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  • Last Email From A Worker at the US Department of Education

    Last Email From A Worker at the US Department of Education

    This graphic is part of an email from a US Department of Education official who was recently fired without good cause.  Our experiences with this dedicated public servant were always excellent, something we cannot say about others in the DC crowd. The graphic displays a number of important measures that have been enacted by ED-FSA (Federal Student Aid) over the last six years–and one giant failure, general debt relief for more than 30 million citizens. We wish the best for those Department of Education workers who remain, and who may see their jobs made more difficult, privatized, or moved to other agencies. The work cannot be easy for anyone–especially those who care about the folks they serve–the consumers and their families who are less likely to receive justice in the coming months and years. 

    Related link:

    Department of Education workers brace for Trump to shut agency down: ‘Everybody is distraught’ (UK Guardian)

    Department of Education contract cuts spur ‘chaos and confusion’ (The Hill)

    The Department of Education’s History Shows It is Essential (Time)

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  • How a tribe won a legal battle against the federal Bureau of Indian Education — and still lost

    How a tribe won a legal battle against the federal Bureau of Indian Education — and still lost

    SUPAI, Ariz. — Kambria Siyuja always felt like the smartest kid in Supai. 

    Raised by educators in this tribal village at the base of the Grand Canyon, she started kindergarten a little ahead of her peers. Her teachers at Havasupai Elementary School often asked Siyuja to tutor younger students and sometimes even let her run their classrooms. She graduated valedictorian of her class. 

    But once she left the K-8 school at the top of her grade, Siyuja stopped feeling so smart.

    “I didn’t know math or basic formulas,” she said. “Typing and tech? Nonexistent.”

    Siyuja, now 22, wiped tears from her face as she sat alongside her mother and grandmother — the educators of the family — one afternoon last year in the Havasupai Tribal Council chambers. The trio wept as they recalled Siyuja’s move as a teenager to a private boarding school 150 miles away in Sedona, Arizona, which she’d chosen to attend because the federal agency that runs Havasupai Elementary, the only school in her village, provides no options for high school. 

    Kambria Siyuja, right, plans to teach in Supai, like her mother, Jackie Siyuja, middle, who teaches at the tribe’s preschool program. Grandmother and Havasupai Tribal Council chair Bernadine Jones, left, previously taught at the elementary school. Their tribe’s seal is reflected from a window onto a wall in the council chambers. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report

    Once there, however, Siyuja discovered how little she’d learned at the Supai school. She had only superficial familiarity with state and U.S. history, and knew none of the literature her peers had read years earlier. She was the only freshman who’d never taken pre-algebra.

    Last year, eight years after Siyuja graduated, the K-8 school still did not offer pre-algebra, a course that most U.S. public school students take in seventh or eighth grade, if not earlier. It had no textbooks for math, science or social studies. The school’s remoteness — on a 518-acre reservation the government forcibly relocated the Havasupai people to more than 150 years ago — makes it a challenge to staff, and chronic turnover required the few educators who remained to teach multiple grades at once. Only 3 percent of students test proficiently in either English language arts or math.

    “I know they struggle a lot because of how few resources we have down here,” said Siyuja of Supai, which visitors must reach either by an 8-mile hike or helicopter. “But what are they teaching here?”

    In 2017, six Havasupai families sued the federal government, alleging that the Bureau of Indian Education, which operates Havasupai Elementary and is housed within the Interior Department, deprived their children of their federal right to an education. The tribe, in a brief supporting the lawsuit, argued that the bureau had allowed Havasupai Elementary to become “the worst school in a deplorable BIE system” and that court intervention was required to protect students from the agency. 

    The families eventually secured two historic settlements that fueled hopes across Indian Country that true reform might finally improve outcomes both in Supai and perhaps also at BIE schools throughout the U.S.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    So far, the settlements have brought new staff to Supai, and the BIE had to reconstitute the school board. Teachers now must use lesson plans, and they finally have a curriculum to use in English, science and math classes. A new principal pledged to stay longer than a school year.

    “We now have some teachers and some repairs to the building that are being done,” said Dinolene Kaska, a mother to three former students and a new school board member. “It has been a long time just to get to this point.”

    Valencia Stinson leads a kindergarten class through a lesson matching lowercase letters with their corresponding uppercase letters. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report

    The legal wins followed an effort to reform the BIE as a whole. In 2014, federal officials unveiled a sweeping plan to overhaul the beleaguered bureau, which had long struggled to deliver better student outcomes with anemic funding. If the BIE were a state, the schools it operates would rank at or very near the bottom of any list for academic achievement. 

    But in the past decade, and after a nearly doubling of its budget, the BIE has finally started to make some progress. Graduation rates have improved, staff vacancies are down and the bureau built its own data system to track and support student achievement across its 183 campuses in 23 different states. Now, those milestones could be at risk.

