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  • 10 Years Ago, Detroit Teachers Protested Building Conditions. What’s Changed Since? – The 74

    10 Years Ago, Detroit Teachers Protested Building Conditions. What’s Changed Since? – The 74


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    Ten years ago, a big crowd of Detroit teachers and their supporters marched down Jefferson Avenue toward Cobo Hall, where the annual auto show was being held, to draw national attention to the substandard conditions inside city schools.

    The Detroit Federation of Teachers timed another rally later that afternoon outside Cobo (now Huntington Place) to coincide with the arrival of President Barack Obama at the auto show, whose appearance drew journalists from across the country.

    The protests on Jan. 20, 2016, which closed most schools that Friday, produced stunning headlines that explained why teachers in Detroit Public Schools had called in sick en masse multiple times in that month.

    “Rats, roaches, mold – poor conditions lead to teacher sick-out, closure of most Detroit schools,” a Washington Post headline said. “These Photos Will Make You Understand Detroit’s Education Crisis,” a HuffPost headline read. “How Detroit’s teacher ‘sickout’ cast a spotlight on unsafe school conditions,” was a Guardian headline.

    The local and national coverage of the crisis proved instrumental, prompting the mayor to order school inspections and the district to begin repairs. After years of emergency management by the state, the new administration and school board that took over in 2017 ordered an audit of conditions in every building. More than $700 million in federal funds went into renovating and rebuilding schools, helping address needs officials say were created in part by a lack of equitable state funding. A decade later, the district is still constructing new schools to replace a handful of buildings that were in the worst condition, as well as addressing the biggest needs in other buildings.

    But the scale of the challenges — both financially and physically — mean many students still attend school in buildings with significant problems.

    “I am proud of the investments we have made and the improvement we are seeing in our infrastructure, but I am not satisfied with it,” Superintendent Nikolai Vitti wrote in an email to Chalkbeat. “Our students and staff deserve EXACTLY and even MORE than suburban districts have.”

    The $700 million investment, made during the pandemic with federal COVID relief dollars, addresses a fraction of the $2.1 billion infrastructure needs, according to the district.

    “Many buildings still require major modernization, and some remain in deficient or failing condition based on industry standards,” Vitti said. “Aging systems continue to drive future costs, and without sustained investment, deferred needs will grow.”

    Teachers push for change in building conditions, higher pay

    The protests happened in the midst of turmoil and division within the Detroit Federation of Teachers.

    The union’s fiery leader, Steve Conn, had been ousted by the union board in August 2015, after a two-day trial that ended with him being convicted of five misconduct charges, the Detroit Free Press reported.

    As part of its attempts to stabilize the union, the American Federation of Teachers, its umbrella organization, asked members to identify the biggest problems facing the district. Building conditions were at the top of the list.

    Stories and pictures collected from union members became the basis for the campaign to raise awareness of student and teacher learning and working conditions, said Ivy Bailey, interim president of the DFT at the time. Photos showed ceilings that were caved in and missing tile, vermin infestations, mold, and other troubling conditions.

    Contributing to the problems, according to teachers and union officials, were the state-appointed emergency managers who had control of the district. The school board existed but had little power during the years of emergency management, which stretched from 2009 to the end of 2016. Teachers said their complaints about building conditions were often ignored. The emergency managers were tasked with whittling down the district’s debt, but it rose substantially while they were in control.

    Nina Chacker, who organized sick-outs as a union representative at Schulze Academy, said areas of some schools would be closed because of water-logged ceilings, forcing students to cram into classrooms that were usable.

    Instead of listening to teachers’ pleas to make buildings safe for kids, Chacker said emergency managers sent people into schools “telling us how to teach.”

    “We knew things weren’t going to get better as long as they were left in the state’s hands to address,” she said. “We wanted a school board with power. We wanted the democratic process returned to the district.”

    Carrie Russell, now a math teacher at King High School, taught at Cody High School before the sick-outs began. An old boiler made it difficult to maintain temperatures in the building. She remembers a teacher who wore hard hats in her classroom at Cody because she feared falling ceiling tiles. (Russell left to teach in the Oak Park school district before the sick-outs and returned to the Detroit district in 2018.)

    Teaching in a building with such problems, Russell said, was “demoralizing on so many levels.”

    Building conditions were hardly the only issue teachers were concerned about, however. Class sizes were high – one teacher at a rally held a sign saying her class had 39 first graders. Teachers had not received pay raises in years, and many schools struggled with teacher shortages. Many teachers wanted to see an end to the years of state oversight and more attention from state lawmakers in Lansing.

    “Everybody deserves a clean and safe environment to work in,” said Bailey, who retired as a teacher in 2018 but remained as union president until 2019. “They shouldn’t have to be worried about if they’re going to get cancer or if it’s going to affect their lungs. I mean, that should not have been an issue.”

    The sick-outs started out small in November 2015, but by Jan. 20 they had increased in size, with nearly every building being closed that day. Most were organized by Detroit Strikes to Win, a group of teachers led by Conn.

    Conn, who taught math at Western International High School for many years until he retired in 2023, said images of the roofs caving in, mold, and vermin infestations were the best way to demonstrate the inequities in Detroit schools to the public.

    By bringing national attention to Detroit schools, he said the movement sparked a larger conversation around inequities in U.S. education.

    “It was time to fight for justice, and we did that and set an example,” he said. “I think it was a high point in the struggle. But the struggle goes on for equity in Detroit schools and America’s schools.”

    Vitti calls for more equitable state funding to keep improving buildings

    When Vitti interviewed for the superintendent job in 2017, he said he was shocked by the conditions he saw while touring schools in the district.

    “To actually walk the buildings and see the state of our infrastructure shook me, and in fact enraged me to see that our children have to go to schools where there are holes in the wall, tiles that are not replaced. It’s unconscionable and it’s a clear indication of the injustice our children face here,” he said.

    The district during emergency management had “no vision and no resources consistently invested in infrastructure,” Vitti told Chalkbeat in an email.

    Since he took the helm, Vitti has focused on tackling the widespread problem — and some teachers say they have seen the changes.

    Russell, the math teacher at King High School, has seen improvements since she returned to the district in 2018. While she used to be met with silence when trying to get problems in her classroom resolved, the current administration is more responsive, she said.

    “They do a better job of trying to maintain issues,” she said.

    She’s happy that the district recently broke ground on a new building for Cody High, where she worked a year before the sick-outs began.

    Chacker, who now teaches at Bunche Preparatory Academy, is excited to have enough books for her class now, but the lack of air conditioning in her building is still a hindrance.

    “The problem is that we started in such an egregious place,” said Chacker. “There’s a lot of improvement needed and still so far to go as far as getting to the standard our peers in the suburbs are enjoying.”

    Funding continues to be an obstacle, Vitti said, because the state funding model doesn’t earmark dollars for school infrastructure, which “indirectly requires districts to either take funding from the general fund” or apply additional local taxes. Federal funds received by the district cannot be used for that purpose. (The COVID relief dollars used for the $700 million plan were one-time funds.)

    Vitti said he wants to see more equitable state funding to help close the gap.

    “DPSCD receives $10,050 per pupil as the minimum, other districts have as high as over $13,000 per student,” he said of state funding. “This difference results in gaps as large as $168 [million] annually.”

    Last week, Vitti presented a new proposal to use $79.4 million in surplus funding to demolish 11 buildings, board up 11 properties, build an athletic complex at the former Cooley High School, re-pave parking lots at 36 schools, improve fencing at 28 schools, and replace the roof at Charles Wright Academy, among other items.

    Vitti said the district will continue to recommend shifting unspent funds to one-time building improvements.

    “When we have extra surplus funding, we know exactly where to invest whether it is in roofs, windows. HVAC, masonry, fences, paving, or football fields,” he said.

    Chacker said the protests were an important moment in the history of the district because teachers shared a unified message that the status quo was no longer tenable.

    “It set standards for how students should be treated,” she said. “Before that, we got a blatant no when it came to money even if schools weren’t safe.”

