Los Angeles Unified School District leaders say they are confident they can persuade county officials that the district can avoid a projected cash shortfall and remain under local control, and are preparing for budget cuts, possible furloughs and school consolidation.  

A July 2  from the Los Angeles County Office of Education found that LAUSD met the criteria for a “Lack of Going Concern,” meaning the district’s financial plan does not show it can meet its future cash obligations. County officials project Los Angeles Unified will face a $231 million cash shortfall in 2027. 

The finding, which also comes after the district failed to make sufficient cuts during the 2025-26 budget, triggered a 45-day period for LAUSD to revise its current fiscal plan for the coming school year. The county has appointed an expert to work with the district during that process. If Los Angeles Unified does not make adequate changes, a county advisor would be appointed, giving the county authority to overrule district decisions. 

Like many California districts, LAUSD’s financial challenges stem from a combination of declining enrollment, the expiration of Covid relief funding and rising operative costs. Enrollment fell 3% during the 2025-26 school year in Los Angeles, reducing state funding tied to student attendance. Still, the amount LAUSD has received from the state has increased over the past three years. 

The county’s letter also cites a series of union contracts reached this spring that will cost the district more than $2.5 billion over the term of the contracts. Union leaders have disputed the severity of the district’s financial crisis. 

Superintendent Andrés Chait  a press conference last week that the county office of education wants the district to prove it can implement its proposed savings, including possible furloughs, and explain its alternative cost-cutting options. 

“I just think it’s really important for board members to take very seriously the process that this state has in place to ensure that every district is fiscally solvent,” said Yolie Flores, president and CEO of Families in Schools, a nonprofit focused on student success. A former LAUSD board vice president, Flores was also appointed to the district’s new revenue task force. 

District officials and independent experts say LAUSD’s fiscal challenges have been building for years and are not unexpected. They’ve also warned that the district will likely need to make difficult spending cuts to restore its long-term financial stability, and that additional state funding alone is unlikely to solve its structural budget problems. 

“Now we’re in a situation where this constriction is still happening, but now the artificial floor is gone,” said Stephen Aguilar, a professor of education at the University of Southern California. “So now, we’re falling through to the basement, and we’re sort of in this emergency period.” 

Painful cuts are expected  

The district’s most difficult decisions are expected to come over the next several months. Board member Tanya Ortiz Franklin said schools will receive their budget allocations for the 2027-28 academic year this fall, and the board will discuss workforce reductions needed to balance the budget.  

She also said that the district must carefully manage workforce reductions so high-needs schools aren’t disproportionately affected by staff turnover. 

The board will also need to weigh other cost-saving measures, including furlough days — a prospect Ortiz Franklin acknowledged could feel like a “slap in the face for our labor unions” — and possible changes to employee health benefit contributions.  

Ortiz Franklin also questioned whether the district could successfully save $200 million by reassessing contracts with outside vendors, as some of the items being procured cannot be made in-house. 

Looking beyond the immediate budget crisis, she said school consolidation is likely unavoidable as enrollment continues to decline, with those conversations expected to begin this fall. 

The board will meet Aug. 11 in a likely closed session meeting to start discussing its fiscal recovery plan. 

“The superintendent is clear that these are ambitious strategies, and that the board needs to not only be aware of them but also weigh in, given that we are elected to represent the voices of our communities,” Ortiz Franklin said. 

“And we want to do our best to make sure we continue to do that, and don’t have a fiscal advisor appointed, so that we lose the ability to make decisions on behalf of our community who elected us.”

LAUSD’s financial situation 

Education finance experts say the findings of the county office of education are serious, but not unusual. Districts across California have faced similar fiscal challenges, and many have restored their financial footing after county intervention. 

“Unfortunately,” Flores said, “it takes a threat like what L.A. Unified is now experiencing for them to make the decisions that they should be making to show that they are fiscally responsible as a board and as management.” 

The board received a similar letter when Flores was on LAUSD’s school board during the height of the Great Recession.

“I just got here, and that’s all we were doing is cutting, cutting, cutting,” she said. “Feeling the impact of what that would mean for our families and for children. … It was a long year.” 

Michael Fine, the CEO of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, said the debate over whether union contracts pushed the district into its present predicament misses the larger issue. The concern, he said, is whether the board approved contracts without clearly explaining how it would pay for them. 

He said that the district should have been more transparent. In July, the parent group Oleada, Inc.,  findings from a public records request revealing a series of written warnings from LACOE to Los Angeles Unified dating back to April, months before the school board approved its fiscal stabilization plan.

“It’s when the board says, ‘I’m going to approve these contracts, even though I don’t know how I’m going to pay the bill,’ that’s where the problem is,” Fine said. “It’s not with the negotiations themselves. It’s not with the deal that was made.” 

Despite his criticism, Fine said he does not believe LAUSD is beyond recovery.  

“I’m normally the one worrying. I’m normally the one on behalf of all district staff all night figuring out or thinking through ‘Uh-oh, do we have a district in trouble?’ ” Fine said. “I’m not feeling that for L.A. right now because I truly believe this is well within their ability to address.” 

California unlikely to come to the rescue

For months, LAUSD and its labor unions have lobbied lawmakers in Sacramento for additional education funding. But education experts say new state funding, while helpful, is unlikely to solve the district’s underlying fiscal problems.  

Much of that advocacy — including from other districts — has focused on the $3.9 billion of Proposition 98 funds that the state has withheld, Fine said. 

Even if the state releases those funds, Fine said, LAUSD’s share is unlikely to make up for the shortfalls. And because the funding may come with restrictions, the money may not come in the form LAUSD needs. 

“We should be able to invest in our schools. However, that always has to come with the understanding that we can’t artificially raise the floor again,” Aguilar said. 

“Because then, what you’re essentially doing is you’re kicking the can down the road, and I think this time it won’t even travel as far if you kick it.”

This story was originally published by EdSource.  for their daily newsletter.

But when she saw an announcement at her high school for a camping trip in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, she was intrigued.

“I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would drive nine hours just to sleep in the woods,” said Begum, who went on to co-found an outdoor adventure club at her high school. “But as I lay in my tent that night, I realized that the fresh air and peacefulness of being by the lake were unlike anything I have ever experienced.’

The trip opened up a new world of friendships and ignited a love of nature, said Begum, who will begin her sophomore year at the University of Michigan this fall. 

But experiences like Begum’s are in shorter supply this summer, outdoor education advocates said, after cuts to federal grants led to the abrupt cancellation of hiking and camping trips for tens of thousands of children and teens.  

“We’re worried there’s going to be a domino effect of losing a whole generation of kids who don’t have early access to nature,” said Julia Hurwit, campaign manager of the Sierra Club’s Outdoor Alliance for Kids (OAK). “We know that early access to nature is what creates lifelong advocates and environmental stewards who then grow up to lead outings like this.” 

It may also be an antidote for excessive time spent in front of a phone or computer, Hurwit said. Studies show on average, kids between the ages of 8 and 18 spend more than watching or using screens, which can lead to sleep problems and mental health issues.

“This generation is spending the least amount of time outside of any generation in history,” she said. “We’re seeing the mental and physical impacts of that.”

Founded in 2010, OAK includes more than 100 organizations that provide outdoor experiences like Nazma Begum’s camping trip. Under past presidential administrations, OAK and its members received relatively abundant support, including President Obama’sin 2015 to make it easier for kids in cities to get to trails and President Biden’s 2025 to increase outdoor access for youth and veterans. 

But this summer, camping programs in Maryland, Wisconsin, Minnesota and California were canceled in the wake of funding cuts, according to Sierra Club data, scaling back summer activities for thousands of children, many of whom are from underserved communities. 

In February 2025, President Trump’s administration cut in AmeriCorps grant funding, forcing the cancellation of outdoor education programs across the country. Even after some funds were restored later in the year, many programs had already been called off,  including trips for nearly 24,000 students in and 3,000 youth in Wisconsin, where the Girl Scouts of the Northwestern Great Lakes its Reaching Out program.

Federal workforce reductions also forced some programs to call off educational experiences. In Alaska, some Denali Discovery Camp youth trips for youth were canceled last summer after an education program manager was laid off.  

In spite of the cancellations, the Sierra Club increased its goal for the number of kids that participate in outdoor education this summer and beyond. The initiative, launched in June, aims to create more opportunities for students to learn outside and get more kids outside by next summer. So far more than 150 organizations have joined the initiative, helping 50,000 children connect with nature.

“We’re trying to engage our members to bring joy back into this work and grow the base,” Hurwit says, “so that if in a few years we have the chance to make moves on the policy front, we’re able to do that in a much more effective way.”

Hurwit hopes the initiative will mobilize member organizations so that it will be easier to successfully lobby for legislation that benefits outdoor education. The , for example, was introduced in March but has not advanced during this congressional session. 

She said the Million Kids Outdoors initiative is also intended to raise the visibility of organizations that continue to lead camping, hiking, canoeing and other outdoor trips even as federal support decreases. Detroit Outdoors, a partnership between the Sierra Club and the Detroit Department of Parks and Recreation, took eight teenagers to Yosemite National Park in July for a week of climbing, photography, poetry, painting and swimming in the chilly Merced River. 

Detroit Outdoors also offers overnight camping trips in Michigan to train teachers to bring their students to Scout Hollow, a campground in Detroit’s Rouge Park.

“We support the teachers so they can take their lessons outside and be able to do it where the kids are going to be safe, warm and dry and have the equipment they need,” says Garrett Dempsey, lead Sierra Club staff with Detroit Outdoors. “We really believe that time outside offers so much for a classroom environment, when it comes to learning larger academic concepts or about yourself.”

Research backs up the arguments that . Especially since COVID, outdoor education is seen in different states as a way to boost mental health and academic outcomes. Initiatives to reduce screen time and develop green spaces to cool urban “heat islands” often go hand-in-hand with efforts to get kids outside for instruction. 

When federal grant money isn’t available, some organizations are able to step up their fundraising efforts. Sausalito-based NatureBridge leads overnight environmental science trips in national parks for students in grades 4 through 12. The organization raises more than $1 million annually to fund scholarships so that students who qualify for free and reduced-lunch can participate.

“Students need time away from screens, meaningful science learning and opportunities to connect with each other and the natural world,” says NatureBridge President and CEO Phillip Kilbridge. “The challenge isn’t demand, it’s that many schools are making decisions in an environment of increasing financial uncertainty.”

My job is to tell a student, kindly, when an argument is not working yet. But the machine had just told them it was. Not because the machine was broken, but because it had been optimized to agree.

For two years, educators have warned students that artificial intelligence makes things up. It can give a wrong answer wearing a confident face, a phenomenon known as hallucination. But there is also a quieter failure we have barely named, and it is more corrosive because it feels like support.

Researchers call it sycophancy: when an AI system flatters, agrees with or validates a user even when a correction would be more truthful. A hallucination is a wrong answer. Sycophancy is a wrong relationship.

When students head back to school at the end of the summer, AI will already be part of their schoolwork. Last year, the ⁠ that 84%of high school students used generative AI for schoolwork, and a February ⁠ found that 54% of U.S. teens had used chatbots for assignments: writing, summarizing articles or videos, studying, and creating or editing images.

A from Turkey illustrates why this is a problem. Nearly 1,000 high school students were given help from an AI math tutor powered by GPT-4, the technology behind ChatGPT, while practicing math. They solved more practice problems with the tool. But when the tool was taken away for the real test, students who had used the less restricted version, which could provide more direct answers, scored 17% worse than students who had no AI help. In the same study⁠, a guarded tutor – designed to give hints instead of answers – avoided that drop in test performance.

AI can make learning look easier while quietly removing the struggle that makes learning stick. In writing and analysis, where judgment matters, it can even encourage students to do inferior work.

Learning runs on friction: the red pen, the Socratic question, the “not yet, try again.” Education often tells students they are not right yet so they can become right. A tool engineered to affirm removes a core foundation that education depends on.

In April 2025, OpenAI rolled back a version of GPT-4o after it had become, in the company’s words, “⁠.” The company later admitted it hadn’t tested for sycophancy before rolling it out to hundreds of millions of users. OpenAI pushed a temporary system-prompt fix, then returned users to the earlier version. The rollback fixed that release, but it didn’t address the broader problem of AI systems becoming too agreeable when users need correction.

The pattern is not limited to one chatbot. In March 2026, a Stanford-led team published a ⁠ across eleven leading models. When users asked for guidance about personal situations and relationships the models affirmed their actions 49% more often than humans did. In prompts involving deception, illegality or other harms – such as lying, manipulation or socially irresponsible behavior – they endorsed the behavior 47% of the time. People who interacted with sycophantic AI became more convinced they were right and more likely to trust and reuse the tool. 

A student who asks whether a weak thesis is strong, whether thin evidence is enough or whether a draft is ready to submit may not be looking for praise. They may be looking for a teacher. If the tool offers confidence instead of correction, the student never feels the discomfort that turns a half-formed idea into a real one.

I am not arguing that students should avoid these tools. But every student using AI should ask: When has this tool stopped helping me think and started flattering me into not thinking?

That confusion may cost the most among the students I work hardest to reach. At a historically Black university, I teach young people who are brilliant and underestimated, who are wary of how institutions judge them and who sometimes turn to AI because it does not seem to judge at all. 

For students surrounded by regular, trusted feedback, an over-flattering tutor may be an annoyance. But for those with fewer chances to get honest, trusted feedback, it can become a closed loop: The student asks, the machine praises, and no one tells the truth. 

A 2026 Stanford study of ⁠ makes that worry more concrete: identical essays received different feedback depending on how the student was described, with essays attributed to Black students receiving more praise and less substantive criticism. That is not reassuring.

So what do we do?

First, educators should teach AI as something to interrogate, not an answer machine. Assign students to make the model disagree with them, hunt for the moment it praised a weak argument, and grade that catch. “Where did it just agree with you?” is a teachable skill.

