the new merged school would have higher expenses, such as the cost of transporting students 30 miles round-trip every day. 

A merger would also alienate one of the communities, Wallace said. Both communities are highly invested in their schools and prize their independence and local control, he said. 

How to close a district

In the early 20th century, California had more than 3,500 school districts, each with its own school board, superintendent and unique traditions. To save money, the state gradually winnowed the number down to the 1,000 that exist today. But there are holdouts. Sonoma County, for example, has 40 school districts, some with only a handful of students.

“It’s one of the most common questions we get: Why do we have 40 school districts?” said Eric Wittmershaus, spokesman for the Sonoma County Office of Education. “Everyone in the community agrees it’s too many. The problem is that no one wants to close their school.”

California has a lax attitude toward closing under-enrolled schools. The state lets a district’s average daily attendance slip below six before it intervenes. In those cases, the county can request a temporary waiver, in hopes that enrollment increases, or start the process of consolidating the district with one of its neighbors. But consolidation rarely happens because local officials and voters have the ultimate say.

In 2011, the Legislative Analyst’s Office the minimum district size to 100, but the recommendation was never implemented. In fact, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s current budget includes a 20% boost in funding for schools that the state deems to be “,” which are elementary schools with fewer than 97 students – or high schools with fewer than 287 students – at least 10 miles from the nearest other school. 

Grand juries in and counties have recommended consolidating small districts to save money, but neither of those reports led to changes. 

Still, some experts say that financial realities may force the issue. Enrollment is declining nearly everywhere and it might not be the best use of taxpayer money to pay for half-empty classrooms and deserted playgrounds.

“Do we need to provide a school in every community? A post office? What if that community barely exists?” said Carrie Hahnel, senior associate partner at Bellwether, an education research nonprofit. “We guarantee a free public education to every child, but do we guarantee a school in every community?”

Now and then, districts will shutter. Last year, Green Point Elementary District, deep in the Klamath mountains, consolidated with a neighboring district when its enrollment fell to three (its per-pupil spending was $108,000 a year). In Sonoma County, Kashia Elementary District, with eight students last year, is at risk of closing next year.

Schools reclaimed by nature

Enrollment in Humboldt County has been declining steadily since at least the 1990s, and isn’t expected to rebound any time soon. A century ago the county had about 100 school districts, essentially one in every mill town, but as the mills closed the districts gradually closed, too.

Some of those towns — and their schools — have been swallowed up by the redwood forests. The old logging town of Falk, for example, had a school, mill, post office, dance hall and about 400 residents. After the mill closed, the town gradually emptied out and the Sierra Pacific lumber company, which owned the land, tore down whatever buildings were left in 1979. “Aside from the rose bushes and English ivy, the town of Falk has literally disappeared,” according to the county’s visitor guide. 

Michael Davies-Hughes, the county superintendent of schools, encourages small districts to plan ahead to avoid abrupt mid-year closures, which are disruptive to students, families and staff. 

“We want districts to be proactive, so they have options,” Davies-Hughes said. “For some, the current model may be increasingly difficult to maintain.”

Outdoor ed and Native traditions

In Orick, older students take a bus 40 minutes every day to attend high school in McKinleyville. Wallace and Frick said it’s unrealistic to put younger children on a bus for long distances, especially in bad weather. Humboldt County has long, dark, rainy winters, with roads often blocked by fallen trees, floods or mudslides.

Besides, Frick and Wallace said, Orick School does a great job educating its students, which is reason enough to keep it open. It has an exemplary outdoor education program, with students going on regular excursions into the nearby wilderness, learning about the local flora and fauna, the seasons and forest ecosystem. They raise trout and steelhead to be released in local waterways, test water quality in the creek and watch pollywogs turn into frogs in classroom terrariums. 

Wildlife is all around them. In addition to the elk, students can observe condors and falcons soaring overhead, deer and coyotes hanging around the field and even the occasional bear. Students learn to fish, camp, raft and surf.

About half the students are Native American, and the school offers a robust education in Native traditions and history. A Yurok volunteer comes regularly to teach Yurok culture through activities such collecting acorns and making mash, and extracting pine nuts from pinecones to make beads.

“I mean, come on, how many other schools are in such an incredible setting?” Frick said. “Orick is a great place to go to school.”

This article was and was republished under the license.

But one line in the department’s own should give parents and policymakers pause. It says the department “would not establish goals and performance indicators” for the MEGA program. 

If Washington wants to throw a sprawling set of K-12 priorities in one pot, it needs to say how taxpayers are supposed to know whether the meal was worth the bill.

At its heart, MEGA would consolidate programs into a single state formula grant, with at least 25% reserved for literacy and 25% for mathematics.

That matters because the programs include support for teacher development, after-school programs, state assessments, homeless students, rural schools, school safety, magnet schools, civics, arts education and family engagement. 

All are important programs that are being compressed into a budget that sets aside huge chunks for reading and math and leaves less room for everything else. And once those line items disappear into a single grant, the public will have a harder time seeing what states funded, what they skipped and what any of it bought.

That is a strange place to economize, because the federal cost of keeping score is tiny. Public schools spent $818.2 billion in current expenditures in fiscal year 2023, according to the latest . Before any of the proposed cuts take effect, the main federal testing-and-data lines totaled , , and . That is $694.8 million all told, or about 85 cents for every $1,000 schools spend.

And yet that sliver buys some of the most important information in American education. As Robin Lake wrote, the newest were alarming and pandemic recovery remains uneven. Âé¶čŸ«Æ·’s interactive on widening achievement gaps shows lower-performing students falling further behind in nearly every state. These are precisely the kinds of problems that become visible only because the federal government mandated metrics.

To be fair, federal education policy has accumulated layers of programs, rules and paperwork; and there is a legitimate argument for giving states more discretion. But even stronger advocates of local autonomy than I have argued for a truer national yardstick so that flexibility does not become opacity. Simpler funding and clearer public evidence belong together.

The Department’s own documents underscore this contradiction. Under the MEGA proposal, states and districts would still be expected to meet federal reporting requirements under . But the new grant itself would arrive without its own goals or indicators, even as the administration describes it as an “evidence-based” investment in literacy and numeracy. 

Some of the programs being consolidated currently have specific purposes and, in some cases, performance measures of their own. , for instance, are explicitly targeted to literacy and report performance information. Under MEGA, that specificity would give way to a much broader grant with no specified performance indicators.

This is especially hard to justify because the budget would not only merge programs but also hollow out dedicated measurement lines. A federal line for state assessments would even as states are still expected to keep testing and reporting. The budget would cut federal education statistics from and reduce NAEP and the National Assessment Governing Board from . 

MEGA is still only a budget request, and Congress rejected similar cuts last year. But proposals like this matter because they reveal what Washington now considers the tiny slice of education spending focused on accountability as dispensable. Programs such as school safety, rural education, homeless students and family engagement would have to compete inside the unreserved share of MEGA. 

If the administration believes states can do more with fewer federal silos, then it should welcome a short public scorecard showing where the money went and what improved.

That scorecard need not be complicated. Congress could require states to publish their MEGA plans in a common format and report a short, comparable set of outcomes for reading, math, attendance, graduation and subgroup performance. None of that would prevent flexibility. It would simply ensure that outcomes remain visible. No one should have to reverse-engineer state budgets to find out whether a grant marketed as a literacy investment actually strengthened reading outcomes.

The administration says MEGA would move decision-making closer to home. Fine. But if the money moves closer to home, the metrics should move with it. Policymakers and researchers need a short public scorecard and a common reporting template. If MEGA is going to remake federal schooling, it can do what schools ask of children every day. Namely, show your work.

was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of .

Sarah DeMaria still remembers how close she came to resigning from her role as a school librarian.

It was the summer of 2023, and after a year of vicious personal attacks, politically motivated book challenges and police reports to flag so-called pornographic content in the library, DeMaria had enough.

She packed up her office with no plan to return to the Hempfield School District in South Central Pennsylvania. But then she thought about her students: “If I left, who was going to be their voice?” she wondered. “Who was going to protect their books?”

Focusing on the young people she serves keeps DeMaria grounded as libraries, in and out of schools, have become targets of the nation’s culture wars on race, gender and sexuality. During , which ends Saturday, librarians across the country are fighting to maintain students’ access to books and to keep their jobs amid cuts to library programs and persistent efforts to restrict reading materials. In the past month, a national book ban bill singling out LGBTQ+ stories has advanced out of committee toward a full vote in the U.S. House. Similar efforts are moving forward in state legislatures.

In this climate, the American Library Association (ALA) this week released its of 2025, finding that 4,235 unique titles were challenged — the second-highest total. In 2023, 4,240 unique titles were challenged, the most ever recorded. All but three of the Top 11 2025 titles challenged were written by women and nonbinary authors, with Patricia McCormick’s “Sold,” Stephen Chbosky’s “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” and Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer: A Memoir” leading the list. Pressure groups and policymakers drove 92 percent of book challenges, up from 72 percent in 2024.