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


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  • It’s Time to Embrace AI Literacy for Kids – The 74

    It’s Time to Embrace AI Literacy for Kids – The 74


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    Artificial intelligence has become an incredibly polarizing topic, with one side eager to integrate it into every aspect of life and the other side running from it as fast as they can.  Is this new technology an existential threat or a transformational opportunity? According to Pew research from September, “Americans are more concerned than excited” about the proliferation of AI and want to exert more control over its use.

    About 62% of U.S. adults report interacting with AI several times a week, and adults and children alike engage on a regular basis with AI without even realizing it. Children are growing up in a world where this technology is unquestionably a part of daily life, shaping their lives in ways no one can yet fully understand. Giving them a clearer understanding of how AI works has never been more important.

    This fall, the three of us met at an event at the National Children’s Museum which brought together technology leaders, museum educators, policymakers, teachers and academic researchers focused on guiding our kids safely and productively into our technology-driven world.

    Our key takeaway? Regardless of where you stand on this issue, a common ground must be forged now. Constructive dialogue must happen, and it needs voices from both sides to produce a healthy outcome for our children. Helping kids understand AI means being both optimistic and cautious, recognizing its promise while acknowledging its shortcomings and risks.

    What if, alongside helping our youngest learn to use AI, we placed greater emphasis on teaching them how it works? By nurturing children’s critical thinking skills, we give them the power to understand it as a tool—where it can augment human effort, and where it fails miserably.

    AI is ushering in a new wave of innovation, but it is also enabling new forms of deception and manipulation. It provides access to a wealth of knowledge and opportunities, but the resulting information overload can undermine learning, cognition, creativity and human connection.

    Society as a whole, from educational institutions to policy makers to parents at the dinner table, need to invest in children’s AI literacy now. In doing so, we can instill some of the most important lessons: how to be creative and discerning in the world in which we live, preparing them for a future full of new opportunities.

    According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, employers expect that 39% of workers’ core skills will change by 2030, with technological skills gaining importance most rapidly. AI will open up new fields of biomedical research. It will help us feed our growing global population. But it will also force many of us to rethink our jobs and educational pathways.

    So, on a global scale, an investment in our children’s AI literacy not only ensures a competitive workforce but also safeguards national prosperity, security and the responsible use of powerful technologies. Whether you think AI is exciting or threatening, children must be introduced to age-appropriate concepts about it so that they can build fluency and prepare for the future.

    Another takeaway from our conversation? Adults must learn alongside — and sometimes from — our kids. As adults, we have the responsibility of fostering children’s safe use of this powerful tool. But let’s give ourselves the grace to acknowledge that we don’t understand AI either.  We didn’t grow up with it, and experts and technology leaders believe that generative AI has surpassed the understanding of its creators.

    There is a window of opportunity to bring everyone to the table. As parents, educators and lifelong learners, we need to have deeper conversations about AI — especially how it shapes children’s learning, development and daily lives. We don’t have to fully comprehend it or agree with all its intended uses; we just have to be open to talking about it and taking action. By approaching this with curiosity, we can thoughtfully consider appropriate uses and guardrails for kids—something we didn’t do early enough when America’s children first began using online tools like social media.

    There are organizations starting to address AI literacy and technology education for families. Sesame Street and Google collaborated to release a series on the healthy use of digital technology. Common Sense Media, with support from the National Parents Union and EDSAFE AI, has a series of lessons about digital citizenship and AI arranged by grade level and a resource for parents as well. The website Children and Screens provides research-based articles, podcasts and other resources to help parents navigate age-appropriate technology use. Children’s museums are developing hands-on, screen-free experiences to help demystify the processes underlying AI. There needs to be more of this, supporting children’s understanding of the fundamentals, not just how to use its applications.

    AI’s purpose is not to replace human life, but to enhance it. Yet, the current conversation — especially around children’s use of AI — is too passive, treating these complex systems as inevitable rather than intentional creations. Educators, industry leaders and policymakers need to insist on a richer, more engaging dialogue about how it shapes kids’ learning, choices and experiences. 

    Whether it’s the weather report from a smart device or personalized help from a chatbot, AI literacy is now essential for young people to navigate civic life. No matter your viewpoint, it is time to embrace AI literacy. The stakes are too high for anything less than universal, active participation in preparing children for the world they’re inheriting and will soon lead.


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  • WEEKEND READING: Parliament’s latest debate on duty of care: what problem are we really trying to solve?

    WEEKEND READING: Parliament’s latest debate on duty of care: what problem are we really trying to solve?

    This blog was kindly authored by Dr Emma Roberts, Head of Law, University of Salford.

    The latest parliamentary debate on a statutory duty of care for universities did not break new ground in legislative terms. It did, however, provide a useful snapshot of where parliamentary thinking currently sits on student wellbeing, safeguarding and institutional responsibility.

    What emerged was not a settled view on whether a statutory duty of care is the right mechanism, but a shared concern that the existing legal and regulatory framework does not operate with sufficient clarity or consistency to support prevention in practice.

    The context for the debate

    Prompted by a large public petition and the Government’s national review of higher education student suicide deaths, Members of Parliament discussed student mental health, suicide prevention and families’ experiences navigating institutional processes after serious incidents. Although the term ‘duty of care’ dominated the debate, the substance focused on systems, processes and accountability rather than tort law.

    What Members of Parliament were actually describing

    Several contributions focused on cases where harm arose not from a lack of concern, but from failures in institutional processes – such as errors in academic administration, uncertainty around escalation and restrictive interpretations of consent that limited information-sharing with families even at points of acute risk.

    These examples are important because they illustrate a recurring pattern in this policy area. Student harm is often linked to governance and decision-making, rather than to the absence of wellbeing services alone. In that sense, the debate was as much about academic and organisational systems as it was about mental health support.

    The national review findings cited during the debate reinforce this point. Incomplete serious incident reporting, limited family involvement, unclear ownership of action plans and weak senior oversight are not issues that turn on the existence of a general duty of care, nor are they problems that the creation of such a legislative duty would, of itself, resolve. They are indicators of regulatory and assurance gaps.

    Why ‘duty of care’ has become the focal language

    The appeal of a statutory duty of care is understandable. For some, it appears to offer a way of clarifying expectations and addressing inconsistency across institutions. Several Members of Parliament were careful to emphasise that this would not entail universities acting in loco parentis or assuming clinical responsibilities, but rather a requirement to take reasonable steps where serious harm is foreseeable.

    At the same time, concerns were raised about unintended consequences. These included the risk of encouraging defensive practice, increasing proceduralisation and diverting attention from early, relational intervention towards liability management. These concerns are well-established in other professional contexts, such as healthcare and policing, and they deserve careful consideration here.

    The Minister’s response reflected this caution, emphasising that students are adults, that universities already operate within multiple legal frameworks and that reform must avoid creating incentives that undermine professional judgement or proactive support.

    This is one reason it is worth being clear about what ‘duty of care’ does (and does not) mean in law.

    Clarifying the legal position

    There is a risk that the debate itself rests on an oversimplification of the law. Universities are often described as operating in the absence of any duty of care, when – in reality – duties already arise at common law and under statute in particular circumstances. The more precise concern is not the absence of duty, but uncertainty about its scope and application in complex, real-world situations. Duties are assessed by reference to context, foreseeability and policy considerations, rather than arising automatically from the existence of a relationship. In that light, a statutory duty would alter the source of the obligation, but it would not remove the need for interpretation or guarantee greater clarity in practice, nor would it create an all-encompassing obligation akin to in loco parentis, which the courts have consistently resisted.

    There is also a broader trade-off to consider. Common law duties evolve through judicial discretion, allowing principles to be applied flexibly to new and unforeseen circumstances. Statute can provide greater certainty, but often at the cost of rigidity, with meaning only becoming clear through subsequent interpretation and case law. In a context as varied and fast-changing as higher education, that balance between flexibility and certainty deserves careful consideration.

    A regulatory question, not simply a legal one

    Taken together, the debate suggests that Parliament is grappling less with the absence of duties, and more with the effectiveness of the current regulatory arrangement.