Second, instructors and advisers should change the question they ask about AI help. Not just, “Did it give you an answer?” but, “Did it make you explain your thinking?” “Did it ask what evidence you had?” “Did it push back?” “Did it make the work harder in the right way?”

That kind of friction has worked before when it is built into the tool, giving hints instead of answers, asking questions that make students show their reasoning and offering prompts that slow them down before they accept AI advice. In the Turkey study⁠, the guarded version that guided students instead of simply spitting out answers largely avoided the learning harm. Other studies have found that prompts requiring users to ⁠, ⁠, and make their own judgment can reduce blind acceptance of AI advice. Until every tool is designed to slow students down in those ways, adults must teach students to add the friction themselves.

We spend our careers teaching students to tolerate being wrong long enough to get it right. The best AI tutor may not be the one students like most in the moment, but the one that refuses to finish the work for them. The friction was never an obstacle to learning. It was the learning.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration is planning a dramatic overhaul of  that would gut its quality standards, upending the hallmarks of the early education program for impoverished children, two people familiar with the deliberations said.

Head Start, established in the 1960s to help fight poverty, has long been considered by experts to be a gold standard early learning program. Its regulations, which stretch more than 100 pages, outline requirements on everything from child-to-teacher ratios and child health screenings to family engagement.

Trump’s Republican administration would replace those regulations with around a dozen pages of rules, leaving most of the specifics up to state and local law, said the people familiar with the deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that was not yet public and because they feared reprisal.

In a post on X on Saturday night, the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Head Start, said to expect a rule to be published this week. The administration “remains committed to strengthening Head Start by preserving federal investment in the program while advancing reforms that expand access, increase local flexibility, reduce unnecessary administrative burden, and ensure services are delivered effectively to children and families in need,” department spokesperson Emily Hilliard said Monday in an email.

The draft rules would require more documentation from parents who are homeless or unemployed, the people familiar with the deliberations told The Associated Press. An early version of the proposal also would have barred parents who are in the United States illegally from enrolling their children, even if the children are U.S. citizens. It’s unclear whether those provisions will make the final draft.

Head Start, which operates in all 50 states, has long enjoyed robust bipartisan support. But some prominent conservatives in recent years have called for , saying the federal government should get out of the education business at every level. Deregulating the program would deliver a win for them and aligns with the Trump administration’s goals of scrapping rules it views as onerous or unnecessary.

Head Start is designed to target poverty, experts say

Head Start serves more than half a million low-income babies, toddlers and preschoolers nationwide. For families that qualify, it offers free preschool and screenings to identify developmental delays. It also offers supports for families.

If the changes take effect, they could make Head Start unrecognizable, said Khari Garvin, who ran the Office of Head Start under President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

“We’d have the carcass of Head Start,” Garvin said. “You might have a program that’s called Head Start, but in substance it will not be.”

The proposed rules were originally reported in The Bulwark.

Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association, said the organization has yet to see the proposed rules. But he said the potential for a massive overhaul has left the organization on edge.

“We’re very anxious,” Sheridan said. “When it does come out … we’ll be ready to fight back where we need to fight back.”

Still, he emphasized that Head Start centers might not be impacted for months, if the rules get on the books at all. Once the proposal is made public, federal law requires the administration to give at least a month for the public to weigh in on it. Then, once finalized, it may take more time for the rules to take effect. There’s also the potential for a lawsuit to halt implementation.

Current rules cover dental screenings and staff-to-student ratios

Head Start was created as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty and targets the myriad challenges that low-income households face. It serves children and adults alike, coaching parents on reaching their goals, connecting them with services and even employing them.

Head Start operators, which include school districts and nonprofit organizations, are required to provide medical, dental and vision screenings for children and to monitor them for developmental delays. There’s also a curriculum framework and prohibitions on physical and emotional abuse of children.

Many of the features that make Head Start distinct from mainstream preschools are spelled out in 122 pages of performance standards. The Trump administration’s proposal would toss most of that rule book and replace it with a much shorter version that eliminates or loosens many requirements, the people familiar with the proposal said. But the proposal also calls for some new regulations, such as requiring all instruction in English.

Requirements around staff-to-student ratios and safety standards would be erased. Operators instead would be instructed to follow local and state laws, which are often far more permissive. And the new proposal also says nothing about suspensions and expulsions, the people said, making it easier for programs to  who are difficult to educate.

Head Start is under threat

Head Start, which has enjoyed robust bipartisan support for decades, has faced several threats since Trump . Project 2025,  authored by the official who is now Trump’s budget chief, called for the federal government to get rid of the program altogether. Last year, in a draft budget, the administration proposed exactly that, saying: “The federal government should not be in the business of mandating curriculum, locations, and performance standards for any form of education.” After public outcry, Health Secretary , whose department oversees Head Start, told Congress the program’s funding was safe.

Funding for the program was disrupted not long after Trump took office, leading some programs to have to shutter temporarily. It was once again halted after  in October that led some centers briefly to close their doors.

Earlier this year, Trump officials also erased a Biden-era rule that mandated raises and greater benefits for Head Start employees. When the rule went in to effect in 2024, , the majority of whom have bachelor’s degrees, earned less than $40,000 a year on average.

The story was originally published by The Associated Press. Ali Swenson contributed reporting.

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced in-person classroom instruction to go virtual, students to have their own laptops or tablets and complete assignments.

to address . This between students and families who had their own tablets, computers and high-speed internet, and those who did not.

While most schools resumed in-person classes by 2021, on online platforms and apps to help their students do their work.

Today, however, more and more schools are reconsidering how technology fits into teaching and learning, with many districts establishing clearer expectations about when technology should be used, for what purpose and .

So far, as of late July 2026, had introduced or debated legislation addressing classroom screen time or student use of digital devices. Six states had already enacted new laws, while others had considered or failed to pass similar measures.

Iowa, for example, passed a law that for elementary students. Maine’s legislation did not put specific screen time limits in place but on the impact of classroom technology.

Instead of treating screens as the default tool for instruction, some schools are directing teachers to use laptops only when the technology adds clear instructional value.

Passive consumption or purposeful use?

The Los Angeles Unified School District is one example of a school district that is shifting away from technology in the classrooms.

In June 2026, Los Angeles approved that eliminates in-school screen use for students in preschool through first grade. It also established screen time .

Los Angeles is also moving away from sending school-issued devices home with every student. Instead, elementary students can use shared classroom devices, and families can then opt in for take-home devices in older grades.

The Marietta City Schools district in Georgia is another example. The district adopted a policy in July 2026 that calls for device screens to be “closed by default” and used only when they serve .

At the state level, a July 2026 prohibits 1-1 device-per-student ratios for students in kindergarten to third grade. There are some exceptions to this policy, such as when students are taking state standardized tests.

In other states, lawmakers are considering similar laws that would restrict or limit the use of school-issued devices during the school day.

How students use screens matters

What makes these developments notable is not any single policy but how quickly the conversation around education and technology has changed.

The American Academy of Pediatrics children spend on screens each day. Instead, parents and educators could consider the quality of digital experiences and what screen use may be displacing.

Technology can support learning when it is , while excessive or passive screen use that displaces sleep, physical activity, play or may .

This distinction between is increasingly shaping school policy. Updated policies also reflect an emerging emphasis on age-appropriate screen use, student well-being and ensuring that technology can support, rather than replace, .

vary, a common through line is that students’ ages matter when it comes to using technology.

For older students, technology may remain central to learning, particularly when students are using it to program, analyze data, model complex systems and critically evaluate information. Younger children, meanwhile, should have sufficient opportunities for play, conversation, writing, movement and hands-on, .

Teachers can still prepare students for a digital world

of the National Academies consensus committee examining the future of data and computing education in K-12 schools, asking a simple question: What do today’s students need to know about the technologies that increasingly shape their lives?

Our shows that students need to learn more than how to use a laptop or an artificial intelligence chatbot. Our research found that they should also understand how data is collected and used, how AI and other computing systems work, how technology affects people and society, and how to use these tools to solve real problems.

The issue, according to our findings, is not whether students spend more or less time using technology. It is whether the time they spend with technology helps them build understanding, solve problems, think critically and make informed decisions.

arrives at the same : Students learn the most when they actively use technology to investigate questions, analyze information and solve problems – consume digital content.

that technology was most valuable when students used it to investigate scientific questions, test ideas, create models, work with classmates and explain their reasoning.

The technology itself was not what improved learning. What mattered was how teachers used it to .

The next critical question

For decades, there was a race to get classrooms hooked up to the latest educational technology.

Now, some schools are doing the opposite. This reversal may represent an overdue correction after years of assuming that more technology automatically equated to better learning.

But I think the next chapter should not be defined by counting minutes of screen time. Instead, policymakers, educators and technology developers should consider the more critical question of what kinds of digital experiences are actually worth students’ time.

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

Given that it’s money that doesn’t come from state or local taxes, we anticipate most states and districts will want in.

Our proposal: Districts set a fixed fee for access to a bundle of services. Imagine the district offers an $800 “K12-plus plan” that provides access to stuff like field trips, tutoring, homework help, assemblies, clubs or other services not required in the state’s definition of required public education. Every student signs up, but none — save for the wealthiest families — actually pay. Instead, a state-approved scholarship-granting organization sends the money from the withheld taxes to the district in the form of scholarships awarded for all the kiddos. 

To make this work at scale, employers are key. Major employers (think school districts, universities, hospitals, Walmart, Amazon) could invite employees to participate via a $1,700 payroll deduction to an SGO. Employees could pick their SGO and indicate which district would benefit, and since their contribution would immediately be offset by a corresponding dollar-for-dollar reduction in federal withholding, there would be no net change in their take-home pay. 

None of this would happen by itself. If state and local leaders want to tap the funds, they have work to do. Here’s where to start:

• Identify a state point of contact and launch a working group of state and district leaders. Include advocates, business community, PTAs, etc. The tax credit scholarship is a new and messy federal policy, and getting it up and running in each state will take a lot of coordination. Someone needs to be on point, and communication channels need to be set up.
  
• Engage the governor’s office. For a state to participate, its governor must opt in by Dec. 31. Most have, or eventually will, but some may take a while as they navigate tricky politics in their state. A few state legislatures have passed laws designating a different entity to opt in, effectively removing the decision from the governor’s desk and providing the state’s chief executive with some political cover for the decision to participate.
  
  Additionally, the governor or designated official will need to submit a list of qualified SGOs (also by Dec. 31). This step will require a process by which SGOs submit their information and the state verifies it.
  
• Identify a trustworthy SGO (or SGOs) ready to deliver scholarships to public schools. While the organization must be independent from the state, the hope is that a district-focused SGO will commit to communicating about the amount of expected contributions with districts, so they can set fees. There will also likely need to be a software platform enabling taxpayers to choose their district. The SGO will need to be approved by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)3 nonprofit and be listed on the state’s official list submitted to the IRS.
  
• Engage employers. Local employers need to understand the upside for students in public schools and how payroll deductions could work. They can also help shape what will likely become a major outreach effort to encourage taxpayer participation.
  
• Identify allowable fees. Each scholarship will need to be on behalf of a named student for an identified fee. Students will need to sign up (which can happen through the district). Lots of states have laws about what’s a permissible fee for public school students. (California’s laws are some of the strictest which, unless changed, might complicate this model in California). Since SGOs might not be able to predict their revenue by the start of each school year, districts might want to consider semester- or trimester-based fees.
  
• Set up data collection. Districts will need to ensure they have robust accounting for fee-related revenues (which have traditionally been treated as an afterthought). States will want to understand how funds are flowing. Giving state leaders visibility will enable them to address any inequities. Further, transparency is the best antidote to mischief, and even a small amount of fraud will sour the public’s appetite for participating.
  
• Consider income verification. The key to funding integrated services in schools is that every student participate. We hope the Treasury Department will allow families to sign a form attesting to their eligibility for scholarships based on income. This way, only a handful of wealthy families — those over 300% of their Area Median Gross Income — would need to pay the fee (our guess is that they won’t balk) or get funding from another source (say, their school’s PTA).
  
• Build a campaign explaining how public school students could benefit. Will they have richer electives and arts? Tutoring opportunities? Better career pathways? Some will want to focus on closing district budget deficits (the law’s language doesn’t prohibit supplanting), but keeping students at the center of the pitch is both good politics and good policy. Consider adding something that’s new: Perhaps drop-in math homework hours?
  
• Communicate! The federal scholarship tax credit should be on the agenda of every association conference, including those for superintendents, chief financial officers, boards and state boards of ed; local school board meetings; PTA briefings; and legislative hearings. There should be webinars, blog posts, media interviews and more. 

It might be tempting to wait a year and start in 2028, and there are still open questions — especially since Treasury’s draft regulations won’t be out until September. But delaying that long to get started puts public schools at real risk of missing out on some of this opportunity. Not only would schools forgo a year’s worth of funds, but taxpayer decisions and SGO relationships could form around other recipients. Also worrisome is that by waiting, a state wouldn’t be able to tap what is sure to be a big national push to get taxpayers signed up. 

For better or worse, this new federal money isn’t anything like traditional funding formula dollars. How much flows to public schools will depend almost entirely on how actively leaders pursue it.

The research-grounded guide aims to help teachers intentionally select books for their students, centering age-appropriate books that present Black, Latinx and Asian culture as wellsprings of understanding. It also highlights titles that explore complex issues such as homelessness and poverty, and those that can help educators teach about historical topics like the Holocaust or the Civil Rights Movement. One chapter explores how scented books can be used as a vehicle for multisensory literacy development. 

Lacina’s book arrives at a critical moment, in a critical state. Texas ranked second in the nation for school book bans during the 2024-25 school year, with 1,781 instances of censorship, . 