“Libraries exist to make space for every story and every lived experience,” ALA President Sam Helmick said in a statement. “As we celebrate National Library Week, we reaffirm that libraries are places for knowledge, for access, and for all.”

For the librarians like DeMaria whose commitment to inclusion has left them vulnerable, that mission now feels perilous.

After the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools nationwide, giving rise to right-wing groups intensely focused on issues including masks, parents’ rights and school curricula, the climate noticeably shifted, DeMaria recalled. She became a Pennsylvania school librarian in 2012. Now, the commonwealth consistently ranks among the top states for book challenges, a distinction unknown to many of her students.

“I always have them guess,” DeMaria said of states with high rates of censorship. “They say, Texas, yep, Florida, yep, and then they guess a bunch of states. And I’m like, ‘No, it’s usually Pennsylvania.’ And that’s shocking to them.”

Aware of growing censorship in Pennsylvania, DeMaria — who is the Hempfield School District’s library media program coordinator and a high school librarian — wanted to get ahead of the trend. In 2022, she approached her curriculum director about reviewing the district’s book challenge policy. Then the school board got involved, leading to a complete, and restrictive, overhaul of the policy.

“It took a pretty quick turn,” DeMaria said, recalling how censorship became a key issue at school board meetings.

The personal attacks began soon after. DeMaria’s critics labeled her a groomer, pedophile and porn pusher because her library included books with LGBTQ+ themes. She learned that parents filed seven police reports about the library books they opposed. The district attorney later determined that the books weren’t actually obscene.

“That can take a toll on you,” DeMaria said. “People said I should lose my job, that I should be arrested, that they didn’t want me near their children.”

The aggression of her detractors surprised DeMaria because she had made opt-out forms available for parents who wanted their children to refrain from reading certain materials, but almost no families used them, she said.

“I received less than 20,” she said. “That paints a very clear picture that it’s really not about the books. It was about politics.”

Instead of resigning in 2023, DeMaria spent the summer regrouping, focusing primarily on serving her students upon her return in the fall. She has turned the pushback she faced into teachable moments. Juniors and seniors at her school take a science-fiction literature class in which they study “Fahrenheit 451,” a 1953 book about censorship and authoritarianism. She has them research novels that have been banned in the United States and shows them the newspaper articles and police reports that chronicle her own personal experiences.

“I tell them about the false narratives,” she said. “I’m transparent about the fact that you’ll know exactly how I feel about censorship — and it’s because in the , it’s my responsibility to fight against it on your behalf.”

When students ask why books with LGBTQ+ themes need to be included in the collection, DeMaria tells them to consider the limited number of movies, books and other media that portray queer people.

LGBTQ+ students “deserve that representation,” she said. “If it sits on the shelf because at that moment I don’t have a student who needs that mirror, that’s where it stays until I do.”

During her 35 years as a school librarian, Bernadette Cooke Kearney has seen major changes — from the rise of the internet in the 1990s to the growing popularity of artificial intelligence today. Through it all, a consistent fear has dogged her: “Every year since 1991, I’ve been afraid I was going to lose my job because of funding,” Kearney said. “The attitude was that this is a frill, just like art and music. Not essential.”

Her worries became reality around 2013, when the School District of Philadelphia cut nearly all of its librarians, including her. But Kearney eventually came back to her magnet school, Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration, after community fundraising efforts and her secondary teaching certification in English paved the way for her return.

Today, just , which includes about 117,000 students. In the 1990s, the district employed over 170 school librarians. “If we want to really have a thinking, thriving society, librarians are irreplaceable,” Kearney said. “It’s not a frill.”

She appreciates, however, that her school district remains staunchly anti-censorship and gender-affirming in a commonwealth that ranks high for censorship. She just wishes the public better understood the contributions of librarians. Some parents have said librarians aren’t essential school personnel, and some of her colleagues have a hazy idea of what librarians do.

“People say, ‘Oh, that’s so nice. You just read stories,'” Kearney said. “It’s like, ‘Yeah, we read stories. But that’s just one little slim part. We’re trying to teach kids how to discern what good information is, what a reliable source is. That’s so important now, with AI and all the junk coming down the pipeline.”

Librarians also advocate for the truth, she said.

“They’re doing more than just stamping books or shushing everybody,” Kearney said. “It has to do with people building good citizenship.”

She connects traditional library skills to the challenges that artificial intelligence poses for students now.

“You do the same thing with AI that you’ve always done with print and websites,” Kearney said. “Where is it coming from? Who’s the author? Is the information credible? You always have to evaluate the source, no matter where it’s coming from.”

Helmick of the ALA considers the attacks on libraries to be more than a culture war alone.

“When we think about the fact that library service is central to community life, we always recognize that difficult conversations could be facilitated here,” Helmick told The 19th. “What’s difficult is that the role of libraries is now being misunderstood by a very vocal minority. We’re being pulled in as a political target.”

Helmick said the push for censorship aligns with efforts to defund libraries entirely.

“This is also a class war,” they said. “Whether people read freely and have access to information is really at risk. We’re in an information age. If we’re not willing to invest in our communities so they can successfully navigate the digital divide and digital citizenry, we will not be equipped to continue to be a nation of, by and for the people.”

Helmick cited the federal “” — which has advanced in the House and would limit federal funding for schools that contain what it deems “sexually oriented materials” — as particularly disturbing legislation.

“Lawmakers are writing broad laws that will create a chilling effect in the hopes that people will self-censor in order to not be a victim of the ramifications,” Helmick said. “The broad definition could lead to things like Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ being taken off the table. Are we a people who teach our children what to think or how to think?”

Despite a sustained years-long effort during the 2020s to restrict reading materials, Helmick finds hope in polls indicating that 70 percent of the public opposes censorship of any kind.

“That’s quite incredible because I joke that 70 percent of Americans wouldn’t agree that water is wet,” they said. “The vast majority are uninterested in this, which makes me wonder why we’re attacking the public information sector in the middle of an information age.”

Fighting against censorship and supporting freedom of expression doesn’t have to be an ordeal. It can be as easy as visiting one’s local library.

“Get a library card,” Helmick said. “Dust off your old one. Go into a library and use it today. Come breathe life into it.”

School librarians aren’t the only ones facing censorship and political attacks in the post-pandemic era. Any librarians who commit to inclusion may find themselves targeted. In rural North Carolina, Tracy Fitzmaurice has endured such targeting at full force. She is one of 10 librarians nationwide to receive a 2026 “” from the ALA for her public service, particularly her work supporting people with disabilities, digital literacy and workforce development. But a complaint about a library display in June 2021 led to a sustained backlash against her that ended with her after 34 years with the Fontana Regional Library system in Jackson County.

“The bigotry toward the LGBTQ community is at the absolute heart of it,” Fitzmaurice said. “It started as a complaint about a Pride display, which we had been doing for years.”

From there, the situation escalated. People who wanted LGBTQ+ materials out of the library worked to elect candidates with similar views to the county commission. Those commissioners then appointed a new library board, which upended existing policies and moved LGBTQ+ books out of the young adult section and into the adult stacks.

After some community members objected to a local LGBTQ+ group called Sylva Pride — named after Sylva, the county seat of Jackson County — using the library’s meeting rooms and to displays of LGBTQ+ books, the county .

Fitzmaurice decided it was time to resign out of concern for her health during the prolonged dispute. She has experienced stress and sleeplessness, she said.

“To have someone stand up at a commissioner’s meeting and say that I, on behalf of the ALA, was grooming children for sex trafficking — it’s hard to relate without spending another hour talking,” she told The 19th during an interview.

She warned her fellow librarians not to buckle to outside pressures.

“Don’t do anticipatory compliance,” Fitzmaurice said. “‘If I just move this book, maybe they’ll go away.’ They won’t. These people have been at it for five years. What it really comes down to is local elections.”

Not all librarians have experienced strife and ugliness during years of political division. In Boone, Iowa, Zachary Stier has spent 15 years making the Ericson Public Library a place of connection, literacy and mental health support.

Stier, director of children’s services and an “I Love My Librarian Award” honoree, launched the Activating Community Voices program, which joins stakeholders together to address issues including food insecurity, homelessness and early childhood development. When the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness an epidemic in 2023, Stier’s group initiated an effort called Project Connection.

“We put out a community survey to get data,” he said. “Based on that data, we’re putting together a presentation for our community and our leaders, and then we’ll work collectively to develop programs that drive community connection.”

Stier also co-created the Little Engines project, a family engagement and early literacy program that uses an app to help families track reading time and complete activity badges. The program equips families with books and technology like mobile hotspots.

“There is still a digital divide,” Stier said of his community, roughly 40 miles north of Des Moines. “It confuses me that we’re struggling with that as a society. Internet access is a basic need.”

Discussing the digital divide is as political as Stier wanted to get, but he acknowledged that libraries have increasingly been politicized, largely because people don’t know what they are all about, he said. More than anything, libraries are a “place for everyone,” he stressed.

“Libraries provide an experience — an experience that allows individuals to learn something new, try something new, build connections and really help elevate our communities,” Stier said. “That’s what it is for me.”

