What could one do with the Department of Education?

 As the current administration daily posts another round of  nonsense about "returning education to the states"--the place education has been overseen since we have had a constitution*--the framing of an alternative has been kind of weak. "Let's not destroy the U.S. Department of Education" is a good start, but reaffirming the mission of the Department has been rather lacking.

I was intrigued, then, to read Kevin Carey's piece in Democracy entitled "A Department of Education--and then some" which outlines a bigger vision:

The Department of Children and Learning (DCL) would do everything ED is charged with by statute while incorporating children’s programs currently located in other federal agencies, including the school lunch benefits located at the Department of Agriculture and the Head Start and child-care programs housed at the Department of Health and Human Services. As any parent can tell you, health, nutrition, and learning all go together.

The DCL would be organized around three main purposes: funding, research, and civil rights. Its mission would be ensuring that foundational education services and the latest scientific findings and technological advances are available to all students, regardless of who they are or where they come from. Existing programs that don’t contribute to this core mission would be replaced.

What is particularly interesting to me is that Carey actually talks about what very, very seldom is: school districts:

But as it is practiced in U.S. education, “local control” is a false promise. It means that local school districts—and in the privatization era, individual families—are left alone to search and struggle for enough resources to purchase what an indifferent and unforgiving market chooses to provide. It means that students destined to compete in a global economy are tied down by how much money their neighbors happen to pay in property taxes. It condemns teachers to crumbling buildings and outdated curricula. It means that the various institutions charged with the care and education of children don’t communicate, coordinate, or collaborate. “Local control” is a long con. It exploits parental anxiety by pretending to give people power, then leaves them feeling individually responsible for our collective failure.

Local communities have the right and responsibility to decide who will teach their children and lead their public schools. Those accountable for school performance should be as close to parents and voters as possible. Critical organizational decisions shouldn’t be routed through a central bureaucracy in Washington. State governments ultimately determine academic standards for their children. At the same time, all local school districts should have enough money to hire great teachers who are versed in the latest research findings and empowered by the newest education technologies. And all children should have equal rights to a free, high-quality education tailored to their specific strengths and needs, regardless of their race, family income, native language, immigration status, or disability.

As I've just again had the class I teach explore the New America map of segregation and income inequality among school districts, the vivid extremes in inequity and segregation are fresh in my mind.

And we do not talk about it, let alone do anything to actually change it. 

*and happy Constitution Day! 

yes, most federal grant funding is still coming from the U.S. Department of Education

 With ongoing thanks to Mark Lieberman for keeping his eyes on this: 

Congress in February approved more than $12.5 billion for K-12 schools to flow to states on Oct. 1, including $10.8 billion through the Title I formula grant for schools serving low-income students and $1.7 billion through Title II for teacher professional development.

In a statement to Education Week, the department confirmed that those funds will go through the department’s existing G5 grants system, rather than through a portal run by the Department of Labor, where the Trump administration has moved most K-12 programs.

This was true of the round of funding that went out July 1; today's statement confirms the same will be true of the funding going out on October 1.  

News of interest

 Some things I have been reading: 

• The Wall Street Journal covers the parent rebellion on about screentime at schools, particularly looking at Lower Merion School District in Pennsylvania, where the school board recently removed an opt-out provision on tech that they'd previously passed. (Cue "that's a bold strategy, Cotton" gif here). 
  It isn't going away, and the level of resistance in some local administrations to even having the discussion is really...odd? I guarantee every district that has an administrator dismissing parent concerns has, somewhere, something about family engagement somewhere in goals (and in Massachusetts, "two-way" communication is part of the state standards for evaluation!).
  
  
• The good news on education policy and such from New Hampshire is sometimes few and far between, so we'll take that Governor Ayotte (a Republican) has vetoed a trans bathroom bill for the fourth time, each of those times by a Republican governor. 
  Republicans in N.H. are also joining with their Democratic colleagues in considering a tightening oversight of the so-called "education freedom" accounts, the thing where families can just take the money allocated for public schools.
  
  
• Continuing our looking north, Vermont signed into law language restricting ICE access to schools, modeled on the policy of Winooski, which has of course received national attention for standing up for its immigrant students.
  
  
• In case you wondered if the Pioneer Institute has changed, the answer from today's Boston Globe editorial page is a resounding 'no.' "Boston charter schools went DEI" is not going to fly, folks.
  