    Universities are subject to a complex mix of legal obligations and regulatory expectations, but these do not always translate into clear operational standards around safeguarding, information-sharing, escalation and transparency. Where guidance exists, its uptake and implementation vary – giving rise to the ‘postcode lottery’ to which Llinos Medi referred. Where failures occur, learning is not always systematic or shared.

    This is where much of the concern evident in the debate originates.

    From a policy perspective, the central question is therefore not whether to add another broad legal duty, but how to design a framework that supports prevention, consistency and accountability in practice.

    What regulation is better placed to do

    Regulatory reform offers tools that a general duty of care cannot easily provide. These include:

    • clearer expectations around serious incident reporting and review, including meaningful family involvement;
    • enforceable standards and related staff training for information-sharing and consent in welfare contexts, reducing uncertainty at points of crisis;
    • stronger requirements for candour and transparency when harm occurs;
    • clearer lines of responsibility and assurance within institutions;
    • mechanisms for the central sharing of learning across the sector, including systematic oversight of Prevention of Future Death reports, with an expectation that all universities engage with and respond to sector-wide lessons learned;
    • regulatory oversight that focuses on systems, learning and improvement, rather than post-incident fault-finding.

    These are the kinds of measures that address the failures described in the debate, without relying on litigation as the primary mechanism for change.

    The Government’s reference to the next phase of the higher education mental health implementation taskforce, including consideration of accountability mechanisms and the role of the regulator, is therefore a significant part of the policy landscape. Whether that route delivers meaningful change will depend on how far it moves beyond guidance towards enforceable standards.

    Keeping the focus on prevention

    One risk in framing reform primarily through the language of duty of care is that it can obscure these regulatory questions. Another is that the concept becomes stretched to cover a wide range of concerns, as we heard cited in the debate – from suicide prevention to harassment, cost-of-living pressures and campus safety – making it harder to define what the duty would actually require.

    If the objective is to prevent foreseeable harm, then clarity, consistency and early intervention matter more than legal symbolism.

    A more precise question for Parliament

    The Westminster Hall debate usefully surfaced a shared unease about the current position. It did not, and perhaps could not, resolve the question of mechanism.

    A more productive way forward may be to ask not whether universities should have a statutory duty of care in the abstract, but what statutory and regulatory arrangements are capable of delivering the standards of prevention, candour and accountability that Parliament clearly demand – and that students and parents can reasonably expect.

    That is a question that invites careful design rather than rhetorical commitment and one that aligns more closely with the practical realities faced by students, families, institutions and regulators alike.

    Recommendations

    The Westminster Hall debate highlights concern about the clarity and effectiveness of universities’ legal responsibilities to students. As this note has argued, a duty of care already exists at common law, but the scope and application of this duty remain uncertain in practice. That uncertainty is shaped less by the absence of a legislative framework than by weaknesses in the surrounding regulatory and governance context.

    The recommendations below, therefore, focus on the regulatory conditions within which the existing duty of care operates. Strengthening those conditions is necessary both to address the systemic issues identified in the debate and to provide a clearer, more coherent framework in which any future statutory articulation of duty could meaningfully develop. Without such reform, a statutory duty risks adding a new legal source without resolving the underlying causes of inconsistency and uncertainty.

    1. Strengthen regulatory standards for serious incidents and safeguarding governance

    Regulators should establish clear, enforceable standards governing how universities respond to serious incidents involving student harm. These standards should address the timeliness and consistency of serious incident reporting, set minimum expectations for internal review processes and require senior leadership oversight and sign-off. They should also ensure that effective assurance mechanisms are in place so that actions identified through reviews are implemented, monitored and revisited as necessary. Improving governance and oversight in this way would directly address the failures highlighted in the national review and provide a more stable foundation for the operation of existing legal duties.

    2. Introduce a statutory duty of candour tailored to higher education

    There is a strong case for embedding candour explicitly within the regulatory framework for higher education. A statutory duty of candour should require providers to act openly and transparently with students and families following serious incidents, to provide timely, accurate and complete information, and to avoid defensive or obstructive practices. It should also support meaningful engagement with families as part of review and learning processes. Such a duty would strengthen accountability and trust, while supporting the effective operation of duties of care without relying on litigation to define their scope.

    3. Clarify and standardise information-sharing and consent frameworks in welfare contexts

    Uncertainty around consent and information-sharing presents a significant barrier to early intervention and effective safeguarding. Regulators should therefore clarify expectations around how consent is obtained, recorded and interpreted in welfare contexts, and set standards for lawful and proportionate information-sharing where there is foreseeable risk of harm. This should be supported by requirements for staff training to reduce uncertainty and overly restrictive interpretations of consent. Greater clarity in this area would help to reduce nervousness and defensive practice for fear of litigation and enable duties of care to be exercised more consistently and confidently in practice.

    4. Establish a centralised mechanism for sector-wide learning from student deaths and serious harm

    To move from isolated institutional responses to systemic prevention, there is a need for a centralised system for sector-wide learning. This should include oversight of Prevention of Future Death reports and other relevant findings, structured dissemination of lessons learned across the sector and an expectation that all universities actively engage with, reflect on and respond to those lessons within their own safeguarding frameworks. Without such mechanisms, legal duties – whether arising at common law or under statute – will continue to operate in fragmented and uneven ways.

    5. Re-calibrate regulatory oversight towards systems, prevention and early intervention

    Regulatory oversight should place greater emphasis on the quality of institutional systems, escalation pathways and decision-making structures that support student wellbeing and safeguarding. This includes early identification of governance weaknesses and emerging risks, as well as a focus on continuous improvement and prevention rather than post-incident compliance alone. Such an approach better reflects the realities of student wellbeing and safeguarding and supports the meaningful exercise of legal duties in practice.

    6. Make the scope and limits of institutional responsibility explicit

    Any development of the legal framework should be accompanied by clear articulation of the scope and limits of institutional responsibility. This should recognise the continued importance of student autonomy and avoid assumptions that would place universities in a position akin to in loco parentis. Clarity on scope is essential both to support professional judgement and to ensure that duties of care, however articulated, operate predictably and proportionately.

    Addressing these regulatory and governance conditions is essential not only for improving current practice, but for creating the legal and regulatory environment in which a clearer statutory articulation of duty, if pursued, could operate effectively and as intended.

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  • Eight things to look for when we get the judgement on University of Sussex vs OfS

    Eight things to look for when we get the judgement on University of Sussex vs OfS

    The recent judicial review in the High Court of Justice (King’s Bench Division, Administrative Court – with Justice Lieven presiding) did not directly concern who was in the right and who was in the wrong regarding the substantive matter of Kathleen Stock’s experiences of a “chilling effect” at the University of Sussex.

    Rather – and by design – it examined the processes, powers, and principles relied upon by the Office for Students to come to the decision to make a regulatory finding of non-compliance with ongoing registration conditions E1 and E2, and thus to issue a record fine of £585,000.

    That’s what judicial reviews do. It’s not a matter of reworking the investigation – or making a substantive judgement on the merits or otherwise of any version of the Sussex Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement (TNBEPS) – it is a matter of procedure.

    It may sound like this would be deadly dull. Lawyers arguing at length as to whether particular letters have been appropriately adorned with dots and or crosses doesn’t sound like big box office.

    But the arguments and rebuttals presented by Monica Carss-Frisk for OfS, and by Chris Butler and Katy Sheridan for Sussex had a poetry of their own – and the entire three days made for compelling viewing.

    I can’t hope to cover everything that was said in a single article – likewise, I am no lawyer so I cannot offer any expert commentary. But these – to me – are the things that are likely to be particularly interesting for ministers and the whole sector when Justice Lieven releases her written judgement in a few weeks time.

    Does OfS actually have the power to make decisions concerning governing documents?

    So, on the face of it, ongoing condition of registration E1 (that the governing documents uphold the public interest governance principles) and E2 (adequate management of governance arrangements and complying with governing documents) give the Office for Students the right to get stuck into your university’s governing documents. Whether it is a matter of those documents having the right things in them about academic freedom, or of whether the measures to ensure decisions are taken properly are actually being followed, any deviation from what is right and proper has regulatory consequences.