This year, we’re seeing a strong signal that we’re doing just that. Based on practice-test data, juniors at Lake Havasu High School are expected to score about 21, on average, on the ACT this spring — higher than the national average of 19.4. Back in 2021-22, our average ACT score was 17.5 and last year, it was 18.7. 

What changed?

It’s often said that there are no silver bullet solutions in education, and after 34 years working in classrooms and schools, that certainly rings true. But I can also point to one clear starting point for our high-school students’ academic rise: the adoption and tireless implementation of knowledge-building reading and social studies curricula in all of our elementary and middle schools five years ago. 

The work began in a single district school: a classical charter elementary school where educators opted to use knowledge-building. This was a major change for teachers and students. 

Often, elementary reading curricula are organized by a target skill of the day, and the topic of that day’s text or worksheet isn’t necessarily connected from one day or week to the next. These new knowledge-building curricula were organized by content—in each unit, they’d spend weeks reading, writing and discussing topics like fables, Mayan civilization, geology, as they practiced reading skills. Meanwhile, instructional materials in social studies are typically created or curated by individual teachers. The new curricula were designed to build knowledge over time, across an entire school or district.

Almost immediately, we noticed impressive, and important, changes. Students were engaging differently, with more confidence, stronger vocabulary and a deeper understanding of the content they were learning. I remember seeing fourth graders confidently explain key ideas from the American Revolution, saying things like, “Wait, so it wasn’t just about tea. The colonists were mad because Britain kept taxing them without letting them vote, so they decided to break away and make their own government!”

If this was possible at one school, why wouldn’t we want this content-rich learning for every student? Pockets of excellence are insufficient and just plain unfair. And that gave us our next step: adopting the curricula districtwide.

It was a lot more complex than just ordering new materials. We needed to build a new, shared understanding of teaching and learning, one that was rooted in knowledge. As a district, we had to agree that all students need access to rich history, science, and literature content, and that what they learn in one year should intentionally prepare them for the next. We needed to develop a non-negotiable collective commitment to implement the curriculum with fidelity at every level.

Implementation was not instant or easy. If you’ve ever watched a rowing team, you know that success doesn’t come from one strong rower working in isolation. It comes from the team’s shared timing, steady rhythm and trust in one another. That’s what we had to build.

Administrators strived to be honest and transparent about what the shift to knowledge-building instruction entailed. One difficult move: Teachers were required to stop using any materials or activities that were not part of the new curricula. They had to let go of familiar practices, which for some may have felt like walking into the abyss. But we also offered support, including monthly district-wide professional learning communities by grade level. 

This allowed teachers to plan together, wrestle with the materials and ask questions. We also gave teachers time and space to expand their background content knowledge, a crucial opportunity for elementary generalists preparing for in-depth history lessons.

Instructional leaders also played a big part. They visited classrooms frequently and shared informal feedback, guiding teachers to follow pacing guides and stay true to the new materials even when it felt uncomfortable. They also observed and provided implementation feedback to principals, whose support would be integral to our success. 

It was excruciatingly challenging and, at times, frustrating. But then we began to see glimmers of positive change, like sunlight on a river. Young students were engaging in conversations about history and literature with confidence. They were using vocabulary that was grounded in knowledge, not memorization, and making connections between what they read and what they wrote.

As the years passed, we saw students carrying ideas from one grade to the next, building on what they already knew instead of starting over. The gains accrued: fifth graders were excited to learn about the Maya, Aztec and Inca, exploring their pyramids, calendars and daily life; seventh graders were then able to analyze the rise and fall of those same civilizations, examine their systems of governance and belief and evaluate the impact of Spanish conquest because they had a foundation of knowledge to build on. 

Best of all, this development was consistent across classrooms and schools. Students had stronger comprehension, greater stamina, and a deeper ability to think critically about what they read. These were not pockets of opportunity, but knowledge for all. 

We are proud of the progress we’ve made. More of our schools are by the state of Arizona — including four of our six elementary schools and the high school. This growth reflects not only the work we’ve done with curriculum but also the coherence, alignment and intentional instruction happening across every classroom. We are rowing in the same direction.

Our implementation efforts aren’t over, because strong systems don’t stand still. Every lesson, every text, every discussion is another stroke forward. While the impacts of our work were almost immediate in elementary and middle school, we’re also getting a fuller sense of just how much building knowledge in the early grades benefits students in high school. Knowledge doesn’t just assist with reading comprehension today and instructional coherence tomorrow; it.

So we carry on. Just like in crew, we keep adjusting, listening and refining our practice based on what we learn. We take joy in this daily work and its results so far — but we’re most inspired by the future. Because when schools create opportunity, there is no limit to what our students can achieve.

Students across New York were unable to log in to the digital platform for the state’s grades 3-8 math exam Wednesday morning, raising fresh questions about the transition to computer-based assessments.

The New York State Education Department told schools they could pause or delay the math tests, officials confirmed.

The issue affected schools across the state, including some in New York City where schools were expected to administer the exams sometime between April 28 and May 8.

“More than 116,000 students tested without error this morning, with thousands more expected to complete testing later today,” state Education Department spokesperson JP O’Hare wrote in a statement. “Since the testing window opened, more than two million exams have been successfully submitted.”

Officials declined to provide specific numbers of affected students. But O’Hare said it was a “limited number.”

Upon learning of the problem, O’Hare added, “NYSED immediately contacted our vendor, NWEA, to expeditiously address the issue.”

State officials said schools can administer the exams at a later point during the window, which runs through May 15.

The city’s messaging to caregivers struck a somewhat different tone. A letter principals were encouraged to distribute said “many” students were unable to complete the test and “we are pausing the administration of the Math exam and will reschedule once we receive the assurances we need that no additional disruptions will occur.”

A message to principals encouraged them to postpone state testing scheduled for Thursday.

New York’s multi-year transition to computer-based tests has been by . This year’s problems come amid a against the proliferation of technology in schools, including the amount of time students spend on screens.

After , the state fully transitioned from paper-and-pencil tests to computer-based tests this spring. The grades 3-8 English language arts exams have already been administered.

Some principals began receiving notifications Wednesday morning from the city’s Education Department about the login problems with Nextera, the state’s testing platform.

“We are receiving a high volume of escalations about students having trouble logging into Nextera,” city officials wrote in an email obtained by Chalkbeat. “It is happening statewide.” The message said schools could continue testing if students had already logged in, but should cancel testing for the day if students continued to have problems.

Officials at NWEA, the state’s testing vendor, said they “have directed all available internal resources” to fixing the problem and hope to have the system running by Thursday.

“The cause of this has not yet been identified, which means the fix is also pending,” Simona Beattie, a company spokesperson, said in a statement.

At one Brooklyn elementary school, students were unable to log in to start their exams for more than an hour but were eventually able to log in and complete the tests, according to the principal who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“I’m sure there are going to be parents who feel like it’s not going to be the best picture of their child’s performance because of the way it happened today,” the principal said. More broadly, the school leader wishes the state would keep paper and pencil tests, especially for younger students who have to “learn a whole other set of skills” to take them digitally.

At another Brooklyn school, a teacher proctoring the exam for a group of sixth graders with disabilities said that one of the seven students was able to log on. The rest spent two hours trying before the school allowed them to take a break and play basketball in the gym.

“They were frustrated but understood there was nothing we could do,” said the teacher, who requested anonymity since she was not authorized to speak. “They were so patient.”

After their gym break, the students were able to log on and take the test, the teacher said, but she questioned the validity of the results.

“Your purpose is to test them, it’s not to test them after two hours of testing their patience,” she said.

City teachers union President Michael Mulgrew blasted the state Education Department in a statement Wednesday afternoon.

“Once again, students and educators were left scrambling because the state failed in its responsibility to hold its vendors and consultants accountable,” he said.

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

The change has been highly controversial. Purists see umpiring as more art than science and worry that technology strips the game of its human element, holding umpires to near-impossible . Supporters counter that ABS encourages data-driven decisions that improves fairness and accountability.

If this debate sounds familiar to folks in K-12 education it should. 

More than a decade ago, tried to fix a broken teacher evaluation system that to distinguish between high and low performers and rarely used measures of actual effectiveness in deploying, rewarding and retaining teacher talent. Most controversially, reformers embraced new technology known as “value-added” measures of teacher effectiveness that were ultimately abandoned for reasons ranging from political resistance to usage.

In many ways, the ABS system for grading umpires offers a useful lens for revisiting what teacher evaluation reform got right, where it went wrong, and what reformers and critics missed. 

Five lessons stand out.

First, start with where value-added provided useful information—and where it did not. These measures were never equally informative for all teachers. Instead, they were strongest at the extremes, where the signal is largest. They were also only available for a subset of teachers, since only some subjects and grade levels are tested. As Cory Koedel , value-added measures are most useful for identifying the highest- and lowest-performing teachers, while distinguishing among the middle is much more difficult. 

Baseball has built an evaluation system grounded in that insight. ABS is not trying to get every call right or perfectly rank umpires from first to worst. Rather, it is designed to catch the most obvious mistakes, identifying consistently poor umpiring. 