  
• Special education oversight moving to HHS got lots of press, but it appears that Senator Cassidy, who chairs the Senate education committee, is not on board, considering a vote next month to bar it. You might remember that the Senate is what saved the federal education budget last year (implementing this year) from draconian cuts; this actually doing oversight appears to be continuing. 

Was the school struck accidentally?

 Both Al Jazeera and NPR have looked more closely at the bombing of Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Mina in Iran.

Board of Ed for February: budget!

 "real challenge" per Martinez at federal level on funding, related to enrollment decline and other things
pay attention when things like this are said

Bill Bell on the Governor's budget

SOA implemented in full as of FY27

concern of how chapter 70 is working; increasing number of districts receiving minimum aid
Department, Commissioner, Executive Office, A&F "aren't tone deaf to the issue"
commitment to see through implementation of Student Opportunity Act; what leaders want to do after that "remains to be seen"

circuit breaker growing by $100M into next budget year

haven't received word on what the education funding levels would be for federal grants in entitlement grants
baseline is funded nationally, but allocations remain to be seen

Legislators have begun their process of budget hearings: education and local aid is March 23 in Lawrence

Hills asks if they have the resources needed to implement the goals
Martinez, in essence, says it is a start

Smidy: the capacity is very limited in the field
even with allocations and grants, a lot of schools are not going to be in a position to move forward with these initiatives if they don't have the resources to move forward

Craven: need a sense about what costs are being piled onto districts
Martinez: not only the need, but also where districts are in 
"when we use the word 'advocacy' we're using it too loosely"
nah, that's still advocacy; you just want specific advocacy
"how do we become strategic about our resources..."
this is what people say when they aren't going to give you more funding to do more things
report on local contribution coming in June 

Bell: another attempt to meet the needs of local districts and communities that exist within a capped revenue environment 

And adjourned

School in Minnesota this week

I know we're all tuned into different things at different amounts, so I thought I'd share a few things that perhaps you may have missed about school in Minnesota this week.

• The school attended by Renee Good's son Southside Family Charter School had to switch to online learning after threats. It's a teeny little school:
  

  The school was founded in the 1970s as a community initiative to help families, briefly served as an alternative school in Minneapolis Public Schools, and became a charter school in 2006.

  As it focuses on social justice, which was the focus of a New York Post article, it drew attention from...this isn't even a right wing thing. People who don't think children should work towards a more just world, I guess.
  
  

• St. Paul's schools have cancelled school for Tuesday and Wednesday this coming week (Monday is a holiday) to give time to prepare for a remote option for students which will start on Thursday the 22nd.

On Friday, Jan. 9, amid the federal enforcement crackdown following the Jan. 7 killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, 51% of students whose home language is Spanish did not show up to school. That compares to absence rates around 20% during comparable days a year ago, in January 2025.
Students whose home language is Somali saw an absence rate of about 24% on Jan. 9, up from about 18% a year ago. Others, including Hmong and Karen speakers, saw small but noticeable increases in absences as well.

• As you may have seen, among the places Minneapolis residents have been keeping watch is around schools: 
  

  People who normally might be organizing parent-teacher association meetings are arranging security patrols at their kids' schools to watch for immigration agents. 

  Some parents not on patrol are escorting foreign-born teachers or staff members, driving them to and from their homes and schools to make them feel safer. Others are delivering groceries and prescription medicines to immigrant families who are too afraid to leave their homes or send their kids to class.
  

  You can read more about their work in this Minnesota Public Radio piece. 

If you're looking for ways to support those resisting ICE occupation of Minneapolis and the surrounding area, you can find ways to Stand with Minnesota here.

I was really struck this week by Jenny B. Potter's "I want to write about what it's like in Minnesota right now," which I saw on her Instagram. She also has links in her bio on ways to help.

Not about school specifically, but don't miss the Minneapolis Art Sled Rally, which was yesterday:

Chalkbeat talks to Lindsey Burke from the U.S. Department of Education

Here's the thing: I am not a video watcher, but I'd recommend watching or listening to this from this afternoon

Lindsey Burke is  the deputy chief of staff for policy and programs at the Education Department. She used to work at the Heritage Foundation and she wrote the chapter on education in Project 2025. 

The reporters subsequently wrote up the interview here; if you'd like to read real time reactions, I think you can see the Bluesky thread here. My takeaway is that we actually have people running these things that think they can make two contradictory remarks and have us not notice. 

