This story was produced in partnership with Teen Vogue and reprinted with permission.
Christopher Cade wants to be president someday. His inspiration largely comes from family members, who have been involved in local politics and activism since long before he was born. But policies from the Trump administration and the Ohio Legislature are complicating his college experience — and his plans to become a politician.
Cade is a student at Ohio State University double-majoring in public policy analysis and political science with a focus on American political theory. He recalls his maternal grandmother, Maude Hill — who had a large hand in raising him — talking to him about her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. She also worked at Columbus, Ohio-based affordable housing development nonprofit, Homeport, and has gone to Capitol Hill to speak with the state delegation multiple times. His dad is the senior vice president of the housing choice voucher program at the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, and his older brother has a degree in political science and is interested in social justice advocacy work, Cade said. Last fall, his first on campus, Cade began applying to opportunities to bolster his resume for a future career in politics.
The now 19-year-old secured an internship with the U.S. Department of Transportation and a work-study job on campus in the university’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion. But the federal opportunity was scrapped when the Trump administration imposed a hiring freeze and budget cuts. His campus job ended when the university announced it would “sunset” the diversity office in response to federal and state anti-diversity, equity and inclusion orders and actions, according to Cade.
Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education.
The work-study position was with the university’s Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male, which was founded to support Black men to stay in college. It’s a cause he was excited about.
“I would help order food or speak with students or do interviews,” said Cade. “I developed a good 20 different programs for the next year.”
In February, when the university announced it was closing the office, “I was like, ‘Well, so six months of work just for no reason,’” he said.
OSU President Ted Carter released a statement on Feb. 27 saying the closure of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion was a response to both state and federal actions regarding DEI in public education. The move eliminated 17 staff positions, not including student roles, the university said. Programming and services provided by the Office of Student Life’s Center for Belonging and Social Change were also scrapped.
The change came before the Trump administration’s initial deadline for complying with a memo that threatened to cut funding for public colleges and universities, as well as K-12 schools, that offer DEI programs and initiatives. In March, the administration announced that OSU was one of roughly 50 universities under federal investigation for allegedly discriminating against white and Asian students in graduate admissions. Additionally, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed legislation in March banning DEI programs in the state’s public colleges and universities. The legislation went into effect in June.
Before the DEI office closed, Cade said, “I felt so heard and seen.” He’d attended a private, predominantly white, Catholic high school, he said. “It was not a place that supported me culturally and helped me understand more about who I am and my Blackness,” he recalled. At the university, though, “the programming we had throughout the year [was] about how to change the narrative on who a Black man is and what it means when you go out here and interact with people.
“And then for them to close down all these programs, that essentially told me that I wasn’t cared about.”
After the February announcement, students pushed back, organizing protests and a sit-in at the student union. But eventually, those efforts quieted.
Cade says students felt like there was a “cloud of darkness” hanging over them. But he also thought of his Office of Diversity and Inclusion coworkers, some of whom had spent decades working there, helping students. In particular he thought of his former colleague Chila Thomas, who celebrated her fifth anniversary last year as the executive director of the Young Scholars Program. That program, which helps low-income aspiring first-generation college students get to and through college, was one of several of the office’s programs that will continue. The day after Carter’s announcement, she and others in the office spent time giving students space to talk through their feelings, despite the uncertainties surrounding their own employment, Cade said.
Since the university crackdown on DEI, Cade said he’s experienced more discomfort on campus, even outright racism. He says he was approached by a white person who said, “I’m so glad they’re getting rid of DEI” and spit on his shoe and used a racial slur.
“I don’t know how that could ever be acceptable to anyone, but that was [when] a flip switched in my head,” Cade said. “I couldn’t sit down and be sad and silent. I had to stand up and make change.”
In March, he traveled with other students to Washington, D.C., as part of the Undergraduate Student Government’s Governmental Relations Committee. They met with Ohio Rep. Troy Balderson and an aide, along with staffers from the offices of fellow Ohio lawmakers Sen. Bernie Moreno and Rep. Joyce Beatty, to discuss college affordability, DEI policies and the federal hiring freeze. Cade says he described how he was affected by the U.S. Department of Transportation canceling his internship.
In Carter’s announcement, he stated that all student employees would be “offered alternative jobs at the university,” but Cade said during a meeting with Office of Diversity and Inclusion student employees, an OSU dean clarified that they would have to apply for new opportunities. With the policy changes meaning there were fewer work-study roles and more students in need of jobs, Cade saw the market as increasingly competitive, and he began to job hunt elsewhere. This summer he secured work with the Ohio Department of Transportation as a communications and policy intern. In October he began an intake assistant role in the Office of Civil Rights Compliance at the university. (Ohio State Director of Media and PR Chris Booker told Teen Vogue that the school could not comment on the experiences of individual students but that “all student employees and graduate associates impacted by these program changes were offered the opportunity to pursue transitioning into alternative positions at the university, as well as support in navigating that change.”)
Although he was drawn to OSU for the John Glenn College of Public Affairs’ master’s program, Cade says he might have reconsidered schools had he known that the university would bend to lawmakers’ anti-DEI efforts. While he’s concerned about how education-related legislation and policies may continue to affect his college experience, he worries most about some of his peers. College is already so hard to navigate for so many young people, said Cade. “And this is just another thing that says, ‘Oh yeah, this isn’t for me.’”
This story was published in partnership with Teen Vogue.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Two months after Education Secretary Linda McMahon was confirmed, she and a small team from the department met with leadership from the National Center for Learning Disabilities, an advocacy group that works on behalf of millions of students with dyslexia and other disorders.
Jacqueline Rodriguez, NCLD’s chief executive officer, recalled pressing McMahon on a question raised during her confirmation hearing: Was the Trump administration planning to move control and oversight of special education law from the Education Department to Health and Human Services?
Rodriguez was alarmed at the prospect of uprooting the 50-year-old Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), which spells out the responsibility of schools to provide a “free, appropriate public education” to students with disabilities. Eliminating the Education Department entirely is a primary objective of Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that has guided much of the administration’s education policy. After the department is gone, Project 2025 said oversight of special education should move to HHS, which manages some programs that help adults with disabilities.
But the sprawling department that oversees public health has no expertise in the complex education law, Rodriguez told McMahon.
“Someone might be able to push the button to disseminate funding, but they wouldn’t be able to answer a question from a parent or a school district,” she said in an interview later.
For her part, McMahon had wavered during her confirmation hearing on the subject. “I’m not sure that it’s not better served in HHS, but I don’t know,” she told Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who shared concerns from parents worried about who would enforce the law’s provisions.
But nine days into a government shutdown that has furloughed most federal government workers, the Trump administration announced that it was planning a drastic “reduction in force” that would lay off more than 450 people, including almost everyone who works in the Office of Special Education Programs. Rodriguez believes the layoffs are a way that the administration plans to force the special education law to be managed by some other federal office.
Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our freeweekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education.
The Education Department press office did not respond to a question about the administration’s plans for special education oversight. Instead, the press office pointed to a social media post from McMahon on Oct. 15. The fact that schools are “operating as normal” during the government shutdown, McMahon wrote on X, “confirms what the President has said: the federal Department of Education is unnecessary.”’
Yet in that May meeting, Rodriguez said she was told that HHS might not be the right place for IDEA, she recalled. While the new department leadership made no promises, they assured her that any move of the law’s oversight would have to be done with congressional approval, Rodriguez said she was told.
The move to gut the office overseeing special education law was shocking to families and those who work with students with disabilities. About 7.5 million children ages 3 to 21 are served under IDEA, and the office had already lost staffers after the Trump administration dismissed nearly half the Education Department’s staff in March, bringing the agency’s total workforce to around 2,200 people.
For Rodriguez, whose organization supports students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, McMahon’s private assurances was the administration “just outright lying to the public about their intentions.”
“The audacity of this administration to communicate in her confirmation, in her recent testimony to Congress and to a disability rights leader to her face, ‘Don’t worry, we will support kids with disabilities,’” Rodriguez said. “And then to not just turn a 180-degree on that, but to decimate the ability to enforce the law that supports our kids.”
