TORONTO – April 28, 2025 – Whether it be student grades, assessment responses, engagement data, or contact information, the safety of your data is our priority at Top Hat. As the leading engagement platform used by more than 750 higher education institutions, we’ve implemented several technical and operational measures to keep our promise. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce that Top Hat has received a certificate of compliance for ISO/IEC 27001:2022!
Read on to learn what this means for our business and users.
A new milestone in Top Hat’s privacy and security journey
The ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification is the international gold standard for information security management. This achievement highlights our dedication to safeguarding user data through a complete set of information security controls, which are routinely audited by an independent third party. CPSI Certifications Inc., a certification body with more than 30 years of experience, performed the audit and awarded the certification. Our certification reflects our continuous commitment to upholding the highest level of security standards to protect user data. This credential applies to both the Top Hat and Aktiv SaaS platforms.
“Achieving ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification is a significant milestone for us. It reflects the strong security foundation we’ve built to protect our users’ data and demonstrates our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of information security,” says Que Sengmany, Director of Information Security at Top Hat. “For our users and partners, this certification provides assurance that we’re following globally-recognized best practices to manage risks and safeguard information.”
Our security philosophy
At Top Hat, we’ve used the following pillars to guide our security philosophy.
Confidentiality: Ensuring that information is accessible only to authorized individuals
Integrity: Maintaining the accuracy and completeness of information and processing methods
Availability: Guaranteeing that only authorized users have access to information when needed
These principles continue to be our North Star as we continue to safeguard sensitive company and user data. Curious to know more about our technical security measures? Visit our Security page today.
About Top Hat
As the leader in student engagement solutions for higher education, Top Hat enables educators to employ proven student-centered teaching practices through interactive content and tools enhanced by AI, and activities in in-person, online and hybrid classroom environments. To accelerate student impact and return on investment, the company provides a range of change management services, including faculty training and instructional design support, integration and data management services, and digital content customization. Thousands of faculty at 750 leading North American colleges and universities use Top Hat to create meaningful, engaging and accessible learning experiences for students before, during, and after class.
In 2010, United States lawmakers passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which aimed to tackle both childhood obesity and hunger by making school meals more nutritious. Two years later, the Department of Agriculture updated its guidance for schools participating in the National School Lunch Program, or NSLP, in accordance with the law. Whereas schools could previously serve fat-free, 1 percent, 2 percent, or whole milk and be eligible for federal reimbursement, now they could only recoup meal costs if they ditched 2 percent and whole milk, which were thought to be too high in saturated fat for kids.
Representative Glenn “G.T.” Thompson has been on a mission to change that. The Republican legislator representing Pennsylvania’s 15th congressional district believes the 2010 law sparked a decline in students drinking milk across the board. “We have lost a generation of milk drinkers since whole milk was demonized and removed from schools,” he told a local agribusiness group in 2021.
Between 2019 and 2023, Thompson introduced the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act — a bill that would allow schools to serve whole milk again under the NSLP — three times without success.
In January of this year, he reintroduced the bill once again — and inspired a group of animal welfare, environmental, and public health organizations to push for a vegan countermeasure. This month, a bipartisan group of legislators put forward the Freedom in School Cafeterias and Lunches, or FISCAL, Act, which would expand the definition of milk under the NSLP to include plant-based options. Currently, schools participating in the NSLP can offer milk substitutions to students with a note from a parent or doctor — but the FISCAL Act is promoting a world where vegan milks are offered freely, alongside cow’s milk.
If students end up replacing their daily cow’s milk with a plant-based alternative, this has the potential to bring down food-related greenhouse gas emissions. But you won’t hear supporters of the FISCAL Act talking up the climate benefits of plant-based milk in the halls of Congress. Instead, they’re focusing on the health benefits of soy, oat, and other vegan drinks for students who can’t digest or simply don’t want cow’s milk.
“Most of this nation’s children of color are lactose intolerant, and yet our school lunch program policy makes it difficult for these kids to access a nutritious fluid beverage that doesn’t make them sick,” said Senator Cory Booker, a Democratic co-sponsor of the bill. This focus on student health — and the absence of any environmental talking points — reflect the eternally tricky politics around milk in U.S. schools, which have become even more complicated in President Donald Trump’s second term.
Milk has a relatively low carbon footprint compared to other animal proteins, like beef, pork, poultry, and cheese. But dairy production still comes with considerable climate impacts — mainly from the food grown to feed cows, as well as methane emitted via cow burps and manure. In 2020, researchers at Pennsylvania State University found that a dairy cow can release 350 pounds of methane every year through their burps — meaning, all told, dairy cows are responsible for 2.7 percent of the U.S.’s total greenhouse gases.
Nondairy milks — fortified drinks like soy, almond, oat, and rice milk — have varying impacts on the environment and climate, but all of these plant-based alternatives use less land and water than cow’s milk to produce, and result in fewer emissions.