The book features contributions from a number of early literacy experts on a variety of relevant themes. Jonda C. McNair, professor at the Ohio State University, wrote a chapter on the significance of African American children’s literature. “Aspects of identity can and do impact early literacy development, and teachers should be encouraged to think critically about them,” McNair wrote in an email. 

Natalia Kucirkova, who leads the , added, “This book responds to an urgent need in an age when texts are increasingly manipulated by technologies, generated by AI and shaped by algorithms for specific audiences and preferences. It reminds us that children need authentic literature that connects them to genuine human experiences beyond their own.”

In the conversation below, Lacina discusses the book, the challenges posed by censorship and the power of children’s literature. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did this book originate?

Years ago, I developed a class when we did not have a children’s literature class at TCU, and my dean at the time wanted it to be a way to attract individuals from throughout the university into the College of Education. So I came up with this idea of a critical literacy and children’s literature class. … I wanted to develop a class where students could learn more about just being good human beings from reading through children’s literature that’s reflective of society. Sometimes those are very sensitive topics, like … homelessness and immigration. [We asked] how can we develop empathetic and kind college students and future teachers? We can do that by learning about other people and recognizing them not as the other, but as someone of value within our community … There’s never been a textbook that really addressed that particular topic. 

What does research show about the importance of inclusive literature and the role stories play in child development?

There’s been a lot of research published over the last 30 years, and I have an article coming out this summer in [a journal published by the International Literacy Association Children’s Literature and Reading Special Interest Group]. [The research] really came to the forefront more than 30 years ago, with a professor at the Ohio State University, Rudine Sims Bishop, who coined the term as a metaphor. Mirrors reflect your own culture, identity and personal life and we need to read books that reflect our own experiences — but just as important are the [books] that are like windows that help us understand other people’s experiences in life and that help us build more empathy and understanding.

Reading helps us identify with the protagonist — with their feelings, with their actions, and it’s important to read about experiences that are similar to our own, whether they’re positive experiences or challenges we might face in life. Children in our schools are dealing with challenges, too. That could be divorce; that could be dealing with not having enough money. In preparing our young children, we want them to be able to face life’s challenges and problem solve and be resilient and also be joyful. 

How does children’s literature, especially for the youngest readers, function as a tool for learning and development?

It helps children at all ages as they move into the workforce as adults, because we’re not going to work with people who are necessarily exactly like us, from our own socioeconomic background, our racial background, our religious background. And it helps us better understand other people, so that we can be a productive member of the workforce and get along with others to solve problems in the workplace. 

Why do you think people get worked up about children’s literature? Why is this an issue at all? 

There are various reasons why, and this is nothing new. … We can look back through history and see that there’s always been censorship, and I think books have historically been targeted over a long period of time for anti-intellectual censorship efforts. Books are primarily a source for people to learn new ideas and to critically think about a variety of topics within our society. So books are powerful, and that’s what scares people.

What do you recommend for responding to censorship in our schools and libraries?

We need leaders in education to have policies and procedures, which many school districts do. However, what’s interesting is that the , and this is not surprising at all, but who is censoring books? It’s not necessarily parents at all; 92% of all books that are challenged were initiated by pressure groups, government officials and decision makers. And that was up from 72% in 2024. Less than 3% of the challenges originated from individual parents. So I think that tells us maybe we don’t need to publicize [censorship] any longer. We need these pressure groups to listen to parents and families. 

Another thing that makes early reading so powerful is that when books are read over and over again, the ideas and pictures really stay with children right at the time when their brains are forming. 

That’s a very good strategy for developing phonemic and phonological awareness, that reading over and over with a very young child. That’s really helpful for oral language and understanding how language works. 

In the book, there’s a surprising chapter about the role of smell in early reading, and the importance of offering children multisensory early reading experiences. How did that come about? 

Natalia Kucirkova, who I met many years ago at the United Kingdom Literacy Association, is an international powerhouse scholar. … That chapter is about a novel approach in Europe, and I think we need to listen to our European peers. They focus a little bit more on creativity and multisensory approaches, where we are focusing on different things here in the U.S. What Natalia talks about is that reading is much more than decoding a text. It’s about an affective and embodied experience. 

An educator I really admire, Nichole Parks, said something recently about how readers are built on laps and that reading to a child is a gateway toward them reading for themselves. 

That’s a beautiful way to phrase that. We lose so much when we focus too much on tablets and technology. There’s so much more to reading than just reading words on a screen. It’s that entire experience — the human interaction with a child, the interaction with a book — to be able to hold the book, turn the pages and, in some instances, smell the book. A robot can’t replace that. A robot can’t replace the interaction between a teacher or a parent or a beloved family member lovingly nurturing a child during their reading process. 

NEWNAN, Ga. — Arnco-Sargent Elementary sits in a wooded area on a two-lane road about 50 miles south of Atlanta. Across the street is a child care center. A Baptist church is less than a mile away. 

But if developers get their way, the school’s newest neighbor could be a sprawling data center campus housing the networking infrastructure needed to help power Americans’ reliance on the internet, and increasingly, artificial intelligence.

Families, some who have lived in the area for generations, are opposed, concerned about traffic, noise, water-quality and other adverse effects. In April, the rezoned 832 rural acres to accommodate the industrial development. Project Sail, as it’s called, could be under construction for the next 10 years.  

“I have a first grader. He’ll be in high school by the time it’s even finished,” said Laura Beth, whose tree-lined property backs up to the proposed site. “This will be his whole childhood.” 

She chairs , which is to stop the project, while also leading a petition drive to get a referendum against it on the ballot. The battle is one of several nationwide in which the rapid expansion of these “hyperscale” centers is colliding with the daily lives of public school families and staff. Americans depend on data centers to work, shop and learn. Despite the recent backlash to ed tech, one research firm estimates that the global in education will grow to over $136 billion by 2035. 

As demand surges, tech companies look for land that is relatively close to customers and existing electricity and water sources. 

“The closer data is stored to the people and systems relying on it, the faster it loads — a benefit that touches everything from healthcare to the classroom technology students and teachers use every day,” said Dan Diorio, executive vice president of state policy and government affairs at the Data Center Coalition, a membership organization. 

But with concerns about energy use and environmental impacts, local governments — and — have on new data centers, and opponents say officials should restrict building near schools and residential neighborhoods. 

“I would like to say our situation’s unique,” Beth said. “It hurts me that it’s not.”

Nationally, 1,878 public schools sit within a mile of at least one data center or a future facility that is approved for construction, according to researchers at Brown University. Shared exclusively with �鶹��Ʒ, the analysis of and National Center for Education Statistics data shows that California has by far the largest number of schools close to data centers or buildings-in-progress: 602, representing 32% of the nation’s total.

Ahmed Saeed, an assistant professor in computer science at Georgia Tech, explained that the infrastructure data centers rely on is more widely available near “population centers.” But because dense urban areas don’t have enough affordable land, developers often gravitate to suburban and exurban areas. 

“As the number of data centers continues to grow, it becomes increasingly likely that some will be located near schools and residential neighborhoods,” he said.

The latest , fueled by advancements in AI, is fairly recent, so researchers know little about the long-term effects of attending school near a facility. The Brown team, however, will soon release research showing that math scores are lower among students whose schools are closer to a data center. Companies say they take measures to minimize disruption, like planting trees to absorb sound, and some argue the downsides . 

‘This buzzing noise’

District leaders are among those who say data centers pose too many risks to ignore. 

“AI is not going anywhere,” said Marcia Andrews, a school board member in Palm Beach, Florida. “My biggest concern is that these data centers should be far enough away that it doesn’t harm the community, it doesn’t harm the schools.”

The Palm Beach County commission agreed. In July, members , a 202-acre near the Arden subdivision that would have been “just a football field away,” from Saddle View Elementary School, Andrews said. The vote, however, leaves the door open for the developers to revise and resubmit their plans in the future. Andrews, whose district includes Saddle View, grew curious about the site when she saw crews widening the roads and planting palm trees. 

“People across the country are waking up now saying, ‘My gosh, we never dreamed that we would hear this buzzing noise 24/7,’ ” she said.

One frequent complaint against data centers is the sound coming from cooling systems, fans and generators. In , a resident likened it to a jet engine. Another in , known for having the of data centers in the world, said the inescapable humming makes him “want to curse.”

A from a former NASA safety manager and planning commissioner in Prince William County, Virginia, predicted that classroom noise from data centers near schools would likely exceed recommended levels. A separate in the state found that the sound is “generally quieter than a lawn mower or nearby conversation,” said Diorio, with the Data Center Coalition. But opponents there often share from a mother at Chris Yung Elementary who said her child wouldn’t go outside for recess because of the sound. 

Many data centers use , which would be like “a bunch of semi trucks idling right next to the school,” said Jessica Owens, the director of data at Science for Georgia, a nonprofit. “Would you want your child in a facility next to a place that’s emitting pollutants, especially in the South when we have heat waves that exacerbate those pollutants?”

Noise, she added, would impact a school within a mile, but they also create “heat islands” that can extend up to six miles. 

The closest Project Sail building would be about 1,000 feet from Arnco-Sargent Elementary “with setbacks, tree buffers, berms and other screening incorporated into the design,” said  Mattie Sorrentino, a spokeswoman for Prologis, the company behind the Coweta County project. The site is “well-suited” for the data center because of its close proximity to Plant Yates, a Georgia Power facility. 

The company “will meet or exceed every requirement,” she said. “Our goal is to keep the project out of sight as much as possible.”

‘Impact on achievement’

Even if students can’t see a data center from the playground, their learning may be at risk.

In a forthcoming paper, Brown University researchers will show that students who attend school within a mile of a data center have lower math scores than those who are farther away.

“You can rule out all other factors,” said Samantha Kane, a research associate and part of the university’s Sustainable Education Research Initiative. “It’s actually the proximity to the data center and the potential pollution coming from the data center that is having the impact on achievement and not other things about the region.”

Critics often as one way data centers put a strain on local resources. Early estimates said Project Sail would use 6 to 9 million gallons per day. Now Prologis says it would draw up to roughly 300,000 gallons a day from the Chattahoochee River, and some comparisons from 2023 show data centers use far less water than , like golf courses.

To reduce dependence on the local water supply, Project Sail would use what’s called a “closed-loop” cooling system. But there are . To keep the hardware inside from overheating, those mechanisms are “blowing hot air into the area and increasing the temperature” as much as , Owens said. If there’s already a heat wave, kids might get less recess time outside. The soaring temperatures also on the power grid as residents, businesses and schools crank up the air conditioning to stay comfortable. 

In Virginia this summer, officials in Henrico County, , asked the school system to help cut energy costs that are expected to increase by $5 million. District spokeswoman Eileen Cox said the system, with 81 schools and more than 50,000 students, already takes a “proactive approach” to conserve electricity, like setting thermostats higher and operating a four-day work week during the summer.

The state, however, just enacted a new on data centers to offset some of the decline in revenue from tax breaks. from state and local taxes also make Georgia a preferred site for the industry. At this point, how many data centers are operating or proposed in Georgia, but Arnco-Sargent isn’t the only school in the state near land eyed by developers.

Closer to Atlanta, residents in Lovejoy are petitioning against a facility that would potentially sit between Michelle Obama STEM Academy and Eddie White Middle Academy.  

The site plan envisions about 3.5 million square feet and 15 buildings of data center space on at least 400 acres, said Clayton County , who has scheduled a community meeting for this Saturday. 

The community, she said, “naturally has serious, legitimate questions about the cumulative, long-term impacts.”

Traffic concerns

Schools in the vicinity of these facilities can feel the effects even before sites are operational. An elementary school in northeast Louisiana last year to protect students from the thousands of cement trucks and 18-wheelers traveling every day to what is expected to be . There were at least three truck crashes last year, and one smashed into the school’s gate. 

For Project Sail, Prologis agreed to some road improvements as a condition for the rezoning. Sorrentino said construction trucks would be routed away from the school and that when finished, the project would “generate limited traffic.”

But families are still worried. The intersection that parents and school bus drivers navigate for drop off and pick up every day doesn’t have a traffic light. 

The school has a long history in the community. Now 70 years old, Arnco-Sargent consolidated two older schools that used to serve children from local mill villages. But in 1996, the area’s leading textile company went bankrupt, families moved away and the area, Beth said, has never prospered like other parts of Coweta County. Nearly 60% of the school’s students live in poverty. 

“These people are just trying to make a living,” she said. Compared to those who the Palm Beach project, Arnco-Sargent parents perhaps have been less outspoken. “They don’t have time to go to a meeting at 6:00 on a Tuesday. They’re working and have young kids.” 

But Beth is hopeful. At the first signature-gathering event, as residents waited to sign the petition. The organizers have nearly reached their goal of 14,000 signatures 

“I feel that this is what it took for the county to listen,” she said.

Students in all Illinois public schools will soon have to abide by rules barring them from using cellphones or other personal electronic communication devices during school hours unless they have been given specific permission to use them.

Although many districts already have similar policies in place, Gov. JB Pritzker signed  Tuesday that will require all districts to have “bell-to-bell” device bans in place before the start of the 2027-2028 school year.

The goal, Pritzker said, is to eliminate the distractions that cellphones and other devices can create so students and teachers can focus their attention on learning.

“We want to make sure that every hour of school time can have the greatest possible positive impact,” Pritzker said at a bill signing ceremony at Elgin High School. “We’re allowing every child to fully learn, participate, ask questions, and build the skills and interpersonal relationships that they need to thrive.”

 requires districts to adopt policies that broadly restrict the use of “wireless communication devices” during school hours. Those include cellphones, laptops, tablets, gaming devices and “wearable” devices such as smartwatches. But they do not include devices that schools or teachers issue to students for educational purposes.

The law requires districts to make exceptions for devices that are needed for medical reasons, for special education purposes or for language translation if a student is an English language learner. Districts may also make exceptions on a case-by-case basis for students who are also caregivers for family members at home.