    However, if you are in a university founded via a Royal Charter the common law position is that a named senior cleric, aristocrat, or – in many cases – King Charles III as monarch is the only person (they have “exclusive jurisdiction”) able to rule on whether or not your charter and statutes (the governing documents that constitute the “laws” of your university) are being correctly implemented.

    You might think that the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 sections 13 and 14 trump some relic of medieval governance processes, but you would be wrong. The usual test is that parliament can only replace common law if it explicitly says that is what it is doing at the time – generally on the face of the act, but any other public statement (a speech in the house, a consultation document) can suffice at a push. This is what happened when visitors lost the ability to deal with student complaints to the Office for the Independent Adjudicator in 2004 (Higher Education Act) and with employment issues (in the 1998 Education Reform Act).

    A trawl through the act, the green and white papers, and parliamentary debates about the bill do not help us – it really feels like nobody noticed this issue during the entire process of establishing OfS. And – to put it mildly – if the court rules that OfS does not in fact get to assess governing documents and how they are applied, it presents rather a problem for the way that the 51 universities who have visitors are regulated.

    What even are governing documents, anyway?

    So, I cited university statutes and university charters as “governing documents” – which feels pretty unarguable. But what else might be a governing document? The University of Sussex argues that the Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement that OfS was so unhappy with was not a governing document, and thus not something ongoing conditions of registration E1 and E2 could apply to.

    OfS contends that the approach to this definition should be broad enough to include that kind of statement. In condition E1, it says:

    Depending on the legal form of the provider its ‘governing documents’ may include a Royal Charter, Statutes and Ordinances, articles of association, or Instruments of Government and/or a trust deed or deeds. They are also likely to include documents such as…the provider’s policies on matters such as…support for freedom of speech or academic freedom…

    It would be helpful at this point to point to a handy definition, in HERA, of the term “governing document” – something that would clearly draw a line around what does and does not count. And, of course there isn’t one. The E1 definition sets out what OfS thinks, not what Parliament intended when it asked OfS to look at governing documents.

    Again, we end up trawling through the debates on the bill to get a taste of what the ministerial intention might be. It turns out that, in the eighth sitting of the Commons Bill Committee, Wes Streeting attempted to widen the definition (to include “practices” as well as “documents”) in amendment 25. He got a response from the minister of the time, Jo Johnson:

    The introduction of the term “practices” through the amendment would risk changing the scope of the public interest governance condition to give it a much wider and more subjective application and imposing a significant and ambiguous regulatory burden on the OfS. That would stray outside our stated policy objective and beyond the OfS’ regulatory remit.

    The University of Sussex argues that this response outlines the intention that a “subjective application” (basically that OfS gets to decide what is in scope) is not what was intended, was not the government’s policy objective, and was beyond the OfS’ regulatory remit.

    If the court agrees, the OfS’ ability to say that something like TNBPES is in breach of conditions E1 and E2 is in serious doubt. Something that would apply to the University of Sussex findings, and to everything else that OfS has done or tried to do with E1 or E2.

    What does “nor” mean?

    Universities change and update their policies all the time – to iron out issues and to make them work better, or to ensure compliance with changing regulatory requirements. Sussex updated TNBEPS a number of times – and in 2023 it added a “safeguarding statement”:

    For the avoidance of doubt, nothing in this Policy Statement should be taken to justify sanctioning academic staff for questioning or testing received wisdom or putting forward new ideas including controversial or unpopular opinions within the law, nor should this Policy Statement be taken to justify disproportionate restrictions on freedom of speech.

    You’d think that a change like this, made towards the end of the long OfS investigation, might keep the regulator happy. However, OfS ruled that this version of the policy still breached E1 – it met the requirements for safeguarding academic freedom, but did not meet the requirements for safeguarding freedom of speech.

    As a layperson, this seems odd – it’s literally the same sentence! That is what Sussex argues – the use of the word “nor” implies that everything state applies to both free speech and academic freedom. The OfS position is that the tests for free speech and academic freedom are different, and the existence of the other parts of the policy (the stuff about not seeking to rely on harmful stereotypes of trans people, for instance) would still have the potential to have a chilling effect.

    Lawyers do spend a lot of time talking about the meanings of words – here the decision on the word “nor” will have a bearing as to whether the 2023 version of the policy was in breach of E1.

    Who made decisions about what to do with Sussex? And when? What was Arif Ahmed’s role?

    OfS presented a fascinating chronology of the many years that the investigation continued, and assigned key decisions to key people.

    For instance, the OfS Board had initially suggested that OfS needed to start using their powers on freedom of speech in the summer of 2021 – so when the issues at the University of Sussex hit the media in October of that year the OfS board discussed the case and decided it should be prioritised (of course, this would be an investigation into compliance with regulatory conditions – as OfS could not investigate an individual case).

    It was the OfS Director of Regulation – who was at that point Susan Lapworth – that put a preliminary analysis to the Provider Risk Committee. When she became interim chief executive in 2022, the day-to-day conduct of the investigation passed to David Smy and Hilary Jones, though Lapworth continued to have close supervisory oversight. It was the interim chief executive who wrote to Sussex to offer the opportunity to reach a settlement in 2022 (of which more later), and who wrote to Kathleen Stock to solicit a statement, which was taken in November 2023.

    On 6 July 2023, Lapworth established the board-level University of Sussex Compliance and Enforcement Committee (USCEC); appointing Martin Coleman as chair, and Elizabeth Fagan and Nisha Arora as members. USCEC was established as a decision making body, to respond to recommendations that would be made by the investigative team. Accordingly the committee met the investigation team on numerous occasions to discuss emerging findings and interim analyses.

    This led to the presentation of interim recommendations on 7 November 2023 – which became, following debate, the provisional decision that was communicated to Sussex on 21 March 2024. As was its right, the university responded with representations (totalling around 2,000 pages on 30 May 2024, including two additional witness statements on 7 June 2024).

    By this point one Arif Ahmed had been appointed OfS Director of Free Speech and Academic Freedom – he started work in August 2023, and joined the investigation team in the autumn of 2024. This presented an issue. The University of Sussex argues that when Ahmed joined the OfS he declared a possible conflict of interest in “cases involving gender” and cases related to Stock – whom he knew professionally. Beyond this, Ahmed had written and spoken publicly about the issue on a number of occasions.

    Initially (June 2023) Lapworth is on record as having said “I think he is conflicted”, a position that others involved in the investigation agreed with. This position changed on 15 October 2024 – with Lapworth appointing Ahmed to head up the investigation team – she argued that his “potential conflicts of interest” were not a “material concern” because the team’s views had already “crystallised” at that point and Ahmed was not a decision maker (though he did present the team’s recommendation to the decision-making committee).

    The idea that the team’s views had crystallised by October 2024 was problematised in court – this date was before Stock had provided a second witness statement (in response to points made in the university’s representations) on 12 December 2024, before the team had completed the drafting of the final recommendation (24 December 2024), before the presentation of the recommendation at a committee meeting (15 January 2025), and before the amount of the fine was decided (14 February 2025).

    Sussex argued that the amount of work that was done after Ahmed’s appointment to the investigation – taking another witness statement from Stock for example – suggests that the views of the team had not crystallised, and that Ahmed may have had the opportunity to “infect” the decision with bias. Proving bias in a regulatory decision is a very high bar – but whatever is decided the ambiguity about how the conflict of interest seems to have been interpreted and applied is troubling, and that ambiguity will need to be resolved in future investigations of this kind.

    The final OfS decision letter was sent to Sussex on 20 March 2025. It was re-issued on 27 March 2025. And it has never been published in full.

    Has this process been “adversarial”?

    So that second Stock statement, the one made in December 2024 in response to the university’s representations, wasn’t shared with the university until the high court hearing started gathering steam. Beforehand, there were just a few points from the statement included in the final decision letter. As OfS was relying on aspects of this statement in reaching the final decision, Sussex was rather nonplussed about this – and asked to see the full thing.

    It was told “no”. The reason? Litigation privilege.