Under the NSLP, schools cannot be reimbursed for the cost of meals unless they offer students milk. The Center for a Humane Economy, an animal welfare and environmental group backing the FISCAL Act, calls this America’s “milk mandate.” In 2023, student Marielle Williamson sued her Los Angeles high school for not allowing her to set up an informational table about plant-based milk unless she also promoted dairy. Subsidized school lunches have been described as “a guaranteed market” for farmers’ products; this is all but acknowledged when legislators like Thompson blame school lunch for the decline of the dairy industry. Indeed, in a recent Senate agricultural committee hearing over the whole milk bill, Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, said, “Not only do school meal programs reduce hunger and promote learning, they also support our local farmers and ranchers at a time when it’s probably the very worst time I’ve seen in decades” for farmers.
The animal welfare groups backing the FISCAL Act argue schools need more flexibility to meet the needs of students with lactose intolerance. Consumption of milk has fallen consistently since the 1970s, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. That change is thought to be the result of shifting diets, as well as perhaps a reflection of America’s growing racial and ethnic diversity. It is estimated that half of American adults have difficulty digesting lactose, the protein found in milk and many other dairy products. These rates are higher in Black, Asian American, Hispanic, Native American, and Jewish communities.
“We’ve had so much marketing to tell us that the milk of a cow is, you know, nature’s perfect food, and it clearly is not,” said Wayne Pacelle, the head of Animal Wellness Action, an advocacy group that opposes animal cruelty and supports the FISCAL Act.
Pacelle acknowledged the climate impact of the dairy industry: “It’s just a truth that cows are big contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.” But he noted that arguments related to the climate are unlikely to sway the debate over school lunch beverages. “The Republican Congress is not really so attuned to that,” he said.
As a result, his group and the others pushing for the FISCAL Act aren’t talking much about the environmental considerations of drinking cow’s milk. This aligns with a shift happening in the broader food industry under the second Trump administration, as producers and manufacturers figure out which talking points are most appealing to leaders like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has called for schools to start offering whole milk again.
The Republicans pushing for whole milk in schools are talking up the health and economic benefits of whole milk, an argument that came into sharp relief during a Senate agricultural committee hearing in early April. Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas, who drank from a tall glass of milk before addressing the committee, referenced the term “Make America Healthy Again,” or MAHA, when making his case. The movement, popularized by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., taps into wellness, environmental, and food safety concerns in the general public and offers solutions based in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories. Marshall, a co-sponsor of the whole milk bill in the Senate, said MAHA is “about whole foods, and I think we could categorize whole milk as part of” that framework.
While Republicans and Democrats alike may be sidestepping the dairy industry’s environmental impact and spending more time talking about student health, there is one environmental consideration that’s caught the attention of advocates of both whole milk and plant-based milk. That’s food waste, a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions. Forty-five percent of the milk cartons offered at breakfast in schools are thrown out annually because students don’t take them. When students do grab milk at breakfast, a fourth of those cartons still wind up unopened in the trash.
Krista Byler, a food service director for the Union City Area School District in northwestern Pennsylvania, spoke at the Senate agricultural committee hearing and said serving whole milk in her schools helped milk consumption go up, ultimately reducing the amount of milk wasted.
“I hated seeing such an exorbitant amount of milk wasted daily in our small district and was hearing stories of even bigger waste ratios in larger districts,” Byler said in her written testimony.
A similar case has been made by Pacelle and other supporters of the FISCAL Act, who argue students will be more likely to drink — and finish — their beverage at school if they have the option to go plant-based.
Recently, the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids bill passed a House agriculture committee vote. If it passes a full House vote, it could then move on to the Senate. Meanwhile, the FISCAL Act is still in committee in both houses of Congress.
Pacelle said the best chance the FISCAL Act has of passing is if its provisions are included as an amendment to the whole milk bill — framing it not as a rival measure, but as a complementary effort to create more choice for students. “Moving it independently is unlikely because of the power of the dairy lobby,” said Pacelle, “and the G.T. Thompsons of the world.”
The parties in the long-running Yazzie-Martinez lawsuit over educational equity in New Mexico will meet in court next week to discuss a motion alleging the state has not complied with previous court orders, along with the plaintiffs’ request for a “remedial plan.”
The case, originally filed in 2014, led to a finding in 2018 by the late First Judicial District Court Judge Sarah Singleton, who found that the state was not providing equitable educational opportunities to Native students, English language learners, low-income students and students with disabilities. She ordered the state to take steps to address the needs of these at-risk students and ensure schools have the resources to provide them with the education they deserve.