She added: “It could not just be contradictory. It feels like a bait and switch.”
Five days after the firings were announced, a U.S. district judge temporarily blocked the administration’s actions, setting up a legal showdown that is likely to end up before the Supreme Court. The high court has sided with the president on most of his efforts to drastically reshape the federal workforce. And President Donald Trump said at a Tuesday press briefing that more cuts to “Democrat programs” are coming.
“They’re never going to come back in many cases,” he added.
In her post on X, McMahon also said that “no education funding is impacted by the RIF, including funding for special education,” referring to the layoffs.
But special education is more than just money, said Danielle Kovach, a special education teacher in Hopatcong, N.J. Kovach is also a former president of the Council for Exceptional Children, a national organization for special educators.
“I equate it to, what would happen if we dismantled a control tower at a busy airport?” Kovach said. “It doesn’t fly the plane. It doesn’t tell people where to go. But it ensures that everyone flies smoothly.”
Katy Neas, a deputy assistant secretary in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services during the Biden administration, said that most people involved in the education system want to do right by children.
“You can’t do right if you don’t know what the answer is,” said Neas, who is now the chief executive officer of The Arc of the United States, which advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. “You can’t get there if you don’t know how to get your questions answered.”
Families also rely on IDEA’s mandate that each child with a disability receives a free, appropriate public education — and the protections that they can receive if a school or district does not live up to that requirement.
Maribel Gardea, a parent in San Antonio, said she fought with her son’s school district for years over accommodations for his disability. Her son Voozeki, 14, has cerebral palsy and is nonverbal. He uses an eye-gaze device that allows him to communicate when he looks at different symbols on a portable screen. The district resisted getting the device for him to use at school until, Gardea said, she reminded them of IDEA’s requirements.
Gardea, the co-founder of MindShiftED, an organization that helps parents become better advocates for their children with disabilities, said the upheaval at the Education Department has her wondering what kind of advice she can give families now.
For example, an upcoming group session will teach parents how to file official grievances to the federal government if they have disputes with their child’s school or district about services. Now, she has to add in an explanation of what the deep federal cuts will mean for parents.
Voozeki Gardea, who attends school in the San Antonio area, uses an eye-gaze communication device with the assistance of school paraprofessional Vanessa Martinez. The device verbalizes words and phrases when Voozeki looks at different symbols. Credit: Courtesy Maribel Gardea
“I have to tell you how to do a grievance,” she said she plans to tell parents. “But I have to tell you no one will answer.”
Maybe grassroots organizations may find themselves trying to track parent complaints on their own, she said, but the prospect is exhausting. “It’s a really gross feeling to know that no one has my back.”
In addition to the office that oversees special education law, the Rehabilitation Services Administration, which is also housed at the Department of Education and supports employment and training of people with disabilities, was told most of its staff would be fired.
“Regardless of which office you’re worried about, this is all very intentional,” said Julie Christensen, the executive director of the Association of People Supporting Employment First, which advocates for the full inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce. “There’s no one who can officially answer questions. It feels like that was kind of the intent, to just create a lot of confusion and chaos.”
Those staffers “are the voice within the federal government to make sure policies and funding are aligned to help people with disabilities get into work,” Christensen said. Firing them, she added, is counterintuitive to everything the administration says it cares about.
For now, advocates say they are bracing for a battle similar to those fought decades ago that led to the enactment of civil rights law protecting children and adults with disabilities. Before the law was passed, there was no federal guarantee that a student with a disability would be allowed to attend public school.
“We need to put together our collective voices. It was our collective voices that got us here,” Kovach said.
And, Rodriguez said, parents of children in special education need to be prepared to be their own watchdogs. “You have to become the compliance monitor.”
It’s unfair, she said, but necessary.
Contact staff writer Christina Samuels at 212-678-3635 or [email protected].
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
This story was produced by the Associated Press and reprinted with permission.
WASHINGTON – For a generation of young Americans, choosing where to go to college — or whether to go at all — has become a complex calculation of costs and benefits that often revolves around a single question: Is the degree worth its price?
Public confidence in higher education has plummeted in recent years amid high tuition prices, skyrocketing student loans and a dismal job market — plus ideological concerns from conservatives. Now, colleges are scrambling to prove their value to students.
Borrowed from the business world, the term “return on investment” has been plastered on college advertisements across the U.S. A battery of new rankings grade campuses on the financial benefits they deliver. States such as Colorado have started publishing yearly reports on the monetary payoff of college, and Texas now factors it into calculations for how much taxpayer money goes to community colleges.
“Students are becoming more aware of the times when college doesn’t pay off,” said Preston Cooper, who has studied college ROI at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “It’s front of mind for universities today in a way that it was not necessarily 15, 20 years ago.”
Related:Interested in more news about colleges and universities? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.
A wide body of research indicates a bachelor’s degree still pays off, at least on average and in the long run. Yet there’s growing recognition that not all degrees lead to a good salary, and even some that seem like a good bet are becoming riskier as graduates face one of the toughest job markets in years.
A new analysis released Thursday by the Strada Education Foundation finds 70 percent of recent public university graduates can expect a positive return within 10 years — meaning their earnings over a decade will exceed that of a typical high school graduate by an amount greater than the cost of their degree. Yet it varies by state, from 53 percent in North Dakota to 82 percent in Washington, D.C. States where college is more affordable have fared better, the report says.
It’s a critical issue for families who wonder how college tuition prices could ever pay off, said Emilia Mattucci, a high school counselor at East Allegheny schools, near Pittsburgh. More than two-thirds of her school’s students come from low-income families, and many aren’t willing to take on the level of debt that past generations accepted.
Instead, more are heading to technical schools or the trades and passing on four-year universities, she said.
“A lot of families are just saying they can’t afford it, or they don’t want to go into debt for years and years and years,” she said.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been among those questioning the need for a four-year degree. Speaking at the Reagan Institute think tank in September, McMahon praised programs that prepare students for careers right out of high school.
“I’m not saying kids shouldn’t go to college,” she said. “I’m just saying all kids don’t have to go in order to be successful.”
American higher education has been grappling with both sides of the ROI equation — tuition costs and graduate earnings. It’s becoming even more important as colleges compete for decreasing numbers of college-age students as a result of falling birth rates.
Tuition rates have stayed flat on many campuses in recent years to address affordability concerns, and many private colleges have lowered their sticker prices in an effort to better reflect the cost most students actually pay after factoring in financial aid.
The other part of the equation — making sure graduates land good jobs — is more complicated.
A group of college presidents recently met at Gallup’s Washington headquarters to study public polling on higher education. One of the chief reasons for flagging confidence is a perception that colleges aren’t giving graduates the skills employers need, said Kevin Guskiewicz, president of Michigan State University, one of the leaders at the meeting.
“We’re trying to get out in front of that,” he said.
The issue has been a priority for Guskiewicz since he arrived on campus last year. He gathered a council of Michigan business leaders to identify skills that graduates will need for jobs, from agriculture to banking. The goal is to mold degree programs to the job market’s needs and to get students internships and work experience that can lead to a job.
Bridging the gap to the job market has been a persistent struggle for U.S. colleges, said Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, a think tank that studies the workforce. Last year the institute, partnering with Strada researchers, found 52 percent of recent college graduates were in jobs that didn’t require a degree. Even higher-demand fields, such as education and nursing, had large numbers of graduates in that situation.
“No programs are immune, and no schools are immune,” Sigelman said.
The federal government has been trying to fix the problem for decades, going back to President Barack Obama’s administration. A federal rule first established in 2011 aimed to cut federal money to college programs that leave graduates with low earnings, though it primarily targeted for-profit colleges.
A Republican reconciliation bill passed this year takes a wider view, requiring most colleges to hit earnings standards to be eligible for federal funding. The goal is to make sure college graduates end up earning more than those without a degree.
Others see transparency as a key solution.
For decades, students had little way to know whether graduates of specific degree programs were landing good jobs after college. That started to change with the College Scorecard in 2015, a federal website that shares broad earnings outcomes for college programs. More recently, bipartisan legislation in Congress has sought to give the public even more detailed data.