    To be clear, litigation privilege is absolutely a thing. If you are preparing for some kind of adversarial litigation (the test is “reasonably contemplated” – around a 50 per cent likelihood of you lawyering up) you are allowed not to share certain kinds of documents with the people you are litigating against. The question in this case is whether adversarial litigation was “reasonably contemplated” at the point the OfS took the second statement from Kathleen Stock, which was before the final decision (the thing that Sussex could reasonably be expected to litigate about) was issued.

    The Sussex argument is that this suggests a frame of mind at OfS that was “adverserial” at a point where it was supposed to be all impartial and regulatory. True, the response to the provisional decision and the idea of a settlement might have given the impression that Sussex was unhappy – but the actual investigation couldn’t really go forward on the basis it was a preparation for the high court. Can it?

    Does the OfS offer a “jolly odd” kind of settlement process?

    That’s the words of Justice Lieven, when she learned that to accept a settlement Sussex would have had to accept the entire of the OfS’ case against it – admitting the breaches of registration conditions in other words – before paying a reduced fine. And that this would include accepting parts of the OfS’ original draft decision (for instance, the idea that the Sussex Freedom of Speech policy was in breach of a B condition) that OfS later withdrew. It is very much like what happened in the investigations that led to OfS’ statement on degree algorithms, where universities felt pressured to accept a presumption that it had breached conditions in order to avoid a reputational detriment.

    It is because Sussex didn’t accept these terms that it – famously – didn’t get the only planned meeting with OfS during the investigation: accepting the settlement was a requirement for the meeting to happen.

    OfS says that the university:

    was intending to challenge the OfS’ view about breaches of conditions of registration […] which was not an issue in respect of which the OfS was willing to negotiate during a settlement process […] settlement is only available under Regulatory Advice 19 if a provider is willing to accept breaches.

    To be clear, this wasn’t in any of the grounds Sussex raised – but Justice Lieven’s note of surprise when presented with these terms was interesting in itself, and I would be unsurprised to see more of this incredulity in her written judgement.

    Does the University of Sussex currently comply with governance conditions?

    On one level the whole point of this investigation and subsequent regulatory action was to ensure that the University of Sussex complied with freedom of speech and academic freedom principles. And on that reading, the end point would be when OfS was satisfied that any offending bits of policy or decision-making did indeed comply with E1 and/or E2.

    However, OfS reserved its position on the 2024 TNBPES – it didn’t want to say if it complied with registration conditions or not. Indeed, Sussex had initially thought the note to this effect in the final decision letter meant it was still under investigation – it was only in preparation for the hearing that it learned it was not. Which is something you would think the regulatory might have been a little clearer on if it was looking to drive compliance. Or if you wanted to say (as OfS did) something like:

    some of the issues with the TNBEPS which gave rise to breach of Condition E1 continued to exist as at 20 March 2024, and therefore it is possible that the breach continued beyond that date and could occur again.

    It would only know that if it had reached a decision on the current policy. Which it said it hadn’t.

    OfS argued that the investigation window had to end at some point, and that it had looked at a lot of iterations of TNBPES already. It argued that this was a common regulatory approach, and to assess yet another iteration of the policy would take “considerable time”.

    What about other universities with a similar policy? What about AdvanceHE?

    The original Sussex TNBPES bore a very close resemblance to a template originally published by the Equality Challenge Unit, which had by 2018 become a part of AdvanceHE. Sussex was not the only university to take this up – by various reckonings there were between eight and ten universities that had a similar policy based on the template.

    This was not an issue that had escaped Judge Lieven, who asked at what point OfS approached either AdvanceHE (to note the issue with a commonly used template and to ask for changes) or other providers (to ask them to cease using or rethink their usage of the template)?

    It had not. It claimed not to have been aware of specific other universities using the policy when it began the investigation (it apparently considered this in the initial conversation about prioritising the Sussex investigation), and there was no conversation with AdvanceHE until after the final decision was made.

    In Justice Lieven’s own words:

    You’ve fined Sussex half a million pounds for a policy, but didn’t ask other universities if they had the same policy?

    Sussex had raised this issue as a part of an argument that it had been “singled out” for punishment – that other providers had done the same thing (and even gone on to experience high profile controversies concerning gender-critical speech) and had not faced regulatory consequences. It had, it claimed, experienced a negative impact as a result – one that had a detrimental effect on fair competition (one of those pesky “have regard to” requirements of OfS in HERA).

    But Justice Lieven’s take opens a wider question – is going after one provider for a widespread sin a reasonable and fair way to do regulation to ensure compliance. OfS’ pour encourager les autres approach is perhaps not a model of change that is helpful if you want to claim a dispassionate and even-handed approach to regulation.

    Why it matters beyond this case

    There is higher education legislation on the way – a Skills Bill, which would straighten up some of the more egregious problems with HERA and the OfS. Some of Justice Lieven’s judgement – particularly if she gets as stuck in to the visitorial jurisdiction issue – is an intervention in the evolution of higher education regulation that would shift us from the Behanite “it would be nice if” to a situation where changes had to be made to ensure OfS can continue to regulate in the way it has come to assume it has.

    Much like in the aftermath of Office for Students vs Bloomsbury College, already knowable issues with OfS become pressingly urgent, and the government will be forced into action via primary legislation. A crisis can drive needed change, but it can also drive measures to shore up systems that need a more considered rethink.

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  • Texas Families Begin Applying for Private School Vouchers – The 74

    Texas Families Begin Applying for Private School Vouchers – The 74


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    Texas families can begin applying for private school vouchers Wednesday, the most significant step yet in a state program set to launch next school year.

    Texans have until March 17 to apply for the program, which allows families to receive taxpayer dollars to send children to private school or educate them at home.

    If the number of applicants exceeds the $1 billion lawmakers set aside for the program, the state will prioritize students based on family income and whether they have a disability — though neither guarantee access.

    The program, overseen by the comptroller, Texas’ chief financial officer, will launch at the beginning of the 2026-27 school year.

    As of Wednesday night, more than 35,000 families submitted applications, according to the comptroller’s office.

    The state can spend no more than $1 billion on the program during the current two-year budget cycle, which ends Aug. 31, 2027. It is unclear how much the program’s costs could rise — lawmakers will make that determination in future legislative sessions — but state budget experts predict the tab could escalate to roughly $4.8 billion by 2030.

    Here’s what to know about the applications.

    Most Texas families with school-age children can apply.

    That includes students already attending private school or in home schooling. Families with children in a public school must plan to unenroll them if they want to participate. Parents must also submit proof of their child’s U.S. citizenship or evidence the child lawfully resides in the country.

    If public demand for the program exceeds available funding, the state will prioritize the following applicants:

    • Students with disabilities in families with an annual income at or below 500% of the federal poverty level, which includes a four-person household earning less than roughly $165,000 a year.
    • Families at or below 200% of the poverty level, which includes any four-person household earning less than roughly $66,000.
    • Families between 200% and 500% of the poverty level.
    • Families at or above 500% of the poverty level; these families can receive up to $200 million of the program’s total budget.

    The priority system does not guarantee access to the program, as students must still find a private school to accept them. No state or federal laws require private schools to make learning accommodations for students with disabilities.

    In other states with large-scale voucher programs, participation has skewed toward more affluent and white families with children already in private school.

    Families must have several documents prepared.

    That includes Social Security numbers for the parent and child; an IRS Form 1040 for 2024 or 2025; and a Texas identification card or utility bill, lease agreement, mortgage statement or voter registration certificate if the state cannot verify a Texas ID number.

    Families can also prove their child’s U.S. citizenship or lawful resident status by submitting documents like birth certificates or certificates of naturalization or citizenship.

    For private pre-K eligibility, children must be at least 3 years old and meet at least one of the state criteria for public pre-K. That criteria includes being eligible to participate in the free or reduced-price lunch program, being unable to speak or understand English, or being in foster care. Families with children in foster care must submit proof, such as a court order, adoption documents or a placement order.

    Some families could receive up to $30,000 each year.

