Titled H.R. 2315, the Fairness for High-Skilled Americans Act, the bill was reintroduced by Gosar, who argued that OPT “undercuts American workers” and lets “greedy businesses hire inexpensive foreign labour” without providing benefits.
“Never authorized by Congress, OPT circumvents the H-1B visa cap set by Congress by allowing over 100,000 aliens admitted into our country on student visas to continue working in the United States for another three years after completing their academic studies,” read a statement by Gosar.
“The OPT program completely abandons young Americans who have spent years and tens of thousands of dollars pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics only to be pushed out of those fields by cheap foreigners.”
Though the legislation has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary, stakeholders have already shut down any possibility of it passing the US House of Representatives in the future.
While proposals like this tend to generate headlines, the likelihood of this bill advancing in Congress is extremely low John Evans, Catalyst Gem
“While proposals like this tend to generate headlines, the likelihood of this bill advancing in Congress is extremely low,” John Evans, co-founder and CEO, Catalyst Gem, a US-based software and services company specialising in international student admissions, told The PIE News.
“The last serious attempt to eliminate OPT came in 2020 and failed in the face of overwhelming bipartisan, legal, and economic opposition. Despite significant political pressure, the program remained fully intact, without any modifications, because of its recognised value to the US economy and workforce development.”
This isn’t Gosar’s first attempt to target the OPT program. In 2019, he introduced similar legislation and urged its termination through an executive order by President Donald Trump, who was serving his first term at the time.
Following Gosar’s move, WashTech – a union representing STEM workers – also took legal action, suing the US government over its 1992 rule that established the 12-month OPT program and the 2016 regulation which allows eligible STEM graduates to extend OPT by 24 months.
But the idea that OPT displaces American workers with international graduates is far from the truth, according to Evans.
“As of April 2025, the US had 7.6 million job openings, with high-skill sectors such as tech, healthcare, and engineering facing some of the greatest shortages,” he explained.
“Looking ahead, the US is projected to create 1.1 million new STEM jobs over the next decade and will need a continued pipeline of talent, including OPT, to support this growth. Failure to meet this demand will weaken the US position in the global economy, particularly if the talent is directed elsewhere.”
Despite efforts by the Trump administration, which pushed to restrict or eliminate OPT under the direction of then senior advisor to the President, Stephen Miller, the proposed changes were ultimately abandoned due to strong opposition from universities, business leaders, and other key groups.
Since then, OPT has remained a critical part in international appeal for US education and in 2023, the number of international students participating in the program rose to 242,782 – a 22% jump from the year before.
This surge played a significant role in pushing the overall international student population in the country to a record 1.1 million, with OPT participants making up a substantial portion of that total.
“I don’t see this bill going anywhere as the US needs more highly skilled workers – both American and otherwise to fuel an economy that is moving towards doing more highly skilled work in the US,” stated Mark Kopenski, president and CEO, Global Student Recruitment Advisors, a consultancy firm handling international student recruitment and enrolment strategies for educational institutions.
“The (Trump) administration has been bullish on creating paths to permanent residence for highly skilled and educated individuals from around the globe. This will take some time as there is a clearing out of many individuals that have come to the US illegally and without skills, financial resources and abilities that the US desires.”
According to Kopenski, programs like the “Gold Card Visa” are designed to attract highly skilled talent and noted that some international students in the US have already acquired or are planning to acquire these visas.
Although programs like the H-1B visa, which allows US employers to temporarily hire international workers in specialised fields, have faced scrutiny during Trump’s second term, the former president has voiced support for granting green cards to international college graduates.
However, no legislation has materialised to back this proposal, and instead, international graduates are encountering growing restrictions.
Since Trump’s inauguration in January this year, hundreds of international students have been detained and seen their visas revoked on US college and university campuses, often without any prior warning.
As per reports, over 80 US universities have reported visas being revoked for some of their international students.
Last month, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that over 300 student visas had been revoked due to activities deemed “against US national interest.”
Experts suggest the revocations may be tied to students’ involvement in pro-Palestine protests or minor legal infractions, such as speeding, with some facing deportation or being asked to leave the country.
The move has led to condemnation from US educators, who have slammed the “alarming” and “deeply disturbing actions” of the Trump administration.
The move could possibly contribute to an already declining interest in studying in the US, as highlighted by a recent survey conducted by StudyPortals.
Evans commented: “To rebuild confidence, the US must adopt a more consistent, transparent, and student-centred approach to international admissions and immigration, like the streamlined policies seen in Canada, the UK, and Australia. This effort must be reinforced by public messaging and policies that clearly state: ‘You are welcome here, and your contributions matter.’”
Meanwhile, Kopenski sees this as short-term declining interest, set to “correct itself as the US strengthens its attractiveness as a destination that provides the ultimate springboard to wealth and prosperity”.
The Alliance, which represents over 500 college leaders, has pledged its support for the AAUP in the case of AAUP v. Rubio, which seeks an injunction to halt the large-scale arrest, detention and deportation of students and faculty.
Submitted in a court document known as an amicus brief, the Alliance argued that recent efforts targeting international students and noncitizen staff had created a “climate of fear” that was “chilling the free exchange of ideas and isolating international students and scholars”.
“Recent actions have upended individual lives, undermined the safety of our institutions and jeopardised academic freedom in and beyond the classroom,” said Presidents’ Alliance CEO Miriam Feldblum on April 10.
“The uncertainty generated by visa revocations and terminations not only has immediate impacts but also threatens our long-term ability to recruit, retain and employ talented individuals from across the globe,” she added.
The court case comes amid growing alarm over the rising number of international student visas revocations and detentions.
As of April 10, over 100 US institutions have identified more than 600 international students and recent graduates who have seen their legal status changed by the State Department, according to monitoring by Inside Higher Ed.
The AAUP-led lawsuit was filed on March 25, challenging the Trump administration’s policy of arresting, detaining and deporting noncitizen students and faculty who participated in pro-Palestinian activism.
The lawsuit alleges that the administration’s “ideological-deportation policy” violates the first amendment right of freedom of speech and the Administrative Procedure Act, as well as being unconstitutionally vague.
Recent actions have upended individual lives, undermined the safety of our institutions and jeopardised academic freedom in and beyond the classroom
Miriam Feldblum, Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration
In coming together as a sector, Feldblum said she hoped the brief would “amplify the contributions of noncitizen students and scholars, whose ideas and breakthroughs fuel our economy and uphold the collaborative spirit that defines American education”.
In 2023, international students accounted for 6% of the total US higher education population and contributed over $50bn to the US economy, according to IIE.
The unprecedented attacks on international students in the US have provoked outrage across the globe, with the Alliance highlighting longer term impacts which threaten to stifle innovation, intensify ‘brain drain’ and jeopardise the competitiveness of higher education in the US.
When paired with declining visa issuance rates from several of the US’ primary sending countries and signs of plummeting interest in the US from postgraduate students, the need for sector-wide unity has never been so strong, say educators.
What’s more, the brief highlights the harmful impacts on US students who will lose out on global perspectives, enriched learning experiences and academic collaboration.
Scientific talent has already started leaving the US in response to research cuts and threats to academic freedom, with a recent poll revealing three quarters of US scientists were considering leaving the country.
Elsewhere, executive members of the US for Success Coalition have urged Congress to press the administration to stop immigration actions and travel restrictions that jeopardise the US’s global attractiveness, highlighting the contributions of international students to America’s “prosperity, safety and security”.
“International students are the most tracked and vetted visitors to this country,” said NAFSA CEO Fanta Aw.
“Deterring them from choosing the United States will not make us safer but will certainly deprive us of global talent at a time when competition for these students is increasing around the world,” she added.
The Coalition is encouraging students and leaders from all sectors including higher education, foreign policy and business, to reach out to members of congress with this message.
AAUP v. Rubio is scheduled to be heard in court on April 23.
The nation’s historically Black colleges and universities, known as HBCUs, are wondering how to survive in an uncertain and contentious educational climate as the Trump administration downsizes the scope and purpose of the U.S. Department of Education — while cutting away at federal funding for higher education.