It also permits districts to exclude a high school student’s lunch and passing periods from the definition of “school time.”

The law also prohibits schools from using fines, fees, suspensions or expulsions to enforce the policies unless a student uses a regulated device to engage in some other type of gross disobedience or misconduct that would warrant such discipline.

“The reason we made the difference in high school is because you have a lot of students who do dual (high school and college) credit,” Sen. Cristina Castro, D-Elgin, the lead Senate sponsor of the bill, said during the ceremony. “Sometimes (they) go part of the day and then go to work. And also, you’re giving them a little bit more responsibility.”

Suzanne Johnson, superintendent of the U-46 School District in Elgin, said her district implemented a cellphone ban last year. She said it requires elementary school students to leave their devices at home while middle school students have to place them in foam pouches during the school day and high school students are not allowed to use them during instructional time.

“While we did this to help students stay more focused in the classroom, we were pleased to see all the other benefits that followed,” she said. “While at first our students were probably hesitant and maybe not so pleased, they quickly adjusted to the new learning environment, and without the distraction of cellphones, students were more engaged, built stronger connections with one another, and once again, laughter and chatter filled our hallways, our cafeterias, and our classrooms.”

The law requires school districts to review their policies at least once every three years and to consult with teachers unions, administrators, parents and community members in making revisions.

This was originally published by , a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation. 

But on that day in March, he swapped out a reading on the Delano Grape Strike for , including a testimony by Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, who revealed that Chávez raped her on two separate occasions. The Times investigation also revealed a pattern of Chávez sexually abusing women and girls who were a part of the UFW. 

“Some students used words like ‘shock,’ ‘devastating,’ ‘gut wrenching,’ ‘soul shaking,’” Rosales said. “I was glad that it’d be in that moment with students at that time. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world, if you will, when that story broke.”

As a historian who has studied and taught about the farmworker movement for years, Rosales, along with many other scholars, was just as shocked. Now, college faculty across California are evaluating the research and teaching approaches they will take when it comes to California’s farmworker movements. 

“I was in a text chain with different professors from across the country, and we were just in shock, because no historian knew about this,” Rosales said. “This definitely feels like a second, social death.”

Chávez died at the age of 66 in 1993, leaving a legacy that has grown in California history. Over 130 public spaces and monuments have been named after Chávez nationally. In California, over 65 streets, schools and parks carried his name. Since 2000, the state recognized his birthday as a state holiday. 

Higher education institutions immediately responded to the allegations against Chávez by renaming and removing public markers. Now California faculty are navigating what it means to teach and research figures like Chávez and finding ways to broaden farmworker history beyond one leader. 

How schools initially reacted 

State lawmakers swiftly renamed César Chávez Day to Farmworkers Day in March. California universities also quickly renamed or removed monuments and buildings commemorating Chávez. 

At both Fresno State and Cal State San Marcos, statues of Chávez were covered and removed within two days of The Times story publishing.

At San Joaquin Delta College, a ceramic relief and plaque memorializing Chávez was replaced with a mural honoring farmworkers painted by Delta College students. UC Berkeley removed Chávez’s name from a student center. UCLA’s department of Chicano Studies removed Chávez from its name. 

While some suggested replacing Chávez’s name with Huerta’s, faculty are instead advocating for an approach that is more deliberate, and can commemorate the collective rather than one leader.

“If Dolores Huerta’s name comes up, I want it to go up based on her own achievements and merits, not based on reaction to allegations against César Chávez,” said Lorena Oropeza, professor of Chicanx Latinx Studies at UC Berkeley.

Campuses are also grappling with changes to curriculum involving Chávez. At Bakersfield College, some faculty advocated for the immediate elimination of the César Chávez Leadership Certificate, a program that teaches students about community organizing through the history of Chávez’s legacy in the farmworker movement in the southern San Joaquin Valley.

Rosales, who created the certificate program, said that any changes to curriculum should be deliberated and thought through, rather than just removed. While no faculty has yet made a motion to the Academic Senate for changes, he said he and department colleagues support any name change going through the senate process. 

“If you actually look at the curriculum, it’s exactly the curriculum that we need, because it basically broadens the history beyond the UFW,” Rosales said.

A historical critique in ethnic studies

In history books, a key moment in Chávez’s legacy is the 1965 Delano Grape Strike, when workers went on a five-year-long strike demanding fair pay and better working conditions. What is often left untold is that Larry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz, who were Filipino-American labor leaders, initiated the strike. The Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, led by Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association, led by Chávez, merged to form the United Farm Workers. Their organizing resulted in a national grape boycott and victory.  

Disciplines like ethnic studies have long explored the complex and often contradictory nature of labor movement leaders. Scholars have examined Chávez’s anti-immigrant stance and studied the farmworkers’ movement through oral histories from workers and families.

At UC Berkeley, Oropeza researches antiwar and racial justice movements of the 1960s. In this decade, the farmworker movement was a part of the growing Chicano movement, which also encompassed college campus protests advocating for ethnic studies, land reclamation, and civil rights. Leaders like Chávez became major figures in the Chicano movement. 

One of the leaders Oropeza has researched is Reies López Tijerina, a Chicano leader from Texas who led a major land grant movement in the American South in the 1960s to reclaim ancestral lands given away after the Mexican-American War. However, Oropeza’s research also revealed how he subjected his family to abuse.

As the leader of the Alianza Federal de Mercedes, or Federal Alliance of Land Grants, Tijerina led peaceful protests in Albuquerque and Santa Fe and occupied the Echo Amphitheater, renaming it the “Republic of San Joaquin del Rio Chama.” That act resulted in the arrests of La Alianza members.

Most notably, Tijerina and La Alianza members led an armed raid of a courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico, to perform a citizen’s arrest of the local district attorney, accusing him of denying the activists their civil rights. Tijerina was arrested following the raid, leading to national attention for the civil rights and Chicano movements. 

Oropeza’s book, “The King of Adobe: Reies López Tijerina, Lost Prophet of the Chicano Movement,” was published in 2019. She traces Tijerina’s legacy in revitalizing the land grant movement, but also how he exerted patriarchal control in his leadership. Her research relies on archival records and oral histories, including interviews with Tijerina’s first wife and eldest daughter, who described patterns of physical and sexual abuse. Tijerina died at the age of 88 in 2015.

“How do you hold together this person who was absolutely brilliant when it came to criticizing U.S. expansion and what it meant for Spanish speakers on the ground in the new American Southwest, but was absolutely reprehensible in how he treated his family?” Oropeza said. In her book, she examines “both of those truths” and used gender to analyze the style of his leadership.

Oropeza has researched Chávez’s leadership in the farmworker movement extensively. She recalls “powerful images” of him, such as how he fasted to call attention to the struggle of farmworkers and how he turned culture into a political resource, like when he went on a pilgrimage from Delano to Sacramento during lent with the farmworkers. Many have referred to Chávez as “El Santo” or “the Saint of the Movement,” Oropeza said.

Now, to process the news of the allegations against Chávez, Oropeza is leaning on both her own research and ongoing critiques of Chávez in the field. Miriam Pawel’s biography of Chávez, “The Crusades of César Chávez,” published in 2014, narrates a critical history of the man, including his anti-immigrant stance, autocratic power over the union, and how he undermined other labor movements.  

“I have already spent 12 years thinking about ‘How do you write about people who are complex, people who can act in reprehensible ways who can also do great things?’” Oropeza said. 

Looking toward the future of studying the Chicano and farmworker movements, Oropeza believes that any study must reconcile various realities in an attempt to get as close as possible to the truth, no matter how complicated.

“To me, this is just a reminder that this endeavor we are engaged in as academics … it is imperfect,” Oropeza said. “They’re always going to approximate ‘What is the truth?’ Is there a singular truth? It gets closer and closer and closer, but never quite gets there.”

New and continued approaches in teaching 

Alina Mendez, a professor of Chicano and Latin American studies at Fresno State, has experienced what it means for the personal and political to be connected as her parents were farmworkers. When she talked about the allegations against Chávez with her students during a lecture about the farmworker movement, she asked them whether they should continue talking about Chávez and, if so, how. 

“As a scholar, obviously, I learned and teach this history,” Mendez said. “But as a daughter of farmworkers, I grew up honoring the memory, the legacy of César Chávez.”

Her classroom came to a consensus that they should continue learning about Chávez while holding him accountable, “with the hopes that this (abuse of power) doesn’t happen (again),” she recalled.

“I can very much see that there’s this collective grief, collective disappointment, a kind of questioning of ‘If César Chávez is no longer our hero, then who do we look up to?’” Mendez said. “That’s why I’ve been insisting that (we) look at our local communities. Let’s look around us and see other people who very much sacrificed a lot of time, a lot of resources, a lot of sweat, to make those successes possible.”

Mendez is changing her approach to teaching farmworker movements to focus on local leaders and histories. She has been in conversation with Arte Américas, a Fresno-based Latinx art and cultural center, to continue collecting archives and interviews with workers across the Central Valley. 

“In many ways, obviously, my teaching is changing,” Mendez said. “As historians, I think we’re understanding more and more the importance of focusing on the collective rather than the individual leader.” 

Faculty say the disciplines of ethnic studies and history will be essential to the future of teaching about farmworker history. They say scholars should focus now on collecting oral histories narrated by workers themselves, rather than letting dominant voices narrate their stories for the movement.

“If anyone can help us figure out how to deal with complexities around race in the United States, it’s ethnic studies,” Oropeza said. “This is a place where ethnic studies scholars will shine.”

Rosales said he hopes this moment can pave the way for research that highlights the contributions of more communities in the farm labor movement, including Arab Americans and Southeast Asian Americans. 

“I think that the farmworker movement’s legacy is intact, but it’s going to take, you know, careful work by teachers, scholars, historians, to ensure that the curriculum is diversified beyond Chávez,” Rosales said.

This article was and was republished under the license.

Gov. Josh Stein, alongside the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) Secretary Dev Sangvai and leadership at Broughton Hospital, within state government on July 16.

The Division of State Operated Healthcare Facilities Skills, Training and Employment Pathways North Carolina (STEP-NC) is a partnership between NCDHHS, , and the (NCBCE), according to .

STEP-NC serves “high school students, adult learners, and new talent,” creating a pipeline for these individuals to enter “vital roles in health care to strengthen the workforce in North Carolina’s health care system, including state health facilities, and meet mental health needs in North Carolina,” said the .

“This partnership is one example of the efforts underway to boost the health care workforce in our state,” Sangvai said in the press release. “This initiative creates pipelines for clinical and non-clinical positions that keep our health systems running, supporting careers spanning from maintenance professionals to nurses.”

This summer, six recent high school graduates participated in the first program cohort by working as pre-apprentices at two Morganton-based facilities: , a state psychiatric hospital, and , a state developmental center. These students are being trained in the behavioral health and maintenance technician fields. Upon their completion of this program, the students may apply for a registered apprenticeship in their desired field.

Health care shortages in NC

Similar to , North Carolina’s health care capacity is projected to decline over the next several years. Currently, the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis rates the state’s at 84%, with that adequacy dropping to 78% by 2033.

Furthermore, that North Carolina will have a shortage of nearly 12,500 registered nurses (RN) and 5,000 licensed practical nurses (LPN) by the year 2033. In 2024, NCDHHS designated counties as having a health care professional shortage in the field of mental health.

Apprenticeship programs like STEP-NC help fill those gaps by creating pathways for people looking to enter the field, allowing them to “earn while they learn” and gain hands-on experience under the supervision of experienced mentors.

“We are facing a critical shortage of health care workers in North Carolina, especially in our state-operated facilities. STEP-NC cultivates a sustainable workforce pipeline starting as early as high school,” Stein said in the press release. “Through this program, students can qualify for free tuition, learn new skills, and jump-start their careers — all while helping North Carolina become safer and healthier.”

The program is also in line with Stein’s , which committed the state to strengthening the behavioral health crisis and criminal justice systems. It also “advances the goals of the Governor’s Council on Workforce and Apprenticeships to reduce state vacancy rates and double the number of apprentices statewide,” according to the press release.

What’s in the future for STEP-NC?

According to the , NCDHHS aims to expand apprenticeship programs across all state-operated facilities.

Right now, the program is only operating at two facilities through , which is a program “open to graduating seniors from Burke County Public Schools sponsored by .” Opt-In combines community mentorship, professional development, and work experience to “increase post-secondary credential attainment in Burke County.”

“The apprenticeship model responds to critical workforce needs by creating a tailored pathway supporting both employee growth and long-term retention,” CEO of Broughton Hospital Dr. Timothy Miller said in the press release. “This program allows students to find rewarding job opportunities close to home that align with their career interests. Health care facilities like ours offer many different career options, from direct care jobs like nursing to administrative support functions to maintenance.”

Sullivan emphasized the benefit of the program being tuition-free and local, allowing participants to pursue careers in skilled trades and health care in their own communities with no debt. This “means the workforce caring for our neighbors is coming from our neighborhoods,” Sullivan said.

The interest form for STEP-NC is available .

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Fauci’s critics, like Sen. Rand Paul, have seized on diary entries detailing his conversations with New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio just prior to that city’s 2020 shutdown. But that criticism errs by collapsing two different things. Fauci plainly supported the initial school closures, as did most Republican and Democratic officials. The more relevant question is whether he advised keeping schools closed on a broad scale the following year.

Fauci has long maintained that he did not. 

In August 2020, as districts wrestled with whether to reopen, he National Geographic, “there are areas and regions of the country … where the level of infection is low enough that you really should try very hard to get the children back to school.” Four years later, Fauci the same account. “I kept on saying, ‘Close the bars, open the schools,’ ” he told CBS News: “Initially to close it down was correct. Keeping [schools closed] for a year was not a good idea.” 

Unfortunately, if that was Fauci’s intended message, it largely failed to reach the public.