Lawmakers in North Carolina ordered a 2023 study on the financial return for degrees across the state’s public universities. It found that 93 percent produced a positive return, meaning graduates were expected to earn more over their lives than someone without a similar degree.
The data is available to the public, showing, for example, that undergraduate degrees in applied math and business tend to have high returns at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, while graduate degrees in psychology and foreign languages often don’t.
Colleges are belatedly realizing how important that kind of data is to students and their families, said Lee Roberts, chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill, in an interview.
“In uncertain times, students are even more focused — I would say rightly so — on what their job prospects are going to be,” he added. “So I think colleges and universities really owe students and their families this data.”
The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
The Strada Education Foundation, whose research is mentioned in this story, is one of the many funders of The Hechinger Report.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
High school history teacher Antoine Stroman says he wants his students to ask “the hard questions” — about slavery, Jim Crow, the murder of George Floyd and other painful episodes that have shaped the United States.
Now, Stroman worries that President Donald Trump’s push for “patriotic education” could complicate the direct, factual way he teaches such events. Last month, the president announced a plan to present American history that emphasizes “a unifying and uplifting portrayal of the nation’s founding ideals,” and inspires “a love of country.”
Stroman does not believe students at the magnet high school where he teaches in Philadelphia will buy this version, nor do many of the teachers I’ve spoken with. They say they are committed to honest accounts of the shameful events and painful eras that mark our nation’s history.
“As a teacher, you have to have some conversations about teaching slavery. It ishard,”Stroman told me. “Teaching the Holocaust is hard. I can’tnotteach something because it is hurtful. My students will come in and ask questions, and you really have to make up your mind to say, ‘I can’t rain dance around this.’”
Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education.
These are tense times for educators: In recent weeks, dozens of teachers and college professors have been fired or placed under investigation for social media posts about their views of slain 31-year-old conservative activist Charlie Kirk, ushering in a slew of lawsuits and legal challenges.
In Indiana, a portal called Eyes on Education encourages parents of school children, students and educators to submit “real examples” of objectionable curricula, policies or programs. And nearly 250 state, federal and local entities have introduced bills and other policies that restrict the content of teaching and trainings related to race and sex in public school. Supporters of these laws say discussion of such topics can leave students feeling inferior or superior based on race, gender or ethnicity; they believe parents, not schools, should teach students about political doctrine.
“It has become very difficult to navigate,” said Jacob Maddaus, who teaches high school and college history in Maine and regularly participates in workshops on civics and the Constitution, including programs funded by the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute. Almost 80 percent of teachers surveyed recently by the institute say they have “self-censored” in class due to fear of pushback or controversy. They also reported feeling underprepared, unsupported and increasingly afraid to teach vital material.
After Kirk’s death Trump launched a new “civics education coalition,” aimed at “renewing patriotism, strengthening civic knowledge, and advancing a shared understanding of America’s founding principles in schools across the nation.” The coalition is made up made up almost entirely of conservative groups,including Kirk’sTurning Point USA, whose chief education officer, Hutz Hertzberg, said in a statement announcing the effort that he “is more resolved than ever to advance God-centered, virtuous education for students.”
So far, no specific guidelines have emerged: Emails to the Department of Education — sent after the government shut down — were not returned.
Some students, concerned about the shifting historical narratives, have taken steps to help preserve and expand their peers’ access to civics instruction. Among them is Mariya Tinch, an 18-year-old high school senior from rural North Carolina. “Trump’s goal of teaching ‘patriotic’ education is actually what made me start developing my app, called Revolve Justice, to help young students who didn’t have access to proper civic education get access to policies and form their own political opinions instead of having them decided for them,” she told me.
Growing up in a predominantly white area, Tinch said, “caused civic education to be more polarized in my life than I would like as a young Black girl. A lot of my knowledge in regard to civic education came from outside research after teachers were unable to fully answer my questions about the depth of the issues that we are taught to ignore.”
Mariya Tinch, a high school senior in North Carolina, at the 2025 Ready, Set, App! competition (second from left). She developed an app to help students get access to policies and form their own political opinions. Credit: Courtesy of Mariya Tinch
Other students are upset about federal cuts to history education programs, including National History Day, a 50-year-old nonprofit that runs a history competition for some 500,000 students who engage in original historic research and provides teachers with resources and training. Youth groups are now forming as well, including Voters of Tomorrow, which has a goal of building youth political power by “engaging,educating, and empowering our peers.”
There will surely be more attention focused on the founders’ original ideals for America as we approach the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence this July. Some teachers and groups that support civics teachers are creating resources, including the nonprofit iCivics, with its “We can teach hard things — and we should” guidelines.
How all of these different messages resonate with students remains to be seen. In the meantime, Jessica Ellison, executive director of the nonprofit National Council for History Education is fielding a lot of questions from history teachers and giving them specific advice.
“They might be anxious about any teaching that could get them on social media or reported by a student or parent,” Ellison told me, noting the strategy she shares with teachers is to focus on “the three S’s –— sources, state standards and student questions.”
Ellison also encourages teachers to “lean into the work of historians. Read the original sources, the primary sources, the secession documents from Mississippi and put them in front of students. If it is direct from the source you cannot argue with it.”
In September, students at Berlin High School in Delaware, Ohio, participated in a sign creation and postcard campaign for a levy on the ballot. Credit: Courtesy Michael LaFlamme
Michael LaFlamme has his own methods: He teaches Advanced Placement government and U.S. history at Olentangy Berlin High School outside of Columbus, Ohio, where many of his students work the polls during elections to see up close how voting works. They learn about civics via a participatory political science project that asks students to write a letter to an elected official. He also encourages students to watch debates or political or Sunday morning news shows with a parent or grandparent, and attend a school board meeting.
“There is so much good learning to be done around current events,” LaFlamme told me, noting that “it becomes more about community and experience. We are looking at all of it as political scientists.”
For Maddaus, the teacher in Maine, there is yet another obstacle: How his students consume news reinforces the enormous obstacles he and other teachers face to keep them informed and thinking critically. Earlier this fall, he heard some of his students talking about a rumor they’d heard over the weekend.
“Mr. Maddaus, is it true? Is President Donald Trump dead?” they asked.
Maddaus immediately wanted to know how they got this false news.
“We saw it on TikTok,” one of the students replied — not a surprising answer, perhaps, given that 4 out of 10 young adults get their news from the platform.
Maddaus says he shook his head, corrected the record and then went back to his regularly scheduled history lesson.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
This podcast, Sold a Story, was produced by APM Reports and reprinted with permission.
There’s an idea about how children learn to read that’s held sway in schools for more than a generation – even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this new American Public Media podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It’s an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn’t true and are now reckoning with the consequences – children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.
Episode 14: The Cuts
Education research is at a turning point in the United States. The Trump administration is slashing government funding for science and dismantling the Department of Education. We look at what the cuts mean for the science of reading — and the effort to get that science into schools.
This podcast, Sold a Story, was produced by APM Reports and reprinted with permission.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
This story about AmeriCorps jobs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
Lily Tegner didn’t know what she wanted to do when she graduated from Oregon State University with a chemical engineering degree five years ago. She entered the workforce at a point when unemployment briefly skyrocketed and companies were freezing hiring because of the Covid pandemic. “I didn’t have a very clear direction as far as where I was going in life,” she said.
Like hundreds of thousands of other young adults, Tegner kick-started her career through AmeriCorps, a federal agency that sends its members to communities across the country to tutor students, help after disasters strike and restore wildlife habitats, among other activities. She took a position at the Alaska Afterschool Network, where her job was to help find ways to expand science, technology, engineering and math access in its programs. Four years later, she’s still there — now, as a full-time employee managing the nonprofit’s AmeriCorps program.
“This state became my home,” Tegner said, adding that her year in AmeriCorps “completely changed the trajectory of my career.”
An AmeriCorps member poses with a student in one of the Alaska Afterschool Network’s funded programs. The organization lost its AmeriCorps funding last spring. Credit: Courtesy of Alaska Afterschool Network
This spring, Alaska Afterschool Network was one of hundreds of organizations abruptly notified that its AmeriCorps funding had been terminated. Federal funding cuts forced the nonprofit to eliminate three full-time positions and cancel 19 internships scheduled for this summer. Tegner’s job is also at risk, though the organization is trying to find a way to keep her on.