Attorneys representing Louise Martinez and Wilhelmina Yazzie filed a joint motion of non-compliance in September 2024, arguing that the state has not made significant progress in addressing the needs of at-risk students. Specifically, in their motion, plaintiffs point to ongoing poor student performance; high turnover within the New Mexico Public Education Department; high teacher vacancy rates; and a lack of targeted funding for at-risk students.
Since Singleton’s decision, the state has increased funding for public education, but students are still being overlooked, Melissa Candelaria, education director for the NM Center on Law and Poverty, which represents the plaintiffs, told Source NM.
The motion hearing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Tuesday, April 29.
“We believe the court’s ruling should have been a wakeup call,” Candelaria said. “Our students can’t afford more bureaucratic churn and empty promises from PED. And we believe, the plaintiffs believe, the court must step in to enforce a real community-driven plan that reflects the urgency and the gravity to improve the overall state education system.”
Candelaria noted that the joint motion was not opposed by New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez, who represents the state in the case. Court documents state that Torrez “agrees” that there has been “insufficient compliance.” However, private counsel for the PED did oppose the motion, particularly the plaintiff’s proposed remedial plan.
PED had not responded to a request from Source NM for comment prior to publication.
That plan, as detailed in court documents, includes nine components or goals, including: establishing a multicultural and multilingual educational framework; building an education workforce; increasing access to technology; developing methods of accountability; and strengthening the capacity of the PED.
“There’s no longer a debate that a statewide education plan is necessary. Now, the decision is who leads that development,” Candelaria said.
Candelaria also told Source the plaintiffs propose the Legislative Education Study Committee take the lead in developing the remedial plan because the department’s staff have knowledge and expertise in the area of education and have access to data. The department also has a director and permanent staff, as opposed to the PED, which has had multiple cabinet secretaries lead the department in the nearly seven years since Singleton’s decision, she noted.
“Without a plan, the efforts by the Legislature will still be piecemeal and scattershot and it’s not going to result in what we want to see in a transformed education system that’s equitable and that builds on the strengths and provides for the needs of the four student groups in the case,” Candelaria said.
The PED opposes the motion on this point, according to court documents, and argues the education department should take the lead in developing the plan. The department also says more time is needed to create and then implement the plan. Plaintiffs suggest that the five-year plan should be developed within six months of this month’s hearing.
Wilhelmina Yazzie, one of the original plaintiffs, told Source she feels “very optimistic” ahead of the motion hearing and that she hopes the judge agrees a plan is necessary. She added that the inequities in public education were emphasized during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Especially our tribal communities who are really deeply impacted by that, and they still continue to suffer to the present time right now and just by the state not taking the action that we need them to take,” Yazzie said.
Yazzie’s son, Xavier Nez, 22, was in third grade when the lawsuit started. He is now in his third year studying at the University of New Mexico. Candelaria pointed out that since the 2018 court decision, multiple classes of students have made their way through the state’s educational system and failed to receive a comprehensive education. Yazzie’s youngest child, Kimimila Black Moon, is currently in third grade but attends private school.
“She’s not in the public school because I still haven’t seen changes,” she said.
Yazzie told Source that another goal of hers is to get out into communities throughout the state and speak with families because many parents are still unaware of the lawsuit and “they’re the ones that firsthand know what their children need, what they’re lacking, how they’re doing in school.”
Source New Mexico is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Goldberg for questions: [email protected].
Attorneys representing a group of New Jersey parents and activist groups are asking a state appellate court to weigh in on a case that could reshape the state’s public education system.
At the center of the fight is whether New Jersey schools are unconstitutionally segregated by race and socioeconomic status. A lower court judge in October 2023 acknowledged the state’s public schools are segregated by race and that the state must act, but also found that the plaintiffs had failed to prove the entire system is segregated across all its districts.
“It is imperative that no more students be deprived of these rights by the trial court’s avoidance of the straightforward conclusion compelled by the facts and the law in this case — that the state defendants, who are legally obligated to take action to desegregate public schools regardless of the reasons for that segregation, have acted unconstitutionally by failing to do so,” the attorneys wrote in the filing.
Gov. Phil Murphy and the state Department of Education have until April 28 to respond to the plaintiffs’ new filing. A spokesman for the Murphy administration declined to comment.
The case dates to 2018, when the Latino Action Network, the NAACP New Jersey State Conference, and several other families and groups sued the state alleging New Jersey failed to address de facto segregation in public schools. The plaintiffs cited data showing that nearly half of all Black and Latino students in New Jersey attend schools that are more than 90% non-white, in districts that are often just blocks from predominantly white districts.
In New Jersey, students typically attend schools in the municipality where they live. Plaintiffs argued that long-standing housing policies that led to segregated residential neighborhoods led to segregated schools also. New Jersey is the seventh-most segregated state for Black and Latino students, the plaintiffs say.
In October 2023, after Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy issued his ruling that acknowledged racial segregation in New Jersey schools but said it was not widespread, both sides entered mediation talks in hopes it would resolve more quickly than continued litigation.
