Senators have grilled embattled Australian National University (ANU) chancellor Julie Bishop on her spending habits after she racked up nearly $800,000 in expenses while slashing more than 1000 jobs since August of last year.
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When I read university strategies, there tend to be three themes – teaching, research, and that stuff that underpins it.
If I’m glancing through students’ union strategies, there’s almost always a version of voice, activities/opportunities, and that stuff that underpins it.
And so it is also the case that when we think about higher education regulation in England, everything from the TEF to the Regulatory Framework tends to have a triangle too – there’s experience, outcomes and that other stuff.
The problem is that the case of disabled students presents a bit of a problem for the design of the regulation.
Whatever the current design or theory of change being deployed, the basic question that OfS asks providers to ask is – are disabled students’ outcomes worse than everyone else’s?
The underpinning theory is that if they are, that’s bound to be because their experience is worse. And if the experience was so poor as to be unlawful, that would definitely show up in outcomes.
But what if, despite the experience being considerably (and often unlawfully) worse, the outcomes are broadly comparable – or even better? Where does that leave regulation that tends to start with outcomes and work backwards, rather than start with experience and then feed forwards?
The Office for Students (OfS) has published new research that seems to show that disabled students are increasingly dissatisfied with their university experience even as their degree outcomes improve.
The regulator has released two documents – a new insight brief examining equality of opportunity for disabled students, and commissioned research from Savanta exploring how 150 students experienced applying for reasonable adjustments.
The publications come via work from the OfS Disability in Higher Education Advisory Panel, which was established in April 2024 to improve disabled students’ experiences and provide expert guidance.
The latest data reveals an interesting pattern. For full-time undergraduates with reported disabilities, continuation rates are now 1.1 percentage points higher than for non-disabled peers – and attainment rates are 2.0 percentage points higher. That’s a significant shift from 2019 when disabled students lagged behind on both measures.
It’s worth saying that, albeit on a smaller N, part-time undergraduates and degree apprentices tell a different story. Part-time disabled students have completion rates 13.0 percentage points lower than their non-disabled peers whilst degree apprentices show a 5.0 percentage point gap in attainment. These gaps suggest that not all disabled students are benefiting equally from institutional support.
But back on full-time students, when it comes to experience, National Student Survey (NSS) results paint a very different picture. Disabled students consistently report lower satisfaction across all seven themes measured by the survey, and the gaps have grown over the past two years.
The difference in satisfaction with organisation and management has widened from 6.5 percentage points in 2023 to 7.5 percentage points in 2025. Assessment and feedback satisfaction gaps have grown from 2.5 to 3.7 percentage points over the same period.
Complaints to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) tell a similar story. Disabled students now represent over 40 per cent of OIA complaints, up from around one-third in 2023. More significantly, a higher proportion of disabled students’ complaints are being upheld, suggesting some universities are failing to meet their legal obligations.
The insight brief isn’t OfS’ first disabled students insight rodeo. 2019’s Insight brief asked whether universities were doing enough for disabled students. It contained a prescient observation:
“Many disabled students are achieving despite the barriers which remain in their way, not because these barriers have been entirely removed.
Over time, the disabled student population has grown substantially. In 2017, 13.2 per cent of students reported a disability. By 2023-24, this had risen to 19.9 per cent of full-time undergraduates and 24.6 per cent of part-time undergraduates. Mental health conditions have driven much of this increase, growing from 0.6 per cent of all students in 2010 to representing a significant proportion of disabled students today.
2019 focused heavily on the social model of disability and questioned whether universities had truly embedded inclusive practices into their institutional structures. It noted that whilst many providers claimed to follow the social model, in practice they still treated disabled students as problems to be solved rather than addressing environmental barriers.
2025’s brief takes a more pragmatic approach. Rather than debating models of disability, it provides a checklist of specific actions universities should take on experience that draws on the new evidence sources – including workshops with 105 university representatives and the Savanta research to understand both student experiences and institutional challenges.
You could call it a statement of expectations, although OfS doesn’t quite go that far.
The Savanta research found that 43 per cent of disabled students had applications for reasonable adjustments fully or partially rejected. Of those students whose needs were not fully met, 91 per cent took further action such as seeking advice or lodging complaints. This level of self-advocacy suggests that students are fighting for support rather than receiving it as a matter of course.
