What would it mean if President-elect Trump dismantled the US Department of Education?

  In her role as former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, Linda McMahon oversaw an enterprise that popularized the “takedown” for millions of wrestling fans. But as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of education, the Trump loyalist may be tasked with taking down the very department Trump has asked her to lead.

  If Trump does dismantle the Department of Education as he has promised to do, he will have succeeded at something that President Ronald Reagan vowed to do in 1980. Just like Trump, Reagan campaigned on abolishing the department, which at the time was only a year old. Since then, the Republican Party platform has repeatedly called for eliminating the Education Department, which oversees a range of programs and initiatives. These include special funding for schools in low-income communities – known as Title I – and safeguarding the rights of students with disabilities.

Project 2025 policies would make schools less safe for all students

  School is often a safe haven for marginalized youth, including LGBTQI+ students. The Trevor Project reports in a large-scale 2024 survey that LGBTQI+ students who find their schools to be affirming experience lower suicidality. Even one supportive adult—such as a teacher—can decrease suicide risks for an LGBTQI+ young person by as much as 43 percent.

  But in 2023, lawmakers who support anti-LGBTQI+ legislation introduced hundreds of bills that, if passed, would significantly disrupt access to a safe and quality education for LGBTQI+ students. Importantly, the legislation considered in 2023 is part of a larger trend; the number of anti-LGBTQI+ school policy bills considered across the country has steadily and dramatically increased in recent years, and this year, state legislatures have continued to introduce and consider a plethora of similar harmful bills. From censoring LGBTQI+ curricula, to restricting bathroom access for transgender students, the far right has introduced dozens of policies that inflict educational harm, with many becoming state law.

70 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, public schools still deeply segregated

  Brown vs. Board of Education, the pivotal Supreme Court decision that made school segregation unconstitutional, turns 70 years old on May 17, 2024.

  At the time of the 1954 ruling, 17 U.S. states had laws permitting or requiring racially segregated schools. The Brown decision declared that segregation in public schools was “inherently unequal.” This was, in part, because the court argued that access to equitable, nonsegregated education played a critical role in creating informed citizens – a paramount concern for the political establishment amid the Cold War. With Brown, the justices overturned decades of legal precedent that kept Black Americans in separate and unequal schools.

Finding objective ways to talk about religion in the classroom is tough − but the cost of not doing so is clear

  Religious strife continues in many places. While the United States has a great deal of litigation and controversy over religion’s place in public life, it has largely avoided violence. Yet our society often seems unprepared to talk constructively about this contentious topic, especially in schools.

40 years ago ‘A Nation at Risk’ warned of a ‘rising tide of mediocrity’ in US schools – has anything changed?

  The National Commission on Excellence in Education’s release of a report titled “A Nation at Risk” in 1983 was a pivotal point in the history of American education. The report used dire language, lamenting that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

  Using Cold War language, the report also famously stated: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

School choice proposals rarely go before voters – and typically fail when they do

  Arizona lawmakers decided in late 2022 that the state will pay tuition, related education expenses, or both for children at any school parents select, including private and religious schools.

  It’s the latest step in an effort to provide public funds for private schools that in Arizona began in 2011. And that step was taken along what I have discovered to be a familiar route.

Is it time for teachers to get a raise?

  In his 2023 State of the Union address, President Joe Biden called for public school teachers to get a raise but offered no specifics on how that could be done. Here, Michael Addonizio, an education policy expert at Wayne State University, provides insight on the current state of teacher salaries, whether a collective raise is in order, and how one might be achieved.

Florida Gov. DeSantis leads the GOP’s national charge against public education that includes lessons on race and sexual orientation

  Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ disdain for “woke ideology” is on full display.

  At a January 2023 inaugural event, the governor boasted that “Florida is where woke goes to die.”

  This is more than political bluster.

Court OKs coach's on-field prayer, shifting balance for religious expression

  In its decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton, the Supreme Court strengthened First Amendment protection for religious speech by government officials.

The Case

  Public high school football coach Joseph Kennedy filed a lawsuit alleging his rights to free speech and freedom of religion were violated when he was fired for praying at the 50-yard line after each game.

Perspectives: Court sets new rules for funding religious schools

  The Supreme Court, in striking down a unique tuition assistance program in Maine, could foreshadow the future of religious freedom under the First Amendment.

The Case

  The very rural state of Maine is not able to provide a local public secondary school in every school district. To fill the gaps, it allows parents to designate a secondary school for their children to attend and, if a private school is chosen, the school district will pay the cost of the student’s tuition.