In late April, the Trump administration slashed 41 percent of AmeriCorps’ funding, cutting about $400 million in grants and letting go of more than 32,000 members serving in hundreds of programs across the United States. In June and also this month, judges ordered the government to restore some funding, but the ruling does not reinstate all the money that was taken away. Shrinking AmeriCorps is among the many steps the Trump administration has taken to curb what he has called “waste, fraud and abuse” of federal funds. More action is expected in the months ahead.
Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education.
Over the years, the program former President Bill Clinton created has deployed more than a million people.On top of gutting AmeriCorps, the cuts have diminished the reach of an agency that has been a critical path to a career for recent high school and college graduates at a time when entry-level jobs can be difficult to find.
AmeriCorps was created more than three decades ago to oversee expanded federal volunteer programs, incorporating existing projects including Volunteers in Service to America and the National Civilian Community Corps. Its members take on community service positions across the country that can last for up to two years. They receive a small living stipend, and full-time members are eligible for health insurance. At the end of their terms, members are awarded a grant that can be used to pay college tuition or student loans.
“AmeriCorps dollars have a powerful ripple effect, for both the AmeriCorps members and the students that they serve,” said Leslie Cornfeld, founder and CEO of the National Education Equity Lab, a nonprofit that brings college courses to high-poverty schools. “In many instances, it helps them define their careers.”
About half of the AmeriCorps funding for the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development was cut this spring. Credit: Courtesy of PHENND
Federal surveys of AmeriCorps members from 2019, 2021 and 2023 show that 90 percent of members joined the national program in part to gain skills that would help them in school and work, and well over 80 percent said their experience in AmeriCorps helped further their “professional goals and endeavors.”
The Trump administration cited fraud as part of its reason for nearly halving the AmeriCorps budget. Audits of the agency have raised questions about its financial management.
Peter Fleckenstein, 23, joined Aspire Afterschool in Arlington, Virginia, through AmeriCorps last year after graduating from the University of Delaware with a degree in psychology. He saw AmeriCorps as a way to build out his resume; even the entry-level positions he encountered during his job search required experience in the field.
In his position at the after-school program, Fleckenstein leads daily activities for a group of about two dozen fourth grade students. The experience has helped him crystallize his career aspirations: Before AmeriCorps, he was considering clinical social work or teaching. Now, he wants to become a counselor.
“Working with the kids here is a lot of behavior management: problem solving, helping them regulate themselves,” Fleckenstein said. “Doing one-on-one work with them, building habits and routines with them — that is something that I could focus on more if I was in a counseling job.”
Fleckenstein’s position was cut in April before he could complete his one-year term set to end in August, but Aspire Afterschool was able to raise money through donations to hire him and some of the nonprofit’s other AmeriCorps members part-time to finish out their grant year.
The Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development lost half of its AmeriCorps funding this past spring when the federal agency was slashed. Credit: Courtesy of PHENND
While some members have joined Americorps after graduating, student Deja Johnson, 24, joined as a way to help pay for college. Her term at The Scholarship Academy — a nonprofit in Atlanta helping low-income high school students navigate financial aid applications — was supposed to end with a $7,400 education grant. Because the terms were cut short, members have been told they’ll get only a prorated portion of the money.
“It’s a little bit of a shame,” said Johnson, who is using the education grant to pursue a bachelor’s degree in nonprofit leadership.
“That’s what a lot of us look forward to with this work that we’re doing, because we know how much of a sacrifice it can be at times. It’s that ‘pouring into our community’ — and that’s how our community pours into us,” Johnson said.
The AmeriCorps termination letters told grantees that their programs no longer met agency priorities, but the nonprofits were not told what those priorities are. Programs with different missions, in both Democratic- and Republican-led communities, were cut.
Sira Coulibaly, a member with the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development’s Next Steps AmeriCorps program, packs bags of food for the Metropolitan Area Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance. Credit: Courtesy of PHENND
The Hindman Settlement School, a nonprofit in rural Kentucky, was one victim of the cuts. The organization receives about $1 million a year from AmeriCorps for its program tutoring students with math and reading learning disabilities in more than two dozen schools. Losing that funding means drastically scaling back services, said Josh Mullins, senior director of operations at the Hindman Settlement School. He said he does not know why Hindman’s grants were terminated: The nonprofit regularly passes its audits, and its last annual report showed an average gain of seven months in reading levels among students in its dyslexia intervention program.
A statement published in January on an AmeriCorps webpage says the agency is in the process of “conducting a full review” to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion in federal programs. But Mullins and other AmeriCorps grantees said diversity, equity and inclusion efforts were not listed anywhere as part of their operations.
“That’s what’s devastating,” Mullins said. “It was completely out of our control. There was nothing you could do.”
The administration also gutted 85 percent of the agency’s federal staff, which has caused problems even for programs that are still receiving AmeriCorps funding.
The federal government terminated about half of the AmeriCorps grants for the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development. The group uses the funding to place members in local nonprofits and to help develop community partnerships in high-poverty schools. Director Hillary Kane said she’s been experiencing delays from the national AmeriCorps office in getting members approved for the programs that are still operating.
“We need the humans in D.C. to do the stuff that they do, so we can do the stuff that we do,” Kane said. “The person we communicate with isn’t there.”
About half of the AmeriCorps funding for the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development was cut this spring. Credit: Courtesy of PHENND
On June 5, a federal judge granted a temporary injunction ordering the Trump administration to restore AmeriCorps funding in states that had sued over the budget cuts. The lawsuit, which was filed by two dozen Democratic-led states in May, challenges the administration’s authority to cancel the funding without Congressional approval. But the judge’s injunction does not require the Trump administration to reinstate AmeriCorps’ federal employees, and funding is not being restored to programs in states that did not sign on to the lawsuit, including Alaska, home of the Alaska Afterschool Network, or Virginia, where Aspire Afterschool is based.
The Hindman Settlement School in Kentucky was one organization whose funding was restored this summer because of the lawsuit. Mullins said he’s hopeful the nonprofit will continue to receive AmeriCorps funding for the upcoming grant cycle in the fall.
For Kane, the injunction does not undo the chaos caused by the abrupt cancellation of half of her Philadelphia organization’s funding. Many terminated members that were with Kane’s organization have already moved on.
Programs whose grants were cut can apply again in the next grant cycle, but the president’s 2026 budget calls for shutting down AmeriCorps entirely.
While the debate in Washington rages, current and former volunteers mourn the potential loss of a program they said gave their lives meaning and led to employment. The avenue AmeriCorps provided for Tegner to start a career at the Alaska Afterschool Network gave her purpose in life, she said. She’s worried if the program ends, there won’t be another pathway on the same scale for young idealists who aren’t sure what they want to do with their lives.
“It helps young people of all ages grow and try new things,” Tegner said. “That’s very much what it was for me.”
Contact staff writer Ariel Gilreath on Signal at arielgilreath.46 or at [email protected].
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
This story was produced by The 19th and reprinted with permission.
On July 4, Nory Sontay Ramos stepped off a flight from San Antonio into a country she hardly recognized: Guatemala.
The summer wasn’t supposed to start this way. The 17-year-old had plans. In early June, she wrapped up 11th grade on a high note, having made the honor roll and represented her Los Angeles high school in the city finals for track. With track season over, she turned her attention to cross-country, showing up to campus for practice after the school year ended.
Everything changed when she and her mother, Estela Ramos — both undocumented — appeared at what they thought was a standard check-in visit with immigration officials on June 30.
“ICE took us to a room, and they ended up telling my mom, ‘Your case is over, so we have to take you guys with us,’” Sontay Ramos told The 19th. Over the objections of their attorney, federal agents led them away.
The next day, she and her mother were shipped to Texas. And by July 4, they were on a plane to Guatemala, a country where neither of them have lived for over a decade. On Independence Day — an occasion associated with freedom, with hope — their American dream shattered. Sontay Ramos has no idea what will become of the friends, family members and school community her deportation forced her to leave behind in Los Angeles.