The research also revealed significant differences between mature and younger students. Mature students were much more likely to take proactive steps when their support was inadequate, with 53 per cent following up or escalating concerns compared with 31 per cent of younger students. Success appears to depend partly on students’ ability to work the system rather than the system working for students.
Implementation delays are another indicator that students are succeeding despite rather than because of support arrangements. Over half of students who received positive application outcomes waited five weeks or longer for support to be implemented. Students with three or more health conditions faced even longer waits, with 73 per cent waiting five weeks or more for exam adjustments compared with 45 per cent of students with fewer conditions.
Workshops with university representatives showed that only 15.2 per cent of institutions have established processes for systematically evaluating whether reasonable adjustments are effective. That suggests most universities are not learning from experience or improving their support based on evidence of what works. Students are therefore navigating systems that are not designed to continuously improve.
And the National Student Survey data on organisation and management is particularly telling. This theme, which includes questions about whether the course is well organised and running smoothly and whether the timetable works efficiently, shows the largest gap between disabled and non-disabled students at 7.5 percentage points. If disabled students are achieving good academic outcomes whilst rating organisational aspects poorly, they must be compensating for institutional failings through extra effort.
Disabled Students UK’s 2024 research reinforces this picture. It found that only 38 per cent of disabled students who declared their disability reported having the support they need to access studies on equal terms with non-disabled peers. It also noted that most disabled students hold back from raising access issues with their university, suggesting they are managing barriers independently rather than relying on institutional support.
And the OIA’s annual reports note that disabled students are overrepresented in complaints and that events occurring because a student is disabled are likely to have significant and lasting impacts. The 2024 report specifically highlighted complaints about implementation of support and reasonable adjustments to teaching and assessment. If support systems were working effectively, disabled students wouldn’t need to resort to formal complaints at such high rates.
The brief reminds readers that the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register now explicitly identifies being disabled as a characteristic indicating risk to student success, and reminds that Access and Participation Plans must address gaps in disabled students’ outcomes with specific targets – and that OfS then monitors progress against these commitments.
But there’s a problem. Providers would have to pick those risks, and pick disabled students.
If we look across 99 now published Access and Participation Plans for universities, 27 providers have no disability targets whatsoever across any stage of the student lifecycle including widening access.
Then if we isolate targets related to experience (ie we ignore access), thirty-five providers have set no targets for disabled students in the continuation, completion, attainment or progression stages. This means over one-third of institutions have no measurable goals for improving outcomes once disabled students arrive on campus.
Most that do have a target don’t have them in all three of the experience measures. And even those that have targets often have them for a subset of disabled students where the disability type suggests a gap.
If we assume that providers have been reasonable in not selecting disabled students and/or the risks in the EORR associated with disabled students, it’s a design problem. For a start, when an issue is spread thinly across providers and you have a provider-based regulatory system, you don’t get detailed plans in large parts of the long tail – and so the actions are absent.
But that’s not the only problem. If we then turn to what providers say they do or are promising to do and look at the aspects of OfS’ checklist that directly relate to student experience, just 39 discuss a process for students to raise issues if support isn’t meeting needs or isn’t implemented properly, and none of the others (working with and listening to disabled students, communication about reasonable adjustments, sharing information about adjustments across the institution and ensuring teaching and assessments are accessible for disabled students while maintaining rigour) go above 60.
Even then, we tend to see descriptions of existing activity and service provision rather than a new and properly resourced intervention. After all, who’s going to put in their plan that new for this cycle is that provider complying with the law?
Imagine if the design worked the other way. OfS – as it did with Harassment and Sexual Misconduct (first with a Statement of Expectations, then through a formal Regulatory Condition) – sets out expectations. Then through polling (or ideally, an NSS extension, again a la H&SM) determines whether students are experiencing those expectations. Then it can take both system-wide and provider-level action.
That – as is also the case with Harassment and Sexual Misconduct – might all lead to better outcomes, it might not. But those design flaws mean that for plans to be made and action to be monitored to secure students’ basic legal rights over their HE, there have to be a decent number of disabled students at their provider, and they have to be failing. If not, no promised action.