Several surveys I conducted for a book on the politics of pandemic school closures show that Americans understood Fauci’s position very differently. My evidence comes from three sources. The is a November 2022 YouGov panel of 1,000 U.S. adults, with samples weighted to represent the national adult population. The is a December 2023 of 5,000 elected school board members, with responses weighted to reflect the demographic characteristics of school districts nationwide. The was a 2025 YouGov survey with the same parameters as the one I conducted in 2022. 

Together, this assortment of data reveals how Americans and local school officials understood the case for prolonged school closures, and which public authorities they believed stood behind them. Three findings from these surveys are especially relevant to the renewed debate over Fauci’s role. 

First: Whether, fairly or not, Fauci became the public face of keeping schools closed.

In the 2022 and 2023 surveys, I asked respondents whether they thought various political leaders and organizations believed that keeping schools closed throughout the 2020-21 school year was strongly justified, somewhat justified, somewhat unjustified or strongly unjustified. The list included Fauci, Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the Democratic and Republican parties, and teachers unions.

Overall, 57% of the 2022 respondents said they believed Fauci thought keeping schools closed during that time was strongly justified, a higher number than for any other leader or group. School board members were even more likely to reach that conclusion: Over 7 in 10 believed Fauci viewed prolonged closures as strongly justified.

What’s more, the idea that Fauci supported prolonged school closures cannot simply be dismissed as a partisan talking point: 63% of Democratic and 57% of Republican respondents held that view.

Second: Compared with those who thought Fauci opposed prolonged school closures, respondents who said they believed Fauci viewed lengthy shutdowns as necessary were far more likely to conclude — even after vaccines had become available — that it was too risky for both students and educators to return to their classrooms. 

Specifically, in the 2022 survey, I asked respondents how risky it was for either a 10-year-old child or a 50-year-old teacher to return to elementary school. Those who believed Fauci supported school closures were about twice as likely as those who thought he opposed them to say school remained too risky for students and about 40% more likely to say the vaccinated teacher still faced substantial risk. To be clear, this does not prove that Fauci caused those perceptions. Americans who already feared reopening may instead have assumed he agreed with them about various risks. But it does show how closely Fauci’s public image had become tied to continued fears about returning to school.

Taken together, these findings suggest that Fauci had become more than a public health official. For many Americans, his perceived position on school closures served as a cue for judging the risks of reopening, even after vaccines had become widely available.

Third: I wanted to know what mattered more when Americans were asked to look back and reflect on the wisdom of prolonged school closures: evidence about what happened to children or the positions of public figures like Fauci.

To get at this, I ran an experiment in the 2025 survey. First, all participants were reminded that many public schools had remained closed even after vaccines became available, while bars and restaurants had reopened. Then, the respondents were then randomly divided into four groups. One group received no additional information. The other three were told that research showed school closures caused lasting academic harm; that Trump had opposed keeping schools closed; or that Fauci had publicly rejected lengthy shutdowns. I then asked everyone whether keeping schools closed for more than a year had been the right or wrong decision.

Regardless of the information they received, about two-thirds of Republican respondents said they believed it was the wrong decision. Among Democrats, however, the information mattered. Just one-third of those who received only the basic facts said prolonged closures had been wrong. Reminding them of the evidence on learning loss barely changed that judgment. But when they learned that Fauci himself had rejected year-long closures, nearly half concluded the policy had been wrong.

Faced with a choice between evidence about the consequences for children and cues from trusted leaders, many Americans appeared to place greater weight on the messenger than the evidence. Fauci, not research on learning loss or Trump’s position, proved to be the persuasive cue. call this follow-the-leader politics. People often rely on trusted elites to interpret complex issues rather than evaluating the underlying evidence themselves.

In sum, Fauci may be correct about what he intended to communicate. But my surveys suggest that most Americans, including the school board members responsible for reopening classes, heard something very different. Fauci’s public standing became closely associated with support for keeping schools closed, shaping how many Americans understood the risks of reopening and, ultimately, judged one of the most consequential policy decisions of the pandemic.

CHICAGO — A bipartisan group of state lawmakers is calling for an overhaul of the nation’s childcare system, which they say is failing children, parents and providers. 

The group of 13 Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who have spent the last year studying childcare access and affordability problems, offered an array of policy recommendations during the National Conference of State Legislatures annual summit in Chicago this week.

During a panel discussion Monday, lawmakers underscored the persisting challenge with childcare that costs families too much and pays providers too little. That has led to vast access gaps in many parts of the country as demand for childcare far outstrips supply.  

“Every state is experiencing a childcare crisis,” said Jenna Bannon, associate director in the Children and Families Program of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

In its 33-page  laying out causes and potential solutions to childcare shortages, the lawmakers’ policy group  called for more private sector employer participation, higher pay for childcare providers and a reconsideration of childcare regulations that may be outdated.

“The childcare system is at a crossroads,” the report says, “and decisions made now will shape how well systems meet the needs of families and economies in the years ahead.”

Many of the policy prescriptions inherently cost money. But Maryland state Del. Aletheia McCaskill said states can’t go it alone. McCaskill, a Democrat and a childcare provider, said the issue requires investment from outside sources, including philanthropic organizations and businesses. 

“It’s going to take more than just taxes,” she told Stateline. “It’s going to take real investment by other folks. We have to do this with everybody playing their part. The government, absolutely, but we can’t do it all.”

During the presentation, McCaskill urged other lawmakers to reframe childcare discussions in economic terms.

“When you talk about childcare, you can’t talk about children. Imagine that,” she said. “You have to talk about the economy, pockets and how all this works together.”

South Dakota state Sen. Tim Reed, a Republican, said businesses are increasingly interested in assuring their employees have access to childcare. 

Reed was previously the mayor of Brookings, the state’s fourth most populous city. Before the pandemic, he said, businesses reported workforce challenges as their biggest constraint. And the lack of workers, they said, was directly linked to a lack of accessible childcare.

Reed pointed to a local bank that provided childcare for the children — and even grandchildren — of employees years before it became a prominent issue across the country.

“And you know what? They’re the first place that people want to work because they have childcare,” Reed said during Monday’s panel. “Once you get businesses involved in this — because they do understand the economic realities of it — that’s when you can become successful.”

In 38 states, the costs of childcare outpaces the average cost of in-state college tuition, according to , a nonprofit advocacy group. For 2025, that organization calculated an average annual cost of childcare of about $13,000, with average prices of infant care surpassing $15,000. Those costs vary widely by state, though, with center-based infant care ranging from $6,492 a year in Mississippi to $27,067 a year in Massachusetts. 

Monday’s discussion  where Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham last year announced the nation’s first free universal childcare system, funded by state investment earnings from oil and gas revenues. 

New Mexico state Sen. Linda Trujillo, a Democrat, said during the discussion that the new universal system doesn’t yet guarantee universal access. In her community of Santa Fe, for example, she said the city lacks about 1,200 spaces for infants to 5-year-olds. 

Several lawmakers noted the changing federal environment, which has raised funding questions about many social service programs, including healthcare and food assistance. 

Bannon, of NCSL, said the states are now leading the charge on childcare as Democratic and Republican state lawmakers increasingly explore new legislation to childcare access.

“Historically, the federal government played a really big role, and the states really kind of looked to the feds to guide them,” she told Stateline. “And I think now there’s been kind of a role reversal and states are stepping more into the space, and the feds are watching them to see what they do.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

A major and final piece of West Virginia lawmakers’ 2023 hallmark education legislation goes into effect this school year when schools are required to retain third graders whose reading and math abilities aren’t at grade level.

Lawmakers carved out some exceptions for students with disabilities and other young learners.

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The robust education , known as the , required aides in kindergarten, first, second and third grade classrooms specifically focused on helping students improve poor reading skills. Those years for intervention if a student falls behind.

“To put an aide in every classroom and train those aides to be able to instruct using the science of reading has been a game changer,” said Senate Education Chair Amy Grady, R-Mason, who championed the bill. “We’re reaching kids at an earlier level, which is what we want to do. Instead of waiting until third grade, which is why we call it the Third Grade Success Act.”

The measure also implemented special training for teachers in those grades; educators are required to include the science of numeracy and literacy in education. There are now benchmark assessments and screenings for student issues like dyslexia.

“What’s been exciting is to watch year by year how our support for our West Virginia schools are increasing … I think we’ve had a lot of success,” said Erika Klose, director of the Office of PK-12 Academic Support at the West Virginia Department of Education.

West Virginia recorded its lowest-ever scores in those subjects in 2022, which state education leaders attributed in part to the COVID-19 pandemic’s education disruptions.

The Third Grade Success Act has contributed to a turn around, and West Virginia is now in the top 10 states for reading growth. Students ranked eighth nationally in reading growth in 2025 and and sixth for improvement in math, according to the .

“We’re seeing a tremendous amount of growth, and growth leads to proficiency,” said Grady, who is an elementary school teacher.

Third grade retention policy includes exemptions

The third grade retention piece of the legislation goes into effect for the 2026-27 school year.

Public school third-grade students who demonstrate a minimal understanding of grade-level English language arts or mathematics as indicated on the state’s testing “shall upon the recommendation of the teacher and the Student Assistance Team be retained in third grade for the next school year,” according to a guidance from the WVDE.

There are exemptions in the retention policy for students with disabilities, English Language Learns and students previously retained in a grade level and more.

Last year, officials with the that 2,000 to 3,000 students statewide could be impacted.

“I think people are starting to think we’re going to be keeping third graders behind or retaining a lot of third graders. If we’ve been doing it successfully, actually the opposite is true,” Grady said.

“If all of those interventions are not working … and they get to third grade and they’re still showing signs of struggling and not progressing, then retaining them in third grade is really important,” she continued. “Because, there is something going on that we have provided these interventions for three years, and that child still is struggling … We don’t want them to move on to where they can’t be successful.”

The recommendation for retention will be made by the classroom teacher and the Student Assistance Team team based on the student’s score on the WVGSA, proficiency with the subject matter and preparedness for the next grade level.

Klose stressed that the biggest advice she’d give to parents — especially third grade parents — is to ensure their child is reading and practicing math at home. She also said parents and guardians need to stay in touch with their child’s teacher.

“I would say that this is the year that they ensure that they have tremendous communication with their child’s teacher, that they are aware of how their children are doing on their benchmarks, those regular assessments that they take throughout the year,” Klose said.

The WVDE has been providing information to county superintendents ahead of the retention requirement implementation, Klose said.

“We’ve been doing a lot of work with our office of assessment in terms of how to best message this third-grade assessment in a way that doesn’t stress out third graders,” she said.

Eighteen states . West Virginia lawmakers modeled the Third Grade Success Act after Mississippi’s reading reform efforts, where helped Mississippi climb from 49th to 21st in national education progress scores.

The Third Grade Success Act was and sponsored by House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, and former Minority Leader Doug Skaff, D-Kanawha.

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

Short of dropping a dead weight copy of the state Education Code on your foot, a State Board of Education agenda item on the normally wouldn’t evoke tears.

But Jessica Sawko’s tears earlier this month were spontaneous and heartfelt during her one-minute testimony before the State Board of Education. They expressed joy and relief over a win for science education a long time coming.

Beginning with the release of scores this fall, science scores will be a full-fledged metric on the state school dashboard. Science joins English language arts, math, suspension rates, chronic absences and other measures given equal weight on the state’s school accountability site. This will end a decade long campaign by science educators to give the subject equal standing in the School Dashboard. 

Sawko, director of education for the advocacy organization and the California STEM Network, wore a pair of earrings — a favorite among science teachers when standards were adopted a decade ago. As she thanked the State Board and Cindy Kazanis, who directs the school accountability division of the Department of Education, for “their commitment to science,”  her voice cracked, “I’m sorry, I’m emotional. It’s been like a decade.”

In 2013, along with two dozen states, the State Board of Education adopted the new science standards, known by its acronym NGSS. Six years later, California began giving a new science test to students in fifth and eighth grades and one year during high school.

Sawko and her colleagues have felt the sting of neglect. Science didn’t receive the funding for teacher training that math and English language arts received after the adoption of the Common Core standards.

Persuading districts to take the standards seriously has proven a tough sell.

“In 2016, it was a high priority for the that science remain a part of the accountability system, recognizing a clear tie between accountability and investment,” Sawko, who was executive director of the organization at the time, told EdSource. “Children Now also championed that same idea.”

The State Board adopted the science curriculum framework, providing advice to teachers on how to teach NGSS, in 2016, and approved a list of textbooks and teaching materials in 2018. It also put a bookmark for including science on the dashboard in the future. Students took the first CAST assessment in 2019.

Post-pandemic struggle to regain momentum

But any early momentum stalled when the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020. Hands-on science instruction, fundamental to NGSS, especially in elementary and middle school grades, faltered during remote learning, and California suspended statewide testing for two years. 

When students returned to the classroom, many districts focused on raising fallen math and reading test scores. Meanwhile, the State Board focused on adopting a new math framework and materials, and Gov. Newsom made early literacy reform a major initiative of his second term.

“You know the saying, ‘What’s tested gets taught,’ ” said Peter A’Hearn, a past president of the state science educators association. “We’ve always run up against sort of administrative indifference to science and to putting investment into science and professional learning in science because it hasn’t been one of the tested metrics.”

For the past two years, scores have appeared on the California School Dashboard “for informational purposes” only while the state Department of Education collected the three years of data required to elevate science to the state’s accountability system. In 2029, the state board will decide how to integrate science test scores and a new method of measuring student academic growth into a revised Statewide System of Support for determining which schools and districts need guidance and more intensive assistance.

Science education advocates hope the higher profile for science will make it a higher priority in districts’ budgets and in their chief academic planning document, the Local Control Accountability Plan. But they’re also betting NGSS, given the chance, will prove to be the secret sauce of learning — that elementary teachers will view science not as a competitor with math and reading for instructional time, but as a partner to their success.