Consider embattled umpire The show he misses , including ones where the stakes are simply too high to ignore. That is what ABS is built to detect, and the same logic applies to teacher evaluation. Even if value-added measures could not perfectly rank teachers, they could identify clear cases where students are being shortchanged with consistently ineffective instructors. Reformers sometimes pushed these measures too far, but critics were too quick to dismiss information that, in some contexts, clearly meant something.

A second lesson comes from how unions responded to the reform moment. There are only two basic ways to evaluate performance: subjective judgment or objective measures. Value-added was an imperfect attempt to introduce more objective information into a system long dominated by subjective evaluation. Rejecting it without offering a meaningful alternative with real consequences for poor performance was not a defense of good evaluation. It was a rejection of evaluation altogether.

That shift is especially striking when contrasted with how unions approached the issue in baseball. MLB umpires are , and their association did not block ABS outright. Instead, the union agreed to a hybrid system that preserves their role while using the new data to ensure umpiring excellence. 

There was a time when teacher-union leaders spoke in similar terms. As once put it, unions should be willing to “identify excellence and not simply be concerned with protecting jobs and defending due process.” But this mindset often failed to take root. After the National Education Association briefly showed some openness to evaluation reform in 2011, it course, holding that “standardized tests, even if deemed valid and reliable, may not be used to support any employment action against a teacher.” Then NEA-president Lily Eskelsen García went so far as to value-added as “the mark of the devil.”

Some local unions have embraced peer review as an alternative: having teachers evaluate other teachers. In principle, this makes sense. A of Cincinnati’s evaluation system, which relied heavily on peer observation, found that teachers became more effective after being evaluated. But that is a different question from whether systems meaningfully differentiate performance or remove persistently low performers at scale. There, the evidence is less clear and evaluation systems designed to support improvement are not always well suited to making high-stakes personnel decisions.

Third, measurement only matters if it carries consequences. In baseball, it does. Umpires are graded using performance data and those evaluations directly affect playoff game assignments (bonuses). In other words, measurement is not symbolic, it is tied directly to outcomes. In education, that link is often missing. Many districts still rely on last-in, first-out rules that remove newer teachers first, regardless of their classroom effectiveness. Here again baseball offers a clear illustration of why that misses the mark. When analysts retiring veteran umpires with the younger group replacing them, the younger cohort was significantly more accurate.

Fourth, these debates remind us just how far actors with a vested interest will go to defend the status quo when reform threatens their career interests. Consider the  from veteran pitcher Walker Buehler that experienced players should receive a more generous strike zone. The logic is familiar. In education, similar arguments are made to insulate veteran teachers from performance-based decisions. In both cases, the argument is less about getting it right than about protecting incumbents.

Finally, this is about getting it right for the people the system is meant to serve. In baseball, the league operates under what is essentially a fiduciary obligation to the integrity of the game. That is, it has a duty to act in the best interests of the game itself, which includes striving for fairness and accuracy in how the game is played. As one recent put it, MLB’s governing rules and “best interests of baseball” authority create a fiduciary-like duty to minimize preventable errors that could undermine trust in outcomes. That obligation has real implications. It does not disappear because new technology is uncomfortable for employees or changes how the job is done. If better tools can reduce clear errors, ignoring them risks undermining the game itself. 

Education rarely operates this way. Student learning is often treated as one goal among many, balanced against . Courts have even declined to recognize a basic right to effective teaching, as in the 2014 ruling. But if schools exist for anything, they to educate students. That should be the north star. Evaluation systems are not about satisfying adults. They are about ensuring that students are not consistently shortchanged.

Baseball is showing that there is a better way. Imperfect tools can still improve decision-making when they are used where they are strongest. The question is not whether a measure captures everything. It is whether it helps us avoid the most obvious mistakes.

It would be nearly fifty years later before the country would again seriously consider building such a system, as proposed in the — though that attempt ultimately stalled when the childcare provisions from the final package that passed.

In the intervening decades, even as most families came to rely on and , childcare largely remained something families had to sort out on their own, with limited state and federal assistance.

But polling data shows that for publicly-funded childcare exists, even as federal legislative efforts have waned. In pockets of the country, there has been state-supported investment in childcare, often due to frustration with low wages, high turnover, poor outcomes and unworkable conditions. In the past three years, for example, New Mexico and Vermont have passed groundbreaking childcare policies, strengthened infrastructure and increased access. 

Childcare has gained visibility and some political leaders, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Vice President Kamala Harris and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, have elevated childcare as a key economic issue for voters. But childcare has more often been a secondary issue in political campaigns, rather than a career-shaping priority for candidates. It’s typically a bullet point for family policy or affordability, rather than the key legislative accomplishment vaulting a candidate to public office. 

That may be starting to change.

As more early care and education policies are enacted, the leaders involved in those endeavors have an opportunity to use their experiences to run for higher office. 

In Vermont, Aly Richards — who led a statewide advocacy organization focused on improving access to high-quality childcare for nearly a decade — this month that she is running for governor. She will compete in a Democratic primary in August, and the winner will face Republican Gov. Phil Scott in the general election this fall.

The organization Richards spearheaded, Let’s Grow Kids, drove efforts to pass Act 76, a landmark legislation that brought to Vermont’s early care and education system, funded largely by a new payroll tax. The state raised reimbursement rates for early childhood programs, and provided breaks to most families to cover the cost of care.

Could Richards’ success in passing childcare policy translate to support from voters in her run for governor? 

In a conversation with Rebecca Gale, Richards explains why childcare is an ideal upstream issue to tackle affordability for families, why other states keep calling her to ask for advice on their own childcare systems, and how the governor’s office might be the best next step for someone who knows just how central quality childcare is for families — and states — to thrive. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

You began with Let’s Grow Kids a decade ago. What was the intended goal at the time, both for the organization and for you personally?

The only focus was the mission. I really had no thought of what I was going to do with myself afterward, because I’m a really mission-oriented person and it was such a gift for me to have a goal and a deadline.

I like to think about what is the one thing a human can do to make the biggest positive impact in the world. And when I realized early childhood education was that lever just sitting there — where our inaction is causing all this detrimental harm to our society and the action [needed] is very clear and concrete — it felt obvious. It’s within our power to [change]. And when you do, it has this immeasurable impact downstream on all these things that we care about.

So the mission was to make that impact through Let’s Grow Kids — like an entrepreneurial-minded enterprise that would do whatever it takes to meet this deadline and this mission of putting in motion a system of high-quality, affordable childcare for the whole state. And we did that.

And while the job is not completely done, we set it in motion in the machinery of the state government. So we really were able to back away having done exactly what we hoped — creating the machinery, the dedicated funding, the ecosystem that will carry it forward and an aspirational model. We showed it’s possible to do this.

What are two or three key changes that you view as central to the state’s early care and infrastructure system?

The No. 1 change is dedicated public investment, because the problem with childcare in this country, since the beginning of time, is that there’s not enough money in the system from parents, who are the only payers.

To fund the system to be functional, to pay early childhood educators a livable wage, to have enough supply to meet the demand — you need a dedicated permanent funding stream. You can have more childcare, it can be higher quality, it can pay wages and it can meet the needs of your community. But that’s the No. 1 thing.

Two and three are the mechanism by which we did it. We basically took a system that already was in place and pushed the public investment into the hands of Vermonters through reduced childcare costs. By going up to that [the threshold in which a Vermont family can now qualify for childcare subsidies], you’re making and you’re seeing reduced childcare costs, which is making life more affordable. We also increased the reimbursement rate to programs.

It put money in the hands of Vermonters to make it more affordable. It put money in the hands of early childhood education programs so they could actually run their programs, pay higher wages and meet the needs of their families. And that’s why I think we’re seeing the implementation work so well. It’s adding more spaces, adding more businesses and reducing costs for families at the same time, which is what’s spurring our economy. It’s the one area of growth we’re sort of seeing in Vermont right now.

There are still very few leaders who’ve built their careers around childcare policy. Do you see this as a structural roadblock to progress? I envision it as sort of a “Lego ceiling” — a barrier built piece by piece through fragmented policy and underinvestment, that could be taken apart if priorities shift. What would change if more leaders made childcare a signature issue?

Yes, yes and yes. Let’s bust that Lego ceiling into a million pieces so they’re on the floor when you step on them accidentally, like in my family all the time.

Look, it is exhilarating for me to be moving into this new world of politics from that background in early childhood education and policy, because it’s not just early childhood education. It’s problem-solving in a dynamic way for the issues we face in the 21st century.

I spent my last decade working to solve this deep crisis that dogged Vermont and has dogged the rest of the country. I grew up in Vermont. I went out of state to change the world, working on Obama’s first campaign. I was so excited by his leadership potential, and yet I was so dismayed by the lack of action in D.C. because people who didn’t agree with each other didn’t speak to each other anymore.

I know enough to know that’s not how real change happens. You have to be in the room together. You have to be able to have reasonable agreement and disagreement.