Attorneys for the parties said in February that it’s unlikely continuing the talks would “be constructive.”
The plaintiffs’ attorneys say the lower court’s October ruling should be reversed. They want a judge to review what they say are six errors in the 2023 order, like the fact that Lougy did not identify a disputed fact.
“Rather than reach the only logical conclusion that followed — that the state defendants violated plaintiffs’ constitutional rights — the trial court left the question of liability for another day,” the filing reads.
If the appellate court denies the motion, the case would return to the trial court, or could be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: [email protected].
Spy High, a four-part documentary series streaming now on Amazon Prime, puts the focus on a lawsuit filed in 2010 after Robbins’ affluent Pennsylvania school district accused him of dealing drugs — a conclusion officials reached after they surreptitiously snapped a photo of him at home with the chewy candy in hand.
Blake Robbins, then a high school student in Pennsylvania’s affluent Lower Merion School District, speaks to the press about his 2010 lawsuit alleging covert digital surveillance by educators. (Unrealistic Ideas)
The moment had been captured on the webcam of his school-issued laptop — one of some 66,000 covert student images collected by the district, including one of Robbins asleep in his bed.
I caught up with Spy High Director Jody McVeigh-Schultz to discuss why the 15-year-old case offers cautionary lessons about student surveillance gone awry and how it informs contemporary student privacy debates.
How student surveillance plays out today: Meet the gatekeepers of students’ private lives. | The 74
In the news
Courts block DEI directive: Three federal courts ordered temporary halts on Thursday to Trump’s efforts to cancel student diversity initiatives — and demands for states to pledge allegiance to the administration’s interpretation of civil rights laws. | The 74
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that called for school discipline models “rooted in American values and traditional virtues,” taking aim at Obama- and Biden-era efforts to reduce racial disparities in suspensions and expulsions. | Politico
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks about a new autism study during a news conference on April 16, 2025. (Getty Images)
‘The history there is deeply, deeply disturbed’: Disability-rights advocates have decried plans at the National Institutes of Health to compile Amerians’ private medical records in a “disease registry” to track children and other people with autism. | The 74
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., faced criticism for recent comments that many kids “were fully functional and regressed because of some environmental exposure into autism when they’re 2 years old.” | ABC News
A new lawsuit filed by students at military-run schools accuses the Defense Department of harming their learning opportunities by banning books related to “gender ideology” or “divisive equity ideology,” including texts that refer to slavery and sexual harassment prevention. | Military Times
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California lawmakers are demanding answers after Department of Homeland Security agents visited two Los Angeles elementary schools and asked to speak with five students who the federal agency said “arrived unaccompanied at the border.” | LAist
‘We all deserve reparations’: White House aide Stephen Miller said in an interview last week the country “used to have a functioning public school system” until it was destroyed by “open borders.” | The New Republic
The Justice Department seized thousands of photos and videos in an investigation of a former University of Michigan assistant football coach who was indicted on allegations he hacked into student athletes’ private accounts to steal intimate images. | CBS Sports
A 48-year-old mother was arrested and accused of bringing a gun to her daughter’s Indiana elementary school and threatening the girl’s teacher over a classroom assignment about flags. While discussing flags, the teacher reportedly referred to a rainbow flag in the classroom with the words “be kind.” | NBC News
Banning ‘frontal nudity’: A Texas school district has removed lessons on Virginia history from an online learning platform for elementary school students because the commonwealth’s flag depicts the Roman goddess Virtus with an exposed breast. | Axios
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments next month to weigh Trump’s executive order eliminating birthright citizenship, bringing into question a 127-year-old court precedent. | NPR
A class-action lawsuit accuses tech giant Google of amassing “thousands of data points that span a child’s life” without the consent of students or their parents. | Bloomberg Law
A Florida teacher is out of a job after she called a student by their preferred name, allegedly violating a 2023 Florida law that requires schools to receive parental permission to refer to students by anything other than their legal names. | Click Orlando
The vice president of the Buffalo, New York, chapter of Bikers Against Child Abuse was arrested and accused of sex crimes against children. | WIVB
“A direct assault on the Texas public education system.”
That’s how social justice groups like the Texas Freedom Network are describing the passage of a bill that would create a $1 billion school voucher program in the state. The Texas House passed Senate Bill 2 early Thursday, with support from Gov. Greg Abbott, who has championed school vouchers. These taxpayer-funded subsidies divert money away from public schools, allowing families to use them to cover their children’s tuition at private or religious schools.
“This is part of a coordinated strategy to dismantle public education statewide and nationally, since Donald Trump literally called Republicans and told them that they had to vote yes on this voucher scheme,” said Emily Witt, spokesperson for the Texas Freedom Network, a grassroots organization of religious and community leaders. “Republicans have done a very coordinated job of framing this as something that it’s not. It’s certainly not ‘choice.’ It’s going to really devastate a lot of public schools and rural communities here in Texas.”