Some tabs I have open

•  If you're a history buff, you might be interested in the events going on across the state in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the "Noble Train of Artillery," led by Henry Knox that brought the cannons of Fort Ticonderoga to Dorchester Heights. They crossed from New York into Massachusetts Saturday (Hillsdale, NY to Alford, MA, to be exact).
  As you may know, the cannons arriving at Dorchester Heights are what caused the British to leave Boston, which those who grew up in Suffolk County know well happened on March 17. 
  It'll be in Worcester January 31:
  

  Prior to the program at AAS, reenactors with horses and sleds, accompanied by fife and drum musicians, will walk from Worcester City Hall along Main Street to Institute Park.  The procession from City Hall will begin at 1:00 p.m.  At approximately 3:30 p.m., following the program at AAS, reenactors will fire a canon at Institute Park.

  
  
  
• Great work by Mississippi Today on student absence in Simpson County which actually looks at some of why students aren't in school: 
  

  Aaron Thompson drives his two elementary-aged children to school each day, but only when they aren’t sick or the road isn’t flooded. The family of four lives off a ragged stretch of concrete bounded on one side by a hunting trail and, on the other, by a worn bridge dotted with orange traffic cones....The reasons vary by family, with explanations oftentimes exposing a fraying social safety net now relying on younger helpers around the house to take care of elderly relatives and toddlers and teenage laborers in town, who work to contribute to their household income. 

   

• Intriguingly, Matt Barnum (now back at Chalkbeat) is having ​​Lindsey Burke, the current U.S. Department of Education’s deputy chief of staff for policy and programs, on a webinar on Wednesday at noon to discuss "why the administration wants to eliminate the agency, how officials are already working to do so, and what all this means for students, educators, and parents." I have RSVP'd, though I'm going to see how my blood pressure is doing by Wednesday before deciding to tune in or not. 

federal funding waiver doesn't live up to the hype

 I entirely understand how it is that people might have missed this, but if you do pay attention to school funding, you may have caught U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon touting "returning education to the states" through approval of a waiver for Iowa for combining federal funding, in essence, block granting their funding. As the Department's release says: 

Today, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) approved Iowa’s Returning Education to the States Waiver, empowering state education officials to have more discretion over their federal education dollars. Iowa is the first state to apply for and receive such a waiver, which will allow state leaders to focus federal dollars on work that best improves the achievement of Iowa students.

Iowa’s waiver permits the state education agency to combine four federal funding streams into one. Iowa leaders seek to focus more federal resources on improving student achievement rather than federal compliance. This waiver’s flexibility will reduce compliance costs, allowing nearly $8 million to be redirected from bureaucratic red tape to the classroom over four years. State education leaders will use the redirected funds and the greater flexibility they afford to expand support for evidence-based literacy training, strengthening their teacher pipeline, and narrowing achievement gaps.

If you know anything of how much federal funding flows to states, you may have had that *record scratch* sound in your head when you to the bit about "nearly $8 million" up here. 

Excellent work from Mark Lieberman over at EdWeek gives a more clear eyed assessment on this one: 

 ...in contrast with proposals the state put forward roughly a year ago, the new federal approval touches only 5% of Iowa’s overall allocation of federal education funds, the part that’s set aside for the state education agency. The bulk of federal dollars that flow to school districts each year—$900 million worth—will retain their current structure and spending and reporting requirements.

This announcement could signal an acknowledgment from the department that its legal authority to flatten discrete funding programs and implement unrestricted block grants without congressional approval is limited, said Anne Hyslop, the director of policy development for the nonprofit advocacy group All4Ed, and a former senior policy adviser at the Education Department who helped implement the Every Student Succeeds Act.

It also foreshadows an uphill battle for other states aiming to convert federal education funding to block grants, including Indiana, which submitted a request for that flexibility, along with relief from certain school accountability requirements, in October.

I realize that it isn't going to surprise anyone that the Trump administration is being less than forthcoming on what they're actually doing, but it's always worth calling these out. 

What we're losing in the Office of Civil Rights

 Good read from The Hechinger Report: 

Now, however, the Trump administration is wielding the power of the Justice Department in new and, some say, extreme ways. Hundreds of career staffers, including most of those who worked on education cases, have resigned. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights also has been decimated, largely through layoffs. The two offices traditionally have worked closely together to enforce civil rights protections for students. The result is a potentially lasting shift in how the nation’s top law enforcement agency handles issues that affect public school students, including millions who have disabilities...

The Justice Department’s lawyers historically have worked on a few dozen education cases at once, concentrating on combating sexual harassment, racial discrimination against Black and Latino students, restraint and seclusion, and failure to provide adequate services to English learners. 