So I raced home to Vermont and started working for the governor, and started realizing — talking to Vermonters from all walks of life — that what was broken in D.C. was not broken here in Vermont. We still talk to each other, and at the end of the day we can get pizza together and a beer even if we disagree. I quickly realized that early childhood education was one of these rare things where if you go upstream, it will solve all these other problems. It’s a way of viewing the world that I think we must focus on in the 21st century. We have real structural issues in Vermont and in this country. We have to go upstream, understand what those structural issues are and change them.

Childcare is a perfect example. Take Vermont. We have jobs. It’s a misconception that we don’t. We just don’t have anyone to fill them. A large reason is because we can’t find or afford childcare.

I paint this picture for you because to me that is the whole basis of the answer to your question. [Childcare] needs to take the country by storm, and it’s starting to in places like Vermont. 

You’ve mentioned that other states have reached out to you about making childcare more affordable. How do you see this conversation changing if you become governor?

Well, it puts it out in the universe in a very different, meaningful way. Affordability will make or break this country right now. And here’s a concrete example of making life more affordable tangibly for your citizens.

So I’ve been all over the country, honestly — in person and on webinars in the past couple of months — spreading the model of what we did in Vermont through Let’s Grow Kids.

Can you imagine the National Governors Association having a childcare meeting where we all say: What’s worked in your state? What hasn’t worked in your state?

Who are the leaders? Get them together, accelerate this — because it’s great for your citizens and great for your economy. And it’s now a low-risk proposition because states have already done it and showed it’s possible.

I think there’s an amazing opportunity there.

“It is painful,” he said, “and some of you have moved two to three times to find a school for your child.”

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

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

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

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

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

The move, Hogan said, was meant to squeeze out so-called RINOS, or Republicans-in-name-only. To MAGA Republicans, Bill Cassidy hasn’t been loyal enough. 

Gov. Jeff Landry, who , has complained that Cassidy supported “liberal Obama judges” and listened to “Never Trumpers.” While Cassidy, a physician, voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services, he continues to express disagreement with Kennedy’s statements that cast doubt on vaccine safety.

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

‘The same language’

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

Following Trump’s State of the Union address in February, all the ways he has “worked with President Trump.” But to Trump, it appears, the vote to impeach is all that matters.

“This administration is completely blinded by their need for retribution at any cost,” said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, who has been pushing for updating federal policy on literacy. Cassidy, she said, is “100% principally aligned” with what Education Secretary Linda McMahon wants to accomplish, but the administration “doesn’t think very strategically around those things.”

Three years ago, Rodrigues didn’t consider Cassidy an ally. 

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

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

“It was almost like he connected with his people,” she said, “because they all spoke the same language.”

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

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

Conservative news outlets dug up a of Letlow interviewing to be president of the University of Louisiana at Monroe in which she said it was “shameful” that the institution didn’t have more women faculty members. While she didn’t get the job, she said establishing a DEI office would have been one of her first moves. 

She has since , saying that DEI efforts were “hijacked by the radical left and turned into indoctrination.”

Fleming, a former Congressman and then Trump adviser, as a “proven MAGA conservative” who didn’t “cut and run” from the administration after Jan. 6.

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

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

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

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

But the window to get a literacy bill passed could close if Cassidy doesn’t return to the Senate next year, said Rodrigues with the National Parents Union. “It’s going to be kind of back to the drawing board.”

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

But even more surprising was the substance of Duncan’s broadside, which pitched the Education Freedom Tax Credit to Democratic officeholders and voters as a “no-brainer” tool to give struggling students a chance to receive a better education. The $1,700 scholarships, available beginning in January, are federally funded through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and can only be accessed in states that opt in. 

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

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

“We’re adrift, it’s killing us politically, and it’s killing our kids,” he told Âé¶čŸ«Æ·â€™s Kevin Mahnken. “I’m deeply troubled by what’s happening to kids, and by what’s happening to us because we’ve lost any vision for education.”

This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Âé¶čŸ«Æ·: Your op-ed last fall encouraged Democrats to participate in the Education Freedom Tax Credit. That seemed like your first major intervention on national K–12 issues in a while. What was behind that decision?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And you don’t see Democrats emulating them?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s pathetic. It’s so sad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the surface, this legislation is ambitious, but for Black children living in book deserts, it does not go far enough. 

According to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, only of children’s books feature Black protagonists. So, even if a Black child receives a book from an organization funded by this $100 million, it’s unlikely that book will have a protagonist that looks like him or her.

Black children everywhere deserve high-quality books with Black characters that speak directly to their dreams.

Reimagining this legislation for Black children, I’m reminded of former President Barack Obama’s vision of the “.” My “should be” world is one where Black children enjoy an abundance of high-quality books with protagonists of African descent whose stories nurture the visions for their lives.

Access to these types of books should not be a luxury or an afterthought; it is foundational to the education of Black children. Without these stories, Black children are robbed of critical into their potential. When they see their future selves, they can take small and big steps toward who they will become.

Years ago, I attended a meeting of literacy organizations in Pittsburgh, where I have lived for close to 20 years. Their leaders cited the cost of books with Black protagonists as a barrier to purchasing them. Curious, I researched prices and discovered that while a high-quality book like King of Kindergarten by Derrick Barnes cost $10, a lower-quality book such as Tarantula vs. Scorpion cost only $4.

The gap is not just about price — it’s about quality.

I’ve seen firsthand when I attend community events how some literacy organizations flood Black communities with low-quality books with strategic consistency. Meaning, they have a narrow focus on books that encourage reading rather than inspire Black children to see books as tools to develop vision for their life. These organizations do so to get books in the hands of families because that is one of the programmatic measures of impact in the industry.

These low-quality books feature cartoon, two-dimensional and animal characters, along with weak storylines. They may excite young readers for a moment but offer little to no insight into how children can develop into their future selves.

, an at Central Michigan University, asserted that Black boys living in book deserts need “access to books which reflect their experiences and motivation in the form of purposeful and leisure reading.” Her assertion similarly speaks to Black girls’ experiences.

I define high-quality books as having dynamic characters of African descent, robust storylines and insights that inspire young readers. Picture book biographies are among my favorite types of books of this kind.Ìę 

When it comes to Black kids, there must not be any compromise. We should follow the example of , the founder of the Manchester Craftsman Guild. He provided subsidized meals to students attending his organization’s educational programs because he believed good food is not just for rich people, but it’s for everybody. Similarly, I believe high-quality books should not be just for rich people; they should be for everybody, especially Black children living in working-class communities.Ìę

Years ago, my wife and I hosted a pop-up bookshop at a local organization in Pittsburgh during Black History Month. A young girl approached our table and asked for a book about Black history. My wife showed her several books, while the girl’s tutor explained that she lived in a home where the adults did not read. The tutor said the girl’s family was not going to buy any books. As the tutor and the girl left the store, my wife put the books in a bag and handed them to me, asking me to give them to the girl. I hurried after them and gave her the bag.

A year later, I saw the tutor again, and she told me the books we gave her had a profound impact on the girl. The tutor has since purchased more books for her, as an investment in the girl’s dreams and future.

My call to action is for literacy organization leaders who conduct book giveaways to consider the following when purchasing books for Black kids. First, examine the types of books your organization is providing. Are you giving children high-quality books that inspire them to think about their dreams? Second, what larger theme(s) are your books speaking to? Third, high-quality books serve as tools that kids can grow with and glean important insights from over the years. Fourth, high-quality books have illustrations that allow the reader to follow the story as if they were an active character in it. Lastly, high-quality books leave an imprint on the reader’s heart, making them want to read them to their children when they grow up. 

Ultimately, when purchasing books for Black children, don’t frame the choices as a matter of quantity versus quality. Think of each book as an investment in Black children’s dreams — because it truly is.

Âé¶čŸ«Æ· is proud to partner with Bellwether for a candid conversation with Santelises, led by Bellwether co-founder and Âé¶čŸ«Æ· board member Andrew Rotherham, about the biggest challenges she’s faced, the unique obstacles she encountered and lessons learned that can inform success in other districts.

Register for the 1:30 p.m. ET livestream , or refresh this page after the livestream for a video replay.

Related coverage from Âé¶čŸ«Æ·:

• Superintendent of the Year Finalists Talk AI, Funding Problems and Career Paths

• Retiring D.C. Charter Leader Can Celebrate Her Own Success — and the District’s

• Former Mississippi Schools Chief Aims to Repeat Learning ‘Miracle’ in Maryland

Following weeks of discussion prompted by the Chicago Teachers Union, the district April 16 to let schools voluntarily participate in International Workers Day. Superintendent Macquline King required classes be in session but students can participate in the union’s to the rally and march near downtown Chicago, where participants will advocate for increased state education funding and protest the Trump administration.

Union President Stacy Davis Gates said at an April 21 webinar that the May Day event was originally part of contract negotiations but was left out of the final tentative agreement. The union had with the district April 6 saying the agreement wasn’t being honored.

The planned activities will celebrate union workers, bring attention to the district’s projected $1 billion budget deficit and protest recent government actions such as immigration enforcement raids, according to the between the union and district. 