The voucher bill’s passage has been characterized as a win for both Abbott and Trump. Abbott tried unsuccessfully to get voucher legislation passed in 2023. Trump, in January, issued an executive order directing the education secretary to explore ways to route federal funding to states and families interested in school choice initiatives, which give students the option to attend their preferred public, private, charter or religious school. Critics of vouchers, a controversial way to facilitate school choice, worry that they take away valuable resources from public schools. They also argue that private schools may exclude students with disabilities or who are LGBTQ+ or have LGBTQ+ parents. Students from low-income or rural areas may also struggle to access private school, as may those from certain ethnic groups or religious backgrounds. The voucher program does not guarantee students admission to private schools.
The approval of a voucher program in the nation’s second most populous state could create a ripple effect across the United States, where the voucher movement has gained momentum in recent years in places like Arizona, Arkansas, Florida and Wisconsin — often with the help of billionaire backers. The Texas bill next goes to the state Senate, where lawmakers in each chamber are expected to work out the disparities in their voucher plans such as how much money participants should get and which participants should be prioritized.
“It is absurd for Gov. Abbott and his pro-voucher allies to claim that a diversion of $1 billion in tax funds to private schools over the next budget cycle will not hurt our underfunded public schools, where the vast majority of our students will remain,” Ovidia Molina, president of education labor organization the Texas State Teachers Association, said in a statement. “That voucher drain will increase to $3 billion by 2028 and more than $4 billion by 2030 if this voucher bill becomes law, the Legislative Budget Board projects.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sits before President Donald Trump arrives to speak at an education event and executive order signing in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (Ben Curtis/AP Photo)
In Texas, most students attend public schools, with an estimated 6 percent enrolled in private schools. Rural communities overwhelmingly attend public schools because of the dearth of private schools in such areas. Accordingly, voters in the country have typically opposed school vouchers, perceived as vehicles to help families in cities send their kids to private school. Even with the school voucher program, experts do not expect private schools to be inundated with new students from public schools.
“Most kids are still going to have to be served by public schools,” Witt said. “We do know that in other states where vouchers have passed, that most of the kids using those vouchers already were in private schools.”
While vouchers have been promoted as a way to help low-income families choose a quality education for their children, the subsidies often aren’t large enough to cover the tuition and fees associated with a private school education. The school voucher program the Texas House just approved is generous, as it will give families who qualify up to about $10,000 per child. The average K-12 private school tuition in Texas is over $11,000, with tuition for schools that specialize in special education topping $19,000 and elite institutions reaching as high as $40,000. Parents would need to make up the difference for tuition costs that vouchers don’t cover, a move critics of the subsidies say is out of reach for disadvantaged families.
“So it’s still going to benefit mostly wealthy families,” Witt said. “Let’s say that it does cover the cost of tuition. It’s not going to cover extracurriculars. It’s not going to cover transportation. Private schools are not required to offer free transportation to and from school like public schools are, and they also don’t have to accept every child.”
Religious institutions, she said, could turn away students who don’t belong to the faith affiliated with the school. A private school could accept a student with a disability only to discharge them later if the school doesn’t have the resources to educate that child or is no longer interested in doing so.
“They could essentially reject a child that they feel just doesn’t meet the culture of their school,” Witt continued. “That could be because a child comes from a low-income family. It could be because they’re not White. It could be because they’re LGBTQ or their parents are LGBTQ or not married.”
Private schools also don’t have to use standardized tests, like the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR), used in public schools to track student progress. The GOP-run Texas House, she said, rejected an amendment that would have required private schools to use standardized testing to measure student outcomes just as public schools do.
“I don’t know how we’ll see if this program works and how it benefits kids, especially kids with disabilities,” she said.
House Republicans tabled 44 amendments to the legislation, including one that would have led to a referendum on school vouchers in November, effectively blocking voters from deciding the issue.
The bill is an additional blow as public schools slash programs and raise class sizes under a budget crunch, Molina said in her statement.
“Texas already spends more than $5,000 less per student than the national average, ranking Texas 46th among the states and the District of Columbia,” she said. “The school finance bill also approved by the House will not come close to ending the state’s financial neglect of public education. The House’s $395 increase in the basic allotment, which hasn’t been increased in six years, will provide only a third of what is needed to cover districts’ losses from inflation alone.”
Supporters of the voucher program may not be happy with it a year from now, Witt predicts. In 2022, Arizona passed its universal school voucher program. It covers expenses related to private school tuition, homeschooling and related academic needs, but now the program faces a backlash as the costs associated with it have led to questions about oversight and funding for public schools.