Overall, we’re left with a checklist – one that represents a pragmatic attempt to provide universities with clear guidance about what they should be doing to support disabled students. The questions about personalisation, implementation, communication, information-sharing, complaints processes, evaluation and accessible assessment all address real problems identified in the research.
But that checklist’s weaknesses reflect a broader challenge in OfS regulation of experience. The questions are framed as prompts for institutional reflection rather than as requirements with clear standards. That approach may encourage tonal buy-in from universities, but it risks allowing institutions to tick boxes without making meaningful changes. And that’s if they even download the PDF.
The checklist doesn’t specify what good looks like in any of the areas. It doesn’t set expectations about response times, explain what effective information-sharing systems should include, or define what routine evaluation means in practice. The lack of specificity makes it difficult for institutions to know whether they are meeting expectations, or for OfS to hold them accountable.
Nor does the checklist address the resource constraints that universities identified as barriers to supporting disabled students effectively. The workshops noted that more students are reporting disabilities, that many have complex support needs and that institutions face staff shortages and stretched budgets.
Unlike on H&SM – where OfS says “afford this detail or don’t provide HE” – the checklist acknowledges none of the challenges nor provides guidance about how universities should prioritise support when resources are limited.
As usual on disability, no teeth are being bared here – a list of questions to muse on, rather than requirements to meet, and no consequences for those that fail.
To be fair, the brief notes that students can make internal complaints, complain to the OIA or take their university to court. But as OfS CEO Susan Lapworth herself said about students in general – let alone disabled students – back in 2019:
We should… consider whether a model that relies primarily on individual students challenging a provider for a breach of contract places a burden on students in an undesirable way.
As I say, the checklist is a useful starting point for institutional self-reflection. But without clearer standards, stronger accountability mechanisms and recognition of the resource challenges universities face, it is unlikely to transform disabled students’ experiences, and is more likely to be just another PDF whose link I look up in a few years time in another article like this.
And crucially, the evidence suggests that plenty of disabled students will continue to succeed despite, rather than because, laws that are supposed to achieve equality.
Students participating in management decisions starts in the classroom and should be supported right through to governing bodies, a student experience expert has said.
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After the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, universities faced a dilemma that has become grimly familiar in the age of social media: what to do when a member of the campus community says something online that others find intolerable.
Within days, institutions moved with visible urgency. Some suspended employees. Others terminated them outright. A few launched “investigations” whose conclusions seemed preordained. FIRE has condemned these actions (when taken by public institutions) as violations of the First Amendment and intervened in over a dozen cases.
Yet the punishments themselves tell only half the story. Equally revealing were the justifications universities offered for them:
The message these colleges sent was unmistakable: offensive speech is not merely offensive, it is an assault on human dignity itself. And that, in the eyes of administrators, makes it punishable.
The impulse to regulate speech in these circumstances is understandable. When tragedy strikes, ordinary condemnations can feel hollow beside the enormity of what has been lost. Requiring respect for “dignity” seems to offer something more; something higher: a recognition of our shared humanity, a pledge to the campus community that while ideas may be contested, no person will be debased.
But the moment “dignity” becomes a standard of compliance, it stops inspiring behavior and starts regulating it. The language of virtue invariably becomes the grammar of control.
The moment dignity must be imposed, it has already been lost.
The trouble with “dignity” begins with its vagueness.
“Dignity” can mean many things: (a) the inherent value of the human person; (b) the social honor one commands in the eyes of others; (c) the inner self-respect that resists humiliation; or all the above. These meanings both overlap and collide. Which, then, is a university to enforce: the idea of respect, the appearance of respect, or the feeling of respect?
There is no objective way to make this decision. And when a rule depends on subjective perception, it cannot be applied fairly. What one dean calls satire, another may label cruelty. What one student finds invigorating, another experiences as demeaning. And all of these people may be completely in earnest. Under such conditions, enforcement becomes a matter not of principle but of preference.
And because “dignity” sounds so unimpeachably virtuous, its invocation cloaks coercion in benevolence. Who, after all, would dare oppose dignity?
From this vagueness comes overbreadth. When “attacking dignity” can mean almost anything, it ends up encompassing nearly everything.