“What are the politics of the Chicago Teachers Union? Our politics are school funding and the maintenance of our democracy,” Davis Gates said at the webinar. “We have to strategically take the opportunity to engage our priority stakeholders, students and families, to the issues that are threatening our school communities. And we also have to say that we need the funding in order to even keep up with what we have now.”

The union the district and Mayor Brandon Johnson to greenlight closing schools for a full day. Johnson of the idea early on but agreed with King’s decision to keep classes in session. 

“We are pleased all parties are working together to ensure school communities can participate in commemorating International Workers Day,” Johnson said in a . “Schools will remain open for instruction, while multiple opportunities will be provided for those who wish to participate in this day of civic action both inside and outside of the classroom.”

Staff and students can’t be penalized for leaving school to attend May Day events, union Vice President Jackson Potter said during the webinar. The union told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· in an email that because the district has committed to providing buses and bag lunches for students at 100 schools to visit the afternoon rally and march, participation numbers will be “easily in the thousands.”

The May 1 field trips fall under an Illinois that allows students in grades 6 through 12 to miss one day of school a year to attend a civic engagement event. 

“For students in grades K-5, there is no provision for excused absences specifically for civic engagement events during the school day,” Mary Fergus, the district’s media relations director, told Âé¶čŸ«Æ·. “Elementary schools are expected to operate normally, and students are required to attend school as usual.”

The district it’s working closely with school principals to track staff absences on May 1, and central office administrators will fill in for absent staff if needed. Its reserve of 10,000 substitutes are already being notified that they might be needed. The city bus system will help with transportation if there aren’t enough district buses available.

Morning classes will consist of civic engagement activities, and students who don’t attend the rally will get similar instruction in the afternoon alongside their regular courses.

Joseph Graciosa, a computer science teacher at Solorio Academy High School, said during the webinar that May 1 at his building will begin with an assembly about the history of May Day and the power of students in education reform. Discussions will highlight the impact of recent immigration raids on the school’s community.

“Unfortunately, too many of our parents have been taken by ICE, so we’re also having speeches by students who’ve been directly impacted by those,” he said. “We’ll have performances by our music, choir, bands, all of our different dance troupes, just celebrating the richness and the beautiful assets that we have in our community and the ways that we’re coming together to unite and fight back against all the atrocities that have happened.”

Liz Winfield, a high school art teacher at Benito Juarez Community Academy, said her building will host an assembly similar to one they had in the fall when a student was detained by ICE. Students will discuss civics topics in a program to be livestreamed from the school gym to other classrooms.

Parents have been speaking out at press conferences and school board meetings about the district’s upcoming May Day plans, with some voicing concerns that students are being in the union’s advocacy efforts.

Joshua Weiner, chief strategy officer for , a national organization that protests politics in schools, said at an April 23 that the May Day events are being influenced by a political agenda.

“The CTU’s resolution for May Day and the protest span an extraordinary spectrum — LBGTQ rights, racial justice, taxing the rich, voting rights, immigration 
 this is not civics,” he said. “It’s state-sponsored conditioning of children into partisan activism. It is inappropriate to have such a partisan, politically driven union determining school curriculum.”

In an to families, the district said all added instruction and activities on May 1 have to be approved by school principals, align with state standards and be “neutral in nature and cannot advance any particular viewpoint.” Davis Gates wrote a arguing that principals can’t unilaterally reject planned civic lessons for that day and expressing concern that the district isn’t abiding by its earlier .

“The union understands that principals at a number of schools and central office clinician managers are rejecting field trip and personal business requests for May 1 in a manner that violates the [agreement] and the labor contract,” Davis Gates wrote. “The union expects CPS to abide by its commitments under the [agreement] and will seek all available recourse in the event of violations.”

School board member Ellen Rosenfeld said at the board meeting that she wasn’t sure how district leaders were going to track what’s being taught across schools and ensure it matches state standards. King said administrators will collect data on attendance, curriculum and how many people attend the afternoon community events.

“I have heard from many families and I have heard from staff members that this day might have different historical connotations for some members of our CPS community,” King said at the board meeting. “As a public school district that welcomes everyone, we need to respect the diversity of views among our students, families and staff. In the end, I am glad we were able to come to an agreement that acknowledges the importance of civic engagement while persevering the critical instruction time that our students need.”

Now in eighth grade, her daughter attends a microschool twice a week. The part-time option is something that many small alternative schools offer for families who don’t want a five-day commitment.

“It never worked for us to isolate ourselves and be just the two of us at home,” Feinberg said. “We’re not that kind of homeschool family.”

Her choices are more common than she thinks. Combining homeschooling with something else — whether that’s a microschool, an online class or a co-op has become the norm —according to released Wednesday from Johns Hopkins University and the Rand Corp.Ìę

In Rand’s of parents, 88% of those who currently homeschool their children use some additional type of support. Over 40% said they use online resources, which could range from a YouTube video to an online curriculum. Nearly a quarter enroll their child in an online school, and 10% use a tutor. As public schools increasingly compete for students, many, especially in Florida, also offer a la carte classes to homeschoolers.

Replacing federal data

To some traditional homeschoolers, those who enroll their children in virtual programs aren’t truly homeschooling, especially if it’s a public online school, because parents are less involved in directing the learning. But Angela Watson, researcher at Johns Hopkins University and director of the Homeschool Research Lab, chose not to define homeschooling on the survey.

“It’s getting so tricky,” she said. Some parents who attend a microschool “identify as being homeschoolers either for policy reasons or because they feel like they are homeschooling.”

The lines between homeschool and other models have been blurry for years, said John Watson, founder of the Community Advancing Digital Learning, a network of online providers. (He is not related to Angela Watson.)

He recently heard about some relatives who said they were homeschooling, but “upon digging deeper, I found they are attending an online charter school,” he said. The rise of education savings accounts, allowing parents to enroll their children in virtual programs using public funds, has further contributed to the “intersection of homeschooling and online schools or courses.”

Johns Hopkins University commissioned Rand to insert homeschooling questions into its survey to learn more about a population growing in both size and diversity. 

“The hope is to better understand current homeschool trends and more about who is doing it,” Angela Watson said. 

Of the 2,427 parents surveyed, about 10% say they homeschool their children. That’s nearly double the 5.2% last when the National Center for Education Statistics released a “first look” at new data.

A fuller report, from the National Household Education Survey, was expected in January 2025. But that after Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency wiped out the Institute for Education Sciences. It’s unclear whether efforts to include restarting that project. 

“I thought, ‘Let’s just make some lemonade out of these lemons,’ ” Watson said, explaining why she turned to Rand.

‘Run the gamut’

Some of the providers who market to homeschool families met last week near Atlanta for the fifth annual National Hybrid Schools Conference, a gathering of those serving students who split their time between different educational settings. 

Exhibitors included twin brothers Matthew and Jared Young, who founded Read Write Create, which offers creative writing classes and materials like journals and colored pencils. 

The homeschoolers who participate in their program “run the gamut,” said Matthew Young. Some do it for religious reasons, while others weren’t happy with the traditional public system. What they have in common, he added, is that they “like the freedom of being able to use whatever they want.” 

In one session, the marketing team from Kaipod, a network of microschools, coached school founders on how to use websites and social media to attract parents looking for something different.

“Enrollment of a child in school is a major decision especially if they’re walking away from a more familiar model,” said Christine Carlson, Kaipod’s head of content marketing.

Sometimes homeschooling is what’s most familiar, but parents want their child to have more socialization, said Candice Hilton, founder of Hilton Horizons Academy, a Kaipod program in Tennessee offering two-, three- or five-day schedules. 

“They may just want to have community. When you homeschool, sometimes you feel a little bit isolated,” she told Âé¶čŸ«Æ·. Other parents, she said, want an educator’s assurance that their child is on track. “It’s like ‘I feel like we’re doing really awesome, but I want to confirm.’ ”

Three survey samples

How homeschoolers’ complement their kids’ education with other programs is just a small slice of what Watson’s team will be able to learn from the parent survey. They also asked parents what grades their children are in, if homeschooling was their first choice or a last resort, what their political and religious views are, and whether their child has disabilities. 

In Austin, Feinberg’s daughter has learning difficulties, but also needs the part-time arrangement because of a chronic illness. 

“We’re super happy there,” Feinberg said. She originally enrolled her daughter for four days a week, but “she doesn’t have the stamina yet.”

Watson, at Johns Hopkins, also wants to learn directly from homeschooled students. Rand just completed a survey of students, with results out later this spring. The data will provide more information on how kids move in and out of different educational settings.

“Nobody really thought to ask ‘Were you only homeschooled for two years?’ “ Watson said. “That seems different than being homeschooled for 12 years.”

Finally, Rand will soon conduct a broader survey of adults, asking if they were ever homeschooled and for how long. Results from the three samples, Watson said, will provide “more confidence that these survey findings are accurate and reflect what is actually happening in the nation.” 