“Republicans have sold people a lie,” Witt said. “They’ve said repeatedly that it won’t harm public schools, and there’s just no way that it won’t. And I do think that’s their goal. I genuinely think that their goal is to eliminate public education, and this is the first step there. A year from now, people are going to see that the neighborhood schools in their communities are shuttering or having to cut resources for students, and they’re going to be really upset. And I think that there’s going to be hell to pay at the ballot box.”
In 2024, The PIE Newsreported that the UK Home Office is engaging with the market about proposals to build a new Secure English Language Testing model for an estimated £1.13 billion, known as the Home Office Language Test (HOELT).
At the time, the government set out that it would be engaging with the market about tendering for the deal, which would be split into two parts; developing the Home Office-branded test and the facilitation of the tests around the world.
In an update on April 10 this year, it was revealed that the total value of the tender has been reduced to £680m.
The tender sets out estimated contract dates of August 2026 to August 2031, with a possible extension to August 2034. The estimated “publication date of tender notice” is August 1, 2025, while the deadline for participation in this third round of engagement is May 1, 2025.
It is noted that one of the primary purposes of the latest round is to “confirm the level of interest in the delivery of the service under a single contract”.
Michael Goodine, SELT expert and owner of Test Resources in South Korea, commented: “This suggests that the Home Office may be seeking a single supplier to both develop and deliver the test… The original plan was for those aspects to be handled by separate suppliers. Or at least separate contracts.”
“This sort of change could narrow the range of acceptable suppliers. Not everyone can do both of these things, of course,” Goodine wrote in his blog.
The PIE contacted the Home Office for comment on the changes, but it declined to respond.
The reliability of federal datasets is under scrutiny after an error was identified on the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) website that appeared to show stagnating international student numbers from August 2024 to the present.
The error, brought to The PIE News’s attention by EnglishUSA, casts doubt on recent headlines and media reports about declining international student enrolments in the US, with SEVIS data appearing to show an enrolment decline of 11% between March 2024 and March 2025.
“Starting in August 2024, the data appears to be duplicated month after month, with flatlined totals for students on F and M visas. These figures show virtually no fluctuation during a period when natural enrolment shifts would be expected,” explained EnglishUSA executive director, Cheryl Delk-Le Good.
“This irregularity comes at a time of heightened concern within the field, particularly as educators and administrators manage the fallout from widespread SEVIS terminations and the resulting confusion around visa status for international students,” added Delk-Le Good.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which runs SEVIS, was alerted to the error on April 14 and said it was “working to resolve the issue”.
As of April 25, the dataset has not been updated, and DHS has not responded to The PIE’s request for comment.
US International Trade Administration. Market Diversification Tool for International Education. 2023. Retrieved: April 11, 2025.
Notably, the inaccuracies begin in August 2024 and span both US administrations, suggesting “a computer glitch rather than an intentional act,” said Mark Algren – interim director of the Applied English Center at the University of Kansas and a contributor to EnglishUSA’s data initiatives – who noticed the anomaly.
However, Algren added that he had “no idea why someone didn’t catch it,” with the considerable timeframe of the glitch likely to hamper confidence in federal datasets that are relied on by institutions and that ensure transparency in the system.
Total F&M visa holders in the US:
Month
Total F&M
Change from previous month
August 24
1,091,134
-59,822
September 24
1,091,137
+3
October 24
1,091,141
+4
November 24
1,091,144
+3
January 25
1,091,142
-2
February 25
1,091,155
+13
March 25
1,091,161
+11
Source: SEVIS
It is important to note that each monthly dataset recorded by SEVIS is a snapshot of a given day that month, and the drop recorded in August 2024 (which is considered the last accurate figure) could have been taken before many students arrived for the fall academic term.
For this reason, “it’s hard to say that an August report is representative of the following fall term,” said Algren, with the true figures yet to be seen.
At the start of the 2024/25 academic year, IIE’s fall snapshot reported a 3% rise in international student enrolment, building on sustained growth over the last three years.
Despite recent uncertainty in the US caused by the current administration’s recent attacks on higher education, the period of SEVIS’ misreporting represents an earlier timeframe before the impact of Trump’s policies came into effect.
“The geopolitical landscape has changed dramatically and it’s an additional reason why the United Kingdom and the European Union have to work together,” Germany’s ambassador to the UK, Miguel Berger told The Today Program on April 25.
Berber added that he was “really optimistic” about the deal, ahead of a summit of EU and UK leaders on May 19, where the main discussion will focus on Europe’s security and defence.
“This is about security in Europe. It requires cooperation between democracies, friends, allies, countries with the same values. So, the geopolitical circumstances have changed in a way that there is no other option than close cooperation,” said Berber.
The ambassador said the scheme being negotiated would be based on a “one in, one out” basis, with a limit on the total number of Europeans living in the UK and the number of British people going to Europe.