“I’m thrilled to see science on the dashboard,” State Board member Haydee Rodriguez, a multi-subject teacher at Central Union High School District in Imperial County, said at the State Board’s meeting on July 8. “The skills that young people learn from science, the habits of mind, are so powerful, whether (or not) they become scientists,” she said. “To see the world of wonder and awe fills me with joy.”

Unlike traditional science instruction, NGSS incorporates hands-on learning that encourages students to apply scientific reasoning and the skills of inquiry and observation to the everyday world. Along with content knowledge, it stresses common patterns, relationships and cause and effect among the sciences — what it calls cross-cutting concepts. Students learning about El Niño, for example, might study the physics of ocean currents, the chemical changes in the ocean and the effect on plants and animals.

The two-hour computer-based California Science Test reflects that approach and includes several performance tasks that require analyzing data and applying scientific reasoning to real-world scenarios. An example of a performance task for third graders might involve creating models for the phases of the moon, said Megan Smith, STEM coordinator for the San Joaquin County Office of Education. Students, perhaps with younger siblings, would sketch the moon over the course of a month, then replicate what they observed in the classroom using a ball and a flashlight, and explain the moon’s orbit.

Because elementary schools often devote limited instructional time to science,  “NGSS authors were careful to focus scientific practices with overlapping literacy and math practices,” said Megan Taylor, chief teaching and learning officer for the Exploratorium in San Francisco, which runs a summer institute and year-round professional development programs for California teachers.

The disruptions precipitated by Covid also have created an opening, Taylor said, “a recognition that science practices and ways of thinking are through lines to helping learning happen — and way more fun.”

Advancing NGSS will require intensive teacher training, with a different mindset for classroom instruction. But there must also be dedicated instructional time and access to high-quality instruction, the science teachers association wrote in a 2025 paper,

Data are scarce, but a 2022 survey by the association found that only 55% of school districts had purchased NGSS curricula and materials.

Low test scores out of the block

underscore the inattention to NGSS. In 2024-25, 32.7% of students were proficient on the test, compared with 37.3% proficiency in math and 48.8% in English language arts.

In 2018-19, the first year of the science test, 29.9% of students were proficient.

The disparities among student groups by race, income and parent education in science also repeated the vast inequalities found in the math and English language arts scores:

• 18.6% of children whose parents had a high school degree were proficient in science compared with 43.9% of children whose parents graduated from college.
•  51.3% of non socioeconomically disadvantaged students were proficient compared with 22.3% of socioeconomically disadvantaged students.
•  60.8% of Asian students were proficient compared with 17.1% of Black students.

Low test results notwithstanding, behind the scenes, science advocates and educators have laid the foundation for the next stage.

Backed by state funding and foundation support, a partnership of the California Department of Education and the Los Angeles County Office of Education created an extensive online library of teacher-generated performance tasks for science teachers to adopt in all grades and subjects.

Using $50 million in state funding — the first major state investment in science education — the California Mathematics, Science, and Computer Science Partnership has created networks of professional development and teacher collaboration that have reached all 58 counties, said Smith of the San Joaquin County Office of Education, which is managing the project.

The and in Berkeley are national leaders in supporting science teachers with training and resources. The nonprofit in the Bay Area is advancing climate literacy with high school students and organizing them to create climate-resilient environments.

“There’s a great deal of professional learning support available to educators,” Sawko said. “It’s really a matter of whether or not school districts are supporting their education.”  

Sawko and other advocates will seek further funding when the $50 million grant runs out in June 2027.

New way to measure growth on test scores stirs criticism 

Along with science, the State Board voted last month to add another dashboard indicator that the California Department of Education has studied on and off for a decade – a measure of students’ growth on test scores.

But the version that the board introduced last year and reapproved again for releasing this fall –  not for accountability purposes – is facing sharp criticism for overstating improvement. The presentation on the dashboard “may cause confusion or even give a misleading understanding of student progress,” the nonprofit student advocacy organization GO Public Schools wrote in a (see pages 30-34).

Growth data measure how assessment scores have increased between the current and previous years and how that growth compares with students’ average growth statewide (see ). It can be used only for math and English language arts in grades four through eight in California, because students aren’t tested annually in science, and only once in high school.

California has been one of only two states without a growth measure for standardized tests, according to an analysis for by USC education professor Morgan Polikoff and Arizona State University researcher Shira Haderlein.

California has relied on a different method to measure yearly increases or declines on the dashboard. It compares the Smarter Balanced scores of the current year’s fourth graders with the students in last year’s fourth grade. This method is limited because it compares two different sets of children, and in some schools, the yearly student transfer rate is high.

Student growth data are useful because they can reveal whether students are falling behind or catching up over time  in which schools, demographic groups and grades. Starting this year, for example, California charter schools that argue students enter school grade levels behind but make big gains over time, even if they haven’t reached proficiency, will be able to use growth data to support their case for school renewal.  

Calculating growth can be complex, and states have chosen different models. One method, pioneered by Louisiana, lets parents see how many points on the test scale their fourth grader is from the proficiency level in math in sixth grade. That often can be a better indicator than grades of what it will take to reach proficiency over two grades.

California has chosen a method called the residual gain model. It begins by looking at each student’s individual point score last year on a Smarter Balanced test and calculates the average yearly gain for all students who had that same score. The same process is then repeated for students by points on the test scale, and finally calculating a statewide average gain.

The state then compares average scores of every school, district and student group with the statewide average and rates them on how many points they fall below or above average. Level 3 is in the middle range of five ratings; Level 5 is at the top, for 20 or more points above average and Level 1, minimal, for 20 or more points below average.

The state has collected the data for three years, but the results won’t appear on the dashboard this fall; those who are interested have to .

“We are just frustrated that the state isn’t reporting the data from the growth model that they painstakingly designed on the dashboard, and instead requires districts, schools and parents/community groups interested in growth to download the data file (and then extract from that file growth data for their school or district,” said Rob Manwaring, senior policy adviser for Children Now.

Instead, it is displaying a puzzling alternative. It is comparing schools, districts and student groups by the percentage of students whose scores increased from the previous year – with an increase defined as a single scale point. Then it rates those percentages with a color rating, using different colors than assigned to other dashboard measures. Schools with a 75% increase were rated average, while a 62% increase was rated “moderate” or Level 2.

“Many schools and districts appear to have very high percentages of students making progress, even when other indicators show little or no improvement,” wrote GO Public Schools. “This overly rosy picture could reduce a sense of urgency to make necessary changes to better serve students.”

David Wakelyn, a partner at , which researches efforts to improve literacy achievement, and a former middle school English teacher in Inglewood, elaborated on that point in an email: “A 1-scale-score point gain between 3rd and 4th grade represents 4 days of learning. Would any normal human celebrate that if it’s what was accomplished in a school year???”

“Celebrating 1 point of scale score growth when kids need 25-50 scale points damages the Board’s credibility and misses the opportunity to be honest about what struggling kids need to succeed,” he wrote. “No one is well-served by it.”

“No other states use a metric of students who made a one-point scale score gain as their indicator,” said Manwaring.

Asked about the criticism, the Department of Education responded in an email. “We have heard the concerns raised and the SBE has asked CDE to revisit the design of the Dashboard Growth Data Cards to include this scale score point metric (average scale score above/below predicted) for the 2027 Dashboard, following public feedback received.”

The department will issue a memo, probably in August, summarizing its plans.  

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Since I became a father three months ago, I cannot stop noticing everything my daughter will inherit simply because of where I am today, as a first-generation college graduate who now sits in rooms my parents never did. She will inherit relationships and people who can help her make sense of the world. She will grow up believing higher education is an expectation. She will know what a resume is. She will be confident enough to ask for help. She’ll know that internships matter and how to ask for letters of recommendation. She’ll understand that careers don’t simply happen.

None of that feels extraordinary to me anymore. It feels normal. But it didn’t used to, and for many talented young people, it still doesn’t.

During high school, I applied to the University of Iowa without ever visiting because most of what I knew about college came from movies. I wanted that picture: a big campus, far from home, nothing like where I came from. Driving out, watching the buildings thin into farmland, it hit me how far I was going.

By the second week, the challenge set in. In class, the professor referenced books my classmates had all read in high school. They could relate. I could not. There were dozens of moments like that, where I realized I was missing things other students already had. I didn’t have the language for it yet, but I was starting to understand that the things I’d thought of as normal weren’t the norm for the people around me.

Then I met a mentor who changed my trajectory. Nancy Humbles, director of the university’s Center for Diversity and Enrichment at the time, made me aware of what I now think of as the second curriculum: the unwritten lessons that would shape my time in college and everything after. At the start of my sophomore year, she asked what I was doing that summer. I hadn’t thought about it; I figured I’d go home and work. She said, absolutely not, you need an internship. I didn’t really know what that was. So she sat me down and walked me through it, including the part nobody tells you: that you apply for the competitive ones in the fall, almost a year ahead.

She didn’t just answer my questions. She asked me the questions I didn’t know to ask. When you are the first in your family to go to college, that is what you are missing. Not intelligence, not drive. You simply do not know what you do not know.

Years later, I was the one at the front of the classroom, a first-year elementary school teacher on Chicago’s West Side, seeing my younger self in students who were capable, hardworking and lacking the exact things I had been missing.

Today I work at Braven, a national nonprofit embedded within colleges and universities that partners with employers to build career readiness into the undergraduate experience. Students take a credit-bearing course and work alongside a coach, a working professional who helps them learn the second curriculum I once had to piece together on my own. 

More than 17,400 students have come through the program. Within six months of finishing college, had landed a strong first job or started graduate school, a 12-point edge over comparable students nationally. They also complete internships at rates 28 points above their peers. 

But a single program, however good, can’t be the whole answer. I still see students doing everything right, persisting, checking every box, who still don’t have the team around them that makes the difference.

Here is what I wish someone had told me earlier: Most of the rules that govern colleges and workplaces were made up by regular people. I used to treat those institutions with reverence until I got older, ended up in the rooms where decisions are made and realized the people there were ordinary, just like me. The systems that shape a life weren’t designed by geniuses. If ordinary people built them, ordinary people can rebuild them.

Too often, first-generation and low-income students are told that hard work is enough. But that message is incomplete. It assumes they already understand the rules of a game nobody has explained to them. The missing piece is someone willing to teach you that second curriculum, if you weren’t among the lucky few to inherit it.

I look at my daughter, and I am not worried about her. She will inherit that second curriculum without ever realizing it has a name. She’ll inherit people to call, expectations about college, confidence walking into unfamiliar rooms and the quiet assumption that she belongs there. What I am concerned about is how many young people who are just as capable will navigate without it.

Anyone can be a builder. It doesn’t take extraordinary genius to look at the future you want for other people’s children and start building it. It just takes deciding that the rules somebody else made up can be made again.

Drawing on this source material, Claude can generate lessons and materials aligned to an educator’s state standards and curriculum. Given how much teacher time goes into that kind of planning, it’s easy to see why CfT is appealing.

We’re glad to see artificial intelligence’s potential being tapped to help teachers individualize instruction at a scale that wasn’t possible even a few years ago. We are also happy to see a major frontier lab with the resources and technical skills to do it. But public school systems don’t operate like the private companies and government agencies Anthropic is used to working with. Teachers face legal exposure around sharing student data that simply doesn’t exist in those sectors.

This creates a severe employment risk for educators. 

Anthropic’s own shows the problem: “Analyze class data to plan instruction. Hand Claude a folder of data — roster, diagnostics, attendance, your own notes — and it builds a clear picture of where every student is, allowing teachers to better tailor instruction. You control what data is shared; nothing you share is used in model training.”

While this pitch appeals directly to overburdened educators, encouraging them to hand over those kinds of data immediately puts them at risk, because it invites teachers to sidestep district policy and, potentially, state and federal law.

CfT’s privacy terms are stronger than those of ordinary consumer AI products: It does not train on teacher inputs or outputs, and it offers data encryption, deletion rights, audits and breach notification. Anthropic says its with teachers is “written to comply with FERPA” — federal student privacy law — but that’s a claim about how the contract is drafted, not a promise that any individual teacher’s use is lawful. 

Here’s the problem: The marketing prompt to “hand Claude a folder of data” (even with the added disclaimer to check district policies) directly conflicts with CfT’s terms of service in two ways. First, the terms require that the teacher have the authority to designate Anthropic as a “school official.” But FERPA dictates that a vendor qualifies as a “school official” only if the district designates it as such and if the vendor is under the district’s “direct control.” An individual teacher can’t make that designation. 

Second, the terms of service require teachers to indemnify Anthropic for claims arising from what they upload. These terms also cap Anthropic’s liability. In short, the educator, not Anthropic, is assuming the risk. 

While the marketing describes an appealing set of features, the terms lay out requirements that are legally impossible for a teacher to meet. If educators agree to these terms and upload data, they could potentially be fired for it. These risks are even greater when any information about students with disabilities (like an individualized education program) or medical conditions (like a Section 504 plan) is shared. 

Both authors have spent years working with school district bureaucracies, so we know firsthand how hard the purchasing process can be and how legal barriers around data privacy and security can slow the adoption of innovative technology. We both agree that the procurement and purchasing process needs reform to enable such adoption, but bypassing districts and going straight to individual teachers defies fundamental tenets of education policy and practice. 

We want tools like CfT to work and to be used. But there need to be changes in how Anthropic (and other large-scale AI providers gain access to data. The way to make this work is to build data access and governance rules that school systems themselves control. Currently, several initiatives are underway to make this a reality. For example, the , the and the are active state- and district-led initiatives working to develop sophisticated, standards-based AI data access systems within district control. They ensure that AI models can draw on state-specific standards and curriculum and local classroom data where allowed, without requiring individual educators to take on the risk of feeding sensitive student information into third-party tools without the authority to do so. 