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

He said he was willing to back down if the secretary would commit to appearing before the committee within the next six weeks. In December, Democrats to participate in a hearing to discuss efforts to shut down the Department of Education, but that hasn’t happened. Following passage of the 2026 budget in January, Congress asked to meet regularly with officials for updates on the interagency agreements with other agencies, but Kaine added that he’s unaware if those have taken place.

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

In , GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the committee, said “Democrats will not dictate the terms of today’s meeting and have lost the chance to speak to the Secretary today.”

McMahon hasn’t appeared before the committee since her confirmation hearing over a year ago. On X, : “It’s disappointing that instead of a productive conversation about the state of our nation’s students and the steps we’re taking at the Department of Education to reverse this trend and break up the bureaucracy, this became about producing another media clip for MSNBC.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“College is not the only solution for everyone,” McMahon told the members.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, cited data showing that low-income, high school students who participate in Upward Bound are more than twice as likely to earn a bachelor’s degree by age 24 than their peers who don’t participate. 

“The stats from these programs are pretty damn impressive,” he said. 

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

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

“You are so cool, literally and figuratively,” said Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana. “They call you names, and you just ignore them.”

‘50 years of progress’

To some Democrats, McMahon has also turned her back on parents who don’t want to see special education offloaded to another agency. The secretary said her team still hasn’t decided what would happen to programs that fall under the Individuals with Disabilities Act. Some might go to the Department of Labor, while others could go to the Department of Health and Human Services, she said.

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

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

“How do you defend that not a single child in Connecticut got a positive resolution from the Department of Education for their discrimination claims?” Murphy asked her. “Seventy of them had disability claims.”

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

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

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

“That’s a floor number,” she said. “Hopefully we’ll have the ability to increase that number.”

She ordered OCR staff on leave to return in December to address a backlog of cases, and is supervisors and attorneys for regional offices. An internal memo, shared with Âé¶čŸ«Æ·, shows the regional directors would go to Denver, Seattle and the D.C. offices. But according to an OCR attorney, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, there have been “lots of departures” among those McMahon brought back. 

‘Overdue for a debate’

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

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

She added that the programs that McMahon aims to wrap into the MEGA program “focus on the most vulnerable student groups.” 

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

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

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

Hicks said her husband had hoped to spend those days at home bonding with his son and helping her before returning to work, but life had other plans. After she gave birth, their son was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit for ten days, which consumed all of his time and meant he had to return to work immediately after they brought their son home from the hospital. “It would have been so nice for him to experience our son, taking him home,” Hicks said. 

Instead, Hicks was “just completely alone” with a newborn while her husband was working, she said. “I was just in a daze.” Her memories of the time are clouded, she now thinks possibly by postpartum depression, which she believes would have been prevented if her husband had been able to take paid family leave to be with her and their son. His absence in those early days also set up a “weird imbalance” where Hicks felt she had to take on more than her share of parenting. That pattern, once established, can be hard to undo. Studies that, if fathers take parental leave, they are more involved in domestic work later on. Meanwhile, her husband lost out on spending time with their son when he was a newborn who changed daily. Given that such young babies sleep a lot during the day, Hicks distinctly remembers telling her husband to rush home from work while her son was awake. “I was like, ‘Hurry, his eyes are open,’” she said. “It’s those little moments he didn’t get to experience.”

Paid family leave “is something that you want to be there for your worst days and your best days,” Hicks added.

Hicks, who is now co-director of Freedom Virginia, a political advocacy organization, was part of an effort that has now ensured that future Virginia parents won’t have to experience what she and her husband went through. On April 22, Governor Abigail Spanberger legislation into law that makes Virginia the 15^th state to pass a paid family and medical leave program.

The program will start paying benefits in December 2028 and is expected to cover private-sector workers, according to the National Partnership for Women & Families. Eligible workers will receive of their average weekly wages up to a cap for up to 12 weeks a year to welcome a new child, care for a family member with a serious health condition, or recover from their own medical events. Employers will have to give them their jobs back when they return. 

“Millions of families across Virginia won’t have to choose between their paychecks and taking care of themselves or their loved ones or bonding with a new baby,” said Elizabeth Gedmark, vice president at A Better Balance, a nonprofit advocacy organization. “It’s a really strong program.”

Virginia’s statewide paid family and medical leave program is also the first to be passed by a Southern state, which advocates say could create more momentum for the policy nationwide. Spanberger called it a “historic step forward” in a after signing the law, saying, “Thanks to this landmark law, millions of Virginians will no longer be forced to give up their paycheck when they welcome a child, or when their loved one faces a serious illness.” 

“This is a really huge victory for families in Virginia, for the movement nationally, and for the whole region,” Gedmark said.

Advocates have been fighting to enact paid family leave in Virginia for about a decade, Hicks said. The coalition of organizations behind it was able to learn from the that had already passed bills. It also courted the support of small business owners who wanted to be able to offer such a benefit and compete with larger entities but couldn’t afford the overhead. Those business owners needed “a state program that evens the playing field against large corporations,” she said. There was also pressure to compete with Virginia’s neighbors: Lawmakers in Maryland a paid family leave bill in 2022, while Washington, D.C. has had a program since 2020.

But Hicks said momentum for paid family leave in Virginia “really picked up” about five years ago, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The crisis “showed us that social structure and social net that everyone needs,” she said. At the same time, younger candidates, especially women, started winning seats in the state legislature, bringing new perspectives and life experiences, Hicks said. Freedom Virginia intentionally supported candidates who said they would support paid family leave. Paid family leave legislation “got really close” to passage in the last two years, she said, but ran aground on opposition from former Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who bills that the general assembly had passed. “The support was there, and it was growing,” she said.

Then Spanberger, who has school-aged daughters, ran for governor to sign such legislation into law. “It’s been a really long time since we’ve had, not just a governor with school-aged children to understand what working families are going through, but someone who’s had the experience of motherhood and giving birth,” Hicks noted. Both Hicks and Gedmark said they think Spanberger’s vocal support for family leave helped her win. “It just goes to show, if you campaign on giving workers and their families concrete action that improves their lives and helps pocketbooks,” Gedmark said, “it’s a really good political strategy.” 

Both Hicks and Gedmark argued that it matters to have a state in the South enact paid family leave. Nearby states will “feel pressure to act,” Gedmark said, “because they’re competing for the same talented workforce, competing to try to draw in business.” It will also offer other Southern states a relatable example. They can no longer write off paid family leave as something only happening in coastal blue states like California and New York, Gedmark said. “There’s a similar culture, there are similar industries, even similar weather, which matters a lot,” she said. “In the South, they all want to keep up with the herd.” She expects to see more states in the region follow suit.

Gedmark also believes Virginia’s example will ripple across the country. Advocates in other states are already starting to talk to A Better Balance about replicating the state’s success, she said. 

She also thinks it will create momentum at the federal level. “As the saying goes, ‘As goes the South, so goes the nation,’” she said. First, there is the fact that Virginia is right next door to D.C. and many lawmakers’ staff live there. But there’s also the fact that Virginia will prove that this isn’t a policy that can only exist in deep blue states. “There is so much that can easily be dismissed if it seems to be sort of just a coastal elite thing,” she said. Now it “can no longer be dismissed.”

Teacher Jake Baskin remembers exactly where he was when he first watched the that introduced to the world, inviting kids to learn how to code. 

“I was sitting in my high school classroom in Chicago,” he said. “I got a link to that first video and thought, ‘I’m so excited. Someone else is saying the things I’ve been saying to my students.’ ”

A longtime educator who now leads the , he watched as the nearly-six-minute video showcased Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and a constellation of tech celebrities recalling their first experiences with a computer: creating games, drawings, quizzes and more. “I was 13 when I first got access to a computer,” says Gates, a wistful smile crossing his face. 

It didn’t hurt that he and a few others onscreen were by then among the wealthiest people on the planet.

The video soon helped spark what would become arguably the most successful education reform campaign of the past few decades.

By 2021, offered computer science, known widely as “CS.” persuaded legislators in 12 states to add it to their high school graduation requirements. And every U.S. president since 2013 has made computer science a pillar of their education agenda.

Baskin liked the video so much he’d go on to spend four years at Code.org, helping the nonprofit write its first curricula and building district partnerships nationwide.

But fast-forward to 2026, and the landscape looks more fraught. So-called Silicon Valley “” have spent the past few years secretly building and while of software engineers. And the organization that made “learn to code” a national rallying cry must confront an existential question: In an era when generative AI tools can create functional code from plain-language prompts — and where kids are making millions “vibe coding” professional-looking apps — where exactly does a nonprofit called Code.org fit in?

New CEO Karim Meghji admitted that he and his colleagues must reframe their offerings and message without abandoning their core ideals. “Our foundational principle is not, ‘More kids need to learn how to be software engineers,’” he said in an interview. “What we’ve been promoting is that a world that is very digital, and has technical products all around us is a world where students deserve to understand how these things function, how they work.”

That reframing comes at a key time for the nonprofit, whose gift-fueled funding has in recent years, from $42.8 million in 2023 to $25.2 million in 2025. It reflects both shifting philanthropic priorities and the existential questions now swirling around the field of computer science. 