However, a UK government spokesperson told The PIE that it had “no plans” for a youth mobility agreement, a stance that it has repeatedly maintained amid heightened political sensitivity around migration.
The most recent suggestions that a mobility scheme could be introduced come as Keir Starmer’s government is set to publish its new Immigration White Paper in the coming weeks, which is expected to reduce legal migration.
Berber highlighted the evolving geopolitical landscape, one in which the UK is increasingly being asked to rethink its relationship with the US and the EU.
According to English UK, the plan is not a return to freedom of movement but a time-limited scheme lasting up to three years, something a recent survey showed the majority of UK voters were in favour of.
In particular, the poll found 81% of Labour voters support a two-year youth mobility scheme, including two thirds on Conservative-Labour switchers, and 74% support a four-year scheme, including half Labour-Conservative switchers.
“It is a key demand of the EU in up-coming reset talks with the UK government and we are very encouraged to see the mood shifting among senior government ministers in recent days,” an English UK spokesperson told The PIE.
“A [youth mobility scheme] agreement with the EU would benefit British youth, inbound tourism and UK exports,” they said, adding that it would play an integral part of UK soft power networks.
The geopolitical landscape has changed dramatically and it’s an additional reason why the United Kingdom and the European Union have to work together
Miguel Berber, Germany’s Ambassador to the UK
This April, more than 60 Labour MPs signed a letter calling on the Prime Minister to back time-limited visas for 18-to-30-year-olds from the EU and UK, which is seen as a key European demand in opening up more ambitious trade with Brussels.
According to The Times, government sources insisted that home secretary Yvette Cooper was open to a capped mobility scheme with the EU, though it is understood that no formal proposals have been put to the home secretary.
“The news that that the government seems to be seriously considering a youth mobility scheme with the EU has been a long time coming,” said Sir Nick Harvey, CEO of the European Movement UK.
Harvey added that the government’s former hostility to the idea “could not be justified when the benefits of such a scheme are so obvious,” including giving young people the chance to work and study in Europe.
According to Berber, the scheme would “reduce obstacles and make is possible for young people with parents on a lower income to have the possibility to work abroad and to learn a language. We would like to have this in both directions,” he said.
As Education Secretary Linda McMahon was busy dismantling her cabinet department, she vowed to preserve one thing: the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card. In early April, she told a gathering of ed tech companies and investors that the national exam was “something we absolutely need to keep,” because it’s a “way that we keep everybody honest” about the truth of how much students across the country actually know.
That was clearly a promise with an asterisk.
Less than two weeks later, on Monday of this week, substantial parts of NAEP came crumbling down when the board that oversees the exam reluctantly voted to kill more than a dozen of the assessments that comprise the Nation’s Report Card over the next seven years.
The main reading and math tests, which are required by Congress, were preserved. But to cut costs in an attempt to appease Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) scrapped a 2029 administration of the Long-Term Trend NAEP, an exam that has tracked student achievement since the 1970s.* Also cut were fourth grade science in 2028, 12th grade science in 2032 and 12th grade history in 2030. Writing assessments, which had been slated for 2032, were canceled entirely. State and local results were also dropped for an assortment of exams. For example, no state-level results will be reported for 12th grade reading and math in 2028, nor will there be district-level results for eighth grade science that year.
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“These are recommendations that we are making with much pain,” said board chair Beverly Perdue, a former North Carolina governor who was appointed to this leadership role in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term. “None of us want to do this.”
The board didn’t provide an official explanation for its moves. But the vice chair, Martin West, a Harvard professor of education, said in an interview that the cuts were an effort to save the 2026 assessments. “A moment of reckoning came more quickly because of the pressures on the program to reduce expenses in real time,” he said.
In other words, the board was effectively cutting off the patient’s appendages to try to save the brain and the heart. Despite the sacrifice, it’s still not clear that the gambit will work.
DOGE has been demanding 50 percent cuts to the $190 million a year testing program. Nearly all the work is handled by outside contractors, such as Westat and ETS, and five-year contracts were awarded at the end of 2024. But instead of paying the vendors annually, DOGE has diced the payments into shorter increments, putting pressure on the contractors to accept sharp cuts, according to several former Education Department employees. At the moment, several of the contracts are scheduled to run out of money in May and June, and DOGE’s approval is needed to restart the flow of money. Indeed, DOGE allowed one NAEP contract to run out of funds entirely on March 31, forcing ETS employees to stop work on writing new questions for future exams.
Reading and math tests are scheduled to start being administered in schools in January 2026, and so additional disruptions could derail the main NAEP assessment altogether. NAEP is taken by a sample of 450,000 students who are selected to represent all the fourth and eighth graders in the nation, and each student only takes part of a test. This sampling approach avoids the burden of testing every child in the country, but it requires Education Department contractors to make complicated statistical calculations for the number of test takers and the number of test sections needed to produce valid and reliable results. Contractors must then package the test sections into virtual test booklets for students to take online. The Education Department also must get approval from the federal Office of Management and Budget to begin testing in schools — yet another set of paperwork that is handled by contractors.