In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order pausing federal grants and loans, alarming HBCUs, where most students rely on Pell Grants or federal aid. The order was later rescinded, but ongoing cuts leave key support systems in political limbo, said Denise Smith, deputy director of higher education policy and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank.
Leaders worry about Trump’s rollback of the Justice40 Initiative, a climate change program that relied on HBCUs to tackle environmental justice issues, she said. And there’s uncertainty around programs such as federal work-study and TRIO, which provides college access services to disadvantaged students.
“People are being mum because we’re starting to see a chilling effect,” Smith said. “There’s real fear that resources could be lost at any moment — even the ones schools already know they need to survive.”
Most students at HBCUs rely on Pell Grants or other federal aid, and a fifth of Black college graduates matriculate from HBCUs. Other minority-serving institutions, known as MSIs, that focus on Hispanic and American Indian populations also heavily depend on federal aid.
“It’s still unclear what these cuts will mean for HBCUs and MSIs, even though they’re supposedly protected,” Smith said.
States may be unlikely to make up any potential federal funding cuts to their public HBCUs. And the schools already have been underfunded by states compared with predominantly white schools.
Congress created public, land-grant universities under the Morrill Act of 1862 to serve the country’s agricultural and industrial industries, providing 10 million acres taken from tribes and offering it for public universities such as Auburn and the University of Georgia. But Black students were excluded.
The 1890 Morrill Act required states to either integrate or establish separate land-grant institutions for Black students — leading to the creation of many HBCUs. These schools have since faced chronic underfunding compared with their majority-white counterparts.
‘None of them are equitable’
In 2020, the average endowment of white land-grant universities was $1.9 billion, compared with just $34 million for HBCUs, according to Forbes.
There are other HBCUs that don’t stem from the 1890 law, including well-known private schools such as Fisk University, Howard University, Morehouse College and Spelman College. But more than three-fourths of HBCU students attend public universities, meaning state lawmakers play a significant role in their funding and oversight.
Marybeth Gasman, an endowed chair in education and a distinguished professor at Rutgers University, isn’t impressed by what states have done for HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions so far. She said she isn’t sure there is a state model that can bridge the massive funding inequities for these institutions, even in states better known for their support.
“I don’t think North Carolina or Maryland have done a particularly good job at the state level. Nor have any of the other states. Students at HBCUs are funded at roughly 50-60% of what students at [predominately white institutions] are funded. That’s not right,” said Gasman.
“Most of the bipartisan support has come from the U.S. Congress and is the result of important work by HBCUs and affiliated organizations. I don’t know of a state model that works well, as none of them are equitable.”
Under federal law, states that accept federal land-grant funding are required to match every dollar with state funds.
But in 2023, the Biden administration sent letters to 16 governors warning them that their public Black land-grant institutions had been underfunded by more than $12 billion over three decades.
Tennessee State University alone had a $2.1 billion gap with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
At a February meeting hosted by the Tennessee Black Caucus of State Legislators, Tennessee State interim President Dwayne Tucker said the school is focused on asking lawmakers this year for money to keep the school running.
Otherwise, Tucker said at the time, the institution could run out of cash around April or May.
“That’s real money. That’s the money we should work on,” Tucker said, according to a video of the forum.
In some states, lawsuits to recoup long-standing underfunding have been one course of action.
In Tennessee, a recent state report found Tennessee State University has been shortchanged roughly $150 million to $544 million over the past 100 years.
But Tucker said he thinks filing a lawsuit doesn’t make much sense for Tennessee State.
“There’s no account payable set up with the state of Tennessee to pay us $2.1 billion,” Tucker said at the February forum. “And if we want to make a conclusion about whether [that money] is real or not … you’re going to have to sue the state of Tennessee, and I don’t think that makes a whole lot of sense.”
Economic anchors
There are 102 HBCUs across 19 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands, though a large number of HBCUs are concentrated in the South.
Alabama has the most, with 14, and Pennsylvania has the farthest north HBCU.
Beyond education, HBCUs contribute roughly $15 billion annually to their local economies, generate more than 134,000 jobs and create $46.8 billion in career earnings, proving themselves to be economic anchors in under-resourced regions.
Homecoming events at HBCUs significantly bolster local economies, local studies show. North Carolina Central University’s homecoming contributes approximately $2.5 million to Durham’s economy annually.
Similarly, Hampton University’s 2024 homecoming was projected to inject around $3 million into the City of Hampton and the coastal Virginia region, spurred by increased visitor spending and retail sales. In Tallahassee, Florida A&M University’s 2024 homecoming week in October generated about $5.1 million from Sunday to Thursday.
Their significance is especially pronounced in Southern states — such as North Carolina, where HBCUs account for just 16% of four-year schools but serve 45% of the state’s Black undergraduate population.
Smith has been encouraged by what she’s seen in states such as Maryland, North Carolina and Tennessee, which have a combined 20 HBCUs among them. Lawmakers have taken piecemeal steps to expand support for HBCUs through policy and funding, she noted.
Tennessee became the first state in 2018 to appoint a full-time statewide higher education official dedicated to HBCU success for institutions such as Fisk and Tennessee State. Meanwhile, North Carolina launched a bipartisan, bicameral HBCU Caucus in 2023 to advocate for its 10 HBCUs, known as the NC10, and spotlight their $1.7 billion annual economic impact.
“We created a bipartisan HBCU caucus because we needed people in both parties to understand these institutions’ importance. If you represent a district with an HBCU, you should be connected to it,” said North Carolina Democratic Sen. Gladys Robinson, an alum of private HBCU Bennett College and state HBCU North Carolina A&T State University.
“It took constant education — getting folks to come and see, talk about what was going on,” she recalled. “It’s like beating the drum constantly until you finally hear the beat.”
For Robinson, advocacy for HBCUs can be a tough task, especially when fellow lawmakers aren’t aware of the stories of these institutions. North Carolina A&T was among the 1890 land-grant universities historically undermatched in federal agricultural and extension funding.
The NC Promise Tuition Plan, launched in 2018, reduced in-state tuition to $500 per semester and out-of-state tuition to $2,500 per semester at a handful of schools that now include HBCUs Elizabeth City State University and Fayetteville State University; Western Carolina University, a Hispanic-serving institution; and UNC at Pembroke, founded in 1887 to serve American Indians.
Through conversations on the floor of the General Assembly, and with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, Robinson advocated to ensure Elizabeth City State — a struggling HBCU — was included, which helped revive enrollment and public investment.
“I’m hopeful because we’ve been here before,” Robinson said in an interview.
“These institutions were built out of churches and land by people who had nothing, just so we could be educated,” Robinson said. “We have people in powerful positions across the country. We have to use our strength and our voices. Alumni must step up.
“It’s tough, but not undoable.”
Meanwhile, other states are working to recognize certain colleges that offer significant support to Black college students. California last year passed a law creating a Black-serving Institution designation, the first such title in the country. Schools must have programs focused on Black achievement, retention and graduation rates, along with a five-year plan to improve them. Sacramento State is among the first receiving the designation.
And this session, California state Assemblymember Mike Gipson, a Democrat, introduced legislation that proposes a $75 million grant program to support Black and underserved students over five years through the Designation of California Black-Serving Institutions Grant Program. The bill was most recently referred to the Assembly’s appropriations committee.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
After weeks of uncertainty, two tribal colleges have been told they can hire back all employees who were laid off as part of the Trump administration’s deep cuts across the federal workforce in February, part of a judge’s order restoring some federal employees whose positions were terminated.
Haskell Indian Nations University in Kansas and Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, widely known as SIPI, in New Mexico lost about 70 employees in mid-February amid widespread staffing cuts to federal agencies. While most of the nation’s 37 tribal colleges and universities are chartered by American Indian tribes, Haskell and SIPI are not associated with individual tribes and are run by the federal government.
About 55 employees were laid off and 15 accepted offers to resign, according to a lawsuit filed last month by tribes and students. The colleges were forced to cancel or reconfigure a wide range of services, from sports and food service to financial aid and classes. In some cases, instructors were hired by other universities as adjuncts and then sent back to the tribal colleges to keep teaching.
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It was not clear this week when and if the workers would return, whether the employees who resigned would also be offered their jobs back, or if the government would allow colleges to fill vacancies. Both colleges said some employees had turned down the offers.
The Bureau of Indian Education, which runs the colleges, declined to answer questions except to confirm the laid-off workers would be offered jobs with back pay to comply with a judge’s order that the government reverse course on thousands of layoffs of probationary employees. But the agency also noted the jobs would be available “as the White House pursues its appeals process,” indicating possible turmoil if an appeals court reinstates the layoffs.
Both colleges said the bureau also has refused to answer most of their questions.
SIPI leaders were told last week that the positions were being restored, said Adam Begaye, chairman of the SIPI Board of Regents. The 270-student college lost 21 employees, he said, four of whom decided to take early retirement. All but one of the remaining 17 agreed to return, Begaye said.
The chaos has been difficult for those employees, he said, and the college is providing counseling.
“We want to make sure they have an easy adjustment, no matter what they’ve endured,” Begaye said.
The chairman of Haskell’s Board of Regents, Dalton Henry, said he was unsure how many of the 50 lost employees were returning. Like SIPI, Haskell was forced after the layoffs to shift job responsibilities and increase the workload for instructors and others.
Haskell was reviewed by accreditors in December, and Henry said he was worried how the turmoil would affect the process. Colleges and universities must be accredited to offer federal and state financial aid and participate in most other publicly funded programs.
Henry declined to discuss his thoughts on the chaos, saying there was nothing the college could do about it.
“Whatever guidance is provided, that’s what we have to adhere to,” he said. “It’s a concern. But at this point, it’s the federal government’s decision.”
The Bureau of Indian Affairs declined to make the presidents of the two colleges available for interviews.
Tribal colleges and universities were established to comply with treaties and the federal trust responsibility, legally binding agreements in which the United States promised to fund Indigenous education and other needs. But college leaders argue the country has violated those contracts by consistently failing to fund the schools adequately.
In the federal lawsuit claiming the Haskell and SIPI cuts were illegal, students and tribes argued the Bureau of Indian Education has long understaffed the colleges. The agency’s “well-documented and persistent inadequacies in operating its schools range from fiscal mismanagement to failure to provide adequate education to inhospitable buildings,” plaintiffs claimed.
Sen. Jerry Moran and Rep. Tracey Mann, both Kansas Republicans, said before Trump took office that they plan to introduce a bill shifting Haskell from federal control to a congressional charter, which would protect the university from cuts across federal agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Education.
“[F]or the last few years the university has been neglected and mismanaged by the Bureau of Indian Education,” Moran said in a written statement in December. “The bureau has failed to protect students, respond to my congressional inquiries or meet the basic infrastructure needs of the school.”
The February cuts brought rare public visibility to tribal colleges, most of which are in remote locations. Trump’s executive orders spurred outrage from Indigenous communities and a flurry of national news attention.
“We’re using this chaos as a blessing in disguise to make sure our family and friends in the community know what SIPI provides,” said Begaye, the SIPI board president.
The uncertainty surrounding the colleges’ funding has left a lasting mark, said Ahniwake Rose, president and CEO of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, which advocates for tribal colleges. But she added she was proud of how the schools have weathered the cuts.
“Indian country is always one of the most resourceful and creative populations,” she said. “We’ve always made do with less. I think you saw resilience and creativity from Haskell and SIPI.”
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
The conflict between the state of Maine and the Trump administration over transgender student athletes reached a new pivot point on Monday. As the first of several deadlines set by the federal government has now expired, whether Maine can continue to allow trans athletes to participate in school sports appears likely to be decided by the courts.
Two separate federal agencies determined that Maine is in violation of Title IX based on the Trump administration’s interpretation of the anti-sex discrimination protection.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a final warning Monday to the Maine Department of Education regarding its noncompliance with a federal directive for allowing trans girls to participate in girls’ sports.
If the state does not propose an agreement that’s acceptable to the office by April 11, the case will be referred to the Department of Justice, the letter said.
Meanwhile, a separate investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ civil rights office that found Maine in violation of Title IX for “continuing to unlawfully allow” trans girls to compete in girl’s sports has been referred to the U.S. Department of Justice, according to a Monday social media post from the agency.
In a letter dated March 17, HHS had given Maine a deadline of 10 days to comply with federal guidance. Monday marked ten business days from that warning.
Both agencies determined that Maine had violated federal law after dayslong investigations that included no interviews, while typical investigations take months and are eventually settled with resolution agreements. The probes were launched after Gov. Janet Mills and President Donald Trump had a heated exchange over the state’s trans athlete policy. Millions of dollars in federal funding might be at risk, depending on how the cases proceed.
“We just need an answer at this point as to, ‘Does the Trump administration have the authority to do what it’s doing when it comes to fast tracking the removal of federal funds?’” said Jackie Wernz, a former OCR lawyer for the Education Department who now represents school districts nationwide in these types of cases.
“This is just unprecedented, and we’re not following the process that we’re used to. So I think it’s going to be really helpful for courts to start weighing in on whether or not they have the authority to do this.”
Meanwhile, Republican state lawmakers said in a news conference on Tuesday that they want the state to repeal trans students’ rights to athletics, locker rooms and bathrooms, and to roll back inclusion of gender as a protected class in the Maine Human Rights Act.
“The problem is that the term gender identity and the Human Rights Act is being interpreted way too broadly by the left,” said Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart (R-Aroostook). “And what it’s saying is there’s no boundary between men’s and women’s spaces.”
Rep. Michael Soboleski (R- Phillips) said he is introducing a bill to remove consideration of gender identity from the act, and asked Democrats and Mills to support the legislation in order to avoid the risk of losing federal funding.
Earlier this year, Iowa became the first state in the nation to remove civil rights from a state law when its Legislature voted to remove gender identity from its civil rights act.
“This is not sustainable,” Stewart said. “We’re a poor state. We are heavily reliant on federal money. The governor needs to move on this.”
On March 19, the Department of Education’s civil rights office notified Maine of its noncompliance and proposed a resolution agreement that would require the state to rescind its support of trans athletes, which is currently required by the Maine Human Rights Act. A Cumberland-area school district and the Maine Principals Association, which runs student athletics, that were also found in violation have already refused to sign the agreement.
This development is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to enforce Title IX provisions concerning gender and athletics. Earlier this year, the administration launched investigations in several other states for similar policies allowing trans athletes to compete in alignment with their gender identity.
Title IX, the federal law banning sex-based discrimination, does not reference trans people directly, but the Trump administration has interpreted Maine’s policy as discrimination against cisgender girls.
Rachel Perera, a fellow in the governance studies program for the Brown Center on Education Policy at national think tank The Brookings Institution, said the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX leaves room for questioning. If the policy goes to trial, she said federal courts may come up with a clearer interpretation.
“It’s going to be really important to see how Maine proceeds, because they’re sort of setting the tone in terms of these other states and other localities who are going to be trying to navigate these very same dynamics,” she said.
Maine Morning Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: info@mainemorningstar.com.
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson launched “Project Head Start,” a summer program intended to help children from low-income families prepare for school. Sixty years later, Head Start has expanded into a multi-billion program operating in all 50 states, serving preschoolers as well as infants, toddlers and pregnant women.
But the program is facing serious challenges, such as recent disruptions in federal funding, and cuts among staffers who oversee the program. In a recent feature story for The Hechinger Report, reporter Anya Kamenetz delved into Head Start’s uncertain future. I asked Anya what she learned from her reporting. Her responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Head Start is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, and has persevered through both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations. However, it seems to be uniquely vulnerable this year. What is happening that puts the program at risk?
A: A lot of the federal staff has been fired. And Project 2025, which the Trump administration has been following closely, calls for eliminating the program altogether. (Editor’s note: this week, the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Head Start, placed staffers at five of Head Start’s 10 regional offices on administrative leave.)
Q: Critics of Head Start say that the program is poorly run and that the money could be better spent at the local level. According to its supporters, why is Head Start still an important program?
A: The program has always been severely underfunded, serving only a fraction of eligible children. The lapses in quality that we know about have come to light in part because the program has better oversight and higher quality standards than the existing patchwork of subsidized, nonprofit and for-profit programs otherwise available across the country. Head Start has been shown to improve long-term educational outcomes. In addition, lawmakers are threatening cuts to Head Start alongside cuts to programs that support families across the board, from food stamps to Medicaid.
Q: States and local communities are stepping in to expand their early childhood offerings. Did state officials share with you if they are ready to step in should Head Start be cut or if the funding shifts?
A: Yes, a bright spot in my article was that in states like Vermont and New Mexico where they have been committed to expanding access to childcare, they are intending to keep this a priority even if federal funding shifts.
This story about Head Start was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Thisstory was produced by Floodlight and republished with permission.
President Donald Trump and his administration have called it the “Great American Comeback.” But environmental advocates say the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s reversing course on enforcing air and water pollution laws is more of a throwback — one that will exacerbate health risks for children who live and study in the shadows of petrochemical facilities.
The American Lung Association has found that children face special risks from air pollution because their airways are smaller and still developing and because they breathe more rapidly and inhale more air relative to their size than do adults.
Environmental lawyers say Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s slashing of federal protections against toxic emissions could lead to increased exposure to dangerous pollutants for kids living in fenceline communities.
Community advocates like Kaitlyn Joshua, who was born and raised in the southeast corridor of Louisiana dubbed “Cancer Alley,” say they are horrified about what EPA’s deregulation push will mean for the future generation.
“That is not an exaggeration; we feel like we are suffocating without the cover and the oversight of the EPA,” Joshua said. “Without that, what can we really do? How can we really save ourselves? How can we really save our communities?”
Kaitlyn Joshua is a native of the southeast corridor of Louisiana dubbed “Cancer Alley,” and has spent the last few years leading the fight against a hydrogen and ammonia facility being built within 2,000 feet of an elementary school in Ascension Parish. Joshua says she is ‘horrified’ about the recent deregulation measures the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently announced for the petrochemical industry. Credit: Claire Bangser/Floodlight
Ashley Gaignard knows how hard it is to keep kids safe when pollution is all around.
When Gaignard’s son was in elementary school, a doctor restricted him from daily recess, saying the emissions from an ammonia facility located within 2 miles of his playground could be exacerbating a pre-existing lung condition, triggering his severe asthma attacks.
“I had asthma as a kid growing up, and my grandfather had asthma, so I just figured it was hereditary; he was going to suffer with asthma,” said Gaignard, who was born and raised in Louisiana’s Ascension Parish, also located within Cancer Alley. She’s now chief executive officer of the community advocacy group she created, Rural Roots Louisiana.
“I just never knew until the doctor said, ‘Okay, we have to think about what he is breathing, and what’s causing him to flare up the minute he’s outside’,” she said.
Gaignard said the further her son got away from that school, as he moved through the parish’s educational system, the less severe his attacks were. She said he’s now an adult living in Fresno, California — and no longer suffers from asthma.
Zeldin sent shockwaves throughout the environmental justice sector on March 12 when he announced that the EPA was rolling back many of the federal regulations that were put in place under the administration of Joe Biden — many built around environmental justice and mitigating climate change.
Those included strengthening the Clean Air Act by implementing more stringent controls on toxic air emissions and increased air quality monitoring in communities near industrial facilities. The new standards were expected to reduce 6,000 tons of air toxins annually and reduce the emissions related to cancer risks in these communities in Texas, Louisiana, Delaware, New Jersey, the Ohio River Valley and elsewhere.
A new memo from the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, which serves as the law enforcement arm of the EPA — circulated the same day as Zeldin’s announcement — states that environmental justice considerations would no longer factor into the federal agency’s oversight of facilities in Black and brown communities.
Zeldin said the goal was “driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.”
Port Allen Middle School sits in the shadow of the Placid petrochemical refinery in West Baton Rouge Parish, La. A 2016 report found nearly one in 10 children in the U.S. attends one of the 12,000 schools located within 1 mile of a chemical facility, which for environmental advocates highlights the danger of the recently announced rollbacks of air and water pollution regulations by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Credit: Terry L. Jones / Floodlight
That means the EPA will no longer target, investigate or address noncompliance issues at facilities emitting cancer-causing chemicals such as benzene, ethylene oxide and formaldehyde in the places already overburdened with hazardous pollution.
“While enforcement and compliance assurance can continue to focus on areas with the highest levels of (hazardous air pollutants) affecting human health,” the memo reads, “…to ensure consistency with the President’s Executive Orders, they will no longer focus exclusively on communities selected by the regions as being ‘already highly burdened with pollution impacts.’”
The agency also will not implement any enforcement and compliance actions that could shut down energy production or power generation “absent an imminent and substantial threat to human health.”
In is prepared video statement about the EPA’s deregulation measures, Zeldin said, “The agency is committed to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower cost of living for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to states to make their own decisions. ”
Top officials with the nonprofit environmental advocacy group Earthjustice recently said there is no way for the Trump administration to reconcile what it’s calling “the greatest day of deregulation” in EPA’s history with protecting public health.
Patrice Simms, vice president of litigation for healthy communities for Earthjustice, went a step further pointing out during a press briefing that the reason EPA exists is to protect the public from toxic air pollution.
“The law demands that EPA control these pollutants, and demands that EPA protect families and communities,” Simms said. “And these impacts on these communities most heavily land on the shoulders of children. Children are more susceptible to the harms from pollutants, and these pollutants are often happening right in the backyards of our schools, of our neighborhoods and our playgrounds.”
A 2016 report published by the Center for Effective Government found that nearly one in 10 children in the country attends one of the 12,000 schools located within 1 mile of a chemical facility. These children are disproportionately children of color living in low-income areas, the report found.
For the past several years, Joshua has been leading the opposition to a hydrogen and ammonia facility being built within 2,000 feet of an elementary school in Ascension Parish. Air Products plans to start commercial operation in 2028 where an estimated 600,000 metric tons of hydrogen will be produced annually from methane gas.
The $7 billion project has been touted as a clean energy solution because the company intends to use technology to collect its carbon dioxide emissions, and then transport them through pipelines to be stored under a recreational lake 37 miles away.
Carbon capture technology has been controversial, with skeptics highlighting the possibilities for earthquakes, groundwater contamination and CO2 leaking back into the atmosphere through abandoned and unplugged oil and gas wells or pipeline breaches. Pipeline ruptures in the past have also led to communities having to evacuate their homes.
Joshua said these communities need more federal regulation and oversight — not less.
“We had a community meeting … for our Ascension Parish residents, and the sentiment and the theme on that call was very much like ‘Kaitlyn, there is nothing we can do.’ Like, we just had to literally lie down and take this,” Joshua said. “We had to kind of challenge people and put them in the space, in time, of a civil rights movement. We have to get creative about how we’re going to organize around it and be our own version of EPA.”
This screenshot from CLEAR Collaborative’s Petroleum Pollution Map models health risks from hazardous air pollution from petrochemical facilities around West Baton Rouge Parish near Port Allen Middle School. The map uses U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data analyzed by the Environmental Defense Fund. Environmental advocates have sounded the alarm on the dangers of the EPA’s rollback of air and water regulations for children in fenceline communities. Credit: Provided by The Environmental Defense Fund
Sarah Vogel, senior vice president of health communities with the Environmental Defense Fund, said the move toward deregulation comes as the U.S. Department of Justice announced on March 7 that it was dropping the federal lawsuit the Biden administration lodged against Denka’s Performance Elastomer plant in Louisiana. That plant had been accused of worsening cancer risks for the residents in the surrounding majority-Black community.
The DOJ said its decision was tied to Trump’s moves to dismantle all federal programs tied to diversity, equity and inclusion.
“What they’re trying to do is just completely deregulate everything for oil and gas and petrochemical facilities, just absolutely take the lid off,” Vogel said. “We have long known that children are uniquely susceptible to air pollution and toxic chemicals. Like they’re huge, huge impacts. It’s why what they are doing is so devastating and cruel in my mind.”
Floodlight, which produced this story, is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Maraida Caraballo Martínez es educadora en Puerto Rico desde hace 28 años y directora de la Escuela de la Comunidad Jaime C. Rodríguez desde hace siete. Nunca sabe cuánto dinero recibirá del gobierno cada año porque no se basa en el número de niños matriculados. Un año recibió 36.000 dólares; otro año, 12.000 dólares.
Pero por primera vez como educador, Caraballo notó una gran diferencia durante la administración Biden. Gracias a una inyección de fondos federales en el sistema educativo de la isla, Caraballo recibió una subvención de 250.000 dólares, una cantidad de dinero sin precedentes. La utilizó para comprar libros y ordenadores para la biblioteca, pizarras e impresoras para las aulas, reforzar el programa de robótica y construir una pista polideportiva para sus alumnos. “Esto significó una gran diferencia para la escuela”, dijo Caraballo.
Yabucoa, un pequeño pueblo del sureste de Puerto Rico, fue una de las regiones más afectadas por el huracán María en 2017. Y esta comunidad escolar, como cientos de otras en la isla, ha experimentado trastornos casi constantes desde entonces. Una serie de desastres naturales, como huracanes, terremotos, inundaciones y deslizamientos de tierra, seguidos de la pandemia de coronavirus en 2020, han golpeado la isla e interrumpido el aprendizaje. También ha habido una rotación constante de secretarios de educación locales: siete en los últimos ocho años. El sistema educativo puertorriqueño -el séptimo distrito escolar más grande de Estados Unidos- se ha vuelto más vulnerable debido a la abrumadora deuda de la isla, la emigración masiva y una red eléctrica paralizada.
Relacionado: En las aulas de preescolar a secundaria pasan muchas cosas. Mantente al día con nuestro boletínsemanal gratuito sobre educación.
Bajo la presidencia de Joe Biden, se produjeron tímidos avances, respaldados por miles de millones de dólares y una atención personal sostenida por parte de altos funcionarios federales de educación, dijeron muchos expertos y educadores de la isla. Ahora les preocupa que todo se desmantele con el cambio en la Casa Blanca. El presidente Donald Trump no ha ocultado su desdén por el territorio estadounidense, habiendo dicho supuestamente que estaba “sucio y que la gente era pobre.” Durante su primer mandato, retuvo miles de millones de dólares en ayuda federal tras el huracán María y ha sugerido vender la isla o cambiarla por Groenlandia.
Una reciente orden ejecutiva para hacer del inglés el idioma oficial ha preocupado a los habitantes de la isla, donde solo 1 de cada 5 personas habla inglés con fluidez, y el español es el idioma de instrucción en las escuelas. Trump está tratando de eliminar el Departamento de Educación de EE.UU. y ya ha hecho recortes radicales a la agencia, lo que tendrá implicaciones en toda la isla. Incluso si los fondos federales -que el año pasado representaron más de dos tercios del financiamiento del Departamento de Educación de Puerto Rico, o DEPR- se transfirieran directamente al gobierno local, probablemente traerían peores resultados para los niños más vulnerables, dicen los educadores y expertos en políticas públicas. Históricamente, el DEPR ha estado plagado de interferencias políticas, burocracia generalizada y falta de transparencia.
Maraida Caraballo Martínez ha sido educadora en Puerto Rico durante 28 años y ahora es directora de una escuela primaria. Su escuela ha estado a punto de cerrar tres veces debido a la emigración masiva de la isla. Credit: Kavitha Cardoza for The Hechinger Report
Y el departamento de educación local no está tan avanzado tecnológicamente como otros departamentos de educación estatales, ni es tan capaz de difundir las mejores prácticas. Por ejemplo, Puerto Rico no dispone de una “fórmula por alumno”, un cálculo utilizado habitualmente en el continente para determinar la cantidad de dinero que recibe cada estudiante para su educación. Roberto Mujica es el director ejecutivo de la Junta de Supervisión y Gestión Financiera de Puerto Rico, convocada por primera vez bajo la presidencia de Barack Obama en 2016 para hacer frente al marasmo financiero de la isla. Mujica dijo que la actual asignación de fondos educativos de Puerto Rico es opaca. “Cómo se distribuyen los fondos se percibe como un proceso político”, dijo. “No hay transparencia ni claridad”.
En 2021, Miguel Cardona, Secretario de Educación de Biden, prometió “un nuevo día” para Puerto Rico. “Durante demasiado tiempo, los estudiantes y educadores de Puerto Rico fueron abandonados”, dijo. Durante su mandato, Cardona aignó casi 6.000 millones de dólares federales para el sistema educativo de la isla, lo que se tradujo en un aumento salarial histórico para los profesores, financiamiento para programas de tutoría extraescolar, la contratación de cientos de profesionales de salud mental escolar y la creación de un programa piloto para descentralizar el DEPR.
Cardona designó a un asesor principal, Chris Soto, para que fuera su persona de contacto con el sistema educativo de la isla, subrayando el compromiso del gobierno federal con la isla. Durante casi cuatro años en el cargo, Soto realizó más de 50 viajes a la isla. Carlos Rodríguez Silvestre, director ejecutivo de la Fundación Flamboyán, una organización sin fines de lucro de Puerto Rico que ha dirigido los esfuerzos de alfabetización infantil en la isla, dijo que el nivel de respeto e interés sostenido hicieron sentir que se trataba de una asociación, no un mandato de arriba hacia abajo. “Nunca había visto ese tipo de atención a la educación en Puerto Rico”, afirmó. “Soto prácticamente vivía en la isla”.
Soto también trabajó estrechamente con Víctor Manuel Bonilla Sánchez, presidente del sindicato de maestros, la Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico, o AMPR, lo que dio lugar a un acuerdo por el que los educadores recibieron 1.000 dólares más al mes en su salario base, un aumento de casi el 30% para el maestro promedio. “Fue el mayor aumento salarial en la historia de los maestros de Puerto Rico”, dijo Bonilla, aunque incluso con el aumento, los maestros de aquí siguen ganando mucho menos dinero que sus colegas en el continente.
Una de las mayores quejas que Soto dijo haber escuchado fue lo rígido y burocrático que era el Departamento de Educación de Puerto Rico, a pesar de una ley de reforma educativa de 2018 que permite un mayor control local. La agencia de educación -la unidad de gobierno más grande de la isla, con la mayor cantidad de empleados y el mayor presupuesto- estaba configurada de manera que la oficina central tenía que aprobar todo. Así que Soto creó y supervisó un programa piloto en Ponce, una región en la costa sur de la isla, enfocado en la descentralización.
Por primera vez, la comunidad local eligió un consejo asesor de educación, y los candidatos a superintendente tuvieron que postularse en lugar de ser nombrados, dijo Soto. El superintendente recibió autoridad para aprobar directamente las solicitudes presupuestarias en lugar de enviarlas a través de funcionarios de San Juan, así como flexibilidad para gastar el dinero en su región en función de las necesidades de cada escuela.
En el pasado, eso no se tenía en cuenta: Por ejemplo, Yadira Sánchez, psicóloga que lleva más de 20 años trabajando en la educación puertorriqueña, recuerda cuando una escuela recibió docenas de aires acondicionados nuevos aunque no los necesitaba. “Ya tenían aires acondicionados que funcionaban”, dice, “así que ese dinero se perdió”.
El proyecto piloto también se centró en aumentar la eficiencia. Por ejemplo, ahora se evalúa a los niños discapacitados en sus colegios, en lugar de tener que acudir a un centro especial. Y Soto dice que también intentó eliminar el uso de influencias y aumentar la transparencia en torno al gasto en el PRDE. “Puedes mejorar las facturas, pero si tus amigos políticos son los que se quedancon los trabajos, entonces no tienes un buen sistema escolar”, dijo.
Bajo el mandato de Biden, Puerto Rico también recibió una subvención competitiva o grant del Departamento de Educación de EE.UU. por valor de 10,5 millones de dólares para escuelas comunitarias, otro hito. Y el departamento federal empezó a incluir datos sobre el territorio en algunas estadísticas educativas recopiladas. “Puerto Rico ni siquiera figuraba en estos indicadores, así que empezamos a preguntarnos cómo mejorar los sistemas de datos. Desentrañar el problema de los datos significó que Puerto Rico puede ser debidamente reconocido”, dijo Soto.
Pero ya hay planes para deshacer el esfuerzo de Cardona en Ponce. La recién elegida gobernadora de la isla, Jenniffer González Colón, es republicana y partidaria de Trump. El popular secretario de Educación, Eliezer Ramos Parés, regresó a principios de este año al frente del departamento tras dirigirlo desde abril de 2021 hasta julio de 2023, cuando la gobernadora le pidió inesperadamente que dimitiera, algo nada inusual en el gobierno de la isla, donde los nombramientos políticos pueden terminar de repente y con poco debate público. Ramos dijo a The Hechinger Report que el programa no continuará en su forma actual, calificándolo de “ineficiente”.
“El programa piloto no es realmente eficaz”, dijo, señalando que la política puede influir en las decisiones de gasto no sólo a nivel central, sino también a nivel regional. “Queremos tener algunos controles”. También dijo que ampliar la iniciativa a toda la isla costaría decenas de millones de dólares. En su lugar, Ramos dijo que estaba estudiando enfoques más limitados de la descentralización, en torno a algunas funciones de recursos humanos y adquisiciones. Dijo que también estaba explorando una fórmula de financiación por alumno para Puerto Rico y estudiando las lecciones de otros grandes distritos escolares como la ciudad de Nueva York y Hawai.
Un autobús escolar bajo un árbol que cayó durante el huracán María, que azotó la isla de Puerto Rico en septiembre de 2017. Más de un año después, no había sido retirado. Credit: Al Bello/Getty Images for Lumix
El Departamento de Educación de EE.UU., que complementa la financiación local y estatal para los estudiantes en situación de pobreza y con discapacidades, tiene un papel desproporcionado en las escuelas de Puerto Rico. En la isla, el 55% de los niños viven por debajo del umbral de la pobreza, frente al 17% en los 50 estados; en el caso de los estudiantes de educación especial, las cifras son del 35% y el 15%, respectivamente. En total, durante el año fiscal 2024, más del 68 por ciento del presupuesto de educación en la isla procede de fondos federales, frente al 11 por ciento en los estados de EE UU. El departamento también administra las becas Pell para estudiantes de bajos ingresos -alrededor del 72 por ciento de los estudiantes puertorriqueños las solicitan- y apoya los esfuerzos de desarrollo profesional y las iniciativas para los niños puertorriqueños que van y vienen entre el continente y el territorio.
Linda McMahon, la nueva secretaria de Educación de Trump, ha dicho supuestamente que el Gobierno seguirá cumpliendo sus “obligaciones legales” con los estudiantes aunque el departamento cierre o transfiera algunas operaciones y despida personal. El Departamento de Educación de Estados Unidos no respondió a las solicitudes de comentarios para esta historia.
Algunos dicen que el hecho de que la administración Biden haya vertido miles de millones de dólares en un sistema educativo en problemas con escasa rendición de cuentas ha creado expectativas poco realistas y no hay un plan para lo que ocurre después de que se gasta el dinero. Mujica, director ejecutivo de la junta de supervisión, dijo que la infusión de fondos pospuso la toma de decisiones difíciles por parte del gobierno puertorriqueño. “Cuando se tiene tanto dinero, se tapan muchos problemas. No tienes que enfrentarte a algunos de los retos que son fundamentales para el sistema”. Y afirmó que apenas se habla de lo que ocurrirá cuando se acabe ese dinero. “¿Cómo se va a llenar ese vacío? O desaparecen esos programas o tendremos que encontrar la financiación para ellos”, dijo Mujica.
Dijo que esfuerzos como el de Ponce para acercar la toma de decisiones a donde están las necesidades de los estudiantes es “de vital importancia”. Aún así, dijo que no está seguro de que el dinero haya mejorado los resultados de los estudiantes. “Esta era una gran oportunidad para hacer cambios fundamentales e inversiones que produzcan resultados a largo plazo. No estoy seguro de que hayamos visto las métricas que lo respalden”.
Puerto Rico es una de las regiones más empobrecidas desde el punto de vista educativo, con unos resultados académicos muy inferiores a los del continente. En la parte de matemáticas de la Evaluación Nacional de Progreso Educativo, o NAEP, una prueba que realizan los estudiantes de todo EE.UU., sólo el 2% de los alumnos de cuarto curso de Puerto Rico calificaron como competentes, la puntuación más alta jamás registrada en la isla, y el 0% de los alumnos de octavo curso lo fueron. Los estudiantes puertorriqueños no hacen la prueba NAEP de lectura porque aprenden en español, no en inglés, aunque los resultados compartidos por Ramos en una conferencia de prensa en 2022 mostraron que sólo el 1% de los estudiantes de tercer grado leían a nivel de grado.
Hay algunos esfuerzos alentadores. La Fundación Flamboyán ha liderado una coalición de 70 socios en toda la isla para mejorar la alfabetización de los niños de preescolar a tercer grado, entre otras cosas mediante el desarrollo profesional. La formación del profesorado a través del departamento de educación del territorio ha sido a menudo irregular u opcional.
La organización trabaja ahora en estrecha colaboración con la Universidad de Puerto Rico y, como parte de ese esfuerzo, supervisa el gasto de 3 millones de dólares en formación para la alfabetización. Aproximadamente 1.500 profesores de Puerto Rico (un tercio de los maestros de Kinder a 5º grado) han recibido esta rigurosa formación. Los educadores recibieron 500 dólares como incentivo por participar, además de libros para sus aulas y tres horas de formación continua. “Fueron muchas horas de calidad. No ha sido el método de ‘rociar (con un poco de agua) y rezar’”, dijo Silvestre. Ese esfuerzo continuará, según Ramos, que lo calificó de “muy eficaz”.
Una nueva prueba de lectura para alumnos de primero a tercer grado que la organización sin fines de lucro ayudó a diseñar mostró que entre los años escolares 2023 y 2024, la mayoría de los niños estaban por debajo del nivel del grado, pero hubo avances en los resultados en todos los grados. “Pero aún nos queda un largo camino por recorrer para que estos datos lleguen a los profesores a tiempo y de forma que puedan actuar en consecuencia”, dijo Silvestre.
Kristin Ehrgood, Directora General de la Fundación Flamboyán, afirma que es demasiado pronto para ver resultados espectaculares. “Es realmente difícil ver una tonelada de resultados positivos en un período tan corto de tiempo con la desconfianza significativa que se ha construido durante años”, dijo. Dijo que no estaban seguros de cómo la administración Trump podría trabajar o financiar el sistema educativo de Puerto Rico, pero que la administración Biden había construido una gran cantidad de buena voluntad. “Hay muchas oportunidades que podrían aprovecharse, si una nueva administración decide hacerlo”.
Otra señal esperanzadora es que la junta de supervisión, que fue muy protestada cuando se formó, ha reducido la deuda de la isla de 73.000 a 31.000 millones de dólares. Y el año pasado los miembros de la junta aumentaron el gasto en educación en un 3%. Mujica dijo que la junta se centra en asegurarse de que cualquier inversión se traduzca en mejores resultados para los estudiantes: “Nuestra opinión es que los recursos tienen que ir a las aulas”.
Betty A. Rosa, comisionada de educación y presidente de la Universidad del Estado de Nueva York y miembro de la Junta de Supervisión, afirmó que la inestabilidad educativa en Puerto Rico se debe a los cambios en el liderazgo. Cada nuevo líder se dedica a “reconstruir, reestructurar, reimaginar, elija la palabra que elija”, dijo. “No hay coherencia”. A diferencia de su cargo en el estado de Nueva York, el Secretario de Educación de Puerto Rico y otros cargos son nombramientos políticos. “Si tienes un gobierno permanente, aunque cambie el liderazgo, el trabajo continúa”.
Ramos, que vivió esta inestabilidad cuando el anterior gobernador pidió inesperadamente su dimisión en 2023, dijo que se reunió con McMahon, la nueva secretaria de Educación de EE.UU., en Washington, D.C., y que mantuvieron una “agradable conversación”. “Ella sabe de Puerto Rico, se preocupa por Puerto Rico y demostró total apoyo en la misión de Puerto Rico”, dijo. Dijo que McMahon quería que el DEPR ofreciera más clases bilingües, para exponer a más estudiantes al inglés. Queda por ver si habrá cambios en la otorgación de fondos o cualquier otra cosa. “Tenemos que ver lo que ocurre en las próximas semanas y meses y cómo esa visión y esa política podrían afectar a Puerto Rico”, dijo Ramos.
La Escuela de la Comunidad Jaime C. Rodríguez es una escuela Montessori de Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, que carecía de instalaciones deportivas para sus alumnos. Recientemente comenzó las obras de un centro deportivo polivalente gracias a los fondos federales otorgados por la administración del presidente Biden. Credit: Kavitha Cardoza for The Hechinger Report
Ramos fue muy apreciado por los educadores durante su primera etapa como Secretario de Educación. También tendrá que tomar muchas decisiones, como ampliar las escuelas charter y cerrar las escuelas públicas tradicionales, ya que la matriculación en las escuelas públicas de la isla sigue disminuyendo vertiginosamente. En el pasado, ambas cuestiones provocaron protestas feroces y generalizadas.
Soto es realista y cree que la nueva administración tendrá “puntos de vista diferentes, tanto ideológica como políticamente”, pero confía en que el pueblo de Puerto Rico no quiera volver a la antigua forma de hacer las cosas. “Alguien dijo: ‘Ustedes sacaron al genio de la botella y va a ser difícil volver a ponerlo’ en lo que se refiere a un sistema escolar centrado en el estudiante”, dijo Soto.
Cardona, cuyos abuelos son oriundos de la isla, dijo que Puerto Rico había experimentado un “estancamiento académico” durante años. “No podemos aceptar que los estudiantes rindan menos de lo que sabemos que son capaces”, dijo a The Hechinger Report, justo antes de despedirse como máximo responsable de educación del país. “Empezamos el cambio; tiene que continuar.
La pequeña escuela de la directora Carabello, con 150 alumnos y 14 profesores, ha estado a punto de cerrarse ya tres veces, aunque en todas ellas se ha salvado en parte gracias al apoyo de la comunidad. Carabello confía en que Ramos, con quien ya ha trabajado anteriormente, cambie las cosas. “Conoce el sistema educativo”, afirma. “Es una persona brillante, abierta a escuchar”.
Pero las largas jornadas de los últimos años le han pasado factura. Suele estar en la escuela de 6:30 a.m. a 6:30 p.m. “Entras cuando anochece y te vas cuando anochece”, dice. Ha habido muchas plataformas nuevas que aprender y nuevos proyectos que poner en marcha. Quiere jubilarse, pero no puede permitírselo. Tras décadas en las que el gobierno local no financió suficientemente el sistema de pensiones, se recortaron los subsidios que compensaban el alto precio de los bienes y servicios en la isla y se congelaron los planes de pensiones.
Ahora, en lugar de jubilarse con el 75% de su salario, Carabello recibirá sólo el 50%, 2.195 dólares al mes. Tiene derecho a prestaciones de la Seguridad Social, pero no son suficientes para compensar la pensión perdida. “¿Quién puede vivir con 2.000 dólares en un mes? Nadie. Es demasiado duro. Y mi casa aún necesita 12 años más para pagarse”.
A Carabello, siempre tan fuerte y optimista con sus alumnos, se le saltaron las lágrimas. Pero es raro que se permita tiempo para pensar en sí misma. “Tengo una gran comunidad. Tengo grandes profesores y me siento feliz con lo que hago”, afirma.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Bright morning sun is streaming through her home’s windows as Sandra Dill reads a picture book about penguins to a room full of busy toddlers. While listening, the kids blow kisses, plop in a visitor’s lap, then get up to slide down a small slide.
Dill has been running a family child care business from her home for 15 years, and every one of her 13 grandchildren has spent time here — currently it’s 20-month-old Nathaniel, who has a puff of curly hair and a gooey grin.
“My older ones started to call it ‘grandma school,’” she said. Another one of her granddaughters, now a teenager, is returning this summer to help out.
Four of Dill’s eight available slots are funded through Head Start. This is the federal-to-local program that funds child care and other support for the poorest families in America. (Regular Head Start serves children 3 to 5 years old; Early Head Start is for those under 3.) The program — which began right here in New Haven, Connecticut — is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year.
It’s also never been so at risk: First a federal funding freeze hit providers, then a chunk of Head Start federal support staff were fired by the Department of Government Efficiency. On March 27, the Department of Health and Human Services announced it was cutting a further 10,000 jobs, and reorganizing the Administration for Children and Families, which administers Head Start. As of April 1, Head Start employees in five of the program’s 10 regions — Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle — had reportedly been laid off, according to a LinkedIn post that day from Katie Hamm, a former official with the federal Administration for Children and Families. Hamm said there does not appear to be a transition plan laying out how Head Start programs in those regions will receive funding and support. Project 2025, the conservative policy handbook organized by the Heritage Foundation, which the Trump administration has been following closely, calls for eliminating Head Start altogether.
“I think it’s terrible,” Dill said. “I just can’t imagine. It’s already not enough, and if this happens, it’s going to affect a lot of families that are already struggling.”
Ed Zigler, the “father of Head Start,” was the son of immigrants from Poland. His father was a peddler and his mother plucked chickens to make a little money, according to Walter Gilliam, executive director of the University of Nebraska’s Buffett Early Childhood Institute, who counted Zigler as his closest mentor.
When Zigler was a child, his family made its way to a settlement house in Kansas City, Missouri; these community-based charities offered a two-generation approach, caring for and educating children while also teaching English and job skills to parents and connecting families with medical care and housing help.
“That made a huge impact on his and his family’s life,” Gilliam said.
Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.
As a young psychology professor at Yale, Zigler was hired as an advisor to President Lyndon Johnson to help design family programs for the federal War on Poverty. In creating Head Start, he turned to the same two-generation model he grew up with.
To date, Head Start has served nearly 40 million children. In fiscal year 2023, the Head Start program was funded to serve 778,420 children. The program has always been underfunded: In 2020 Head Start served barely 1 in 10 eligible infants and toddlers and only half of eligible preschoolers. It’s limited to families making under the federal poverty level, which is just $31,200 for a family of four.
The sand table at Dill’s child care is an opportunity to explore shapes, colors and textures. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report
Still, for many of the families who do manage to make it through the doors, the program is life-changing.
“Head Start is in every community in America,” said Cara Sklar, director of early & elementary education policy at the D.C.-based think tank New America. “It’s the original two-generation program, with wraparound support for kids. It’s really held up as a model of quality in early learning.”
The “wraparound support” for Dill’s Early Head Start families is funded by the United Way of Greater New Haven, and comes via a network for family child care educators called All Our Kin. The network helps mothers enroll in community college and apply for housing subsidies. Dill has had mothers who lived in their cars and one who was living with her mother “six to a room,” she said. She also does regular home visits with families to talk about children’s development and support parents in goals like potty training.
Thanks to Early Head Start, a nurse, a mental health consultant and a nutritionist all help Dill keep the kids healthy and safe. And the program also provides extra funds she can use to get back up and running if, for example, the furnace needs fixing.
But Head Start is now facing funding challenges that go far beyond a broken furnace. “The past month has been harrowing for child care providers,” said Carolina Reyes, director of Arco Iris Bilingual Children’s Center, a preschool in Laurel, Maryland, that is a Head Start partner, and also a member of the nationwide advocacy group MomsRising.
The first blow to Head Start in this administration was President Donald Trump’s January 27 executive order calling for a federal funding freeze. Since Head Start is a direct federal-to-local grant program, even temporary interruptions in funding can cause programs to close their doors.
“ Programs like mine operate on razor-thin margins,” said Reyes. “I don’t have any reserves to pull from if funding is delayed or slashed.”
While funding for most programs has resumed, Joel Ryan, the executive director of the Washington State Association of Head Start, said in a recent press conference that as late as the week of Feb. 17, one in four of his programs still had trouble accessing the Head Start payment website.
That same week of the 17th, almost 70 Head Start staffers were pink-slipped in the federal government’s sweep of “probationary” employees — about one-fifth of the program’s workforce. One laid-off employee, who didn’t want to give his name because he is still fighting his dismissal and fears reprisal, said he spent five years as a contractor before switching to full time this past summer, which accounted for his probationary status. He wore many hats at Head Start, doing data analytics, working with grant recipients and serving as a liaison for state partners.
“They say we’re bloated; we could have used two more full-time people,” he said.
The cuts, he feared, will lead to further delays in programs getting the payments they rely on, not to mention the oversight that keeps kids safe.
“I come from the private sector. I will find another job,” he said. “The issue isn’t us, it’s the children and the families. We’ve got all these people in poverty who are getting screwed over by what’s happening.”
A third blow came on February 25, when the House passed a budget resolution calling for $880 billion in cuts to discretionary spending programs over the next decade, with Medicaid the prime target, along with the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Head Start families overwhelmingly rely on these safety net programs. The White House’s gutting of the Department of Education also threatens many services for preschoolers, especially those in special education. (This process, which maps out the next fiscal year, is separate from the recent vote to fund the government until Sept. 30.)
“This is going from the precipice of disaster to decimating the system,” Sklar said. “All the parts that help families, from Head Start to child care to food to health care, are all being destabilized at once.”
Gilliam said that threats to eliminate Head Start are nothing new. After designing the program during the Johnson administration, Zigler was appointed to run it under the presidency of Richard Nixon. “Some folks told him that his job was to destroy, essentially, the program that he had created,” Gilliam said.
Head Start advocates said the program has been able to fight off political challenges in the past because it is widely distributed geographically and has bipartisan support.
“I agree that Project 2025 is a real threat to Head Start, as well as to other programs that we all care about,” said Ryan, with the Washington State Head Start association.
“But I will say this: We have great research. We have great data. We have a great track record. We have a lot of bipartisan support in Congress. And we have parent power.”
By coincidence, the week the House passed its budget resolution, a group of 150 Head Start parents were on Capitol Hill lobbying as part of a group called Start Early, and they met with many Republican senators.
Tommy Sheridan, the deputy director of the National Head Start Association, struck an almost defiantly optimistic tone after the visit to lawmakers: “We still believe and have seen indicators that this administration is supportive of Head Start. And Congress as well.”
NaMaree Cunningham and her twin sister turned two on the day of our visit. Credit: Anya Kamenetz for The Hechinger Report
Another potential bright spot is the growth of child care support and funding on the state level. Elizabeth Groginsky is New Mexico’s first cabinet secretary for the state’s new Early Childhood Education & Care Department, and she said the pandemic woke a lot of people up to the importance of early care and education.
“People began to understand the impact that child care has on children’s development, families’ ability to work, the overall economy,” Groginsky said.
Since 2020, New Mexico has gone through a major expansion in home visits, child care and preschool. Vermont has made similar moves, and New York and Connecticut are heading in that direction as well. Even the deep-red state of Kentucky has expanded access.
What all of these state-level programs have in common is that they are much more widely available to middle-class families, rather than tightly targeted to families in poverty, as Head Start still is. Historically, with programs like Medicare and Social Security, universal access has meant durable support.
Now those states are contemplating stepping in further if the federal government drops the ball.
“Because the state has made such an impressive commitment to child care, we’re potentially in a better spot than others,” said Janet McLaughlin, deputy commissioner for Vermont’s Department of Children and Families. And Groginsky, in New Mexico, said firmly, “The governor and the legislature — I don’t think we’ll let New Mexicans go without. They’ll find a way.”
Support for this reporting was provided by the Better Life Lab at New America.
This story about Head Start was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Higher education is under siege from the Trump administration. Those opposing this siege and the administration’s attacks on democracy would do well to heed the wise advice of Benjamin Franklin given just prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776: “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
This is particularly true right now for college and university presidents.
College presidents come from a tradition based on the importance of ideas, of fairness, of speaking the truth as they understand it, whatever the consequences. If they don’t speak out, what will later generations say when they look back at this dark, dark time?
The idea that Trump’s attacks on higher education are necessary to combat antisemitism is the thinnest of covers, and yet only a very few college presidents have been brave enough to call this what it is.
The president and those around him don’t care about antisemitism. Trump said people who chanted “Jews will not replace us” were “very fine people”; he dined with avowed antisemites like Nick Fuentes and Ye (Kanye West).
Marjorie Taylor Greene blamed the California wildfires of 2018 on space lasers paid for by Jewish bankers. Robert Kennedy claimed that Covid “targeted” white and Black people but spared Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. The Proud Boys pardoned by Trump for their part in the January 6 insurrection have routinely proclaimed their antisemitism; they include at least one member who has openly declared admiration for Adolf Hitler.
Fighting antisemitism? That was never the motive for the Trump administration’s attacks on colleges and universities. The motive was — and continues to be — to discipline and tame institutions of higher learning, to bring them to heel, to turn them into mouthpieces of a single ideology, to put an end to the free flow of ideas under the alleged need to combat “wokeism.”
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Columbia University has been a prime target of the Trump administration’s financial threats. I’ve been a university provost. I’m not naïve about the tremendous damage the withholding of federal support can have on a school. But the fate of Columbia should be a cautionary tale for those who think keeping their heads down will help them survive. (The Hechinger Report is an independent, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization based at Teachers College, Columbia University.)
Columbia was more than conciliatory in responding to concerns of antisemitism. The administration suspended two student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, for holding rallies that allegedly included “threatening rhetoric and intimidation.”
They suspended four students in connection with an event featuring speakers who “support terrorism and promote violence.”
They called in police to dismantle the encampment created to protest the War in Gaza. Over 100 protesters were arrested.
They created a Task Force on Antisemitism, and accepted its recommendations. They dismissed three deans for exchanging text messages that seemed to minimize Jewish students’ concerns and referenced antisemitic tropes.
President Minouche Shafik resigned after little more than a year in office. (Last week, the university’s interim president, Katrina Armstrong, also resigned.) In September 2024, the ADL reports, the university went so far as to introduce “new policies prohibiting the use of terms like ‘Zionist’ when employed to target Jews or Israelis.”
None of this prevented the Trump administration from cancelling $400 million worth of grants and contracts to Columbia — because responding to antisemitism was never the real impetus for the attack.
Was Marjorie Taylor Greene asked to renounce antisemitism as a condition for her leadership in Congress?
Was Robert Kennedy asked to renounce antisemitism in order to be nominated for a Cabinet position?
Were the Proud Boys asked to renounce antisemitism as a condition for their pardoning?
This is an attack on higher education as a whole, and it requires a collective defense. Columbia yesterday. Harvard today, your school tomorrow. College presidents cannot be silent as individual schools are attacked. They need to speak out as a group against each and every incursion.
They need to pledge to share resources, including financial resources, to resist these attacks; they should mount a joint legal resistance and a joint public response to an attack on any single institution.
These days, as many have observed, are much like the dark days of McCarthyism in the 1950s. In retrospect, we wonder why it took so long for so many to speak up.
Today we celebrate those who had the moral strength to stand up right then and say, “No. This isn’t right, and I won’t be part of it.”
The politicians of the Republican Party have made it clear they won’t do that, though most of them understand that Trumpism is attacking the very values — freedom, democracy, fairness — that they celebrate as “American.”
They have earned the low opinion most people have of politicians. But college and university presidents should — and must — take a stand.
Rob Rosenthal is John E. Andrus Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, at Wesleyan University.
This story about higher education and the Trump administration was produced byThe Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’sweekly newsletter.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