In the last 11 months, however, the agency has sued over and opened investigations into concerns about antisemitism, transgender policies and bias against white people at schools. It sued at least six states for offering discounted tuition to undocumented immigrants and pressured the president of the University of Virginia to resign as part of an investigation into the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies. And it joined other federal departments to form a special Title IX investigations team to protect students from what the administration called the “pernicious effects of gender ideology in school programs and activities.”  

Ensuring next year's state budget is ready for federal impacts

 As I noted back in October, there were changes made to how the federal government is managing SNAP and Medicaid that will have impacts on school funding and on the state budget. I said then, and I continue to fear now, that I don't see indications that Massachusetts is making this part of our preparation for FY27 and beyond. 

where we are at on federal grants

 This came out from DESE's grants office this morning. While it is not new information, I thought it was a useful summary: 

On November 12, a “continuing resolution” was passed to reopen the federal government through January 30, 2026. However, most school year 2026-2027 federal education funding levels have not been resolved and are still subject to negotiation (ESSA, IDEA, Perkins, etc.). If Congress cannot come to an agreement on FY27 funding levels by January 30^th, they must either pass another “continuing resolution” or shut down the government yet again. It should be noted that the national school meals program was the one major area of federal education funding that did receive a new full-year appropriation, through September 30, 2026.
 
Early the following week, the U.S. Education Department (USED) informed state education leaders of its intent to transition the management of several major programs to other federal agencies. The announcement stated that the majority of programs currently managed by the federal Office of Elementary and Secondary Education will transition to the U.S. Department of Labor via an inter-agency agreement. These programs will include Title I-A, Title II-A, Title III-A, Title IV-A and B, and the McKinney-Vento Homeless Act, among others. 

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) programs will, for the moment, remain at USED, as will the Office for Civil Rights. USED officials noted that signed agreements with the Department of Labor and other agencies are only a first step and could not provide immediate details on the timing or specifics of the interagency transitions. These details will vary by program. The federal press release includes links to several federal fact sheets, including one on elementary and secondary education. 

Knew we could count on them

Somerville, Easthampton, and all the rest have indeed updated their lawsuit in light of the moving of powers of the U.S. Department of Education out of that office. From the New York Times coverage:

The education coalition argues in its lawsuit that the annual appropriations law approved by Congress requires the Education Department to carry out its programs and that Ms. McMahon lacks the authority to shift these functions to other federal agencies.

“The information and actions coming out of the Department have been unpredictable, chaotic, and unprofessional,” the education coalition said in the lawsuit. “This experience is unprecedented in administration changes.”

The press release from Democracy Forward can be found here.

Outsourcing the Department of Education

It was another of those news rounds where if, like me, you were offline for an hour, you missed a major thing and had to play catch-up.

On Tuesday of this week, the U.S. Department of Education signed a series of agreements with other federal departments. Those agreements move functions of U.S. Ed to those other Departments, as EdWeek charts out here. Most of it is going to the Department of Labor—demonstrating truncated view of the function of the public education system—though several go to the Interior, and one to HHS. As yet, there is no move of IDEA which covers special education to HHS, as has been floated a number of times.

It's worth noting that this isn't the first of such moves: career and technical education grants were moved to the Department of Labor earlier this year. Those who have been paying attention say it has not gone well.

Secretary McMahon was quick to say that funding would continue to flow to states and from there to schools. As Matt Barnum wrote in Chalkbeat, it's quite possible that schools will see little change, so long as those other departments actually pick up the ball. The AP, though, captured the concern that I've had all week: 

Instead of being housed in a single agency, much of the Education Department’s work now will be spread across four other federal departments...The plan increases bureaucracy fivefold, Washington state’s education chief said, “undoubtedly creating confusion and duplicity” for educators and families. His counterpart in California said the plan is “clearly less efficient” and invites disruption. Maryland’s superintendent raised concerns about “the challenges of coordinating efforts with multiple federal agencies.”

It is state education agencies that coordinate with the federal level, and it is those state agencies that now have to chase funding down across multiple federal departments--departments not set up to interface on those programs--in order to get the funding to states and then to districts. Those state agencies, if they're anything like our own (and I'll bet they are) are understaffed already.

It's also worth noting that objections have not all fallen along party lines, as covered in the same article:

Yet some conservatives pushed back against the dismantling. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, said on social media that moving programs to agencies without policy expertise could hurt young people. And Margaret Spellings, a former education secretary to Republican President George W. Bush, called it a distraction to a national education crisis.