    Most participating families with children in private schools will receive about $10,500 annually. Home-schoolers can receive up to $2,000 per year. Children with disabilities can receive up to $30,000 — an amount based on what it would cost to educate that child in a public school.

    To apply for the voucher program, families can submit a Social Security determination letter or a physician’s note as proof their child has a disability.

    But to qualify for the higher tier of funding, families must submit an Individualized Education Program, a legal document specifying that a child needs special education services. If families do not have that documentation, they can request it from their local public school. Public schools must complete those requests within 45 days of a parent consenting to the evaluation.

    Families will receive the money through education savings accounts. Managed by the finance and technology company Odyssey, the digital accounts will let families pay tuition and make education-related expenses, like private tutoring, transportation and school meals.

    Students must also find private schools to accept them.

    During the application process, families must signal their intent to enroll their child in a private school.

    But they do not have to officially have their children enrolled until June 1, nearly three months after the application period closes. If parents cannot find a school by the initial deadline, the state will give them until July 15. Private schools will then confirm enrollment between June 15 and July 31.

    Private schools, on a rolling basis, can apply to join the program if they have operated a campus for at least two years and received accreditation. They must also administer a nationally recognized exam of their choosing in grades 3-12. The schools are not required to administer the same standardized tests issued to public school kids each year — currently the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR.

    More than 1,600 private schools have opted in thus far, with most located in the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth areas.

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton released a January opinion stating his belief that the comptroller can block certain schools from participating in the program if they’re “illegally tied to terrorists or foreign adversaries.”

    The opinion came after Acting Comptroller Kelly Hancock requested guidance from Paxton, saying schools associated with the accreditation company Cognia had hosted events organized by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group that Gov. Greg Abbott recently designated a terrorist organization.

    CAIR has sued Abbott over the label, calling it defamatory and false. The U.S. State Department has not designated the organization a terrorist group.

    As first reported by the Houston Chronicle, hundreds of Cognia schools have been shut out of the program, including those that primarily serve Muslim students, Christian students and children with disabilities. The comptroller’s office has said it is now inviting groups of Cognia schools that it considers in compliance with the law to participate.

    Families will start receiving notifications in April.

    Those notifications will let parents know they will receive funding — contingent upon enrolling their children in a private school by either the June 1 or July 15 deadline.

    The first portion of state funding will become available in families’ education savings accounts between July 1 and mid-August.

    This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.


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  • The True Costs of Trump’s Ed. Dept. Cuts – The 74

    The True Costs of Trump’s Ed. Dept. Cuts – The 74

    School (in)Security is our biweekly briefing on the latest school safety news, vetted by Mark Keierleber. Subscribe here.

    When the Trump administration decimated the Education Department’s civil rights office last year, thousands of students waiting for relief from alleged racial and sexual discrimination in schools were left to languish. 

    It turns out the move to sideline half of the Office for Civil Rights staff cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, according to a new report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. Nearly a year later, the Education Department still can’t say whether it saved a dime. 

    GAO estimates the decision to place civil rights staffers on paid administrative leave, while simultaneously shuttering most of its regional offices, cost upwards of $38 million for the salaries and benefits of staffers who were kept home. 

    “Other costs,” the government watchdog noted, “are unknown.” 

    Without a full accounting of costs and savings, the watchdog concluded, the department can’t credibly claim the shakeup improved efficiency, saved money or better served students — the very reasons used to justify the cuts in the first place. 

    Click here to read the full Government Accountability Office report.

    In the news

    Meghan Gallagher/The 74/Getty Images

    The latest in Trump’s immigration crackdown: Minnesota school districts and the state’s teachers union filed a lawsuit demanding reinstatement of a longstanding policy against immigration enforcement activities near schools and other “sensitive locations.” | The 74

    • A Minnesota 11-year-old and her mother will be reunited with their family after being held for nearly a month in a Texas detention center after getting picked up by immigration agents on their way to school. | KSTP
    • The horrifying truth behind the immigration arrest of 5-year-old Liam Ramos: It wasn’t an accident. | Slate
      • The Columbia Heights school district where Liam is enrolled closed for a day this week after officials received a “racially and politically motivated” bomb threat. | CBS News
    • ‘None of this is OK’: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz demanded in a letter that the federal government disclose how many of the state’s children have been detained as part of the immigration enforcement surge — and pleaded for agents to stay away from schools and bus stops. | MPR News
    • Cities could be compelled to cooperate with federal immigration officials in order to access federal funds for investigations into internet crimes against children, a lawsuit alleges. | KPBS
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    Get the most critical news and information about students’ rights, safety and well-being delivered straight to your inbox.

    Big Tech in the spotlight: As TikTok and Snap settle lawsuits centered on the damaging effects of social media on children, Meta and YouTube are gearing up for closely watched trials. The tech companies face allegations the apps were designed to keep kids hooked despite known harms to their well-being. | Los Angeles Times

    • Amazon reported hundreds of thousands of photos of child sexual abuse in its artificial intelligence training data — but the company’s refusal to say where it came from could hinder police efforts to track down perpetrators. | Bloomberg 
    • As Democrat- and Republican-led states pass rules designed to protect children from the potential harms of AI chatbots like ChatGPT, an executive order by President Donald Trump gives the attorney general authority to sue states with consumer protection laws that stand in the way of the country’s “global AI dominance.” | Futurism
    • The head of the Federal Trade Commission came out as a strong proponent of contentious online age-verification rules, arguing “it offers a way to unleash American innovation without compromising the health and well-being of America’s most important resource: its children.” | The Record

    A North Carolina woman faces criminal charges after she allegedly kicked a pregnant school resource officer in the stomach while refusing to leave her child’s elementary school. | WECT

    ‘It’s evil’: The National Institutes of Health failed to protect genetic data of more than 20,000 U.S. children from misuse by a fringe group of researchers who used the records to claim intellectual superiority of white people over other races. | The New York Times

    Two Florida teenagers accused of plotting to kill a classmate will be charged as adults with attempted premeditated murder. | WESH

    ICYMI @The74

    Eamonn Fitzmaurice/The 74, Getty Images

    Four Takeaways from New Report on AI’s Risks in Education

    Families Locked Out of Child Care Subsidies Suffer While On Waitlists

    How a Notorious Maximum-Security Prison Was Transformed Into a Thriving Preschool

    Emotional Support

    The 74’s Eamonn Fitzmaurice and his son Ellis visited the Brooklyn Cat Cafe to offer a few treats and scratches. “I’m a dog person,” Eamonn tells me, “but the cats were cute.”


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  • WEEKEND READING: Fiscal drag or fiscal sense? Freezing student loan repayment thresholds

    WEEKEND READING: Fiscal drag or fiscal sense? Freezing student loan repayment thresholds

    This blog was kindly authored by Jack Booth, Maike Halterbeck, and Gavan Conlon at London Economics.

    There has been wide-ranging coverage of the recently announced freeze to the Plan 2 student loan repayment threshold in England (The Times, Guardian, Financial Times and many more), as graduates and the media begin to understand that the majority of Plan 2 graduates are unlikely to ever pay off their loan balance within the 30-year repayment period.

    While the policy was announced by the UK Government in the November 2025 budget, the Welsh Government has just announced that it will not follow suit. This is a big decision from the Welsh First Minister.

    So, what has potentially driven the Welsh First Minister’s decision?

    The Welsh Government’s recent call for evidence on tertiary education in January stated that it was:

     in discussions with HMT and the Department of Education regarding the implications of the Plan 2 threshold freeze decision for Wales.

    The decision to freeze the threshold (or not) is even more important in Wales than in England as – unlike England which moved to Plan 5 from 2023-24 onwards – Wales has remained on Plan 2 repayment terms, so all current students are still on Plan 2 once they graduate.

    In this blog, we assess the impact of the potential threshold freeze on the 2025-26 cohort of Welsh domiciled students. On the surface, the freeze might seem like a relatively minor change, but it in fact would have significant impacts. This may explain the Welsh Government’s decision to opt for the status quo.

    How does the Plan 2 repayment system work?