A DOGE dilemma
People familiar with the board’s deliberations were concerned that contractors might be pressured to agree to cuts that could harm the quality and the validity of the exam itself. Significant changes to the exam or its administration could make it impossible to compare student achievement with the 2024 results, potentially undermining the whole purpose of the assessment.
Board members were ultimately faced with a dilemma. They could cut corners on the full range of assessments or hope to maintain NAEP’s high quality with a much smaller basket of tests. They chose the latter.
The cuts were designed to comply with congressional mandates. While the Long-Term Trend assessment is required by Congress, the law does not state how frequently it must be administered, and so the governing board has deferred it until 2033. Many testing experts have questioned whether this exam has become redundant now that the main NAEP has a 35-year history of student performance. The board has discussed scrapping this exam since 2017. “The passage of time raises questions about its continued value,” said West.
The writing assessments, originally scheduled for 2032 for grades four, eight and 12, needed an overhaul and that would have been an expensive, difficult process especially with current debates over what it means to teach writing in the age of AI.
The loss of state- and district-level results for some exams, such as high school reading and math, were some of the more painful cuts. The ability to compare student achievement across state lines has been one of the most valuable aspects of the NAEP tests because the comparison can provide role models for other states and districts.
Cost cutting
“Everyone agrees that NAEP can be more efficient,” said West, who added that the board has been trying to cut costs for many years. But he said that it is tricky to test changes for future exams without jeopardizing the validity and the quality of the current exam. That dual path can sometimes add costs in the short term.
It was unclear how many millions of dollars the governing board saved with its assessment cancellations Monday, but the savingsare certainly less than the 50 percent cut that DOGE is demanding. The biggest driver of the costs is the main NAEP test, which is being preserved. The contracts are awarded by task and not by assessment, and so the contractors have to come back with estimates of how much the cancellation of some exams will affect its expenses. For example, now that fourth grade science isn’t being administered in 2028, no questions need to be written for it. But field staff will still need to go to schools that year to administer tests, including reading and math, which haven’t been cut.
Compare old and new assessment schedules
Outside observers decried the cuts on social media, with one education commentator saying the cancellations were “starting to cut into the muscle.” Science and history, though not mandated by Congress, are important to many. ”We should care about how our schools are teaching students science,” said Allison Socol, who leads preschool to high school policy at EdTrust, a nonprofit that advocates for equity in education. “Any data point you look at shows that future careers will rely heavily on STEM skills.”
Socol worries that DOGE will not be satisfied with the board’s cuts and demand more. “It’s just so much easier to destroy things than to build them,” she said. “And it’s very easy, once you’ve taken one thing away, to take another one and another one and another one.”
On April 17, the Education Department announced that the 2026 NAEP would proceed as planned. But after mass layoffs in March, it remained unclear if the department has the capacity to oversee the process, since only two employees with NAEP experience are left out of almost 30who used to work on the test. McMahon might need to rehire some employees to pull it off, but new hiring would contradict the spirit of Trump’s executive order to close the department.
Socol fears that the Trump administration doesn’t really want to measure student achievement. “There is a very clear push from the administration, not just in the education sector, to have a lot less information about how our public institutions are serving the people in this country,” Socol said. “It is a lot easier to ignore inequality if you can’t see it, and that is the point.”
The Education Department did not respond to my questions about their intentions for NAEP. McMahon has been quite forceful in articulating the value of the assessments, but she might not have the final say since DOGE has to approve the NAEP contracts. “What’s very clear is that the office of the secretary does not completely control the DOGE people,” said a person with knowledge of the dynamics inside the Education Department. “McMahon’s views affect DOGE priorities, but McMahon doesn’t have direct control at all.”
The ball is now in DOGE’s court.
Canceled assessments
Long-Term Trend (LTT) assessments in math and reading for 9, 13 and 17 year olds in 2029. (The Education Department previously canceled the 2025 LTT for 17 year olds in February 2025.)
Science: Fourth-grade in 2028, 12th grade in 2032
History: 12th grade in 2030
Writing: Fourth, eighth and 12th grades in 2032
State-level results: 12th grade math and reading in 2028 and 2032, eighth grade history in 2030
District-level results: Eighth-grade science in 2028 and 2032
*Correction: An earlier version of this sentence incorrectly said that two administrations of the Long-Term Trend NAEP had been scrapped by the governing board on April 21. Only the 2029 administration was canceled by the board. The 2025 Long-Term Trend NAEP for 17 year olds was canceled by the Education Department in February. Nine- and 13-year-old students had already taken it by April.
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