A lawyer hired after she and her mother were detained said Monday that a motion to reopen the case has been filed with the Board of Immigration Appeals but provided no other information to The 19th.
A year shy of becoming a high school graduate in the United States, the teen’s life — and opportunities — completely changed in the span of five days.
“I’m confused,” Sontay Ramos said, her voice breaking. “I don’t know. I’m just really sad about everything.”
President Donald Trump campaigned for a return to office with the promise of mass deportations, characterizing undocumented immigrants as criminals and threats to women and girls. But as his administration has ramped up enforcement of his policy priority, undocumented people with no criminal backgrounds have made up the largest share of immigrants targeted. Those who are pursuing legal status through the proper channels have also become vulnerable — showing up to check-ins, like Sontay Ramos and her mother — only to be detained. These developments, recent polls reveal, have led to public disapproval of the Trump administration’s strategies.
Civil liberties and advocacy groups have raised concerns that undocumented immigrants are being removed so quickly they have been denied the right to due process. With Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act directing $150 billion more toward mass deportations, expedited removals of undocumented immigrants will almost certainly increase — and those immigrants who arrived in the United States as children like Sontay Ramos stand to get caught in the middle.
The Trump administration deported more than 93,800 people from January 20 to June 11, with ICE more than doubling its arrests compared with the same period in 2024, revealed an analysis by the Washington Post based on information from the Deportation Data Project. (The data does not reflect arrest and removal numbers from Customs and Border Protection.) Of those, 61 percent did not have criminal records and almost 90 percent were men, underscoring how relatively uncommon it is for a mother and daughter to be removed.
The Trump administration has not provided a tally of how many minors have been deported this year, but The 19th’s review of figures from the Deportation Data Project found that only about 3 percent of removals involved children. When ICE targets juveniles, the incidents often make national headlines, such as when a 9-year-old boy and his father living in Torrance, California, were detained in May and swiftly deported to Honduras. In states including Michigan, Massachusetts and New York, the detainment of teenagers, including those who are technically legal adults, have also garnered widespread media attention this year.
But when Sontay Ramos and her mother exited their Guatemala-bound flight on Friday, they weren’t met with fanfare. None of their family members in the Central American nation knew to expect them. With the help of an internet connection, they managed to contact one of Sontay Ramos’ older sisters, with whom they’re now living. The teenager isn’t sure which part of Guatemala she’s in, though she describes the area as rural.
Just six when she left Guatemala, Sontay Ramos struggles to recall what life there was like. But she remembers the emotion she felt as a small child: fear.
“I was scared because there’s gangsters here, and they tried to kill my mom,” she said. A family member involved in a gang threatened her mother, once attacking her so badly she needed to be hospitalized, she said. “My mom was scared.”
A research study exploring the root causes of immigration from Guatemala from 2012 to 2019 found violence, poverty, climate change and corruption to be among the driving factors and that many such migrants hail from rural parts of the country.
“The two major reasons, especially if we look at families, have to do with violence and drought,” said David Leblang, a coauthor of that study and politics professor at the University of Virginia. “It has been drought and then flood, hurricane and then drought that has just decreased the ability for families to put food on the table, so you see a combination of economic insecurity, but more so for families, food insecurity — because when you can’t feed your kids, that’s when families are going to pick up and they’re going to move first to more urban areas and then out of the country.”
About 11 years ago, Sontay Ramos and her mother headed by car to the United States in search of safety and opportunity. There, other family members awaited them and they hoped to be granted asylum, she said.
The transition was not easy. They left behind three of Sontay Ramos’ older siblings who did not want to come to the United States, she said. Her father remained in Guatemala, too. His death from illness shortly after she moved away was devastating.
“Unfortunately, her dad passed away at a young age, just like two weeks after her arrival to the States,” recalled Jennifer Ramos, Sontay Ramos’ 22-year-old cousin who lives in Los Angeles. “She grew up with her dad, so that also hit her at such a young age, just coming to a new country at six years old and not knowing the language here and losing her father. It was definitely hard for her.”
Getting accustomed to life in Los Angeles also wasn’t easy. Sontay Ramos and her mother are Indigenous Guatemalans, fluent in K’iche’. Few resources in their native tongue made assimilation more challenging in a city where English and Spanish are the primary languages.
Jennifer Ramos helped her little cousin learn to speak English. “She would come over, and I would help her with her homework. When she first came to the States, my younger sister was kind of her only friend in school because she didn’t know anybody and, again, the language barrier. She actually does struggle speaking Spanish.”
In time, Sontay Ramos and her mother adjusted to life in California. Her mother ultimately became a garment worker, employed as a seamstress until physical setbacks — illness and surgery — sidelined her earlier this year. Her deportation has separated her from her life partner, with whom she and her daughter shared an apartment in the Westlake District of Los Angeles, the neighborhood where an ICE raid at a Home Depot close to an elementary school in June panicked families, and days of demonstrations in nearby downtown escalated after Trump deployed 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines.
Los Angeles is a deeply blue city in a liberal state, with the nation’s highest concentration of immigrants — a place that the president has made ground zero for his immigration raids. In November, the City Council voted unanimously to make L.A. a sanctuary city, which bars it from using resources for immigration enforcement. Last week, the Trump administration filed suit, challenging the law. Meanwhile, advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and Public Counsel are suing the Trump administration for what it describes as a pattern of federal violations during immigration raids in Greater Los Angeles.
Before Trump’s immigration policies roiled her neighborhood and upended her life, Sontay Ramos was indistinguishable from her peers born in the United States. She grew up on the Netflix shows “Stranger Things” and “Cobra Kai,” enjoys the music of Lana Del Rey and The Weeknd and dotes on her cat, Max, who turned one on May 15. He is black — one of her two favorite colors. In her spare time, Sontay Ramos practices taekwondo, which she’s been learning for nearly four years.
“I just liked it,” she said of the martial art. Knowing how to fight, she added, helps her feel protected.
Sontay Ramos never sensed she was in danger before the immigration check-in that would push her out of the United States.
But her cousin Jennifer Ramos worried. The night before, Ramos’ father invited the family over to have Sunday dinner with his wife and three daughters. The evening was largely festive. Her father made shrimp ceviche and was eager for his family to enjoy the tangy, citrusy dish — especially Estela Ramos, who had just celebrated her 45th birthday. But when Estela mentioned that she and her daughter had an immigration check-in scheduled, everyone fell quiet.
“We were kind of scared,” Jennifer Ramos said. “We were like, ‘Are you sure you should go?’”
Estela Ramos poses for a picture with Jennifer Ramos at her quinceanera in 2017. Credit: COURTESY OF JENNIFER RAMOS
But her aunt tried to reassure them by letting them know their lawyer said it would be fine. After all, they had shown up for previous check-ins without incident, and if they didn’t appear, immigration officials would just find them at home.
Now, Jennifer Ramos doesn’t know when she’ll see her aunt and cousin again.
“It is unfair that a young student like her has been detained,” she said. “She’s the most deserving person. This should be the least of her worries.”
Sontay Ramos couldn’t help but tear up when she described what she was looking forward to about senior year — graduation, her friends, track-and-field and cross-country.
Although excited to reunite with family members they hadn’t seen in years, she and her mother have been weeping off and on since they arrived in Guatemala.
“I was happy, but I was expecting to see them in another way,” she said of her relatives. “Not like this.”
Sleeping and eating have been tough as has the constant feeling of disorientation. She doesn’t know where she is. In K’iche’, she asked her mother for the name of the town they’re in, but it didn’t register.
She also continues to feel blindsided about why she and her mother were deported at all. She doesn’t understand how or why their case was closed.
Recent polls, particularly those conducted after the immigration raids in Los Angeles, reveal that the Trump’s administration’s immigration crackdowns may be unpopular with the majority of the public. A PBS News/NPR/Marist poll released July 1 found that just 43 percent of Americans support Trump’s tactics.
Sixty-four percent of registered voters support giving most undocumented immigrants in the United States a pathway to legal status, with 31 percent preferring deportation for most of them, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll released June 26. Six months ago, only 55 percent of voters supported giving unauthorized immigrants a path to legal status, while 36 percent backed deportation.
Leblang, the politics professor, said that ultimately the economy will sway the public to take a stand on immigration.
“All of those people who are being deported, they’re consuming goods that are produced by natives,” he said. “So, what the evidence suggests is that’s going to affect native workers’ wages, so across the board, this is going to have a negative effect on the economy.”
For Manuel Guevara — a physical education teacher and coach at the Miguel Contreras Learning Complex, where Sontay Ramos is enrolled as a student — immigration isn’t an economic issue but a personal one. He came to the United States at 11 months in the mid-1980s amid El Salvador’s horrific 12-year civil war, becoming a citizen as a teenager. He fears that more deportations of youth from his school are imminent. He knows some families skipped school graduations in the area due to their concerns over raids. Some are so worried they refuse to let their children attend football practice. He’s heard that other families intend to self deport.
“This is not normal,” Guevara said. “Our whole community is beyond vulnerable. A lot of their [students’] parents, sad to say, don’t know how to read and write. Their kids need to do that for them. If they’re presented with [immigration] paperwork, they might not even be able to read it because that’s not their primary language.”
Before her deportation, Nory Sontay Ramos was recognized at school for her academic and athletic achievements. Credit: COURTESY OF JENNIFER RAMOS
He can hardly believe that Sontay Ramos, whom he taught for most of her high school years, is gone.
“She was smiling, happy-go-lucky,” Guevara said. He’s astounded that she was detained and deported in less than a week. “Nory is going into her senior year, which is another thing that’s just killing me. She was going into her senior year with all this momentum.”
Guevara fondly recalled the teen’s high-pitched voice that gets even higher when she’s excited.
“You could tell when she’s coming from down the hallway, for sure,” he said. But her trademark voice is now subdued due to her deportation ordeal. Through tears, she expressed gratitude for how her teachers, classmates and other supporters have donated nearly $7,000 to her GoFundMe campaign.
“I just want to thank everybody for the support and tell them to just be safe out there and be strong no matter what’s going to happen,” she said.
If she can’t return to the United States, she will figure out how to finish her education in Guatemala, Sontay Ramos said.
Guevara is certain she has the aptitude for greatness. Her academics and extracurricular activities are just hints of what she’s capable of, he said.
“She was about to reach cruising altitude,” he said. “Some of our students are capable of reaching the clouds up there and doing some great things. And I really believe that she was on her way.”
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
The Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms, is investigating the unintended consequences of AI-powered surveillance at schools. Members of the Collaborative are AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times.
RIGBY, Idaho — Four years ago, a sixth grader in Rigby, Idaho, shot and injured two peers and a custodian at a middle school. The tragedy prompted school officials to reimagine what threat prevention looks like in the approximately 6,500-student district.
Now, student-run Hope Squads in Rigby schools uplift peers with homemade cards and assemblies. Volunteer fathers patrol hallways as part of Dads on Duty. A team of district staff, counselors, social workers and probation officers gathers to discuss and support struggling students. Thanks to a new cellphone ban, students are off screens and talking to each other. The positive results of these combined efforts have been measurable.
“We’ve helped change … lives,”said Brianna Vasquez, a senior at Rigby Highand member of her school’s Hope Squad. “I’ve had friends who have been pulled out of the hole of depression and suicidal thoughts because of [the Hope Squad].”
School shootings like Rigby’s have driven America’s educatorstotry to prevent similar harm. Many districts in the U.S. have turned to technology — especially digital surveillance — as the antidote. Not everyone is sold on that approach, as there can be issues, including with privacy and security.Without broad agreement on which strategies do work best, some districts are trying a braided approach — using a combination of technology, on-the-ground threat assessment teams, and other mental health supports.
“If you’re sitting in the shoes of a district leader, taking a multi-pronged approach is probably very sensible,” said Jennifer DePaoli, a senior researcher at the Learning Policy Institute, who has studied school safety.
In Rigby, educators lean toward human interaction. Artificial intelligence and digital surveillance systems are perhapsless likely to identify who is eating alone at lunch or withdrawing from friends.
“It’s all about culture,” said Chad Martin, the superintendent of Jefferson County School District in Rigby. “It starts with that — just having a friend, having a group of friends, having a connection somewhere.”
Rigby school leaders use technology to detect threats, including an app, STOPit, which allows students to anonymously report safety concerns, and surveillance software that monitors students’ keystrokes and looks out for troubling terms. Martin said those are helpful, but must be used in concert with human-led initiatives.
The district’s version of a threat assessment team, which meets monthly, has been one of the most useful tools, Martin said. In those group conversations, school staff may realize that a student who’s been missing class has a parent who was recently arrested, for example.
“Everybody has a little piece of information,” Martin said. “So the goal is to put those people in the same room and be able to paint a picture that can help us support kids.”
Chad Martin, superintendent of Jefferson County School District, said student relationships remain the most powerful tool in keeping school safe. Credit: John Roark
A leading model,used by thousands of school districts, is the Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines (CSTAG). These were developed by forensic clinical psychologist Dewey Cornell after he spent years studying homicides committed by children or teens, including school shootings. He said digital surveillance technology can offer school districts “an illusion of safety and security.”
With CSTAG, school-based teams use a five-step process when threats emerge. The team includes a school administrator, a counselor or psychologist, a social worker, a staff member focused on special education, and a school resource officer. In serious situations, the group might suspend or move a student elsewhere while conducting mental health screenings,a law enforcement investigation, and development of a safety plan. Ultimately, that plan would be put into effect.
If implemented correctly, Cornell says, this type of approach is less punitive and more rooted in intervention. Instead of relying only on technology, Cornell and his threat assessment guidelines recommend adding humans who can make decisions with schools as situations emerge. He points to a recent study in Florida, one of the states where threat assessment teams are mandatory. Threats investigated by those teams “resulted in low rates of school removal and very low rates of law enforcement actions,” according to the report authored by Cornell and fellow University of Virginia researchers.
“If you’re a school counselor and you can work with a troubled kid and help get them on the right track, you’re not just preventing a school shooting, but you’re more likely to be preventing a shooting that would occur somewhere else and maybe years in the future,” he said.
Threat assessment teams — whether using the CSTAG model or another form — haven’t been immune from scrutiny. Complaints have emerged about them operating without student or parent knowledge, or without staff members to represent children with special needs. Criticism has also included concern about discrimination against Black and Hispanic students.
DePaoli, from the Learning Policy Institute, says more research is needed to determine whether they successfully identify threats and provide students with appropriate support. She suspects it boils down to implementation.
“If you are being required to do these, you need to be doing them with so much training and so much support,” she said.
The Jordan School District in Utah uses the CSTAG model. Travis Hamblin, director of student services, credits the “human connection” with strengthening the district’s approach to handling threats and, as a result, boosting student safety and well-being.
Earlier this school year, the district received an alert through Bark, a digital monitoring tool that scans students’ school-issued Google suite accounts. It flagged a middle schooler’s account, which contained a hand drawn picture of a gun that had been uploaded.
The notification mobilized the school’s threat assessment team. By using the CSTAG decision-making process, the team determined the student did not intend any harm, Hamblin says.
Rigby High’s Hope Squad — and those like it nationwide — aim to foster connection and reduce the risk of suicide. Credit: John Roark
The school leaders didn’t unnecessarily escalate the situation, he says. After their assessment, they chalked it up to middle school immaturity and asked the student to avoid such drawings in the future.
“When you say, ‘Why did you do that?’ And they say, ‘I don’t know.’ That’s the truth, right? That’s the gospel truth,” Hamblin said.
He shares this example to illustrate how the district marries technology-related monitoring with human-led threat assessment. The district employs someone — a former school administrator and counselor — to field the Bark alerts and communicate with school staff. And administrators from every school in the district have undergone threat assessment training, along with select members of their staff.
“A digital tool for us is a tool. It’s not the solution,” Hamblin said. “We believe that people are the solution.”
