After more than a year of uncertainty over how a Republican-controlled Congress under President Donald Trump would change federal education funding, lawmakers on Tuesday approved a fiscal 2026 budget that maintains level funding for virtually every existing K-12 program. The House voted 217-214 on Feb. 3 to approve a package of five spending bills the…
Enrollment in private school choice programs have exploded in recent years, with Republican-led states collectively investing billions of dollars in subsidies for families to spend on private educational options of their choosing. Vouchers go toward private school tuition. Education savings accounts, or ESAs, cover a broader range of expenses, including tuition, fees, equipment and material…
The U.S. Department of Education spent up to $38 million last year paying staffers from its office for civil rights to remain on administrative leave while the Trump administration’s efforts to lay them off were stymied by courts, according to a report from Congress’ investigative arm. The Government Accountability Office reached its cost estimate—a range…
Two Minnesota school districts and the state’s teachers’ union filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to stop immigration agents from carrying out enforcement activity at or near schools. The suit challenges the Trump administration’s decision to revoke a long-standing policy that generally prohibited Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents from making immigration arrests and…
Katie Collins is one of the nation’s top teachers. And not long ago, she thought of leaving the classroom. “I was on a carpet with kids, feeling alone, even though I have so much support at my school and everybody is all in for kids,” said Collins, a 1st grade teacher at Bluff Park Elementary…
The public comment period is now open for Oklahoma’s proposed new academic standards for social studies that do not include several concepts championed by former state Superintendent Ryan Walters. As posted to the Oklahoma State Department of Education’s website, the proposed new standards do not include Bible stories, nor do they call for students to…
As Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver drove to her teaching job at Winooski High School in the small refugee resettlement city outside of Burlington, Vt., on Jan. 12, she listened to news related to the shooting death of Minnesota resident Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent days earlier. And she wondered how her friend Tracy…
New efforts to establish religious charter schools are accelerating in several states, as advocates hope to return to the U.S. Supreme Court and finally get an answer about whether such schools pass constitutional muster. Last year, the justices deadlocked 4-4 in a case over the proposed St. Isidore of Seville Catholic virtual charter school in…
Students around the country have staged school walkouts in the last month to protest federal immigration enforcement tactics—drawing concerns about their safety from school administrators and criticism from conservative leaders opposed to their cause. The student protests follow the killing of two civilians by federal officials in Minneapolis, where a surge of confrontational enforcement actions…