    Graduates are on the Plan 2 repayment plan if they are English domiciled and started their course between 2012-13 and 2022-23 (after which English students moved onto Plan 5) or are Welsh domiciled and started their course since 2012-13. Graduates on this plan currently repay 9% of their income above £28,470, with the threshold traditionally increasing each year in line with RPI inflation (so the threshold will increase to £29,385 in April 2026). The interest applied to the loan balance starts at RPI (currently 3.2%) and increases to RPI + 3% (currently 6.2%) for higher earners.

    In its November 2025 budget, the UK Government announced a three-year freeze of the threshold (at £29,385) from April 2027 to March 2030. Without this freeze, we would expect the threshold to rise to approximately £32,545 by April 2029 (based on OBR forecasts). While the threshold freeze might seem like a small and ‘temporary’ change to the loan repayment terms, it would in fact result in a lower repayment threshold in every year of the 30-year repayment period for the 2025-26 student cohort. Therefore, it has a substantial impact.

    What would have been the impact of adopting the freeze in Wales?

    The figure below presents the estimated impact of the threshold freeze on graduates’ total lifetime loan repayments (by income decile and gender).

    Figure 1: Total lifetime loan repayments by Welsh domiciled students who complete full-time first degrees in Wales (net present value, 2025-26 prices), by lifetime earnings decile and gender

    Overall, if the Plan 2 freeze had been implemented in Wales, graduates’ average lifetime repayments would have increased by £3,300 for men (from £65,600 to £68,900) and by £5,100 for women (from £39,000 to £44,100).

    However – as so often when it comes to the complex system of student loan repayment – the freeze would have had important distributional effects. Essentially, only lower- to middle-income graduates (1st to 4th decile for men, and 2nd to 8th decile for women) would be affected by the threshold freeze. This is because their earnings are insufficient for them to ever be expected to fully pay off their loan (i.e. they make repayments for the entire 30-year repayment period). With the freeze, lower- to middle-income graduates’ total repayments over the 30 years would have been higher (by between £7,000 and £8,000 over their lifetimes). In contrast, higher-income graduates would have been basically unaffected by the Plan 2 threshold freeze.

    What are the implications of Wales not following the English policy?

    The Welsh Government just confirmed that it will not follow the Westminster Government’s Plan 2 repayment threshold freeze. The key issue now is that, while the student loan outlay provided to Welsh domiciled students is funded by HMT, this is conditional on the cost of the Welsh student finance system being ‘broadly comparable’ to the English system.

    The specific problem here relates to student loan impairments (the RAB charge) – in other words, the amount of the student loan outlay that is expected to not be repaid. For HMT to fund student loans for Wales, this RAB cost needs to be ‘within a reasonable range’ of the corresponding RAB cost for English domiciled students (adjusted for the relevant Barnett formula comparability percentage), according to HMT’s Statement of Funding Policy.

    The Plan 2 threshold freeze in England is aimed deliberately at reducing the English RAB charge.

    Our modelling suggests that the decision of the Welsh Government not to implement the freeze increases the RAB charge by approximately 8 percentage points. The additional cost associated with this decision is in the region of £74 million per cohort (or about 23% of the total costs of funding undergraduate students). The Welsh Government may now need to cover this cost from elsewhere if the loan system is no longer assessed to be ‘within a reasonable range’ of the English system. The Welsh Government have (candidly) acknowledged this possibility in their recent call for evidence, stating that:

    these pressures will likely require the Welsh Government to review and amend its ongoing policy on student support outlay, and student loan repayments.

    As outlined here, adopting the threshold freeze would have been regressive: high-earning graduates would be basically unaffected, but lower-income and middle-income graduates would be made worse off. However, as always, with scarce public resources spread thinly, the costs of this decision may need to be borne elsewhere. 

    Want to know more?

    Our more detailed analysis, including further charts and additional impacts of the repayment freeze, can be found here on our website.

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  • Why This Teddy Bear Was Canceled – The 74

    Why This Teddy Bear Was Canceled – The 74

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    According to a report, an AI-powered teddy bear, called Kumma, from FoloToys, delivered ‘potentially dangerous information” and “mature topics.’



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  • St. Paul Teachers Share Their Classroom Realities – The 74

    St. Paul Teachers Share Their Classroom Realities – The 74


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    When COVID forced schools to close in 2020, everyone — students, teachers, classroom aides and administrators — was forced online together. Everyone scrambled to figure out the technology, everyone hungered for human connection. 

    Today, with thousands of federal agents targeting Minnesota schools, bus stops, day care centers and other places where immigrant parents gather with their children, remote learning options have been revived in numerous districts, with varying degrees of success. And, unlike the pandemic-era emergency measures, the steps schools are taking to keep kids safe are anything but uniform. 

    In many schools — especially those that enroll diverse student bodies — who can show up and who can’t changes by the day, forcing teachers to improvise continually. Still confronted with the absenteeism, mental health crises and lost learning of the pandemic shutdowns, educators know what’s being lost — and exactly which children are going to suffer the disproportionate impact of an emergency now in its ninth week.   

    Two St. Paul Public Schools teachers recently gave The 74 glimpses inside their classrooms. In his 18th year on the job, John Horton teaches at Barack and Michelle Obama Montessori, where classes contain multiple grade levels and the student body, as he puts it, “looks like the people that live in St. Paul.” So far, all 28 of his first, second and third graders have been in school, every day.

    Across the city, in the equally diverse Como High School, 31-year veteran Eric Erickson teaches a host of subjects where current events are inescapably relevant: AP Psychology; a University of Minnesota College in the Schools government course; and U.S. history, co-taught with an English learner instructor. 

    As improbable as it sounds, the families of Horton’s pupils want them physically present in class and have moved mountains to get them there safely. But the divides in in-person attendance in Erickson’s classes are illustrative of a deepening inequity. He knows that a persistent chasm of unequal opportunity is likely to yawn wider. 

    Until the abduction of a child or violence at or near their school forces them into the spotlight, most Minnesota educators have been too fearful to speak out, using their names and those of their schools, about what it’s like in classrooms right now. Yet Horton and Erickson, both of whom have been Minnesota Teacher of the Year finalists and/or semifinalists, told The 74 they want people to know what school is like in this unprecedented moment. 

    These excerpts from conversations with them have been edited for length and clarity.

    Who’s in class in person, and who isn’t

    Horton: Children really, really thrive on structure, routine, predictability. The problem that’s different from COVID to now is that during COVID, even though things were upended, there were still some structures and routines and things in place. But with the way things are heading right now, those things aren’t present anymore. 

     Barack and Michelle Obama Montessori teacher John Horton. (Courtesy of John Horton)

    Our school has some teachers that have been reassigned to take on virtual learning. They’re pausing their in-person job and moving to the online school. They’re teaching children who haven’t ever been to online school. So it’s a whole new program and a whole new mode of instruction.

    My classroom has 28 kids normally, and I have 28 kids still here. I have a very good relationship with a lot of the families, and they really wanted to stay in person as a community. There’s definitely some fears and anxiety, but for young children, that predictability is really important. 

    We are fortunate to have a community of volunteers keeping watch around the school. We have precautions in place for children who don’t feel safe waiting for the bus. There’s been a lot of community- and school-level action that has helped mitigate the fear. But there’s a lot of anxiety about leaving the house. 

    Erickson: The students who are not here tend to be students with brown skin and black skin. And in many ways, this division along race and ethnicity makes this version of virtual learning feel a lot more like battles we thought we had overcome in the Civil Rights Movement, and with equal access to opportunity and education.

    The difference in who’s here and who’s not can be seen in the difference between a U.S. history English-language cohort and a senior-level, University of Minnesota college-level government course. I’ve got 95% of my seniors in college-level government present, and about 30% of my co-taught U.S. history classes are online. But our English-learner classes, some of them are less than half in attendance in person. 

    (Students are) not able to listen to their (in-person) peers and process what’s happening. They’re living in isolation with their family and social media as connectors, as opposed to the support of peer-to-peer and caring adult interaction. 