“Moving programs from one department to another does not actually eliminate the federal bureaucracy, and it may make the system harder for students, teachers and families to navigate and get the support they need,” Spellings said in a statement.

Those who work in the Department have also noted that this makes no sense.
This is doing it for the sake of doing it. As I noted elsewhere earlier in the week, this feels a lot like the phase some kids go through where they have to push every rule and will come back with "TECHNICALLY..." when they are called on it.

TECHNICALLY, they haven't closed the Department of Education. I suspect that isn't going to be good enough for the judges that have already told them to knock it off.  

A few notes on federal grants

I've been in a couple of sessions recently on federal grants (most recently DESE did one this morning), so providing a few highlights:

• Always remember that federal education grants are almost all what's called 'forward funded' meaning that we have the current fiscal year's funding already. 
• Thus discussions of the FY26 federal budget--which is what the shutdown happened around--are funding that are/will largely impact our NEXT fiscal year at the state and district level, FY27, and thus NEXT school year.
• There are BIG differences among White House/House/Senate's bills, with the Senate being the one that essentially level funds and has the least changes. As the Senate can only act on a bipartisan basis, there's some thinking that the Senate's option is the one that will win out.
• The Senate bill also included language that required that funding to states go out as soon as it was available--none of this wanting to recheck stuff that hung up grants this fall!--but it's anybody's guess as to if that stays in.
• The continuing resolution to fund the government expires January 30, 2026, so expect us to get countdown clocks again soon.
  
•  The CR passed reverses the reductions in force RIFs initiated just after the shutdown began and prohibits the Administration from initiating any new RIFs through January 30, 2026, when the CR expires.
• One piece of good news: Because the CR funds full year appropriations for, among others, USDA, the continuing resolution that passed fully funds school nutrition through September 30, 2026, so that isn't iffy around government shutdowns.

What is freaking me out about funding right now

 I'm at the ASBO conference this week in Fort Worth--ASBO is the Association of School Business Officials--and one of the "must attends" for me is always the federal policy update jointly done by ASBO and AASA (that would be the superintendents). This stems from that presentation yesterday.¹

Setting aside for a moment:

1. that we do not currently have an operating federal government
2. because we do not have a federal budget or continuing resolution
3. and that some of the proposals for the federal budget have been alarming

I want to talk here about something that is actually going to happen because it is actually law and appears to not be in what is being planned for, at least from what I have seen in Massachusetts.

Probable federal government shutdown at midnight

 And while we've been over this a few times, here's Politico on what this means for education. The two big PreK-12 hits are Head Start (in some cases) and federal funding in areas with non-taxed federal land. Again, remember, most of our federal grants are forward funded.

Politico also shared the official "here's what happens in a shutdown" document filed by Secretary McMahon. Page 1 has the number of employees expected to have to continue to work should the federal government shutdown at midnight tonight.

Since a possible federal shutdown is coming

 ...as the federal fiscal year ends October 1 (like me, you may be surprised to learn that is next Wednesday), and Congress is not showing signs it's moving towards a continuing resolution to keep it funded (never mind an actual budget).

As that can be anxiety-inducing to hear, let me suggest you review the post AASA (that's the superintendents) has up on a federal shutdown. The most important and reassuring part?

Most K-12 federal funding is “forward-funded”—funds are provided the following July for the upcoming school year—which means the majority of K-12 federal education funding is not immediately impacted by a government shutdown.

It's short; go give it a read. 

Don't panic on Title I just yet

You may have caught last week that the House Appropriation Committee moved a 26% cut to Title I. Please continue to keep in mind a few things on this: 

1. We are talking here about NEXT school year. Yes, the discussion is on fiscal year '26, but that's FEDERAL fiscal year 2026, which starts October 1. That's money that districts will be using for NEXT school year, in what we at the state and local level will call FY27.
   
   
2. The Senate Appropriation Committee DID NOT cut Title I and the two chambers have to agree on a resolution for it to move forward.
   
   
3. There is, again, a very good chance that this isn't going to be done for October, in any case, and people are already discussing a possible government shutdown again.

This is certainly something to keep an eye on, but we're not in panic mode at this point. 

Dragons to slay this the new school year

Statue of St. George slaying a dragon.
Sainte-Georges, Quebec, Canada

As we've entered this school year, I've noticed as I keep an eye on things across the country that we have some reoccurring things that don't serve kids well that we can actually fix. Yes! These are things that are within our power!
Here then are eight dragons to slay this back to school season: