Government figures obtained by The PIE show 62% of applicants were refused a study permit from January to July this year, with record-high volumes “raising urgent questions about transparency and application readiness,” said ApplyBoard.
Despite a decade of relatively stable approval ratings hovering around 60%, rates have plummeted to 38% so far this year, down from 48% in 2024 following the implementation of Canada’s study permit caps.
“It’s clear that Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is applying far greater scrutiny to new applications,” Jonathan Sherman, vice president of sales & partnership at BorderPass told The PIE, pointing to a “fundamental shift” in government processing.
Data: IRCC
Indian students – who comprise 40% of Canada’s international student population – have been hardest hit by soaring refusals, with four out of five Indian students receiving rejections in Q2 2025, according to BorderPass.
Stakeholders have pointed to a glimmer of hope in overall approval ratings rising modestly this spring, though without a “dramatic shift,” Canada will only reach one fifth of the government’s international student target for the year, Sherman warned.
With institutions bracing for severe declines, ApplyBoard analysis has found the most common reason for reason for rejection in 2024 was the perception by IRCC officers that students wouldn’t leave Canada after their studies, cited in over 75% of cases.
“While reviewers at IRCC understand that some future students hope to gain work experience in Canada after graduation… the extensive use of this reason last year suggests that many are perceived as having permanent residency as their primary purpose, instead of study,” stated the report.
Financial concerns drove three of the top five refusal reasons, after Canada more than doubled its proof-of-funds requirements from $10,000 in 2023 to $20,635 in 2024.
Specifically, in 53% of cases, IRCC officers said they were unconvinced that applicants would leave Canada based on financial assets, alongside doubts about insufficient resources for tuition and living expenses.
“While new policy caps played a role, our full-year data points to recurring applicant challenges, particularly around financial readiness and immigration intent that are preventable with the right guidance and documentation,” said ApplyBoard.
The report highlighted the continuing decline of unspecified reasons for refusal, following IRCC adding officer decision notes to visa refusal letters last month, which was welcomed as a much-needed step in improving transparency.
Other reasons for refusal include the purpose of visit being inconsistent with a temporary stay and having no significant family ties outside Canada.
The data comes amid a major immigration crackdown in Canada, with temporary resident targets included in the latest Immigration Levels Plan for the first time, which aims to reduce temporary resident volumes to 5% of the population by the end of 2027 – a year later than the previous government’s target.
Many are perceived as having permanent residency as their primary purpose, instead of study
ApplyBoard
Approval rates are also below average for other temporary resident categories, but none so drastically as study permits, with just under half of all visitor visas approved so far this year, compared to a ten-year average of 64%.
After more than 18 months of federal policy turbulence, changing eligibility rules have likely contributed to the rise in study permit rejection rates.
Pressure to reduce IRCC backlogs and reach ambitious government targets could also be playing a role, according to immigration lawyers speaking to the Toronto Star.
As of July 31, over 40% of Canada’s immigration inventory was in backlog, including 56% of visitor visas, 46% of work visas and 23% of study visas, according to official data.
Following a swathe of new IRCC officer hires, Sherman said he expected to see improvements in consistency, though “processing backlogs may get worse before they get better,” he warned.
Amid the challenges, educators and advisers are doubling down on what applicants and institutions can do to ensure the best chance of success, with ApplyBoard warning that any incomplete or ineligible documentation can be grounds for refusal.
More than 600 international students studying across the UK came together at Queen Mary University of London last month for the second edition of Leverage Careers Day.
While a record 758,855 international students were enrolled in UK higher education in 2022/23, a 12% rise on the previous year, rising employer uncertainty, growing graduate anxiety, and an increase in job scams have made students more cautious in their professional choices.
The event saw students, who are now exploring opportunities in AI, data science, marketing, finance, and more, connect with top employers and industry leaders, to network, explore career pathways, and gain valuable career advice.
“We saw a remarkable breadth of interest from students across a range of disciplines, with data science and AI standing out as clear frontrunners. Many were especially drawn to AI-layered roles in marketing, creative industries, finance, and healthcare,” Akshay Chaturvedi, founder and CEO, Leverage, told The PIE News.
“At the same time, digital marketing and content strategy sparked strong interest of their own, driven by rising opportunities in the digital economy. Beyond these, students also gravitated towards specialized tracks for example in biotechnology, luxury management, automobile design, and culinary arts.”
For many international students, a successful career has long been the ultimate benchmark of achievement, and in the UK, standing out is crucial, with a sponsored job often seen as the true return on their significant investment in tuition and living costs.
Moreover, with over a quarter of UK employers unaware of the Graduate Route – which allows international students to work sponsor-free for up to two years but is set to be reduced to 18 months under the May 2025 immigration white paper and tied more closely to skill-based jobs – understanding the realities of today’s hiring market has become increasingly important.
“Employers aren’t just looking for textbook skills anymore — they’re looking for forward-thinking talent who can bring innovation to the table,” explained Lee Wildman, director, global engagement, Queen Mary University of London, who joined a fireside chat on mentorship, global exposure, and the skills needed in an ever-evolving world, alongside Chaturvedi and Rhianna Skeetes, international careers consultant at QMUL.
“What ideas do you have to take an organisation to the next level? Be prepared to sell yourself – not just in terms of what you’ve learned, but in terms of how you think.”
What excites me most is seeing students ask better, sharper questions about their careers – not just what job they’ll get, but how they’ll grow, how they’ll lead, and how they’ll stand out
Akshay Chaturvedi, Leverage
Adaptability was also highlighted as the “strongest tool in a student’s back pocket” by Jennifer Ogunleye, B2B communications lead at Google, who delivered a keynote urging students to look beyond job titles, and academic credentials, and focus on building a personal brand.
“There isn’t always a straightforward route into tech or any industry today – even those who were most in demand just a year ago are having to pivot,” noted Ogunleye.
“What matters more than ever is your personal brand: What are you passionate about beyond your job title? That’s what sets you apart from AI, from competition, from volatility.”
The event also brought together organisations such as Publicis Groupe, Reed Recruitment, Hyatt Place, Ribbon Global, and GoBritanya, which offered insights into student accommodation services across the UK and Ireland, giving students exposure to careers across creative, corporate, hospitality, and FinTech sectors.
The Westminster and Holborn Law Society also provided guidance to aspiring legal professionals on navigating local and international career pathways.
“Students today aren’t satisfied with just ‘getting a job’ anymore. They’re actively chasing careers that offer international mobility, cross-border exposure, and long-term growth,” stated Chaturvedi.
“That’s a significant shift, and quite refreshing so, given how only a few years back stability was often the top priority. Now, they want to thrive in industries that are constantly evolving every single day, with technology, globalization, and new market needs at play.”
The proposed rule, announced by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on August 27, would upend the longstanding “duration of status” policy and enforce additional restrictions on students changing programs and institutions.
If finalised, the new rule would limit the length of time international students, professors and other visa holders can stay in the US, which DHS claims would curb “visa abuse” and increase the department’s “ability to vet and oversee these individuals”.
Trump initially put forward the proposal during his first administration, only for it to be withdrawn under Biden. In recent weeks, a rehashed version of the plans has been moving closer towards final approval.
Yesterday’s publication of the finalised proposal in the Federal Register was met with immediate denunciation by stakeholders who say it would place an undue administrative burden on students as well as representing a “dangerous government overreach”. Now the proposal is under a 30-day public comment period.
“These changes will only serve to force aspiring students and scholars into a sea of administrative delays at best, and at worst, into unlawful presence status – leaving them vulnerable to punitive actions through no fault of their own,” said NAFSA CEO Fanta Aw.
Under the rule, students could only remain in the US on a student visa for a maximum of four years and would have to apply for a DHS extension to stay longer.
The policy document reasons that 79% of students in the US are studying undergraduate or master’s degrees which are generally two or four-year programs, thus: “a four-year period of admission would not pose an undue burden to most nonimmigrant students”.
And yet, stakeholders have previously pointed out that the average time taken to complete an undergraduate degree – for both domestic and international students – exceeds four years, meaning that the majority of students would have to file for an extension to complete their studies.
Meanwhile, this reasoning does not consider postgraduate students on longer programs or the many students that go onto Optional Practical Training (OPT), who would have to apply for a visa extension as well as the work permit itself.
If finalised, master’s students would no longer be able to change their program of study, and first year students would be unable to transfer from the institution that issued their visa documents.
Alarmingly, the rule would hand power to the government to determine academic progress, with “a student’s repeated inability or unwillingness” to complete their degree, deemed an “unacceptable” reason for program extensions.
It would also limit English-language students to a visa period of less than 24 months, and the grace period for F-1 students, post-completion, would be reduced from 60 to 30 days.
Such far reaching provisions amount to “a dangerous overreach by government into academia,” said Aw, pointing out that international students and exchange visitors are already “the most closely monitored non-immigrants in the country.”
Government interference into the academic realm in this way introduces a wholly unnecessary and new level of uncertainty to international student experience
Fanta Aw, NAFSA
“For too long, past administrations have allowed foreign students and other visa holders to remain in the US virtually indefinitely, posing safety risks, costing untold amount of taxpayer dollars, and disadvantaging US citizens,” DHS said in a statement.
Framing the issue as one of national security, the department said it had identified 2,100 F-1 visa holders who arrived between 2000 and 2010 and have remained in status, becoming what DHS called “forever” students “taking advantage of US generosity”.
Putting this in perspective, commentators have highlighted that in 2023 alone there were 1.6 million F-1 visa holders in the US.
As well as imposing significant burdens on students and intruding on academic decision-making, the proposal would also place strain on federal agencies and increase the existing immigration backlog, warned Miriam Feldblum, CEO of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration.
“International students deserve assurance that their admission period to the US will conform to the requirements of their academic programs,” said Feldblum, issuing a grave warning that the rule would further deter international students and “diminish” US competitiveness.
“At a time when the US is already facing declines in international student enrolment, we must do everything we can to keep the door open to these individuals, who are essential to our future prosperity,” she continued, alluding to recent falls in US visa issuance.
Since coming to office, a barrage of hostile policies from the Trump administration have erected unprecedented barriers for students hoping to study in the US, with a near-month long visa interview suspension earlier this summer still wreaking havoc on visa appointment availability around the world.
The latest government data revealed a 30% drop in student arrivals this July, with colleges bracing for a drastic drop in international student numbers for the upcoming year. If the decline continues, experts have warned of USD $7bn in damages to the US economy.
According to Aw, the proposed rule would “certainly” deter international students further, “without any evidence that the changes would solve any of the real problems that exist in our outdated immigration system”.
Appealing to Trump’s recent remarks pushing for a more-than doubling of the Chinese student population in the US, Aw urged the government to engage with the sector to ensure the US remained the “premier destination” for global talent while keeping the country “safe and prosperous”.
At ISTE this summer, I lost count of how many times I heard “AI” as the answer to every educational challenge imaginable. Student engagement? AI-powered personalization! Teacher burnout? AI lesson planning! Parent communication? AI-generated newsletters! Chronic absenteeism? AI predictive models! But after moderating a panel on improving the high school experience, which focused squarely on human-centered approaches, one district administrator approached us with gratitude: “Thank you for NOT saying AI is the solution.”
That moment crystallized something important that’s getting lost in our rush toward technological fixes: While we’re automating attendance tracking and building predictive models, we’re missing the fundamental truth that showing up to school is a human decision driven by authentic relationships.
The real problem: Students going through the motions
The scope of student disengagement is staggering. Challenge Success, affiliated with Stanford’s Graduate School of Education, analyzed data from over 270,000 high school students across 13 years and found that only 13 percent are fully engaged in their learning. Meanwhile, 45 percent are what researchers call “doing school,” going through the motions behaviorally but finding little joy or meaning in their education.
This isn’t a post-pandemic problem–it’s been consistent for over a decade. And it directly connects to attendance issues. The California Safe and Supportive Schools initiative has identified school connectedness as fundamental to attendance. When high schoolers have even one strong connection with a teacher or staff member who understands their life beyond academics, attendance improves dramatically.
The districts that are addressing this are using data to enable more meaningful adult connections, not just adding more tech. One California district saw 32 percent of at-risk students improve attendance after implementing targeted, relationship-based outreach. The key isn’t automated messages, but using data to help educators identify disengaged students early and reach out with genuine support.
This isn’t to discount the impact of technology. AI tools can make project-based learning incredibly meaningful and exciting, exactly the kind of authentic engagement that might tempt chronically absent high schoolers to return. But AI works best when it amplifies personal bonds, not seeks to replace them.
Mapping student connections
Instead of starting with AI, start with relationship mapping. Harvard’s Making Caring Common project emphasizes that “there may be nothing more important in a child’s life than a positive and trusting relationship with a caring adult.” Rather than leave these connections to chance, relationship mapping helps districts systematically identify which students lack that crucial adult bond at school.
The process is straightforward: Staff identify students who don’t have positive relationships with any school adults, then volunteers commit to building stronger connections with those students throughout the year. This combines the best of both worlds: Technology provides the insights about who needs support, and authentic relationships provide the motivation to show up.
True school-family partnerships to combat chronic absenteeism need structures that prioritize student consent and agency, provide scaffolding for underrepresented students, and feature a wide range of experiences. It requires seeing students as whole people with complex lives, not just data points in an attendance algorithm.
The choice ahead
As we head into another school year, we face a choice. We can continue chasing the shiny startups, building ever more sophisticated systems to track and predict student disengagement. Or we can remember that attendance is ultimately about whether a young person feels connected to something meaningful at school.
The most effective districts aren’t choosing between high-tech and high-touch–they’re using technology to enable more meaningful personal connections. They’re using AI to identify students who need support, then deploying caring adults to provide it. They’re automating the logistics so teachers can focus on relationships.
That ISTE administrator was right to be grateful for a non-AI solution. Because while artificial intelligence can optimize many things, it can’t replace the fundamental human need to belong, to feel seen, and to believe that showing up matters.
The solution to chronic absenteeism is in our relationships, not our servers. It’s time we started measuring and investing in both.
Dr. Kara Stern, SchoolStatus
Dr. Kara Stern is Director of Education for SchoolStatus, a portfolio of data-driven solutions that help K-12 districts improve attendance, strengthen family communication, support teacher growth, and simplify daily operations. A former teacher, principal, and head of school, she holds a Ph.D. in Teaching & Learning from NYU.
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Rigorous research rarely shows that any teaching approach produces large and consistent benefits for students. But tutoring seemed to be a rare exception. Before the pandemic, almost 100 studies pointed to impressive math or reading gains for students who were paired with a tutor at least three times a week and used a proven curriculum or set of lesson plans.
Some students gained an extra year’s worth of learning — far greater than the benefit of smaller classes, summer school or a fantastic teacher. These were rigorous randomized controlled trials, akin to the way that drugs or vaccines are tested, comparing test scores of tutored students against those who weren’t. The expense, sometimes surpassing $4,000 a year per student, seemed worth it for what researchers called high-dosage tutoring.
On the strength of that evidence, the Biden administration urged schools to invest their pandemic recovery funds in intensive tutoring to help students catch up academically. Forty-six percent of public schools heeded that call, according to a 2024 federal survey, though it’s unclear exactly how much of the $190 billion in pandemic recovery funds have been spent on high-dosage tutoring and how many students received it.
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Even with ample money, schools immediately reported problems in ramping up high-quality tutoring for so many students. In 2024, researchers documented either tiny or no academic benefits from large-scale tutoring efforts in Nashville, Tennessee, and Washington, D.C.
New evidence from the 2023-24 school year reinforces those results.Researchers are rigorously studying large-scale tutoring efforts around the nation and testing whether effective tutoring can be done more cheaply. A dozen researchers studied more than 20,000 students in Miami; Chicago; Atlanta; Winston-Salem and Greensboro, North Carolina; Greenville, South Carolina; schools throughout New Mexico, and a California charter school network. This was also a randomized controlled study in which 9,000 students were randomly assigned to get tutoring and compared with 11,000 students who didn’t get that extra help.
Their preliminary results were “sobering,” according to a June report by the University of Chicago Education Lab and MDRC, a research organization.
The researchers found that tutoring during the 2023-24 school year produced only one or two months’ worth of extra learning in reading or math — a tiny fraction of what the pre-pandemic research had produced. Each minute of tutoring that students received appeared to be as effective as in the pre-pandemic research, but students weren’t getting enough minutes of tutoring altogether. “Overall we still see that the dosage students are getting falls far short of what would be needed to fully realize the promise of high-dosage tutoring,” the report said.
Monica Bhatt, a researcher at the University of Chicago Education Lab and one of the report’s authors, said schools struggled to set up large tutoring programs. “The problem is the logistics of getting it delivered,” said Bhatt. Effective high-dosage tutoring involves big changes to bell schedules and classroom space, along with the challenge of hiring and training tutors. Educators need to make it a priority for it to happen, Bhatt said.
Some of the earlier, pre-pandemic tutoring studies involved large numbers of students, too, but those tutoring programs were carefully designed and implemented, often with researchers involved. In most cases, they were ideal setups. There was much greater variability in the quality of post-pandemic programs.
“For those of us that run experiments, one of the deep sources of frustration is that what you end up with is not what you tested and wanted to see,” said Philip Oreopoulos, an economist at the University of Toronto, whose 2020 review of tutoring evidence influenced policymakers. Oreopoulos was also an author of the June report.
“After you spend lots of people’s money and lots of time and effort, things don’t always go the way you hope. There’s a lot of fires to put out at the beginning or throughout because teachers or tutors aren’t doing what you want, or the hiring isn’t going well,” Oreopoulos said.
Another reason for the lackluster results could be that schools offered a lot of extra help to everyone after the pandemic, even to students who didn’t receive tutoring. In the pre-pandemic research, students in the “business as usual” control group often received no extra help at all, making the difference between tutoring and no tutoring far more stark. After the pandemic, students — tutored and non-tutored alike — had extra math and reading periods, sometimes called “labs” for review and practice work. More than three-quarters of the 20,000 students in this June analysis had access to computer-assisted instruction in math or reading, possibly muting the effects of tutoring.
The report did find that cheaper tutoring programs appeared to be just as effective (or ineffective) as the more expensive ones, an indication that the cheaper models are worth further testing. The cheaper models averaged $1,200 per student and had tutors working with eight students at a time, similar to small group instruction, often combining online practice work with human attention. The more expensive models averaged $2,000 per student and had tutors working with three to four students at once. By contrast, many of the pre-pandemic tutoring programs involved smaller 1-to-1 or 2-to-1 student-to-tutor ratios.
Despite the disappointing results, researchers said that educators shouldn’t give up. “High-dosage tutoring is still a district or state’s best bet to improve student learning, given that the learning impact per minute of tutoring is largely robust,” the report concludes. The task now is to figure out how to improve implementation and increase the hours that students are receiving. “Our recommendation for the field is to focus on increasing dosage — and, thereby learning gains,” Bhatt said.
That doesn’t mean that schools need to invest more in tutoring and saturate schools with effective tutors. That’s not realistic with the end of federal pandemic recovery funds.
Instead of tutoring for the masses, Bhatt said researchers are turning their attention to targeting a limited amount of tutoring to the right students. “We are focused on understanding which tutoring models work for which kinds of students.”
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From the start, Na’Siah Martin and H’Sanii Blankenship’s July trip to Washington, D.C., was destined to be a riveting stop on the teenagers’ passage to adulthood. There were the scheduled meetings with lawmakers, the monuments, the reflecting pool near where Martin Luther King Jr. broadcast his dream for racial equality 62 summers ago.
For years, the pair have been involved in the Boys and Girls Clubs of the Austin Area, the revered summer and after-school program that was now making it possible for the two blossoming leaders to meet with Texans in Congress and present their game plan for tackling mental health challenges among student-athletes, a struggle both were deeply familiar with.
But two weeks before their arrival on Capitol Hill, President Donald Trump’s administration threw one of many curveballs lobbed during the first months of his second term. The U.S. Department of Education notified state education officials on the last day of June that it would pause the disbursement of nearly $7 billion in funds for teacher development, support for students learning English, and before- and after-school programs predominantly serving low-income families, pending a review of how schools had put the money to use. That notice went out a day before states expected to begin receiving the money.
For Texas, it meant a potential loss of nearly $670 million. For Martin and Blankenship, it potentially meant losing the Boys and Girls Club, a space that has aided their growth as both leaders and individuals. Martin, 18, graduated from Navarro Early College High School in June and has participated in the club since elementary school. Blankenship, a 17-year-old incoming senior at the same school, has participated in the club for about as long as Martin.
The focus of their trip immediately broadened: They now wanted to convince federal lawmakers that cutting the funds would harm Texas kids.
“These programs aren’t just for fun,” Blankenship said. “They actually give us resources, help us grow into adults instead of just coming here and just goofing around and stuff like that. These programs, they help us cope with things we need to cope with.”
The education funding freeze was typical of the Trump administration. In recent months, it has also cut billions of dollars in food assistance and health care for families in poverty; frozenbillions in grants and contracts financially supporting universities; canceled billions for foreign aid and public broadcasting stations; laid off thousands of employees working in critical federal agencies; and sought to overhaul the U.S. immigration landscape through actions like attempting to end birthright citizenship.
Those cuts and changes have often been sweeping and abrupt, disrupting federally funded services and programs serving large swaths of people of color, people with disabilities, low-income families, LGBTQ+ Americans and immigrants. And they have come at the same time the administration has moved to lower taxes for some of America’s wealthiest households.
“We can’t look at just the cuts to education in isolation,” said Weadé James, senior director of K-12 education policy at the Center for American Progress. “I think what we’re witnessing is really the undoing of a lot of progress, and also actions that are really going to keep a lot of families trapped in cyclical and generational poverty.”
Boys and Girls Club director Jacob Hernandez watches club members play spades at Navarro Early College High School. Credit: Montinique Monroe for The Texas Tribune
Ongoing changes to the country’s educational landscape are only one part of Trump’s larger goals to eliminate what the second-term president has deemed “wasteful” spending and crack down on anything he views as diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. A large piece of his efforts involve closing the Department of Education and sending “education back to the states,” though most decisions about education and public school funding already happen at the state and local levels.
“Teachers will be unshackled from burdensome regulations and paperwork, empowering them to get back to teaching basic subjects. Taxpayers will no longer be burdened with tens of billions of dollars of waste on progressive social experiments and obsolete programs,” Trump Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement earlier this year. “K-12 and college students will be relieved of the drudgery caused by administrative burdens—and positioned to achieve success in a future career they love.”
The disarray has resulted in profound consequences for Texas, one of the largest and most diverse states in the nation, home to more than 9,000 school campuses and 5.5 million students — the majority of whom live in low-income households and come from Hispanic and Black families. Public schools serve as a safety net for many of them. They are one of the few places where some children have consistent access to meals, where working-class parents know their kids will be taken care of.
The prospect of federal cuts to school programs triggered a wave of concern across the state. For 44-year-old Clarissa Mendez, it jeopardized the after-school program her two daughters attend while she works as a nurse in Laredo.
“I’m on shaky grounds right now because I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Mendez said last month. “I understand there has to be cuts. I understand the government needs to find out how to save money. But why does it have to affect us and our kids?”
For Gay Hibbitts, a 57-year-old trying to become a certified teacher in rural Throckmorton, the worries began months earlier.
Earlier this year, the federal government cut roughly $400 million from a program that helps teaching candidates like her pay for their education as they gain hands-on classroom experience. That left participating rural districts with one of two options: cover the costs at a time when schools are financially struggling to make ends meet, or get rid of their preparation programs during a teacher shortage.
In both scenarios, Hibbitts said, children would pay the price.
“They’re the main ones that are going to suffer,” she said.
For as long as Martin and Blankenship can remember, they have each helped raise their younger siblings, a responsibility that has been rewarding but stressful. On the one hand, Martin said, her siblings look up to her, and her academic success has motivated them to do well in school. On the other hand, Blankenship said, taking on adult responsibilities at an early age meant missing out on the type of exhilarating childhood experiences many kids desire.
Since joining the Boys and Girls Club, the program has provided them the space to be kids.
They receive tutoring and time to finish homework. They go to live sporting events, watch movies and listen to music — SZA some days, Lauryn Hill on others. They play sports, cards and board games. They can earn scholarships. They find mentorship.
“We’re the future adults, so I feel like if you help us now with programs like this, that make us happy, that give us stress relief, that let us be kids, because we can’t be kids at home, I feel like that’ll equate to happier adults,” Martin said.
Na’Siah Martin, left, and H’Sanii Blankenship traveled to Washington, D.C., in July and had a chance to discuss with lawmakers the Trump administration’s pause on roughly $7 billion in federal funding, which threatened to shutter the Boys and Girls Club. Credit: Montinique Monroe for The Texas Tribune
Neither Martin nor Blankenship enjoys public speaking. Martin actually fears it. But with the Austin Boys and Girls Club’s future in jeopardy, they decided to lean into the discomfort and use the face time with lawmakers and their staffers to make a case for the after-school program.
The pair and several other clubmates sat down with the staff of Texas Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. They also met with Rep. Greg Casar, an Austin Democrat. The kids wore blue polo shirts with the words “America Needs Club Kids” etched in white. Martin, rocking a black one-button blazer, led the way.
“I gotta let these people know,” she thought.
Erica Peña is responsible for taking care of about 400 kids as she coordinates Hebbronville Elementary’s summer and after-school programs. Working with an assistant and about 25 paid volunteers, the 37-year-old often stays after hours — sometimes as late as 7 p.m. — depending on when parents can leave work to get there.
Peña breaks the after-school schedule into blocks. The first hour is for tutorials and worksheets, the later hours are usually for more fun activities like arts and crafts, kickball and cooking.
But shortly after the federal education funds were paused, the district notified Peña that it could no longer afford to keep her or the program.
“I cried, to be honest,” Peña said. “I was very upset, because I love my job, I love my students, and a lot of it is about them.”
Clarissa Mendez and her daughters Catiana Ester Mendez, left, and Catalaya Avaneh Mendez pose for a photo at their home in Hebbronville on July 30, 2025. Credit: Gabriel V. Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune
Hebbronville, in far South Texas, is home to about 4,300 mostly Hispanic Texans, one-third of whom live below the poverty line. The town has no H-E-B or Walmart. The local health clinic is often busy. The town has a few day care centers, but they can get pricey.
For the average Texas family, child care is financially out of reach. The median annual cost sits at $10,706 a year — or $892 each month. That’s more than one-fourth of the average cost for in-state tuition at a four-year public college, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Access to no-cost options, like the Hebbronville after-school program, has positive effects on student attendance, behavior and learning, multiplestudies have found over the years. Such programs also keep families from having to choose between leaving their children unattended or taking time off work to stay home.
“That has a direct impact on future economic prospects for that entire family,” said Jenna Courtney, CEO of the Texas Partnership for Out of School Time, a youth advocacy organization.
Mendez, the 44-year-old Hebbronville mother with two daughters, commutes about an hour to and from Laredo every weekday to make it to her job as a nurse. She goes in at 9 a.m. and gets out at 5 p.m. Her husband operates heavy equipment and has an unpredictable work schedule.
After picking up her daughters, Mendez cooks for them and spends some time with them before she starts working from home for an additional three to four hours. The after-school program Mendez’s daughters attend allows her to save some money on daycare costs. Credit: Gabriel V. Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune
The after-school program “gives me enough time to get to town to pick them up,” she said. But with the district planning to shutter operations, Mendez needed to find care providers who could look after her children until 6-6:30 p.m., when she gets home. She pays about $1,000 a month for that service during the summer when the school program is out of session. It would likely cost her another $800 per month during the academic year.
“That’s a big chunk of our money,” Mendez said.
Without the program, she would need to find a second job.
“We’ll do what we gotta do,” she added. “But I don’t understand.”
Catalaya Avaneh Mendez plays with her sister Catiana Ester Mendez as their mother watches them at her home. The Trump administration recently froze funding that benefits after-school programs, placing financial stress on parents such as the Mendez. They would have to find and pay for daycare for their children if those programs ended. Credit: Gabriel V. Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune
Hibbitts, the 57-year-old from Throckmorton, recently joined a federally funded program that would allow her to support students in her rural hometown between Abilene and Wichita Falls. It places aspiring full-time teachers in classrooms under the supervision of more seasoned teachers and provides financial assistance for their education and living expenses.
In exchange, the district gets to retain educators familiar with the community and eager to teach.
Based on her own experience as a Throckmorton student in the 1970s, Hibbitts knows the monumental role teachers can play in a child’s life.
“They were almost like your second mother,” she said.
Texas has the largest rural population of any state in the country. Of its roughly 5.5 million students, 13% attend class on a rural campus. Those schools often have to educate their students with less: Less access to the internet and technology, less staffing, and less money to pay and retain teachers.
Educator Gay Hibbitts, left, speaks with her mentor, Amy Dick, a secondary social studies teacher, inside a classroom at Throckmorton Collegiate ISD on July 29, 2025. Hibbitts was part of a federally funded educator preparation program serving about 30 participants across 11 rural Texas districts. Credit: Desiree Rios for The Texas Tribune
Texas lawmakers have acknowledged that rural teachers often do not make as much as their urban and suburban counterparts, and that many have left the profession because of a lack of support. Public schools over time have also grown more reliant on hiring unlicensed educators, a trend playing out more profoundly in the rural parts of Texas.
In response, state officials recently passed laws aimed at raising teacher pay, particularly in rural schools, and enhancing teacher preparation programs.
During her first year in the Throckmorton program, Hibbitts learned how to incorporate state learning standards into lesson plans. She learned how to keep students engaged. She helped a child who struggled academically and acted out at the beginning of the school year become a “model student” who thrived in reading by the year’s end.
Then, one Sunday afternoon in April, her superintendent called her.
The Trump administration had abruptly cut the federal dollars that helped schools fund educator preparation initiatives like the one she was participating in. It would affect about 30 people across 11 rural districts in Texas.
Hibbitts was one of them.
Hibbitts participates in a safety training at Throckmorton Collegiate ISD. The funding for Hibbitts’ educator preparation program, which covered her two years of college and training costs, was cut on April 25 under the Trump administration, leaving her uncertain about her future. Credit: Desiree Rios for The Texas Tribune
In Hebbronville, Mendez and Peña each had to confront their own harsh realities. Mendez would have to search for child care in a community with few affordable options. Peña, the after-school program coordinator, would have to find a new job.
In Austin, Martin and Blankenship had trouble picturing life without the Boys and Girls Club.
Club leaders began preparing a memo to notify parents about the funding uncertainty and what it could mean for their kids. Nothing had come of the Republican, Democratic and legal efforts seeking the release of the frozen funds. The Texas kids who spoke with congressional lawmakers and staff at the U.S. Capitol hadn’t heard anything either. When the administration would make a decision about the funds was anyone’s guess.
When Blankenship got the news, he sprinted out of his room in excitement and told his mom. The moment was just as surreal for Martin.
“Knowing that it could have been me, my story, or any other club kids’ story,” Martin said, “it made me happy. But it was like, ‘Dang. I was a part — we were a part of that.’”
Peña, the Hebbronville Elementary program coordinator, was relieved. The mood in her group chat with people from the district’s after-school programs was “pretty ecstatic.” They all cried. Getting the funds meant they no longer had to look for new jobs, and parents like Mendez wouldn’t have to go searching for a place to take care of their kids after school.
Hibbitts is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in general studies with an emphasis in education and a minor in psychology at West Texas A&M. Credit: Desiree Rios for The Texas Tribune
Hibbitts, meanwhile, wasn’t immediately able to bask in the good news, as it did not restore the federal funds for her district’s teacher preparation program. But in early August, her supervisor notified her that the program was officially back up and running for the 2025-26 school year. The news cleared the way for the 57-year-old to graduate at the end of the year and to start teaching full time by the next.
“This has been life changing for somebody of my age, to be able to step up and to step into the world of education,” Hibbitts said. “I’m finishing my dream. And as my kids like to say, ‘Mom, you’re going to be 58 years old walking the stage.’”
Still, she recognizes that so much uncertainty around federal funding means there is no guarantee others will get the same chance.
Uncertainty is what Peña also keeps coming back to.
“It just gets me upset with the administration, because, why? What was the purpose of the freeze? Why did you do that? You’re hurting people, not just adults, but children,” Peña said. “It’s like in a divorce, you don’t want to put the children in the middle. If something were to happen between parents, you never put children in the middle. And by doing that, you put children in the middle.”
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune, a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.
Despite the summer heat, Toyia Diab came out to the Summer on the Block at Pulaski Elementary-Middle School to learn what it had to offer the four grandchildren she had in tow.
The family made their way to about a dozen tables snaking around the lawn on the side of the school. Diab listened to staff from the Detroit school district detail all of its resources over the pulsing base of loud music.
Diab’s family was one of many the Detroit Public Schools Community District courted this summer as part of its efforts to retain families and boost enrollment. With the loss of more than 92,000 students in the last 20 years, district officials devote some of the summer break each year to getting word out about what the city’s schools have to offer.
This year, the districtramped up efforts. It sent 40 people to canvas communities and held 19 events to create excitement about the start of school — nearly double that of previous years. It also started new initiatives, such as putting up billboards around the city. In all, the school system budgeted around $3.5 million for marketing this year. School starts Aug. 25.
Though the district has “done a fairly good job” of recruiting new students in previous years, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti told school board members at a meeting earlier this month that the main challenge is keeping them.
As a result, this year the school system also has focused on reenrollment rates. Those numbers have become a metric the district uses to “hold schools accountable,” Vitti said, though he didn’t share how many students the district typically loses during the school year.
“We have emphasized … the need to improve customer service and parent engagement, so that parents feel more welcome,” he said. “And we fight harder to keep students at the schools that they’re at, rather than having more of an attitude of, ‘Well, if you don’t like it here, then you can find another school.’”
Sharlonda Buckman, assistant superintendent of family and community engagement, told Chalkbeat the district has seen a lot of “good signs” for this school year because of the number of people her office reached in the summer.
“It’s noticeable for me, and I’ve been at this for a long time,” she said. “We’ll see what that boils down to, in terms of enrollment.”
This year, Buckman said nearly 5,000 people went to the Summer on the Block events, parties held at schools that both serve as a vehicle to sell families on sending their kids to the district and connect them with free resources.
“As a parent, you have to bring your kids to school every day in order to get the education that they need,” Diab said at the Pulaski back-to-school event. “But then you’ll find some schools, they just don’t have enough resources to keep them interested to come to school, to stay in school.”
All of the district’s summer efforts produced 532 leads on parents interested in enrolling their kids by mid-August. Around 80 of those students completed enrollment, according to the district.
Though initial enrollment numbers are up, officials say, the full impact of the district’s efforts won’t be known until the end of the 2025-26 school year.
Myriad factors have affected enrollment in DPSCD
Boosting student numbers has been among the district’s top priorities for years.
The numbers of students attending schools are crucial for districts in Michigan, where school funding is tied to enrollment.
High student mobility rates, or the rate at which kids move to different homes, contribute to the district’s difficulty in keeping children enrolled. Chronic absenteeism rates also have a direct impact on enrollment.
When DPSCD was created and the school system began being phased out of emergency management in the 2017-18 school year, enrollment shot up to more than 50,800 from 45,700 during the 2016-17 school year.
The district has struggled to move the needle much since, especially after drops during pandemic-era school closures and the years that followed.
At the beginning of this month, there were 50,890 students enrolled in the district, Vitti said at the board meeting.
“We have about 1,400 more students than we did at the end of the year enrolled in DPSCD as of today, and about 500 more as compared to the first day of school,” he said, adding that “ “enrollment is trending in a positive direction.”
Early enrollment numbers for the district are usually higher than official headcounts made in October. The number of students recorded on “Count Day” is used by the state to calculate funding for districts.
Making the case for DPSCD face-to-face
Three days before the Summer on the Block at Pulaski, more than 20 people squeezed into a sun-filled classroom at the Detroit School of Arts.
The group was contracted by the district to canvas homes in areas where attendance is low compared to the number of school-aged children living there.
This summer, the district sent canvassers to more than 78,000 homes to inform families about its schools and programs.
The group at the School of Arts was gathered to get their assignments for the day. They waited to pick up hand-out materials, including fliers listing Summer on the Block dates and pamphlets highlighting programs at application schools.
To get the energy up in the classroom before they headed out, the canvassers stood up to form a circle. Buckman, the assistant superintendent, asked them to share what they heard door-knocking.
“We’re getting a good response in terms of some of those students coming back to the district,” said one woman.
Others expressed residents’ hesitations to open their doors or to give their contact information for the district to follow up with them.
Laura Gomez, who has been canvassing for three years, said through a translator that this summer has been different in southwest Detroit, which is home to many immigrant and newcomer families.
“There are some people that are really happy we’re going out to the houses because that way they don’t have to leave their home because they don’t feel safe,” she said.
After the canvassers broke out into teams, they drove to the areas they were assigned to for the day.
Tanya Shelton and her son, David, arrived in the Crary St. Mary’s neighborhood in the northwest corner of the city.
“We’ll ask them what school district are they in, and if they are interested in DPSCD, we give some information on it,” she said as she made her way down a long block adjacent to the Southfield Freeway.
In her conversations with families, Shelton said the district’s free school lunches piqued their interest. Other canvassers said parents were interested in learning more about the academic interventionists available to students.
Most of the doors Shelton knocked on that day, though, went unanswered. She left the district’s literature at dozens of houses.
Families weigh programming, academics, and transportation in selecting schools
At Pulaski’s Summer on the Block Alexa Franco-Garcia saw more students signing up to attend the school than she has in past years.
“Right now, I have three enrollment packets in my hand, so that means they’ve completed enrollment,” she said during a break from talking with families.
Another three parents left their contact information and said they would return the paperwork the next day.
Considering it was about 30 minutes into the event, that was a strong number, said Franco-Garcia, who works in the Office of Family and Community Engagement.
In her time working in the district, Franco-Garcia has learned what kinds of questions families ask: They want to know about the curriculum, extracurricular activities, and class sizes. They wonder whether their children will be supported in special education and if they will get a bus ride to school.
Most of the sign-ups at the Pulaski event were for kindergartners who were new to the district, Franco-Garcia said.
There were 457 students enrolled in prekindergarten by the beginning of August, according to the district, up about 10 compared to the same time last year.
Diab, the grandmother, brought four kids ages 5 to 12 out to learn more about the school. They heard about the district’s community health hubs, parent academy, and mental health resources.
Teachers from the school gathered around a welcome table ready to answer questions as Principal Tyra R. Smith-Bell floated around talking with parents.
The fresh produce boxes, ice cream truck, free books, and kids’ activities also enticed more than 350 people to come – many more than in previous years, Buckman said.
Linn Flake was the first second-grader of the day to enroll at Pulaski, said Franco-Garcia. It would be his first experience at a neighborhood school, she added.
His mom, Roxanne Flake, chose DPSCD over the charter school Linn went to last year.
“I just wanted a different start,” she said.
The charter school didn’t provide transportation, said Flake, which was an inconvenience because she doesn’t currently have a car. But the Detroit school district offered bus service for Linn to Pulaski, the mother said.
Diab said she had more research to do before her family committed to Pulaski.
“We’re gonna come here and we’re gonna figure everything out – ask questions, all of that stuff, and then if it’s the right fit for them, then we’re gonna put them in,” she said.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
As a “pink-collar profession” — a nickname given to women-dominated occupations — teaching has historically paid less than comparable fields requiring a higher education degree, and in Philadelphia, the push to close the wage gap could lead to a strike by the end of the month.
Salaries for Philly teachers — roughly 70 percent of whom are women — begin at $54,146. That’s far below the median earnings of Pennsylvania college graduates. Now, concern over pay has become a sticking point between the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) and the School District of Philadelphia as they negotiate a new contract, with the current collective bargaining agreement expiring August 31.
The PFT in June voted to authorize its executive board to initiate a strike if the union and the district don’t agree on a new contract by then. With the deadline imminent and no deal in sight, schools may open on August 25 only for teachers to appear on picket lines within days. A strike could leave working parents in a lurch, scrambling for childcare — a task moms usually have to complete. Many Philly teachers, however, are also parents and demanding higher salaries to better provide for their families.
PFT President Arthur Steinberg pointed out that even suburban teachers with less education often out-earn Philadelphia’s top-performing educators by up to $22,000.
Amid ongoing negotiations, Steinberg appeared with School District of Philadelphia Superintendent Tony Watlington at a welcome event for new teachers on Wednesday.
“We are optimistic about a successful conclusion by the end-of-the-month deadline, and it’s important to us that all of our employees feel seen, valued and heard,” said Watlington, who called Steinberg a “tough negotiator.”
To reach an agreement, Steinberg said, “There’s significant work that has to be done, but it’s doable.”
“Our schools are not safe, they’re not healthy for anybody to work in or go to school in,” chemistry teacher Kate Sundeen told local news station ABC 6. “We have a hard time with teacher retention and a hard time attracting new talent.”
On Friday, the national bus tour of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) will arrive in West Philadelphia to support the PFT ahead of a possible strike. The event will be the last of six strike preparation events that have taken place before the teachers head back to work on Monday, a week before the first day of school.
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The U.S. military faced a new threat to national security toward the end of the 20th century. This threat affected the recruitment and retention of our nation’s armed forces, reducing their capacity to defend the denizens of the United States and our interests overseas.
The threat wasn’t the Cold War; it wasn’t tension in the Middle East; and it wasn’t international or domestic terrorism.
The threat was a lack of affordable, accessible, high-quality child care.
The makeup of the armed forces changed following the shift from a national draft to an all-volunteer military after the war in Vietnam. More service members had families in the late 1970s and 1980s — many of them with young children. And many more of those families included two working parents than in previous decades.
The child care crisis faced by the military 40 to 50 years ago was similar to the one civilians face today. More families with working parents increased the demand for child care. Thousands of children languished on waitlists, forcing families to consider forms of supervision that lacked consistent standards for safety, teacher training, student/teacher ratios, and curricula. Teachers were poorly compensated, and turnover was high.
Back then, as now, parents couldn’t afford the fees necessary to cover the costs of addressing these challenges, and limited public investment wasn’t enough to fill the gap.
Graphic by Lanie Sorrow
Because the child care crisis was seen as a threat to the collective future of Americans, elected officials took action. Congress passed the Military Child Care Act of 1989, which put a priority on affordability, accessibility, and quality in child care for service members.
With the end of child care stabilization efforts that were undertaken during the pandemic, North Carolinians now face a similar threat to our own collective future. The military’s approach offers lessons for where we can go from here, in our communities and across our state.
An experiment in universal child care
The Military Child Care Act wasn’t the first time the military had taken the lead on child care. During World War II, women entered the workforce in massive numbers, filling the roles of men who were drafted to serve in the military. This raised the question of who would care for children when both parents were working outside the home to defend American interests.
Congress responded with the Lanham Act of 1940, creating a nationwide, universal child care system to support working families with children through age 12. Federal grants were issued to communities that demonstrated their need for child care related to parents working in the defense industry.
The program distributed $1.4 billion (in 2025 dollars) between 1943 and 1946 to more than 600 communities in 47 states. The grants could be used to build and maintain child care facilities, train and compensate teachers, and provide meals to students.
In his 2017 analysis of the Lanham Act’s outcomes for mothers and children, Chris M. Herbst, of Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs, found that “the Lanham Act increased maternal employment several years after the program was dismantled.”
An image of Rosie the Riveter from a 1943 issue of the magazine Hygeia (published by the American Medical Association) demonstrating the need for child care.
Herbst also found that “children exposed to the program were more likely to be employed, to have higher earnings, and to be less likely to receive cash assistance as adults.”
One lesson Herbst took from his research was that the Lanham Act was successful because of the broad support it received from parents, advocates for education and women, and employers. He noted: “Each group was committed to its success because something larger was at stake.”
Today’s military-operated child care model
While the Lanham Act was a short-lived national experiment that hasn’t received much study, the military’s child care program since adoption of the Military Child Care Act of 1989 has become a widely acclaimed model for publicly subsidized early care and learning, serving about 200,000 children each year.
Four categories of child care are available through military-operated child care programs: Child Development Centers (CDCs), Family Child Care (FCC), 24/7 Centers, and School Aged Care (SAC). The official military child care website describes each program type:
Child Development Centers (CDCs) — CDCs provide child care services for infants, pretoddlers, toddlers, and preschoolers. They operate Monday through Friday during standard work hours, and depending on the location offer full-day, part-day, and hourly care.
Family Child Care (FCC) — Family child care is provided by qualified child care professionals in their homes. Designed for infants through school agers, each FCC provider determines what care they offer, which may include full-day, part-day, school year, summer camp, 24/7, and extended care.
24/7 Centers — 24/7 Centers provide child care for infants through school age children in a home-like setting during both traditional and non-traditional hours on a regular basis. The program is designed to support watch standers or shift workers who work rotating or non-traditional schedules (i.e., evenings, overnights, and weekends).
School Aged Care (SAC) — School age care is facility-based care for children from the start of kindergarten through the end of the summer after seventh grade. This program type operates Monday through Friday during standard work hours. SAC programs provide both School Year Care and Summer Camp.
Requirements for military-operated child care programs are typically more stringent than state requirements. For one thing, they must be accredited by one of the following: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), National Early Childhood Program Accreditation (NECPA), the Council on Accreditation (COA), or the National Accreditation Commission (NAC).
For context, the requirements for licensed child care in North Carolina are relatively stringent compared with other states, but still fall below the requirements for NAEYC accreditation, which is widely recognized as the national standard. Only 110 programs in our state are NAEYC-accredited — many of which are Head Start or military-operated programs — out of about 5,300 total state-licensed programs.
Military-operated child care programs offer families hourly, part-day, full-day, extended, or overnight care, plus afterschool and summer programs.
The maximum rate is on par with the national average for civilian child care in 2023, meaning that almost every family using military-operated child care programs is paying less than the national average for typically higher-quality early care and learning.
The Department of Defense budgeted about $1.8 billion for child care in 2024 — about 0.2% of its $841.4 billion total budget.
Military child care in North Carolina
In addition to military-operated child care programs, service members may be eligible for Military Child Care in Your Neighborhood (MCCYN), a fee assistance program for families who can’t access military-operated child care. MCCYN pays a portion of the cost of enrolling children in early care and learning programs that meet the military’s high-quality standards in their community.
North Carolina is one of 19 locations where military families may be eligible for MCCYN-PLUS, which expands the MCCYN program to child care programs that participate in state or local Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) in places where nationally accredited care is not available.
Both programs rely on the availability of high-quality child care in civilian communities. That’s a challenge in North Carolina, which was already facing a child care shortage before the pandemic. Our state has lost almost 6% of licensed child care programs since February 2020, with more expected to close because stabilization grants have ended.
According to the NC Military Affairs Commission, there are 12 military bases and more than 130,000 active-duty military members in North Carolina, giving us the fourth-largest active-duty military population in the nation.
In January 2025, Fayetteville Technical Community College hosted the state’s first N.C. Military Community Childcare Summit, organized by the North Carolina Department of Military and Veteran Affairs (NCDMVA) to discuss the problem that military communities are having with access to community-based child care.
The first N.C. Military Community Childcare Summit in January 2025.( Katie Dukes/EdNC)
The summit culminated in a screening of Take Care, a documentary about North Carolina’s child care crisis produced by the state Department of Health and Human Services and featuring EdNC’s early childhood reporter, Liz Bell.
The issues of spouse resilience and child care are inextricably linked for Angie Mullennix, who works for The Honor Foundation at Fort Bragg, helping members of the U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF) transition to careers in the private sector after their military service.
Mullennix served in the U.S. Army for four years after high school and has previously worked for the Department of Public Instruction as the state military liaison. Her husband recently retired from the SOF himself. They have two teenage children.
“If you look at the number of military spouses in North Carolina who have degrees and credentials and could be in the workforce, from nurses to lawyers, lots of them are staying at home,” Mullennix said.
“A big reason why about 40% of (military) spouses do not work is because of child care not being available to them,” Mullennix said, noting that lack of child care is also a barrier to workforce participation among the civilian population.
When Mullennix’s children were under the age of 5, she used hourly child care on base, which was available at no cost when her husband was away on assignment.
“You ask any parent in the world, I don’t care who they are, there’s nothing more important than their child’s safety — then their education,” Mullennix said. “And yet, the two things we think are the most important, we put (their providers) at the lowest pay and ask them to do quality care.”
That’s what sets military child care apart from civilian early care and learning for Mullennix: high quality standards and higher pay for early childhood educators, including benefits. She sees lessons in this for North Carolina.
“You gotta pay them to keep them, there’s no secret behind that,” Mullennix said. “If you pay them high, you can also set the standards really high.”
And because workforce participation — and military readiness — is directly tied to the accessibility and affordability of high-quality child care, not investing in it threatens our collective future.
“North Carolina, or any state that doesn’t offer child care, is shooting itself in the foot,” Mullennix said.
Lessons from military child care
Policymakers at every level who are seeking to end the child care crisis can learn much from the military child care model. One report on the topic offers these lessons:
Do not be daunted by the task. It is possible to take a woefully inadequate child care system and dramatically improve it.
Recognize and acknowledge the seriousness of the child care problem and the consequences of inaction.
Improve quality by establishing and enforcing comprehensive standards, assisting providers in becoming accredited, and enhancing provider compensation and training.
Keep parent fees affordable through subsidies.
Expand the availability of all kinds of care by continually assessing unmet need and taking concrete action steps to address it.
Commit the resources necessary to get the job done.
Both agreed these are the right takeaways for policymakers across North Carolina to consider.
Lesson 1: Do not be daunted by the task
Gale Perry said the top lesson for her is: “Start where you are, know that change is possible, and have a goal post in mind.”
She pointed out that the military’s goal wasn’t a fully publicly funded child care system. It was a system that acknowledged Americans’ values around the role of parents in raising young children — and paying for their care and education. But also that their employers and the government “have a role in offsetting that cost, so that we can ensure that child care is quality, and it is stable, and that the families can actually afford it.”
Smith said there was no “silver bullet” when she and her colleagues were tasked with solving the military’s child care crisis in the 1990s — and there isn’t one for the civilian child care crisis today.
We had to redo the standards, we had to look at the workforce, we had to look at the health and safety issues, we had to look at the fees and how we could bring those fees down. We had to look at the infrastructure of all of it. We’ve got to start thinking about the interconnectedness of all of these things if we’re going to be successful in this country.
Smith said people think that because she worked for the secretary of defense, “I could just tell all the bases what to do, and that would magically happen, which is so not true. It wasn’t just like we could give an order and everybody jumped.”
She said you just have to start where you are, and move up.
Lesson 2: Acknowledge the seriousness of the problem and the consequences of inaction
“The military understood very early the link between people getting to work and child care,” Smith said.
As the military shifted away from relying on conscription and became a more welcoming workplace for women, the need for child care became evident. Smith described working on a base where children were routinely left in cars when their parents were unexpectedly called into work.
“So (military leaders) really got the connection to their guys going to work very quickly, and I think that we still haven’t all understood that in this country,” Smith said, though she notes businesses have started making that connection since the pandemic.
“The other thing the military understood was that a pilot is every bit as important as the mechanic who works on the plane, and so they invest in all of their people,” Smith said.
She and her team had to design a program that worked for everyone, or it wouldn’t work for anyone.
Lesson 3: Improve quality
Smith said quality was of critical importance when she was designing the military’s child care system in the 1990s, especially after child abuse and neglect scandals that came to light in the 1980s.
She and her team studied the child care standards of all 50 states and created a set of military standards that fell squarely in the middle. Then they set about training the 22,000 early childhood educators they already had — most of whom were military spouses — to meet those standards.
That was a six-month training program. Then there was an 18-month training to get them to move beyond those standards toward national accreditation. They hired highly qualified trainers to work with educators at each site.
“And if you didn’t do it, guess what? You’re fired!” Smith said.
There was an incentive to participate in the training, beyond keeping their jobs — higher compensation.
“Maybe some were grumpy about it, but we didn’t have to fire people,” Smith said.
North Carolina already has some tools in place to help educators advance their education and improve their compensation, specifically through the WAGE$ and TEACH programs — both of which were highlighted in the report that identified these lessons.
“(The military) realized they had to get serious about quality and quality standards. And I would say that’s a lesson for us now, particularly in a climate that is deregulatory,” Gale Perry said. “And while I’m for sensible regulatory reform, I think we have to be really thoughtful about not wanting stacks of child deaths in child care sitting on a desk waiting to be investigated.”
Lesson 4: Keep parent fees affordable through subsidies
Smith said that while designing the military’s child care program, she and her team figured out that there was no way parents could afford the actual cost of high-quality child care. So they set up a subsidized system that would provide a 50% match — on average — to parents’ fees, paid directly to child care programs.
“We had to, on average, match parent fees dollar-for-dollar, with the higher-income people paying more and the lower-income paying less,” Smith said. “So a major, for example, would pay two-thirds of the cost, and a private would pay one-third, but the average was 50/50.”
Smith pointed out that we’re already subsidizing child care in ways that are hidden — through the public benefits and social programs that early childhood educators often rely on because of low compensation, and through lack of workforce participation.
Lesson 5: Expand the availability of all kinds of care
Gale Perry said the military’s model really stands out to her for its ability to assess unmet needs and take action to improve.
“In the early 2000s when there were the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there were a lot of deployments of National Guard and Reserve who did not live on post and did not have access to on-post child care,” Gale Perry said. “That is really when the military got in the business of thinking about, how do we help build capacity and make child care accessible for military families off post?”
That’s when the MCCYN came about, subsidizing high-quality early care and learning in a broader array of settings in the communities where service members live.
Smith said that the Military Child Care Act was originally targeted toward child care centers, but she recalls briefing the assistant secretary of defense on the potential effects of that strategy when they were designing the system:
I remember saying we need to apply all of this to family child care, to school-aged care, to part-day preschools, because if we don’t, all the parents are going to have a demand on these centers that we can’t meet, right? Because if you lower the cost in the centers and you improve the quality, why would somebody go to another place when they get it cheaper and better over here?
She made the case for educators in every setting getting the same access to training and the same level of compensation, because that’s what would work best for everyone.
“Everything applies to everybody,” Smith said. “And I think that was one of the smartest policy decisions we made.”
Lesson 6: Commit the resources necessary to get the job done
“There was this perception that we just had a lot of money and we threw it at” child care, Smith said. But that wasn’t the case.
“When they passed the Military Child Care Act, it didn’t come with an appropriation,” Gale Perry said. “So they had to fight equally hard for the funding, and a lot of the funding actually ended up coming from local base commanders making the decision to invest in child care.”
Now the military submits a budget request to Congress each year, and depends on those appropriations.
For state and local policymakers seeking to solve the civilian child care crisis without public investment, the woman credited with solving the military’s own child care crisis 35 years ago has a message.
“It’s gonna cost. There’s no way it doesn’t cost,” Smith said.
Since hitting a record high in 2022, national chronic absenteeism rates have dropped modestly — by about five percentage points — according to the most recent available data, but still remain persistently higher than pre-pandemic levels.
States that joined a national pledge led by three high-profile education advocacy and research groups to cut chronic absenteeism in half over five years fared better. The 16 states and Washington, D.C. posted results “substantially above the average rate” of decline, though exact numbers are not yet available, said Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, one of the trio.
The national chronic absenteeism average dropped from 28.5% in 2022 to 25.4% in 2023, and fell an additional two points to 23.5% in 2024. Virginia, which is among the 16 participating states, cut its chronic absenteeism by 4.4 percentage points, year over year, to 15.7%, as of spring 2024.
Speaking of the states collectively, Malkus told The 74, “That’s good but it’s not as good as we need it to be. I think it points to the need for sustained pressure and a sustained campaign to bring absence rates down and to bring more students back to consistent attendance.”
Last July, AEI and EdTrust, right-and left-leaning think tanks, respectively, and the national nonprofit Attendance Works joined forces to launch The 50% Challenge. This week, the organizations hosted an event in Washington, D.C., to report on their progress, re-up the call to action and hear insights from state, district and community partners on how they are improving student attendance and engagement.
With California and Georgia recently joining, the 16 states and D.C. who signed on to the pledge account for more than a third of all students nationally. While Malkus doesn’t necessarily attribute their better results to the pledge itself, he noted that their participation shows a willingness to commit to the cause and be publicly accountable for their results.
“I will hold their feet to the fire on this goal,” he added during his opening remarks in D.C.
While felt most acutely by students of color and those in poorer districts, the spike in chronic absenteeism — students missing more than 10% of school days a year — cut across districts regardless of size, racial breakdown or income. Chronic absenteeism surged from 13.4% in 2017 to 28.5% in 2022 before beginning to drop in 2023.
Only about one-third of students nationally are in districts that are on pace to cut 2022 absenteeism in half by 2027, according to an AEI report, and rates improved more slowly in 2024 than they did in 2023, “raising the very real possibility that absenteeism rates might never return to pre-pandemic levels.
AEI
Research has shown that students with high rates of absenteeism are more likely to fall behind academically and are at a greater risk of dropping out of school. About 8% of all learning loss from the pandemic is attributed just to chronic absenteeism, according to soon-to-be-released AEI research.
The continued disproportionate impacts of chronic absenteeism were confirmed by recent RAND research, which found that in roughly half of urban school districts, more than 30% of students were chronically absent — a far higher share of students than in rural or suburban school districts.
RAND also found that the most commonly reported reason for missing school was sickness and one-quarter of kids did not think that being chronically absent was a problem.
SchoolStatus, a private company that works with districts to reduce chronic absenteeism, also released new numbers this week for some 1.3 million K-12 students across 172 districts in nine states. Districts using proactive interventions, the company reports, drove down chronic absenteeism rates from 21.9% in 2023–24 to 20.9% in 2024–25.
At this week’s event, numerous experts across two panels emphasized the importance of a tiered approach to confronting the issue, which has resisted various remedies. Schools must build enough trust and buy-in with kids and their families that they are willing to share why they are absent in the first place. Once those root causes are identified, it is up to school, district and state leaders to work to remove the barriers.
And while data monitoring must play a significant role, it should be done in a way that is inclusive of families.
“We need to analyze data with families, not at them,” said Augustus Mays, EdTrust’s vice president of partnerships and engagement.
Augustus Mays is the vice president of partnerships and engagement at EdTrust. (EdTrust)
It’s imperative to understand the individual child beyond the number they represent and to design attendance plans and strategies with families so they feel supported rather than chastised.
“It’s around choosing belonging over punitive punishment,” Mays added.
One major and common mistake schools make is “accountability without relationships,” said Sonja Brookins Santelises, the superintendent of Baltimore City Public Schools.
“You can’t ‘pull people up’ if you don’t have enough knowledge of what they’re really going through,” she said.
Panelists were transparent that all this would require immense funding, staff and community partnerships.
Virginia achieved its noteworthy drop in chronic absenteeism after launching a $418 million education initiative in the fall of 2023, in part after seeing their attendance data sink, with about 1 in 5 students chronically missing school. At least 10% of those funds are earmarked to prioritize attendance solutions in particular, according to panelist Emily Anne Gullickson, the superintendent of public instruction for the Virginia Department of Education.
These strategies are far-reaching, she noted: Because parents had been told throughout the pandemic to keep their kids home at the slightest sign of illness, schools partnered with pediatricians and school nurses to help counter the no-longer-necessary “stay home” narrative.
Hedy Chang is the founder and executive director of Attendance Works. (Attendance Works)
Gullickson said she also broke down bureaucratic silos, connecting transportation directors and attendance directors, after realizing the role that transit played in chronic absenteeism. The state now has second chance buses as well as walking and biking “buses,” led by parents or teachers along a fixed route, who pick up students along the way.
And they are “on a mission to move away from seat time and really deliver more flexibility on where, when and how kids are learning,” she said.
“This isn’t one strategy. It’s a set of strategies,” said Attendance Works founder and executive director Hedy Chang, who moderated the panel.
In Connecticut, state leaders have launched the Learning Engagement and Attendance Program, a research-based model that sends trained support staff to families’ homes to build relationships and better understand why their kids are missing school.
Charlene Russell-Tucker is the commissioner of the Connecticut State Department of Education. (Connecticut State Department of Education)
A recent study confirmed that six months after the program’s first home visits, attendance rates improved by approximately 10 percentage points for K-8 students, and nearly 16 percentage points for high schoolers, said Charlene Russell-Tucker, the commissioner of the Connecticut State Department of Education.
Schools must also work to motivate kids to want to show up in the first place, panelists said, making it a meaningful place that students believe will support and help them in the long run. The only way to do this is to start with student and family feedback, said Brookins, the Baltimore schools chief.
During the pandemic many parents saw up-close for the first time what their kids’ classrooms and teacher interactions looked like, “and I don’t think a lot of folks liked what they saw for a variety of different reasons,” Brookins said.
“I think it opened up boxes of questions that we — as the education establishment — were unprepared to answer,” she added. But chronic absenteeism cannot be successfully fought without engaging in those uncomfortable conversations.
Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to EdTrust and The 74.