Building such technology systems and their governance is hard and time-consuming work that may go against the “move fast and break things” ethos that many tech companies embody. But Anthropic and other AI labs should be collaborating with states and school districts to help build and even assist in funding such systems for the public benefit. They would be part of the solution to this knotty problem instead of fueling the growing AI backlash in public education.

A Senate committee advanced legislation Thursday aimed at undoing the Trump administration’s efforts to split apart the U.S. Department of Education. The bill delivers the plan the biggest rebuke since Education Secretary Linda McMahon began shifting offices to other agencies last year.

The education committee’s would keep oversight of K-12 and services for students with disabilities at the department. It would also keep the Office of Postsecondary Education out of the Department of Labor and the Office of Indian Education from moving to the Department of the Interior.

The legislation leaves “landmark education programs,” like Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act “at the Department of Education where Congress specifically put them and where they belong,” said Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, who along with GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, co-sponsored the bill with Sen. Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat. 

Sen. Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican who chairs the committee, voted no on the bill, saying that he’s open to moving some programs, but opposes giving the Department of Health and Human Services responsibility for special education. That move treats “students with disabilities as patients to diagnose rather than learners to educate,” he said, adding that he doubts that any Education Department staff transferred there would be “empowered and prioritized” to do their jobs.

Despite the bipartisan support for leaving much of the department intact, nine members, all Republicans, voted against it. “Many of us have long believed that the federal footprint in education is much larger than it needs to be,” said Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.

Following the vote, McMahon and six other Trump cabinet members saying there are “misconceptions” about the agreements and they just need more time to prove they’ll work. They have already “demonstrated measurable results by driving stronger grant competitions, streamlining government operations and producing better outcomes for Americans,” they wrote.

Political observers have said since the beginning that the administration’s plan to eliminate the department doesn’t stand a chance of passing the Senate, and Thursday was evidence of that. The legislation, however, still needs to pass the full Senate and is a sharp contrast to the package of 10 bills the House education committee moved earlier this month formalizing the movement of most key programs out of the department. While House Republicans call the arrangements “reform,” the actions have prompted Rep. Suzanne Bonamici to launch an impeachment effort against McMahon. The Oregon Democrat says the agreements are illegal and that the Republicans’ bills are an attempt “to cover for the unlawful actions already taken.” 

Even if the House passes those 10 bills, it’s highly unlikely they would ever get votes in the Senate, said David Cleary, a principal with The Group, a Washington lobbying firm and a former Republican education staffer for the Senate.

The Senate bill, he added, might not go any further either. It’s possible, he said, that Collins and Murkowski could attach it as an amendment to the for defense spending that Republicans are trying to pass through a process known as reconciliation. But even then, it might fail, Cleary said.

During that July 15 markup in the House, Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia said that the proposals don’t do anything to fulfill McMahon’s promise to “return education to the states.”

“You’re just moving people around Washington D.C.,” he said.

On Thursday, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington pressed the department to disclose how much the moves are costing taxpayers.

The Senate bill includes her amendment requiring McMahon to provide Congress with quarterly reports on how much the department is spending to implement the agreements. The department, so far, has spent $1 million to move just one relatively small office running to the Department of Labor, and the administration is asking for an to hire more staff to help with the transition.

“If you’re proud of this deal, show us the price tag,” Murray said. “What do you have to hide?”

Murray also offered separate amendments to reverse all of the agreements, including relocating the Office for Civil Rights to the Department of Justice, but those didn’t pass the committee. Collins said she’s in favor of letting the Justice Department take over education civil rights investigations because she said OCR has failed to address anti-semitism on college campuses.

But Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a Democrat, said the move won’t improve conditions for Jewish students because the administration has downsized the civil rights workforce. 

“We are at a 12-year low in terms of the number of cases that are being resolved,” he said. DOJ is “just out of the business of trying to investigate serious instances of civil rights abuse.”

Of all the interagency agreements, placing special education within HHS has received the most attention. One advocacy group supports the change, arguing that the shift would offer families more resources when their children transition out of the K-12 system. Out of the , HHS already runs federally funded programs for adults with disabilities.

“Too many students leave school without a clear path to a meaningful career, education or training path,” Rachel Barkley, director of Able Americans, wrote in . 

But overall, have been highly unpopular. Over 700 organizations have signed saying that moving special education to HHS and civil rights to the Department of Justice undermines a “coordinated and cohesive approach” to addressing discrimination complaints. 

Shifting oversight, some advocates say, not only separates special education from OCR, but also from the Office for Elementary and Secondary Education, which McMahon transferred to the Department of Labor.

“These are education programs,” Bonamici said during the July 15 House markup. “K-12 is education; it is not job training.” 

On a recent call with reporters, led by Murray, one parent explained that when her older son was diagnosed with a disability, she immediately wondered if he would ever go to college. Both of Lanya Elsa’s sons have Usher syndrome, a genetic disease that affects hearing and vision.

Conner, now 26, graduated college and works for Alaska Airlines. Dalton, 18, graduated this year with a 4.0 GPA from Bellevue High School in Washington. She attributed their success to the Department of Education’s “specialized expertise.”

“That future was not guaranteed for them,” said Elsa, also a special education researcher and teacher. “It was made possible by families, educators, specialists, … federally funded deafblind programs and civil rights protections that believed my sons belonged.”

The (S.4689) would strengthen the federal government’s oversight of the science of reading through amendments to the , which currently provides $194 million to aid literacy instruction in 23 states. 

“Capable students are dropping out of high school simply because they were never taught to read,” said U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee chairman Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana. “This legislation aims to address the national literacy crisis by strengthening evidence-based literacy instruction … and empowering states, local communities and parents with more resources.”

After the bill’s 20-2 passage out of the Senate HELP Committee, it now heads to the floor for a full senate vote. Other bills, including one that would explicitly identify dyslexia as a learning disability under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, also passed Thursday.

The READ Act closely mirrors and expands on a similar bill that unanimously passed the House of Representative’s Education Committee in March, but has not yet been taken up for a full House vote.

Both the Senate and House bill aim to define the science of reading in federal law as instruction that teaches phonics and phonemic awareness and also builds vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, oral language and writing skills. 

A report released earlier this year found nearly a third of teachers still used “discredited” methods to teach kids how to read and aren’t fully committed to the science of reading. Both bills, however, would reject the use of federal funds for other teaching methods, such as three-cueing, where students are asked to figure out unfamiliar words through context clues or pictures.

The READ Act further includes proposals for prioritizing federal support for the bottom 10% of underperforming states and shifting funding of individual literacy projects to more systematic widespread efforts like requirements for early literacy screening.

It also has language that calls for teacher preparation program audits, expands professional development opportunities and creates new requirements for states to provide more detailed annual reports with the number of students receiving intervention, the number of teachers receiving professional development and the number of districts using high-quality learning materials aligned with the science of reading if they’re receiving the grant.

Keri Rodrigues, co-founder and president of the National Parents Union, said the bill’s passage out of committee is the result of years of advocacy from families.

“This is a bill that codifies the fact that the sky is blue,” Rodrigues said. “We’re just very excited that folks are seeing the importance of this, and we’re able to finally get [lawmakers] to show they can prioritize kids, they can be swayed based on evidence, they can actually make good decisions for kids and frankly do the right thing in what is a very difficult political climate.”

Lawmakers on Thursday also considered the (S.3010), another piece of legislation that would affect students who are learning to read.

The 21st Century Dyslexia Act proposed to add and explicitly define dyslexia as a disability covered under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act — requiring schools to provide accommodations and other services needed for dyslexic students to be successful in the classroom.

Under IDEA, students with “” are protected, but Cassidy argued that making dyslexia a disability category — similar to what was done with — would “increase screening, identification and the number of students receiving appropriate accommodations.”

“When reading scores haven’t moved and 20% of readers are dyslexic — and therefore learn to read differently — we either choose or choose not to do something positive for these students,” Cassidy said. “If we’re serious about addressing the inexcusably low literacy rates, we must pass this bill.”

More than a dozen organizations, including The Reading League, National Center for Learning Disabilities and International Dyslexia Association , with concerns it would undermine support and confuse states.

In a written statement, the organizations also argued the legislation could be harmful because it used an outdated definition of dyslexia from the early 2000s. A new definition, which removed old IQ-discrepancy requirements, was from the International Dyslexia Association.

Democratic lawmakers, such as Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, brought up the challenges Thursday. 

“There are 27 states, including Indiana, Florida, Kansas, Ohio, South Carolina, that effectively ban the use of this definition. Congress banned the use of this definition in the 2004 version of the IDEA,” Murphy said. “When you define dyslexia as relational between intelligence and reading ability, … many students with dyslexia … are judged to have lower intelligence levels. They don’t get services because you essentially have to show that there is a substantial difference between your reading ability and your assessed level of intelligence.”

Murphy recommended to “convene a national conversation on this issue of the definition,” and for the federal government “to provide a higher level of technical assistance to states as they seek to get services out to people with disabilities,” before the bill ultimately passed 12-10.

Plenty of students have . It turns out some educators have their own anxiety about teaching the subject, a new study finds. And that appears to affect their students — especially those already struggling in the subject.

The draws on an unusually detailed survey of teachers in Indiana. They were asked how much they agreed with statements like “Teaching mathematics does not intimidate me at all” and “Of all the subjects, mathematics is the one I worry about teaching.”

Based on those answers, the researchers created a “math teaching anxiety” score for over 3,000 educators who taught math in grades three through eight. Those grades are when state testing occurs, allowing the researchers to link teachers to their students’ progress.

The good news: Math anxiety was not all that prevalent among elementary and middle school teachers in Indiana. Just over half were highly confident teaching the subject, and nearly 40% reported middling confidence. That left 11% of teachers with significant apprehension about teaching math.

New teachers were especially likely to lack confidence, perhaps reflecting broader struggles in the classroom, the researchers found. Early-grade educators also tended to have a bit less assurance in math. This makes sense since the study included middle school teachers, many of whom specialize in the subject.

Math-anxious teachers were not evenly spread across classrooms. Students with disabilities, low-achieving students, and students from lower-income families were more likely to have such teachers. It’s also possible that teachers became less confident in their ability because they taught more students who struggled in math.

Then the researchers asked the next obvious question: Do students learn less when they’re taught by anxious math teachers? In short, yes.

The differences in learning rates were real but modest. An average student’s scores dipped by about one percentile when taught by a less confident math teacher, the researchers found. The harm could grow if students had multiple anxious math teachers in a row, the study speculated. Girls, Asian American students, and English learners seemed to be affected a bit more severely by having an anxious math teacher.

The study paints a particularly troubling picture of math instruction for students already struggling in the subject. They were more likely to have an anxious teacher, and when they did, their learning suffered more. In other words, the students who needed the most help in math were often taught by teachers least equipped to provide it.

NaYoung Hwang, the study’s lead author and a professor at the University of New Hampshire, said there are a number of potential explanations for the results. Math-anxious teachers may have spent less time on the subject, explained math concepts less clearly, or even made their own math errors. Perhaps their own ambivalence and anxiety came through.

“When teachers are genuinely excited about the content, students tend to engage much more,” Hwang said.

The study partially validates the long-standing concern that elementary school teachers, at least some of them, are not sufficiently equipped to teach math. A National Council on Teacher Quality report that most elementary teacher preparation programs don’t spend enough time on core math content.

The study also offers an insight relevant beyond math instruction.

Teachers who lacked confidence teaching math had correctly self-diagnosed their own weakness. School administrators should keep that in mind when planning professional development and support for educators. Perhaps they should start by asking teachers themselves what they need to get better.

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

A bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers from around the nation on Monday identified lack of facilities and high costs as two leading challenges states are facing in addressing childcare needs.

The bipartisan group, which includes a New Mexico lawmaker, presented their findings at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Chicago, along with several proposed solutions.

The report found that nearly 30% of the nation has a childcare gap, meaning more children require care than daycare centers can accommodate. Economically, the report found that childcare averages a cost of $13,000 annually — and that infant care, in particular, can run as high as $27,000, roughly equivalent to . And it found that the median annual wage for childcare professionals nationally is just $32,000.

The panel proposed seven solutions: expand access and availability; address affordability; invest in the childcare workforce; modernize licensing and quality-rating systems; strengthen small childcare businesses; find for the future; and elevate state early childhood governance and leadership.

Monday’s discussion often turned to New Mexico, where Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in late 2025 . Earlier this year, the state Legislature passed during specific times of economic decline.

State Sen. Linda Trujillo (D-Santa Fe) told a room of conference attendees Monday that work to create the universal program had been underway for years, although many people in and out of New Mexico hadn’t heard of it until late last year.

“New Mexico didn’t just wake up one morning and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to provide universal childcare,’ ” she said.

In 2019, while a member of the state House of Representatives, Trujillo to create the , which now oversees universal childcare. The next year, state leaders with an investment of more than $300 million. The fund’s balance, which pays for universal childcare in large part, .

Jenna Bannon, associate director of the NCSL’s Children and Families Program, added that the very report conferencegoers discussed Monday was born in New Mexico. The bipartisan group of 13 state lawmakers first met in Albuquerque in mid-2025 to compare notes on their respective states’ challenges surrounding childcare access and affordability, she said.

The work, she said, was important because childcare has gone from being a family-based, private issue to a public, economic issue. Leaders in most every state are looking for direction on how to navigate the many issues childcare affects, particularly workforce development, she noted.

According to Bannon, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts about 160,000 job openings for childcare workers each year in the coming decade. If those workers can’t make livable wages, that can have an impact on households where both parents want to work outside of the home, she said.

“If childcare is the workforce behind the workforce, we have a problem on our hands.”

Trujillo said that problem is felt even in New Mexico, where every family is eligible for free childcare.