Universities that rightly prohibit harassment or discrimination — categories of unprotected acts that may involve expression — increasingly extend those prohibitions to merely “undignified” expression, which is protected. The University of Michigan’s harassment policy, for example, forbids conduct that diminishes “individual dignity.” Similarly, Penn State’s harassment policy defines discriminatory behavior as violating “the dignity of individuals.”
Once disagreement itself is framed as a denial of dignity, even empirical or policy debates about healthcare, sports, or law are reclassified as “harassment” rather than legitimate discussion. The zone of the impermissible grows, and the culture of caution grows with it.
Faculty and students, uncertain where the invisible boundary lies, retreat into self-censorship. They learn to treat disagreement as danger and discomfort as moral injury. The less precise the rule, the wider its reach. The wider its reach, the more timid the discourse. Administrative control breeds emotional fragility, and emotional fragility, in turn, justifies greater administrative control. It’s a feedback loop of moral protectionism.
What is at stake is no less than the mission of the university itself. Higher education exists not to shield its members from offense, but to teach them how to confront it; to refine judgment through exposure to conflict; to cultivate reason through disagreement. The “dignity rule” diminishes the (ahem) dignity of that mission. It transforms the university from a marketplace of ideas into a tribunal of sentiment.
To be clear, none of this is to diminish the importance of human dignity itself. Indeed, any university worthy of its title should strive toward cultivating an educational environment wherein all members of the campus community are treated with equal dignity. But when vague and overbroad noble values become instruments of coercion, liberty is often the first casualty.
This is precisely why the Supreme Court has consistently rejected attempts to limit speech on the grounds of indignity. In Snyder v. Phelps (2011), the Court held that even the Westboro Baptist Church’s vile protest at a fallen soldier’s funeral — which most Americans would see as a profound affront to dignity — was protected expression. In America, the right to speak, to offend, and to argue is not the enemy of dignity, but its precondition.
That is, to affirm the value of human dignity is not to be shielded from ridicule or offense but to be recognized as a rational, moral agent capable of hearing, weighing, and responding in kind.
In short: the moment dignity must be imposed, it has already been lost. And when universities attempt to enforce it, they risk betraying their commitment to free speech and the mission of education itself: to cultivate minds capable of reasoning in the face of offense, and of finding in that encounter — not in its suppression — the measure of their humanity.
AUSTIN, Texas, Oct. 14, 2025 — A federal judge today issued a preliminary injunction blocking the University of Texas System from enforcing a new Texas law that bans virtually all protected expression on public university campuses after dark.
In his ruling, Judge David Alan Ezra of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas found that students challenging the law on First Amendment grounds were likely to succeed on the merits, and blocked the law from going into effect while the case makes its way through the courts.
“The First Amendment does not have a bedtime of 10:00 p.m.,” the District Court held. “The burden is on the government to prove that its actions are narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling governmental interest. It has not done so.”
“Today’s ruling is a victory not only for our plaintiffs, but all of those who express themselves on college campuses across Texas,” said Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression senior supervising attorney JT Morris. “The First Amendment protects their freedom of speech on campus, every hour of the day, every week of the year.”
Passed in the wake of several protests over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Senate Bill 2972 reversed Texas’s previously strong statute enshrining campus free speech protections into state law, and would have forced public universities to ban “expressive activities” from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m., which it defined as “any speech or expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment.”
That’s a shockingly sweeping ban that would have empowered colleges to punish everything from wearing a T-shirt with a message, to writing an op-ed, to playing music — even worship. That’s an intolerable attack on freedom of speech at public universities, where First Amendment protections must remain indispensable.
“Texas’ law is so overbroad that any public university student chatting in the dorms past 10 p.m. would have been in violation,” said FIRE senior attorney Adam Steinbaugh. “We’re thankful that the court stepped in and halted a speech ban that inevitably would’ve been weaponized to censor speech that administrators disagreed with.”
Another provision from Texas’ law required public universities to ban students from inviting outside speakers, or using amplified sound or percussive instruments during the last two weeks of any academic term. FIRE challenged those provisions on behalf of a diverse group of student groups and organizations who would be adversely affected if Texas’s law was allowed to go into effect on UT System campuses:
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought—the most essential qualities of liberty. FIRE recognizes that colleges and universities play a vital role in preserving free thought within a free society. To this end, we place a special emphasis on defending the individual rights of students and faculty members on our nation’s campuses, including freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience.
CONTACT:
Alex Griswold, Communications Campaign Manager, FIRE: 215-717-3473; [email protected]
The Department of Education has delayed the semiannual convening of its accreditation advisory committee for the second time this year, according to an email sent to committee members and obtained by Inside Higher Ed.
The meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, originally slated to take place in July, had already been pushed back to Oct. 21. Now, as a result of the government shutdown, it’s been rescheduled for Dec. 16.
“As many of you know, most department staff, including those supporting NACIQI, have been furloughed and the Department has suspended operations except for specific excepted activities,” Jeffrey Andrade, deputy assistant secretary for policy, planning and innovation, wrote in the email. “The Department will be publishing a notice in the Federal Register shortly announcing this change of meeting date.”
Inside Higher Ed reached out to the department for direct comment on the delay but did not get a response prior to publication.
The meeting was slated to include Under Secretary Nicholas Kent’s first comments on accreditation since he took office, as well as compliance reports from five different accreditors. Three of those agencies are institutional: the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, the New England Commission of Higher Education, and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission. The other two are programmatic: the Accreditation Commission for Midwifery Education and the Commission on Accreditation in Physical Therapy.
And while it wasn’t formally listed on the committee’s agenda, this meeting also likely would have served as the unveiling of six new Trump-appointed committee members.
When department officials announced the first delay in July, observers noted that by the time the rescheduled meeting took place, the terms of six of the committee’s 18 members would be over. With key decisions about the future of higher education accreditation looming, many policy experts took this as a sign that the Trump administration was trying to stack the panel in its favor.
Now, the new appointees will likely go unnamed for another two months, and the compliance reports will remain unchecked until the next meeting. And though neither of these agenda items is quite as high-stakes as a recognition review—the process by which independent accrediting agencies are granted the power to gate-keep federal student aid—one expert feared it could lead to a backlog in future evaluations.
“While [the accreditation agencies] are coming up before NACIQI on this compliance report, they are also likely in the process of having their regular recognition reviewed again,” said Antoinette Flores, the director of higher education accountability and quality at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “So it adds to the burden and could lead to compounding issues.”
Flores, who served in the same role as Andrade during the Biden administration, is worried that the delay could not only slow down future reviews but also hamper current ones, putting certain agencies and the institutions they serve at risk. When an agency is placed under compliance review, it has 12 months to fix the problem and prove it is meeting the committee’s criteria, she explained. So, if it hasn’t proven it’s meeting those criteria within that period, technically the agency’s authorization could be at stake.
Flores said she’s particularly worried for Middle States Commission and the New England Commission, because they each received letters from the Trump administration earlier this year pressuring them to take action against member institutions’ alleged noncompliance with civil rights laws. Neither accreditor has done so, and they won’t be able to present their compliance reports before the 12-month deadline.
“So is the agency in compliance? Is its recognition going to continue? … That’s kind of the underlying question,” Flores said.
Others are far less concerned.
Kyle Beltramini, a policy research fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a right-leaning policy organization, said that to his knowledge there’s never been a time when NACIQI failed to meet and review an agency’s compliance or recognition before the deadline.
So while it remains unclear what would happen if the meeting never took place or the agencies were unable to present their compliance reports before deadline, Beltramini believes that any consequences of the delay will be minimal.
“I don’t think what we’re going to see is the nuclear option of an accreditor losing their authorization,” he said. “It’s partially because of the fact that even if that’s what the administration wanted to do—which I don’t think that that’s the case—they just don’t have the full majority on the committee.” (Although, technically, the under secretary and secretary of education do not have to follow the committee’s guidance.)
Either way, if and when the meeting occurs, Beltramini anticipates that it will set the tone for how the Trump administration plans to approach accreditation moving forward.
“There is a broad and bipartisan agreement that there needs to be change to the system, and what you’re going to see, more and more often, is NACIQI attempting to hold the accreditors accountable by asking them questions and getting them on the record in ways that may make them uncomfortable,” he said.
Your website is one of your institution’s most valuable assets, and also one of its more expensive and labor-intensive. It serves as the front door for prospective students, a resource hub for current ones, and a critical platform for driving enrollment.
But when performance drops — conversions are low, traffic is declining, or user experience feels outdated — many institutions assume a full redesign is the only solution.
Before you make that call, take a step back. A complete rebuild isn’t always the smartest or most cost-effective path. Sometimes, targeted improvements to your existing site can deliver significant results without the high price tag.
So how do you decide if it’s time to rebuild or if your current site simply needs smarter strategy and support?
Let’s walk through what to look for.
When a site isn’t performing, you need to pinpoint why. These common red flags often indicate underlying issues that should prompt a deeper evaluation:
To be clear, none of these should be considered death sentences for your website. But they’re strong signals that further evaluation should take place.
A clear-eyed look at your site’s current state can help determine whether optimization or a rebuild makes more sense. Start here:
If your site’s foundation is sound, targeted improvements may deliver high ROI at a lower cost. But if technical debt, poor UX, or fragmented infrastructure are holding you back, a rebuild could be the better investment.
Keep these ballpark figures in mind:
Also consider the hidden costs of delay — missed inquiries, lower conversions, and outdated experiences that don’t meet student expectations.
A side-by-side cost-benefit analysis, grounded in performance data and institutional goals, is the best way to determine your path forward.
Deciding between a website refresh or a rebuild is a big decision, and it shouldn’t be made in isolation. A strategic partner with deep higher ed expertise can help you evaluate your current digital ecosystem, identify gaps, and recommend the most cost-effective solution.
At Collegis, we work with colleges and universities to optimize digital experiences that convert. Whether you’re refining an existing platform or building from the ground up, our web strategy team can help you create a future-ready site aligned with student needs and institutional goals.
Let’s talk about how to get your website working smarter.
Higher ed is evolving — don’t get left behind. Explore how Collegis can help your institution thrive.
At Flocabulary, we love seeing students use their voices and creativity to share what they’ve learned and are interested in. That’s why, this school year, we’re inviting students to become researchers, lyricists, and rappers for the chance to turn their lyrics into a Flocabulary lesson!
The Flocabulary Student Voice Rap Contest is a new student writing contest that asks kids to select a historical figure that piques their interest and use their creativity to write about what they learn. The winning students will have their hip-hop inspired raps turned into a Flocabulary video and suite of activities, which will be published on our platform to be viewed by 20,000 schools across the country!
In the words of hip-hop legend and rapper Nas, hip-hop has been a “voice for the voiceless.” So, what better way to celebrate and uplift student voices than with a rap-writing contest? This annual fall contest gives students the opportunity to express themselves, share their voices, and showcase their creativity and skills.
You may be familiar with our previous student contests for Hispanic Heritage Month, Black History Month, and our parent company Nearpod’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month contest. The Flocabulary Student Voice Rap Contest combines these individual events into one contest, dedicated to celebrating and uplifting student voices.
In our past contests, Flocabulary winners would see their lessons published in the summer or the following school year. By shifting to a single contest, we can accept submissions and share the winning student lessons all within the same school year.
The new contest will continue to encourage students to honor the multicultural heritage of the U.S. Together, we hope to inspire a range of diverse topics, unique perspectives, and creative writing opportunities for students.
You can use our past contest winners’ videos to inspire your students for this year’s contest!
First, students will choose a historical figure to write a rap song about. The only parameters are to pick a person who has had a significant and lasting impact on history and does not already have a lesson about them in Flocabulary.
Invite students to select a figure they feel a personal connection to or are interested in learning more about. Students can use this project as a mirror, selecting a figure they see themselves in; or as a window, selecting a figure that helps them learn more about the world around them.
Then, it’s research time. They’ll learn about the person’s life, significance, and the traits that made them impactful.
Now, for the fun part: They take the research they’ve compiled and turn it into a rap song! Students can utilize the Lyric Lab or our graphic organizer in the contest packet. Their lyrics should rhyme, have rhythm, include figurative language and wordplay, and be at least 16 lines long.
Finally, fill out an entry form and submit the song before submissions close on November 30, 2025, at 11:59 P.M. EST.
The Flocabulary team will then consider all entries and pick 10 finalists. The selected finalists will be invited to record a performance of their song for their chance to be named our contest winners! Two winners will be selected—one from grades K-5 and one from grades 6-12. The winners will collaborate with the Flocabulary team to create a song, video, and lesson inspired by their submission.
The final lessons will premiere on Flocabulary in April, National Poetry Month, to celebrate our talented student poets—because hip-hop is poetry, after all!
Hip-hop and poetry may seem like two very different genres—but hip-hop artists rely on many of the same techniques as poets, including imagery, alliteration, metaphor, simile, rhythm, and rhyme. They also use similar form devices, such as iambic pentameter, internal rhyme, prose, theme, motif, meter, and flow.
Take Kendrick Lamar, for example—he is regarded as one of the most influential hip-hop artists of all time. He is known for his complex lyricism and technical artistry. In 2018, Lamar made history when he won the Pulitzer Prize in Music. It was the first time in Pulitzer history that the prize had been awarded to an artist outside the classical or jazz genres.
But hip-hop is about more than poetry or music. Since its inception, hip-hop has centered around five elements, or pillars, including:
By blending these elements together, hip-hop has grown and become more than a genre of music. It’s a lens through which we can view the world, a way of viewing, experiencing, comprehending, and critiquing life—a way of being.
Hip-hop is also a powerful tool for teaching. Flocabulary is built on hip-hop’s unique ability to tell stories and invoke emotions. Academic vocabulary is a leading indicator of student comprehension, and the more students understand, the more successful they can be. Hip-hop has two to three times the number of words per song compared to other genres, making it the perfect vehicle to teach academic vocabulary and other educational content. Utilizing hip-hop in the classroom offers an engaging way to connect with students and teach curriculum, while also imparting important literary techniques that can help them become stronger writers.
So, what are you waiting for? Help your students find their voices this fall—get started on their submissions today and enter the Flocabulary Student Voice Rap Contest! Download the contest packet for the rules, rubric, and other resources.
We can’t wait to hear what your students have to say!
Ok, folks, today is voting day in Newfoundland and Labrador, and so, as usual, it’s time to look at manifesto promises with respect to post-secondary education.
Newfoundland is feeling pretty good these days. Just five years ago it was living with a budget deficit of about $1 billion, and the only reason it was that low was because of a federal bailout for the Muskrat Falls dam. Now, the province *almost* has a balanced budget, it has the fastest-growing provincial economy in the country (I know, low bar, but still), and it has a new Memorandum of Understanding with Hydro-Quebec to replace the Upper Churchill contract which will – in theory at least – transform provincial finances, though not everyone is convinced. The debt load is still considerable ($47 billion) and servicing that debt takes up more money than the province spends on education. But who cares about long-term problems when there are votes to be bought…er…sought?
Let’s start with the commitments New Democratic Party, which usually wins at least one or two seats in the House of Assembly. They promise three things with respect to post-secondary education. First, they want to reverse the Liberals’ decision to let tuition rise after a 20-year freeze. Because of the deeply opaque way the NDP’s presents its costing data, it is unclear if the NDP intends to actually reimburse College of the North Atlantic (CNA) and Memorial for this or if it is simply going to tell them to eat it (a little back-of-the-envelope math suggests the rise tuition is bringing in somewhere between $20-$25 million/yr by my estimation). Second, it is going to pay CAN $10/million to increase trades training. And third, it is going to find a way to give healthcare students paid work terms.
Now, over to the Conservative Party, which does occasionally win elections (in fact it won three in a row in 2003, 2007 and 2011, and held power for 12 years). Oddly, the Conservatives have published a document called “Platform Highlights” but not an actual platform. The party seems to be running on strictly three planks made up of precisely one adjective and one noun (“Better Healthcare”, “Safer Communities” and “Lower Taxes”). Post-secondary students get in on the action, but not institutions. Like the NDP, they want to provide paid work terms for students (though in the Conservatives’ case this doesn’t seem to be limited to health care). They also want to “guarantee jobs for students training in a program where there are staff shortages” (this does seem to be limited to health care), and finally, provide a tuition refund for graduates who work in the province. This is, of course, a policy which, as I have explained on more than one occasion, is as dumb as a bag of hammers.
So, now over to the governing Liberals, whose pitch can be summed up as “we signed an MOU with Hydro-Quebec to re-up the Churchill Falls agreement and boy are we going to be rich!” Yet, perhaps because of the enormous debt, while the Liberals are making a lot of promises, a lot of them are pretty small ball. A million here, a million there – in the big scheme of things, it’s fairly restrained. (Aside: one of the more interesting provincial pledges I have seen anywhere in recent years is the Liberal pledge on the Technology and Defense sectors, which I think points to an interesting possible future where National Security actually comes to be seen as an area where provinces have some agency and some responsibility).
Anyways, back to post-secondary education, where the Liberal manifesto promises, as I say, are pretty restrained. It basically comes down to three things. First, the Liberals promise to cover all the costs of tuition associated with all practicum courses for Newfoundland and Labrador nursing students, and offer all graduating nurses full-time permanent positions in Newfoundland and Labrador. Second, they want to create a one-time moving allowance of up to $500 per student for rural students to assist with moving costs to study in St. John’s. And third, they are going to work with Memorial and CNA to expand capacity in certain fields related to new construction in Churchill Falls.
In other words, friends: today’s vote in Newfoundland is another episode in that continuing tradition of the New Canadian Post-Secondary Consensus, in which every party in every province believes that:
1) Money for students is good while money for institutions is not, and
2) To the extent post-secondary education has value, it is exclusively related to Nursing and the Construction Trades.
So, God guard thee, Newfoundland. And God help us all if, as seems increasingly likely, this is the future of Canadian post-secondary education.
Key points:
When I walked into my first classroom almost a decade ago, I had no idea how many “first days” I would experience–and how each one would teach me something new.
Growing up–first in the Virgin Islands and then later in Florida–I always felt pulled toward teaching. Tutoring was my introduction, and I realized early that I was a helper by nature. Still, my path into the classroom wasn’t straightforward–I changed majors in college, tried different things, and it wasn’t until six months after graduation that a friend pointed me toward Teach For America. That leap took me all the way to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, far from home and family, but I was fortunate to find a strong cohort of fellow teachers and mentors who grounded me.
Those early years weren’t easy. Being away from home, balancing the demands of teaching, and later, raising two kids of my own–it could feel overwhelming. My mentors kept me steady, reminding me that teaching is about community and connection. That lesson has never left me.
As I started this school year–my eighth first day of school at the front of the classroom–I’m reflecting on other lessons learned that help me help my students thrive.
Connection is the key to everything. If students know you believe in them, they’ll start believing in themselves. I think of one student in particular who was failing in my class repeatedly, and finally passed–not because I’m a miracle worker, but because we built trust. I bought into him, and eventually, he bought into himself. Those are the moments that make the long days and sacrifices worth it.
Make your classroom a safe space to learn. I teach 10th-grade biology and 11th-grade dual-enrollment engineering; these are subjects that can seem intimidating to young people. I tell my students that I want to hear each and every one of their ideas. No one’s brains are alike. My brain isn’t like yours, and yours isn’t like your neighbor’s. Listening to everyone’s thoughts, processes, and ideas helps us expand our own thinking and understanding. Especially with a subject matter like science, I want students to know that there is no shame in exploring different ideas together. In fact, that’s what makes this kind of work exciting.
Lean on your network. We preach the importance of continuous learning to our students, and rightfully so. There is always room to grow in every subject. I believe teachers need to model this for our students. I lean heavily on my support system: my mentors, my master teacher, and other educators and coaches. They are always there to bounce ideas off of, helping me continue to strengthen my lessons and outcomes. This also builds community; two of my mentors, Sabreen Thorne and Marie Mullen, are Teach For America Greater Baton Rouge alumnae who still work for the organization and still make the effort to keep in touch, invite me to community events, and offer me words of wisdom.
I’m proud that these approaches have been working. This past year, our school, Plaquemine High School, saw the most improved test scores in the Iberville Parish School District. It wasn’t magic–it was the collective effort of teachers and students who decided we could do better, together. I was also honored to receive the Shell Science Lab Regional Makeover grant, which provides us with resources to upgrade our science lab. We’ll be able to provide the equipment our students deserve. Science classrooms should be safe spaces where every idea matters, where students feel empowered to experiment, question, and create. This grant will help us bring that vision to life.
Eight years in, I’ve learned that teaching isn’t about perfection. It’s about showing up, reflecting, leaning on others, and never losing sight of why we’re here: to open doors for kids. Every year, every day, is another chance to do just that.