Is computer science collapsing?

The shift Meghji describes is happening not just in K-12 education, but in the higher ed landscape and in the broader job market.Student enrollment in computer science at four-year colleges last fall, the biggest single-year drop of any major discipline since at least 2020. In one year, computer science fell from the nation’s fourth-largest undergraduate major to its sixth, even as the fortunes of Silicon Valley . 

At the University of California, computer science graduates are expected to number about 350 next year, from 2025. Across the entire UC system, computer science enrollment declined last year for the first time since the early 2000s.

The job market for young coders has softened, too. A recent study by, using payroll data from millions of workers, found that by September 2025, employment for software developers aged 22 to 25 had declined nearly 20% compared to its peak in late 2022 — even as employment for more experienced developers held steady or grew. The study’s authors described entry-level engineers as “canaries in the coal mine,” early casualties of AI tools that can easily replicate their work.

Other data paint a less clear picture. A by the finance analysis firm Citadel Securities found that in the long term, software developers’ jobs may be relatively safe because replacing them en masse with AI would require “orders of magnitude more compute intensity” than the industry has. Alex Kotran, CEO of the , noted that job postings for software engineers are actually up 11%.

“Something that I just want to shout from the rooftops, is, ‘We really don’t know what is about to happen,’ ” he said.

That uncertainty, it turns out, is what Meghji is emphasizing as Code.org shifts direction. 

Yes, AI seems miraculous and it’s improving quickly. But it also fumbles on occasion, , and generally threatening to on the world. Meghji invoked the notion of AI’s “,” which describes its strange, counterintuitive competence in complex processes — but that can also fumble . 

For Meghji, a veteran consultant and technologist who most recently was Code.org’s chief product officer, that jaggedness is exactly why teaching computer science matters now: “The further we move away from how these systems work — the further we abstract away from what’s happening under the hood — the more important it is that students learn foundational CS and computational thinking concepts,” he said.

When AI shows its fallibility, he suggested, educators should view it as a teachable moment.

As it rebuilds, his organization plans to keep coding at its center while weaving AI into instruction, Meghji said. It has replaced its well-known “” with an Hour of AI, and it’s developing an “AI Foundations” course for high school students, due this fall, in which students use AI to help build and lay out interactive websites, then use a combination of their own written code and AI-generated code to improve the sites. A middle school curriculum is also planned.

“We don’t start with AI,” Meghji said. “We start with the foundation, teach the principles. Then we introduce AI coding, have students read code that AI is generating, find the issues, and hopefully have a higher ceiling — both in terms of their creative output, their agency, and what they’re producing.” He estimates that where previously perhaps five out of every 100 students built something genuinely impressive, AI tools could raise that to 30 or 40.

He’s also tweaking the organization’s business model. With philanthropic funding down sharply, Meghji said, he’s exploring whether Code.org can generate earned income through curriculum offerings tied to dual-credit and career and technical education pathways, models where public funding could help students earn technical credentials. He wants its curriculum to remain free for students but is exploring state and federal funding to underwrite it.

‘A fool’s errand in any field’

Meghji is also eager to correct a misconception that he believes was never really Code.org’s message: the idea that learning to code was to a six-figure salary. 

“Our message was not, ‘Hey, come to Code.org, take computer science, and you’re going to write your ticket,’” he said. “We’ve always been of the mindset that every student deserves the right to learn the foundations of how technology works.”

Baskin, the former computer science teacher, said he wishes that distinction had been drawn more sharply from the beginning.Ìę

“If I could go back in time, I would try to keep the movement from explicitly linking computer science to short-term career outcomes, because that’s a fool’s errand in any field,” he said. “No one knows what the jobs of the future will be like, and if they did, they’d be very, very rich. It’s about preparing students for the things we don’t know that are coming and giving them the broadest opportunity to engage in what is meaningful to them.”

aiEDU’s Kotran made a similar case, arguing that computer science should sit “alongside reading and writing and math and science,” not as vocational training but as the place where students practice so-called “durable skills” such as collaboration, design thinking, productive struggle and iteration. 

He worries about the consequences if schools abandon the field entirely. “If we turn our backs to computer science, you’re going to have this deviation where kids who have access to those learning experiences are just going to be on a separate track,” he said, with access to knowledge that others don’t have. That’ll worsen inequality.

The strongest case an organization like Code.org can make, Kotran said, is actually a counterintuitive one: That AI, the very technology threatening to upend coding careers, might actually help recruit the next generation of computer scientists.

Despite the appealing creation myths embedded in Code.org’s famous intro video, he said most young people who study computer science must put in upwards of two years before they get to a place “where you could build something that’s actually cool.” But many students never made it that far. With AI, the time horizon shrinks: “Your first class is like, ‘OK, let’s vibe-code something. Think of a problem you want to solve that’s relevant to you — finding the right makeup, predicting fashion trends, sports data analytics, whatever,’” he said. 

Students build something, but to further develop it, they need to go deeper and understand the code behind the vibe. Code.org and groups like it could open that experience up to students for the first time. “I don’t think we ever had something that powerful before,” he said. “And if we wield it right, we can actually start to reach kids who don’t think of themselves as CS kids.”

Updated: This story has been updated to reflect the most recently released funding figures for Code.org.

Having access to Algebra 1 in eighth grade can often make or break a student’s path to , which in turn, is often a gateway to selective colleges as well as science and engineering careers.

But many eighth graders can’t take Algebra 1 — regardless of how well they did on their seventh grade state math test. And when New York City parents are exploring middle school options for their fifth graders, they might not realize the consequences a school’s math offerings might have for their students’ education trajectory.

Across New York state, more than 1 in 4 schools don’t offer Algebra 1 to eighth graders, , a group convened by EdTrust-New York. Schools that disproportionately enroll Black, Latino, and low-income students tend to have less access to Algebra 1 in middle school.

“When we have qualified kids that are denied that opportunity, and it impacts them in high school and beyond 
 it is such a critical inflection point,” said Jeff Smink, deputy director at EdTrust-New York, an advocacy group focused on improving outcomes for students of color.

Smink hopes to raise awareness about the importance of Algebra 1 for eighth graders so parents can advocate for it.

“If there’s no demand, then schools aren’t going to respond to it,” he said. “They’re going to offer the easier, simpler option, which is just tracking kids to the standard eighth grade class, which is going to avoid kids struggling, it’s going to get potentially better test scores.”

While 58% of New York’s seventh graders scored proficient (a 3 or 4) on their 2023-24 state math exams, in the following school year — 2024-25 — just 37% of eighth graders enrolled in Algebra 1, representing a gap of 20,000 proficient students, the report said. More than half were estimated to be from low-income families, and nearly half were students of color.

In New York City alone, there were 8,000 more students proficient on seventh grade state exams than enrolled in eighth grade Algebra 1, according to the researchers.

The state’s gaps were starkest for Black and Asian American students: while 38% of Black students and 75% of Asian American seventh graders were proficient, 13% of Black and 14% Asian American eighth graders the following year enrolled in Algebra 1, the study found.

Drilling down into the data,, reveals vastly uneven access across New York City’s 32 local districts.

The top three districts with more proficient seventh graders than eighth graders in Algebra 1: Queens’ District 24, Brooklyn’s District 20, and Staten Island. Each had gaps of more than 1,400 students, researchers said.

In five districts, fewer than half of their schools offered Algebra 1 for eighth graders: Manhattan Districts 4 and 6, Brooklyn’s District 13, and Bronx Districts 7 and 12.

Eight districts appeared to be outliers, with either more than or an equal share of eighth graders taking Algebra 1 last year compared to the percentage of seventh graders who scored proficient on their state math tests the year before: Manhattan’s District 3; Bronx’s District 11, Brooklyn Districts 15, 19, 23, and 32; and Queens Districts 27, 28, and 30.

Equity gaps in proficiency remain, however, and three of those districts — 19, 23, and 32 in Brooklyn, which overwhelmingly serve Black, Latino, and low-income students — had fewer than half of their students who were proficient.

The report recommends the state adopt an automatic enrollment, or opt-out policy, for all eighth graders who score proficient on seventh grade state tests. They want an $8.5 million investment to help 15 high-needs districts expand Algebra 1 access as well as fund tutoring, staffing, and public data tracking enrollment and completion by race and income.

The report comes at a time when Gov. Kathy Hochul, , called for an overhaul of math instruction, getting “back to the basics,” New York City’s schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, a former math teacher, has also argued for a emphasizing memorization of math facts along with a focus on creative problem-solving.

Samuels

Under former Mayor Eric Adams, the city required nearly all high schools to use a single math curriculum from Illustrative Math for Algebra 1 — Education Department officials are also .

“We are working to strengthen early math instruction, expand equitable pathways to Algebra 1 by eighth grade, and ensure every student has access to rigorous, high-quality curriculum,” Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said in a statement.

Several states and cities have focused more attention on eighth grade access to Algebra 1, , which has offered the class online and has covered educators’ training costs to get credentials to teach algebra.

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