In Rigby, one of those solution people is Ernie Chavez, whose height makes him stick out in a hallway streaming with middle schoolers. He’s part of Dads on Duty, a program that brings in parents to help monitor and interact with students during passing periods and lunch.
Throughout the school, students reach out to Chavez for high-fives. On one February afternoon, he was greeted with applause and cheers. “I don’t know what that was about,” he said with a smile.
Similarly, the district’s Hope Squads, in place since 2021, have become an active presence inside the school.
The student-led coalitions aim to foster connection and reduce the risk of suicide. Thousands of schools across the United States and in Canada have implemented Hope Squads, but in Rigby, the mission of violence prevention has become personal.
Ernie Chavez monitors the hallways at Rigby Middle School on Feb. 5 for the Dads on Duty program. Credit: John Roark
“We refer … students every year to counselors, and those students go from some of the worst moments in their life (to getting help),” Vasquez said. “We build the connection between adults and faculty to the student.”
Members of the Hope Squad notice peers who seem down or isolated and reach out with a greeting, or sometimes a handmade card.
“We just reach out and let them know that people in the community are there for them, just to show them that we care and they’re not alone,” said Dallas Waldron, a Rigby High senior and Hope Squad member.
The groups also plan assemblies and special events, including, for example, a week of activities themed around mental health awareness.
Emilie Raymond, a sophomore at Rigby High, said the shooting made it clear “that people need to feel included and they need to find that hope.”
Another change at Rigby schools is a cell phone ban that was put in place this school year.
Before the ban,students were “sitting in the corners, isolated, staring at a screen,” said Ryan Erikson, Principal at Rigby Middle School. Now, “they’re playing games, they’re goofing off … they’re actually conversing.”
While Jefferson County School District’s approach to stemming violence is robust, “it’s not perfect,” Martin, the superintendent, said. “It’s still life. That’s just the reality of it, we’re still going to have things come up that we haven’t prepared for or weren’t on our radar. But we address them and just try to do whatever we can to support kids.”
Carly Flandro is a reporter with Idaho Education News. Jackie Valley is a reporter with The Christian Science Monitor.
Contact Hechinger managing editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, on Signal at CarolineP.83 or via email at [email protected].
This story about school threat assessments was produced by the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms that includes AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Thisstory was produced by Floodlight and republished with permission.
President Donald Trump and his administration have called it the “Great American Comeback.” But environmental advocates say the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s reversing course on enforcing air and water pollution laws is more of a throwback — one that will exacerbate health risks for children who live and study in the shadows of petrochemical facilities.
The American Lung Association has found that children face special risks from air pollution because their airways are smaller and still developing and because they breathe more rapidly and inhale more air relative to their size than do adults.
Environmental lawyers say Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s slashing of federal protections against toxic emissions could lead to increased exposure to dangerous pollutants for kids living in fenceline communities.
Community advocates like Kaitlyn Joshua, who was born and raised in the southeast corridor of Louisiana dubbed “Cancer Alley,” say they are horrified about what EPA’s deregulation push will mean for the future generation.
“That is not an exaggeration; we feel like we are suffocating without the cover and the oversight of the EPA,” Joshua said. “Without that, what can we really do? How can we really save ourselves? How can we really save our communities?”
Kaitlyn Joshua is a native of the southeast corridor of Louisiana dubbed “Cancer Alley,” and has spent the last few years leading the fight against a hydrogen and ammonia facility being built within 2,000 feet of an elementary school in Ascension Parish. Joshua says she is ‘horrified’ about the recent deregulation measures the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced for the petrochemical industry. Credit: Claire Bangser/Floodlight
Ashley Gaignard knows how hard it is to keep kids safe when pollution is all around.
When Gaignard’s son was in elementary school, a doctor restricted him from daily recess, saying the emissions from an ammonia facility located within 2 miles of his playground could be exacerbating a pre-existing lung condition, triggering his severe asthma attacks.
“I had asthma as a kid growing up, and my grandfather had asthma, so I just figured it was hereditary; he was going to suffer with asthma,” said Gaignard, who was born and raised in Louisiana’s Ascension Parish, also located within Cancer Alley. She’s now chief executive officer of the community advocacy group she created, Rural Roots Louisiana.
“I just never knew until the doctor said, ‘Okay, we have to think about what he is breathing, and what’s causing him to flare up the minute he’s outside’,” she said.
Gaignard said the further her son got away from that school, as he moved through the parish’s educational system, the less severe his attacks were. She said he’s now an adult living in Fresno, California — and no longer suffers from asthma.
Zeldin sent shockwaves throughout the environmental justice sector on March 12 when he announced that the EPA was rolling back many of the federal regulations that were put in place under the administration of Joe Biden — many built around environmental justice and mitigating climate change.
Those included strengthening the Clean Air Act by implementing more stringent controls on toxic air emissions and increased air quality monitoring in communities near industrial facilities. The new standards were expected to reduce 6,000 tons of air toxins annually and reduce the emissions related to cancer risks in these communities in Texas, Louisiana, Delaware, New Jersey, the Ohio River Valley and elsewhere.
A new memo from the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, which serves as the law enforcement arm of the EPA — circulated the same day as Zeldin’s announcement — states that environmental justice considerations would no longer factor into the federal agency’s oversight of facilities in Black and brown communities.
Zeldin said the goal was “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.”
Port Allen Middle School sits in the shadow of the Placid petrochemical refinery in West Baton Rouge Parish, La. A 2016 report found nearly one in 10 children in the U.S. attends one of the 12,000 schools located within 1 mile of a chemical facility, which for environmental advocates highlights the danger of the recently announced rollbacks of air and water pollution regulations by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Credit: Terry L. Jones / Floodlight
That means the EPA will no longer target, investigate or address noncompliance issues at facilities emitting cancer-causing chemicals such as benzene, ethylene oxide and formaldehyde in the places already overburdened with hazardous pollution.
“While enforcement and compliance assurance can continue to focus on areas with the highest levels of (hazardous air pollutants) affecting human health,” the memo reads, “…to ensure consistency with the President’s Executive Orders, they will no longer focus exclusively on communities selected by the regions as being ‘already highly burdened with pollution impacts.’”
The agency also will not implement any enforcement and compliance actions that could shut down energy production or power generation “absent an imminent and substantial threat to human health.”
In is prepared video statement about the EPA’s deregulation measures, Zeldin said, “The agency is committed to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower cost of living for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to states to make their own decisions. ”
Top officials with the nonprofit environmental advocacy group Earthjustice recently said there is no way for the Trump administration to reconcile what it’s calling “the greatest day of deregulation” in EPA’s history with protecting public health.
Patrice Simms, vice president of litigation for healthy communities for Earthjustice, went a step further pointing out during a press briefing that the reason EPA exists is to protect the public from toxic air pollution.
“The law demands that EPA control these pollutants, and demands that EPA protect families and communities,” Simms said. “And these impacts on these communities most heavily land on the shoulders of children. Children are more susceptible to the harms from pollutants, and these pollutants are often happening right in the backyards of our schools, of our neighborhoods and our playgrounds.”
A 2016 report published by the Center for Effective Government found that nearly one in 10 children in the country attends one of the 12,000 schools located within 1 mile of a chemical facility. These children are disproportionately children of color living in low-income areas, the report found.
For the past several years, Joshua has been leading the opposition to a hydrogen and ammonia facility being built within 2,000 feet of an elementary school in Ascension Parish. Air Products plans to start commercial operation in 2028 where an estimated 600,000 metric tons of hydrogen will be produced annually from methane gas.
The $7 billion project has been touted as a clean energy solution because the company intends to use technology to collect its carbon dioxide emissions, and then transport them through pipelines to be stored under a recreational lake 37 miles away.
Carbon capture technology has been controversial, with skeptics highlighting the possibilities for earthquakes, groundwater contamination and CO2 leaking back into the atmosphere through abandoned and unplugged oil and gas wells or pipeline breaches. Pipeline ruptures in the past have also led to communities having to evacuate their homes.
Joshua said these communities need more federal regulation and oversight — not less.