State funds for students at religious schools? Supreme Court says ‘yes’ in Maine case – but consequences could go beyond

  For nearly three-quarters of a century, one issue in education has come up before the Supreme Court more than any other: disputes over religion.

  Carson v. Makin, a case about Maine’s tuition assistance program for students in districts without high schools of their own, continues the pattern – with potential consequences for schools, families, and courts across the country.

  On June 21, 2022, the court ruled that parents in rural districts lacking public high schools, but who receive state aid to send their children to private schools instead, can use that money for tuition at schools with faith-based curricula. In a 6-3 order, the court held that Maine’s requirement that tuition assistance payments be used at “nonsectarian” schools violated the free exercise clause of the First Amendment because parents could not send their children to the schools of their choice.

Public education is supposed to prepare an informed citizenry – elementary teachers have just two hours a week to teach social studies

  The founders of the United States were intentionally building a nation based on the ideals of the Enlightenment, a movement centered on individual happiness, knowledge, and reason. This new approach to defining a country – rather than basing it on language, ethnicity, or geographic proximity – meant the new United States would have to educate its citizenry with the ideas, skills, and values necessary to build and grow their democracy.

  As a result, the founders called for schools to be established and funded. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and others believed it was the responsibility of the government to provide that education. Jefferson believed that education would serve as the moral foundation of the nation and redress the effect of poverty because education would be available to all children.

US schools are not racially integrated, despite decades of effort

  Nearly seven decades after the U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the court’s declared goal of integrated education is still not yet achieved.

  American society continues to grow more racially and ethnically diverse. But many of the nation’s public K-12 schools are not well integrated and are instead predominantly attended by students of one race or another.

Legacy of Jim Crow still affects funding for public schools

  Nearly 70 years ago – in its 1954 Brown v. Board decision – the Supreme Court framed racial segregation as the cause of educational inequality. It did not, however, challenge the lengths to which states went to ensure the unequal funding of Black schools.

  Before Brown, Southern states were using segregation to signify and tangibly reinforce second-class citizenship for Black people in the United States. The court in Brown deemed that segregation was inherently unequal. Even if the schools were “equalized” on all “tangible factors,” segregation remained a problem and physical integration was the cure, the Court concluded.

Police presence on school grounds poses potential risks to kids

  In fall 2020, I got an email from the Phoenix Elementary School District #1, a K-8 school district, requesting feedback on whether to continue using school resource officers in seven of the district’s 14 elementary schools.

  As a researcher who specializes in the policing and development of children and adolescents, I responded by sharing a summary of the research on the subject of police in schools and offering my consultation. The school board president asked me to present research to the board on the effects school resource officers had on overall student well-being, school safety, and school climate.

‘Every day feels unsettled’ – educators decry staffing shortage

  The COVID-19 pandemic, with its multiple waves of remote, hybrid, and in-person education, increased students’ needs for support, revealed political minefields in teaching, and heightened labor tensions for educators. And in the 2021-2022 school year, staffing shortages have made all of that worse, as our work details.

  Our long-term research with hundreds of teachers and school administrators reveals that persistent staffing shortages are leading professionals to feel burned out and to worry about students missing learning opportunities.

‘Teaching has always been hard, but it’s never been like this’ – elementary school teachers talk about managing their classrooms during a pandemic

  As the omicron wave spikes across the United States, K-12 education is one of many systems buckling under the weight of expanding needs. Recent headlines highlight staff and busing shortages, parental anxieties about both in-person and distance schooling, and disputes between unions and districts. Yet teachers’ experiences in their classrooms can be overlooked in these conversations.

Watch for these conflicts over education in 2022

  At school board meetings across the country in 2021, parents engaged in physical altercations, shouted at school board members, and threatened them as well.

  These disagreements entered state politics, too, such as the 2021 Virginia governor’s race, which was largely shaped by conflicts over how issues of race and racism are taught in the K-12 curriculum, and transgender student rights.

What American schools can learn from other countries about civic disagreement

  Few areas of American life have experienced more conflict of late than public education. The conflict has largely revolved around how public schools should deal with the difficult subjects of race and racism. The situation has become so inflamed that a national school board group asked the federal government to step in and protect school officials and educators from what they said were a growing number of attacks from angry citizens.

COVID-19 threatens the already shaky status of arts education in schools

  Parents can watch their kids draw and paint at home or perform in school music concerts and dance recitals. But they may not know how their school arts program compares with others around the country.

  As a music education professor and a researcher who studies arts education policies, I know that access to and the quality of arts programs vary greatly among states, districts, and even schools within the same district.

  Additionally, I see that disruptions from the pandemic are threatening the already tenuous status of the arts in public schools.