“Just because we say we have universal childcare doesn’t mean that we have universal access,” she said. “In Santa Fe, I have a working group of city councilors, county commissioners, community college and school board members because we have a shortage of 1,200 spaces for birth to 3-year-olds.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Goldberg for questions: info@sourcenm.com.

After teaching math for years, Nicolle Dexter completed a data science graduate program. To her, the growing interest in the field was not a temporary trend but a discipline shaping our future. The evidence says she was right. Companies rely on analytics for revenue projections, healthcare professionals use longitudinal data tracking to diagnose patients, and even artists and influencers depend on engagement, streaming and sales data.

Dexter pitched a pilot course to her school district as an alternative to Algebra II for students who had completed Geometry. District leaders welcomed it as a way to modernize math instruction. Soon her course at Holmen High School had 12 students enrolled.

Students signed up for different reasons. Jackson Dwyer, one of three seniors I spoke to, had already taken AP Statistics and Computer Science; data science let him “combine those fields in a different way.” Maria Suarez did not want to take AP Statistics, which “sounded too dry,” but she knew applied statistical concepts would be fundamental to her planned career in chemistry. Owen Shaw thought the course was interesting and applicable to college. All three cited one shared reason: “We like Ms. Dexter!”

Dexter designed a new approach to math education from scratch. She didn’t try to make it match with what they’ve experienced before in math classes. Instead, she modeled it after what her master’s degree classes looked like. No tests, no worksheets, no typical homework — the course is solely project-based, moving from data collection to data visualization to hands-on model building.

Students collected data about their own behaviors to find patterns, drew candy from a bowl to understand probability and built histograms using Pokemon card statistics. Unsurprisingly, each student picked topics that interested them to learn core principles of data science. Maria’s favorite project analyzed lobbying expenditures for Wisconsin’s congressional delegation and found that a small number make up a large majority of contributions. Owen categorized the notifications he received on his phone and discovered that promotional college emails made up a disproportionate majority.

The course structure breaks subject silos. To complete projects, students routinely combine algebra, data analysis, subject area knowledge and coding. Perhaps that interdisciplinary nature is why all three students concluded the subject does not feel like it belongs to the math department at all. “This is a bit of a different approach to math class than anything I have taken before,” said Jackson.

Dexter believes that conclusion is partly driven by a misconception. “I think that my students would incorrectly say that they do less math in this class, than in other classes, because they have a misconception about what math is,” she said. “It is not a procedural math that they could rely on in the past. Some of the uncertainty that is an important part of data science is what we are interested in.” 

That uncertainty was a novelty at first, but Dexter kept raising the difficulty until students had the tools to explore large data sets and find answers.

As the school year ended, Maria admitted, “This class has definitely shifted how I feel about the statistics side of math. It doesn’t have to be super boring!”

Implementation was hard on everyone. Students acknowledged the course required more work than others, especially learning Python syntax alongside analytical approaches to data. But they said Dexter’s approach was never about memorizing lines of code; it was about understanding the process of problem-solving. Her own biggest challenge was letting go of the teacher-led classroom model.

Arguably, that seeming chaos is a much closer reflection of real-world math than worksheets and equations. For decades, math and the way it’s taught  have not changed. Parents of students at Holmen High learned the same calculus concepts from textbooks no different from today’s.

Generations were taught to imagine math solely as a procedural science: analyze an equation, complete the right steps, get the right answer. The real objective — and perhaps the real challenge — of modernizing math instruction is making it applicable to students’ lives, taking math from its procedural roots to its creative applications. That is what Dexter set out to do  at Holmen High.

While states and districts continue to debate data science education, the real world does not wait. Instead of leaving data literacy on the margins of the K-12 curriculum as employers’ demand for it grows, policymakers, teachers and curriculum designers ought to treat it as a plank of the national effort to improve literacy. 

To be successful in the tech-heavy world of tomorrow, children will need pattern recognition, statistical analysis, and data storytelling just as much as numeracy and literacy. And Dexter’s classroom is a snapshot of what innovation can look like when teachers are empowered to teach for the real world.

The results, even in the small sample of 12 students, speak volumes. Jackson and Owen are headed college and into degrees in computer science and electrical engineering with a stronger background. Maria, who hopes to major in chemistry, is excited to take more data science courses in college. 

Put simply, if public schools take a leap to stop teaching the priorities of yesterday, students will become skilled-adults of tomorrow.

Subpoenaed by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the Republican chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Fauci repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to decline to respond, and accused the senator of an “unhinged obsession” with putting him in jail. Former President Joe Biden for any crimes he may have committed dating back to 2014 in his official roles with the government, but Paul threatened “repercussions” over Fauci’s refusal to answer questions and said the committee will vote next week on contempt charges.

“You argue that you did not personally issue every lockdown order, close schools or impose every mandate, but officials across the country invoked your authority to justify these decisions,” said Paul, who described Fauci as more concerned about his celebrity status than scientific evidence. “Children lost years of education.”

The hearing followed Paul’s recent release of Fauci kept during the height of the COVID crisis. The entries reveal his conflict with President Donald Trump over keeping schools open and his sense of pride that officials, like former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff, followed his guidance on closing schools. On June 29, 2020, for example, he noted with former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, about allowing in-person learning to resume that fall. “Since this is the first decision among governors regarding opening for the fall term, he feels that he will be the example,” Fauci wrote. “I recommended that he delay decision for two weeks.”

Democrats praised Fauci for his decades of service under both Republican and Democratic presidents and characterized the hearing as a personal vendetta by Paul. , the ranking Democrat on the committee, said the hearing was a distraction from some of the current public health issues facing the public, including a rise in measles cases. With staff cuts, he added, “the administration has hollowed out the public health workforce.” 

Republicans, he said, are just “relitigating the past.”

Much of the questioning focused on whether Fauci misled the public about the source of the virus, saying that it originated in a Chinese market, while he wrote to himself that the market was only an “amplifier.” Since 2021, Paul has accused Fauci of lying about the National Institutes of Health funding the type of lab research in China that created COVID. 

“Many people would say, ‘Well gosh, that doesn’t sound like a really good idea, to create viruses that don’t exist in nature to see if they’ll infect human cells,’ ” Paul said. “The American people deserve an apology.”

‘Slower in learning’

The nation’s schools shut down in mid-March 2020 as states responded to calls from Trump, under Fauci’s advice, to “slow the spread” of the disease. But what most assumed would be short-term measures turned into more than a year of on-again, off-again closures and intense battles over mask and vaccine mandates. By October of 2020, education researchers began to estimate that students had lost more than a year of learning in reading and math.

Those predictions held up. Data from the most recent shows that overall, students still haven’t reached pre-pandemic levels in reading and math. 

Children are “slower in learning language now because they couldn’t watch someone’s lips moving,” said Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, a Republican.

He also pressed Fauci on a May 6, 2020 conversation he had with Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over the fact that 1 million children had missed their measles vaccinations because of the shutdown. 

“This is terrible and needs to be addressed since on that basis alone, there would be far, far more excess deaths from measles among children than coronavirus deaths among children,” Fauci wrote. 

But Sen. Maggie Hassan, a New Hampshire Democrat, blamed the current administration for the rise in measles cases. So far this year, there have been over 2,300 reported measles cases, .

“Children are dying because there has been increased vaccine hesitancy fueled by Robert F. Kennedy,” Hassan said about the Health and Human Services secretary.

During the hearing, Trump took credit for the rapid development of the COVID vaccine. But he said he relied less on Fauci’s advice over time. 

“I didn’t let him shut the country down, although he wanted to,” Trump wrote. “I went the Federalist way, and let the governors decide.”

The public, however, thought the president didn’t respond quickly enough to the outbreak. In an April 2020 , 65% of Americans said Trump was too slow to take major steps to address the threat.

Some experts say what schools needed at the time was strong federal guidance on reopening. 

“It’s one thing to close for a couple weeks, which is what we all thought was going to happen,” said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which launched one of the of schools’ responses to the virus. “A couple weeks turned into months and years in some cases. That’s where the real cost to kids came in.”

She declined to say Fauci is to blame for the prolonged damage to students’ learning and mental health. But she said neither the Trump nor the Biden administrations protected schools from the political storm over reopening and COVID protocols.

“Everybody involved bears responsibility,” she said. “So many things went wrong.” 

Pencils are more expensive. So are notebooks, scissors, glue sticks — just about every back-to-school item that families will load into their literal or virtual carts this summer has gone up in price at a time when American families already feel crushed by rising costs.

of the 21 most common school supply items by the Groundwork Collaborative and The Century Foundation, two progressive think tanks, prices are up about 7.7 percent with parents paying an average of $173.45 for their school supply haul. That’s an even bigger jump . Add to that an 11 percent hike in prices for school lunch essentials — from the literal needed to feed young children to apple juice — and costs balloon to nearly $4,000 a year to cover supplies and meals. 

That data was first shared exclusively with The 19th. The analysis is based on weekly retail transaction data on millions of products collected by NielsenIQ from about 50,000 retailers.

With school supply costs outpacing inflation, many families — and especially the women who do the majority of purchases in American households — are going to feel the sticker shock, said Lindsay Owens, the president and CEO of the Groundwork Collaborative.

“Women in this country are rip-roaring mad about the price hikes that they’re absorbing. They’re trying to manage household finances and budgeting. They’re trying to feed their kids healthy food,” Owens said. “The work is getting harder of providing for your family.”

Here are the school supplies with the biggest spikes in price: 

• Lunch boxes are up 27 percent
• Notebooks, notebook paper, tissues and index cards are all up about 20 percent
• Scissor costs rose 14 percent
• Dry erase markers and glue sticks are up 8 percent
• Headphones, binders, crayons, colored pencils and No. 2 pencils increased between 5 and 7 percent

On the lunch side: 

• 12 ounces of blueberries are up a whopping 48 percent
• A loaf of sandwich bread is up 22 percent
• Apple juice prices have risen 20 percent
• A pound of oranges has risen 17 percent
• A box of packaged animal crackers will run you nearly 16 percent more 
• A package of chocolate chip cookies is up 14 percent

Driving up some of these costs are tariffs and the war on Iran. 

Take blueberries, which American families have every year, particularly those with berry-aged children who pop them like M&Ms. About half of the berries Americans eat are imported, many from Peru, which is now instead of the United States because of tariff increases. 

The other half of America’s blueberries are grown domestically, a good portion of them in Maine, the top producer of wild berries in the country. But tariffs on steel and aluminum have made it more costly to purchase the equipment needed to harvest the crops. 

“Our consumers, our manufacturers, our blueberry growers, and more will all continue to pay the price,” Sen. Susan Collins, the Republican from Maine,  

Similarly, many school supplies are produced overseas, like , which are predominantly imported from Brazil, China, Mexico and India. The war in Iran, which has raised fuel and shipping costs, has directly and those price increases are being passed on to consumers. Though , oil prices hit a in late July.

“Gas prices filter through to everything, but especially food,” Owens said. “The cost of transporting food goes up. The cost of farming goes up because the cost of diesel is up. The cost of plastic goes up, so the packaging around pencils or deli ham, that gets more expensive. All of that is going to filter through to higher food prices and higher prices for consumer goods like back-to-school staples.”

The problem is parents don’t have a lot of wiggle room on the matter, said Julie Margetta Morgan, the president of the Century Foundation. Kids need the supplies to be successful during the year, and parents, whether they’re low- or high-income, want to ensure their kids can thrive. 

of parents expect to take on debt to cover back-to-school shopping this year, up from 34 percent in 2024, according to a survey of parents with kids under 18 conducted this summer by Intuit Credit Karma. One in five parents say they also to keep up with what other parents are buying their kids, a June NerdWallet survey found.

“There’s a really strong actual cost — but also emotional cost — to having to make really impossible choices about caring for yourself and caring for your family in order to bear the costs of tariffs and of a war that seems impossible to explain why we’re involved in it,” Morgan said. “It is weighing particularly heavily on mothers.” 

It’s around this time every year that Victoria Albano starts to cut back on any expenses for herself to make sure she can cover all the back-to-school items for her 6-year-old daughter, who is entering first grade this year. A to get everything on her list — among the items, two packs of wired headphones, Band-Aids, eight folders and four composition notebooks — cost about $230.

Albano, her husband and her daughter moved to Duluth, Georgia, three years ago because housing costs squeezed them out of New Jersey. They swapped their $2,500-a-month, two-bedroom apartment there for a $2,000-a-month, three-bedroom home in Georgia. But even with the savings, utility and gas prices remain high, Albano said. School supplies are another stressor. 

Recently, she said, “I was up all night trying to figure out what to buy and what not to buy.”

“I’m not struggling, but I’m not where I want to be,” Albano said.  

When Albano, a full-time content creator, , a deluge of messages come in from moms desperately asking Albano to donate items to their kids.

Many families cite living under that financial stress, said Ailen Arreaza, the executive director of ParentsTogether, a national nonprofit that works to engage parents politically. In the organization’s surveys, about 70 percent of parents cite experiencing financial strain, with little relief in sight.

It’s all further complicated by the loss of government benefits over the past year. More than 4 million Americans, , have lost their benefits through SNAP, the food assistance program that helps low-income people buy groceries. That makes family budgets even tighter going into the new school year.

“It feels like we are a little bit at a breaking point,” Arreaza said. “The concern and the situation just feels untenable right now.”

To get by, parents are searching their local back-to-school fairs for supplies, or seeking out backpack giveaways and school supply distributions. Some families are working more over the summer to cover increased costs. 

By the time November’s midterm elections roll around, some of this pressure is likely to be on parents’ minds in an election that will no doubt center affordability. Both parties .

Right now, Arreaza said, “parents are so busy and focused on their day-to-day and November feels far away and the election can feel far away for parents, but the reality of what is happening everyday feels very real for families.” 

Even if folks aren’t thinking about the election, she said, “they’re thinking about the system that is making it harder for them and they’re noticing the differences.”

was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of .