“We had a community meeting … for our Ascension Parish residents, and the sentiment and the theme on that call was very much like ‘Kaitlyn, there is nothing we can do.’ Like, we just had to literally lie down and take this,” Joshua said. “We had to kind of challenge people and put them in the space, in time, of a civil rights movement. We have to get creative about how we’re going to organize around it and be our own version of EPA.”
This screenshot from CLEAR Collaborative’s Petroleum Pollution Map models health risks from hazardous air pollution from petrochemical facilities around West Baton Rouge Parish near Port Allen Middle School. The map uses U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data analyzed by the Environmental Defense Fund. Environmental advocates have sounded the alarm on the dangers of the EPA’s rollback of air and water regulations for children in fenceline communities. Credit: Provided by The Environmental Defense Fund
Sarah Vogel, senior vice president of health communities with the Environmental Defense Fund, said the move toward deregulation comes as the U.S. Department of Justice announced on March 7 that it was dropping the federal lawsuit the Biden administration lodged against Denka’s Performance Elastomer plant in Louisiana. That plant had been accused of worsening cancer risks for the residents in the surrounding majority-Black community.
The DOJ said its decision was tied to Trump’s moves to dismantle all federal programs tied to diversity, equity and inclusion.
“What they’re trying to do is just completely deregulate everything for oil and gas and petrochemical facilities, just absolutely take the lid off,” Vogel said. “We have long known that children are uniquely susceptible to air pollution and toxic chemicals. Like they’re huge, huge impacts. It’s why what they are doing is so devastating and cruel in my mind.”
Floodlight, which produced this story, is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Linda McMahon said she stands firmly behind President Donald Trump’s calls to gut the U.S. Department of Education at her confirmation hearing to lead the department.
But she promised to work with Congress to do so — acknowledging some limits on the president’s authority as Trump seeks to remake the government through executive orders. And she tried to reassure teachers and parents that any changes would not jeopardize billions in federal funding that flows to high-poverty schools, special education services, and low-income college students.
“We’d like to do this right,” McMahon said. “It is not the president’s goal to defund the programs, it is only to have it operate more efficiently.”
Trump has called the Education Department a “con job” and said that McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive and billionaire Republican donor, should work to put herself out of a job. McMahon called this rhetoric “fervor” for change.
The Trump administration’s chaotic approach to spending cuts so far raise questions about whether McMahon’s statements — an effort to neutralize the most significant criticism of plans to get rid of the Education Department — will prove true over time.
Thursday’s hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, punctuated by occasional protests, served as a referendum of sorts on the value of the Education Department. Republicans said it had saddled schools with red tape without improving student outcomes. Democrats said the department protects students’ civil rights and funds essential services.
Democrats also pressed McMahon on Trump’s threats to withhold federal funding from schools that violate his executive orders and on the details of a potential reorganization — questions that McMahon largely deflected as ones she could better answer after she takes office.
“It’s almost like we’re being subjected to a very elegant gaslighting here,” said Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire.
Even as Trump has called for the Education Department to be eliminated and schooling to be “returned to the states,” he’s also sought to expand its mission with executive orders threatening the funding of schools that employ diversity, equity, and inclusion practices or teach that racism and discrimination were part of America’s founding. The federal government is barred by law from setting local curriculum, as Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska pointed out during the hearing.
In a tense exchange, Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut who’s championed school desegregation and diversity efforts in education, asked McMahon how schools would know if they were running a program that violates Trump’s executive order seeking to root out “radical indoctrination” in K-12 schools. Many schools have no idea what’s allowed, Murphy said, because the order doesn’t clearly define what’s prohibited.
But McMahon would not say that running affinity groups for students from certain racial or ethnic backgrounds, such as a Black engineers club or an after-school club for Vietnamese American students, was permitted. She also would not say whether schools might put their federal funding at risk by teaching an African American history class or other ethnic studies program.
“That’s pretty chilling,” Murphy said. “You’re going to have a lot of educators and a lot of principals and administrators scrambling right now.”
Later in the confirmation hearing, McMahon agreed schools should teach “the good, the bad, and the ugly” parts of U.S. history, and that it’s up to states, not the Department of Education, to establish curriculum.
McMahon’s record on DEI has sometimes been at odds with the Trump administration. She backed diversity issues when she served on the Connecticut State Board of Education, the Washington Post reported.
During her hearing, McMahon said DEI programs are “tough,” because while they’re put in place to promote diversity and inclusion, they can have the opposite effect. She pointed to examples of Black and Hispanic students attending separate graduation ceremonies — though those are typically held to celebrate the achievements of students of color, not to isolate them.
McMahon told the committee that many Americans are experiencing an educational system in decline — she pointed to sobering national test scores, crime on college campuses, and high youth suicide rates — and said it was time for a renewed focus on teaching reading, math, and “true history.”
“In many cases, our wounds are caused by the excessive consolidation of power in our federal education establishment,” she said. “So what’s the remedy? Fund education freedom, not government-run systems. Listen to parents, not politicians. Build up careers, not college debt. Empower states, not special interests. Invest in teachers, not Washington bureaucrats.”
Republican Senators reiterated these themes, arguing that bureaucrats in Washington had had their chance and that it was time for a new approach.
They asked McMahon about Trump administration priorities such as expanding school choice, including private school vouchers, and interpreting Title IX to bar transgender students from restrooms and sports teams aligned with their gender identities.
McMahon said she was “happy” to see the Biden administration’s rules on Title IX vacated, and she supported withholding federal funds from colleges that did not comply with the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law.
Teachers unions and other critics of McMahon have said she lacks the proper experience to lead the Education Department, though McMahon and others have pointed to her time serving on the Connecticut State Board of Education, as a trustee of Sacred Heart University, and her role as chair of the America First Policy Institute, where she advocated for private school choice, apprenticeships, and career education.
McMahon also ran the Small Business Administration in Trump’s first administration. Her understanding of the federal bureaucracy is an asset, supporters say.
Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, said McMahon’s background made her uniquely suited to tackle the pressing challenges facing the American education system today.
McMahon said multiple times that parents of children with disabilities should not worry about federal funding being cut for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, though she said it was possible that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services would administer the money instead of the Education Department.
But it appeared that McMahon had limited knowledge of the rights outlined in IDEA, the landmark civil rights law that protects students with disabilities. And she said it was possible that civil rights enforcement — a large portion of which is related to complaints about children with disabilities not getting the services to which they’re entitled — would move to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Dismantling the education department by moving key functions to other departments is a tenet of Project 2025, the playbook the conservative Heritage Foundation developed for a second Trump administration. Most of these functions are mandated in federal law, and moving them would require congressional approval.
McMahon struggled to articulate the goals of IDEA beyond saying students would be taken care of and get the assistance and technology they need.
“There is a reason that the Department of Education and IDEA exist, and it is because educating kids with disabilities can be really hard and it takes the national commitment to get it done,” Hassan, the New Hampshire senator, said. “That’s why so many people are so concerned about this proposal to eliminate the department. Because they think kids will once again be shoved aside, and especially kids with disabilities.”
McMahon also could not name any requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal law that replaced No Child Left Behind. ESSA requires states to identify low-performing schools and intervene to improve student learning, but it gives states more flexibility in how they do so than the previous law.
McMahon seemed open to reversing some of the cuts enacted by the U.S. DOGE Service, the cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk.
She said, if confirmed, she would look into whether staff who’d been placed on administrative leave — including some who investigate civil rights complaints — should return. She also said she’d assess the programs that were cut when DOGE terminated 89 contracts at the Institute of Education Sciences and 29 training grants.
Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, said her office had heard from a former teacher who developed an intensive tutoring strategy that was used in a dozen schools in the state. The teacher had a pending grant application to evaluate the program and its effect on student outcomes, and the teacher worried it would be in jeopardy. Collins asked if the department should keep collecting that kind of data so it could help states determine what’s working for kids.
“I’m not sure yet what the impact of all of those programs are,” McMahon said. “There are many worthwhile programs that we should keep, but I’m not yet apprised of them.”
The Senate education committee is scheduled to vote on McMahon’s confirmation on Feb. 20.
This story was produced by Chalkbeat and reprinted with permission.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