    We are still their teachers. They are still on our class lists. We are pushing out lessons, videos, documents and assignments to students in their homes. But there’s no substitute. Students who miss live instruction and interaction with peers and their teachers cannot obtain the same quality of education.         

    What they’re hearing from students 

    Horton: The challenges the kids are experiencing at home and in the community are real. Children talk openly about the immigration crackdown. They’re making posters and expressing their frustration. A couple of my kids have been to protests. A few of my kids have had knocks at the door and agents enter their homes.

    And, of course, a lot of children are aware of what’s going around the community because of parents’ stress. In a lot of ways that’s very similar to COVID, where families are trying to isolate children from everything that’s going on and yet the children know something is going on.

    I don’t know if I can share all my stories. There was an incident at a child’s house a couple weeks ago. And that was scary. The child was scared, the family was scared. I was shook. They called me Sunday at 6:50 in the morning to tell me what was going on. Some of the people in our community are going through a lot, and they don’t have a lot of people they might be able to know or connect with or trust.

    I’ve worked with these families for three years in a row, and I have good relationships. There’s a lot of blessings with that and also heartbreak. It’s really hard to hear what’s transpiring, but I’m also really surprised by the outpouring of love. 

    When they’re struggling through traumatic events — and our city has been through so many over the last few years — children also need a sense of hope and joy. To see their friends, to have things they know how to do, be it an art project or something. Having those things, those distractions, those avenues are really important. The children that have been coming to school have been very happy in my class.

    Erickson: When we are debriefing the current events in the news cycle, Minneapolis and St. Paul are at the center of a federal surge that has drawn the attention of the world. It’s imperative that we’re able to discuss, analyze and evaluate the impact of the situation surrounding us. I take pride in listening to my students, taking their questions and helping them think critically about what we’re experiencing in relationship to what we’ve studied with the Constitution, separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism. 

    They ask appropriate questions. They see injustice. They observe an overreach of federal power. They notice that the guardrails are off with regard to checks and balances. Congress is not holding the Executive Branch accountable. Court decisions are not necessarily checking the expansion of presidential power. They wonder if it’s their time and place to exercise their First Amendment rights.

    How students are expressing themselves   

    Horton: This is a Montessori school, and we believe in honoring children’s voices. The posters children have written are very simple. They say “ICE out.” Or, “Leave our friends alone.” “You are not welcome” is one of my favorite ones. The kids are expressing themselves through art. Having that outlet is so important. 

    The kids started a food shelf in the classroom. And they’re collecting money for the International Institute of Minnesota [a St. Paul nonprofit that helps refugees and immigrants resettle]. Two children are carrying around a box, collecting change. 

    Families have donated gift cards to support other families. To see all the people coming together, that makes me hopeful.

    Erickson: We saw a highly organized, peaceful student protest on Jan. 14, a week after Renee Good’s killing, where students from across St Paul high schools — mostly public, but also peers from private and charter schools — converged on the state Capitol to call out the injustices they’re seeing and to ask for human decency from the federal government. 

    We were fearful as a school community about what might happen to them if they exercise their freedom of speech and freedom to assemble. We were inspired to see them advocate for themselves. We, of course, did not attend or endorse the student walkouts. But parents and community members coordinated to serve as unofficial marshals and watch over the routes they were taking to the Capitol, and to be there for support, to be observers of their constitutional rights. 

    There were three students in the room with me, the other 20 were at the rally. We were able to watch a livestream. And as we observed democracy in action, two of their classmates gave speeches on the steps of the Capitol. One addressing the humanity of all people and immigrants being the backbone of this country, and another addressing the impact of ICE’s actions. They were articulate messages — positive and hopeful in tone — while also criticizing the overreach of the federal government.

    Their own mental health

    Horton: Well. Oh boy. That’s a doozy of a question. My job is to make sure the children are safe and secure, and sometimes that means that you have to co-regulate with them. You have to show them what calm, caring and compassion looks like. And also anxiety. You need to model it: “I’m feeling this way, and this is how I can deal with it.” It’s almost like you’re teaching as you’re feeling, which is tough. 

    And then my own children. You know, what they hear when I talk at home. I’m trying to be a really good role model, and that comes first. Sometimes as an adult and a parent and someone in the community, you just have to put aside your own preferences for the good of the group. 

    Talking to children about hard things is important, but they can only take so much at a time. As a teacher, and especially a teacher of young kids, having difficult conversations is part of life. But they really need time to process things. Talking briefly about these incidents and then giving them an opportunity to have a say and have some hope and have some joy in their life is very important.

    The hardest thing for me is I know the impact it’s having on our families. That’s really hard. And I also know it’s impacting staff. There’s staff that carry around documents now, and they’re scared to go out. 

    I keep using the word “community,” but I really have found a lot of comfort in that. You know, comfort with the children, the families, the staff. But to say it’s easy would be a lie. 

    It’s a relief in some ways that they can be together. Just being in community is such a powerful thing for the people out protesting — even in our classroom.

    Erickson: As much as I pride myself on teaching from a non-partisan perspective and analyzing political issues and the role of government with objectivity, seeing the harm to our students and families has caused me to choke up more than once in class while listening and guiding discussion on these matters. 

    Yes, it has taken an emotional toll on teachers. Teachers love and care for all of our students. To have 30% of them not be able to reach school and go to your class where they belong is a cruel and sad injustice.


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  • LAWSUIT: FIRE sues Federal Trade Commission over agency’s targeting of news rating service

    LAWSUIT: FIRE sues Federal Trade Commission over agency’s targeting of news rating service

    WASHINGTON, Feb. 6, 2026 — For almost a year, the Federal Trade Commission has unconstitutionally used its broad regulatory powers to attack NewsGuard, a private news organization, because it doesn’t like its news ratings.

    Now, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is filing a federal lawsuit on behalf of the company to protect NewsGuard’s First Amendment rights and remind the federal government it has no business using its power to censor journalism whose reporting it opposes.

    “NewsGuard’s rating service is quintessential journalistic activity protected by the First Amendment,” FIRE Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere said, “and the Supreme Court has unanimously affirmed that the government has no legitimate role in saying what counts as the right balance of private expression — to ‘un-bias’ what it thinks is biased.” 

    Since its founding in 2018 by veteran journalists L. Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, and Steven Brill, the founder of The American Lawyer and Court TV, NewsGuard has published ratings of the reliability of news websites based on fully disclosed journalistic criteria. These criteria include whether news sites verify their information, regularly correct errors, and disclose ownership and financing, among other transparency metrics. NewsGuard’s services are used by consumers and businesses alike, including advertisers, to weigh the credibility of news platforms where their ads may appear.

    Websites across the political spectrum earning low scores have objected to their ratings. In recent years, some conservative websites earning lower scores than their conservative competitors have sought government censorship of the ratings.

    FIRE’s lawsuit, filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, lays out three ways in which the federal government violated the company’s First Amendment rights:

    • FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson and the agency engaged in unconstitutional retaliation against NewsGuard based on its perceived viewpoints.
    • The government violated the First and Fourth Amendments by an unjustified and overly burdensome civil investigation into the company’s operations.
    • The FTC unconstitutionally targeted NewsGuard for its First Amendment activity, including by conditioning a merger last fall between advertising companies Omnicom and IPG on a prohibition against the new conglomerate using news rating services when determining where to buy ads — drafted and amended to ensure the ban would prohibit access to NewsGuard’s ratings.

    FIRE is seeking an injunction to stop the FTC’s excessive investigation into NewsGuard’s practices and to stop the government from enforcing the merger condition.

    “Disagreement over news coverage is precisely the kind of expression the First Amendment protects,” Corn-Revere said. “If the government, regardless of the party in charge, can use its levers of power to punish an organization over its coverage, there’s no reason it can’t do the same to pursue other news organizations that it disfavors.”

    NewsGuard’s statement on today’s filing is available here.

    The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought — the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE educates Americans about the importance of these inalienable rights, promotes a culture of respect for these rights, and provides the means to preserve them. 

    CONTACT:
    Karl de Vries, Director of Media Relations, FIRE: 215-717-3473; [email protected]

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