    President Donald Trump, in his seismic restructuring of the federal government, laid off thousands of workers that will trigger deep cuts to the BIE, among other agencies that work directly on Indian Country. The White House in January also issued an executive order to turn the BIE into a school choice program, draining the bureau of funding and, according to some advocates in Washington, D.C., threatening the government’s long-established trust responsibility to tribal nations. It also remains unclear how the policy would benefit families in isolated communities like Supai where other schooling options are scant or nonexistent.

    “Tribes in rural areas don’t have a lot of school choice,” said Quinton Roman Nose, executive director of the Tribal Education Departments National Assembly, a nonprofit that works with tribal education agencies. “For Native students, that’s not a good model. I don’t think it’s going to work for so many.”

    Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat and vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, said the Trump administration’s actions are devastating. “What Trump is doing to the federal government isn’t just reckless — it’s arson,” he said in a statement to The Hechinger Report. “We will do everything we can to ensure that this manufactured chaos does not have lasting impacts on our trust and treaty responsibilities to Native communities.” 

    Last fall, as conservative critics called for dismantling the BIE and converting its funding into vouchers, longtime director Tony Dearman defended the bureau. He also pitched a new, five-year strategic direction that will emphasize tribal sovereignty and cultural education — both promises the bureau made in its reform agenda more than a decade ago.

    “We have really built the capacity of the BIE,” Dearman said. “It’s just taken a while. Anything in the government does.”

    Still, he insisted that the BIE could fulfill the government’s obligation to deliver a quality education to tribal nations. “I truly believe that we can handle the trust responsibility with the support from Congress through appropriations,” Dearman said.

    For decades, the Department of the Interior, which manages natural resources and wildlife, placed control of schools on tribal reservations within its Bureau of Indian Affairs. The agency oversees law and justice across Indian Country, as well as agriculture, infrastructure, economic development and tribal governance. The agency’s poor management of schools, meanwhile, had been well documented, and in 2006, an internal shakeup resulted in the creation of the BIE.

    Almost from the start, the new bureau faced criticism.

    In 2008, the Government Accountability Office dinged the BIE for stumbling in its early implementation of the No Child Left Behind education law. A year later, the Nation’s Report Card found Native students in traditional public schools performed much better than those in BIE schools. (About 92 percent of Native students attend traditional public schools and 8 percent attend BIE schools.) Senators scolded the bureau after only 1 in 4 of its schools could meet the new federal education standards. A 2011 report, “Broken Promises, Broken Schools,” cataloged the deterioration of BIE schools, estimating it would cost $1.3 billion to bring every educational facility to an “acceptable” condition. 

    In 2013, then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell assembled a study group to diagnose the root causes of academic failures in BIE schools. A year later, the group released the Blueprint for Reform. At its unveiling, Arne Duncan, then the federal education secretary, had damning words for why the BIE needed to change, calling it “the epitome of broken” and “utterly bankrupt.” 

    The blueprint, issued through a formal secretarial order, called for dramatically restructuring the BIE over two years, starting with its management of tribally controlled schools. In 1988, as part of a renewed focus on tribal sovereignty, Congress had created a grant program to help tribes take control of their respective BIE schools, and as of 2014, a full two-thirds of campuses had already converted.

    The 70-page blueprint proposed transforming the agency from a top-down operator of schools into more of an educational services and support center. It would create a division within the BIE to focus on assisting principals with the day-to-day operation of schools. New regional directors and offices would oversee tribally controlled schools, BIE-operated campuses and schools on the sprawling Navajo Nation.

    The plan also pitched the addition of “school support solutions teams” at each regional office that would assist with teacher and principal recruitment, school facilities, financial management and technology. A new Office of Sovereignty and Indian Education would help tribes convert their schools to local control and encourage them to shape culture and language classes. Other proposed changes included allowing tribes to tie staff pay to student performance and creating incentives to replicate successful tribally controlled schools.

    Related: As coronavirus ravaged Indian Country, the federal government failed its schools

    The study group, however, did not address whether the bureau needed additional funding to pull off the reforms. And without additional funding, the BIE faced deep cuts as budget negotiations pressured then-President Barack Obama to require all federal agencies to reduce their spending by 20 percent. 

    That essentially tasked the BIE with achieving a turnaround of its failing schools with a fifth less funding. By the time of the blueprint, those cuts were already phasing in: Between 2011 and 2014, for example, the number of full-time administrators located on or near Indian reservations to oversee school spending fell from 22 to 13, leaving the remaining staff to still split 64 reservations among them.

    “It was a terrible set up,” said one former top agency official who worked at the BIE during the blueprint’s release. The official, like many of the more than 75 interviewed by The Hechinger Report for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the DOI’s large role in tribal communities and worries that criticizing the agency could cost them jobs or contracts.

    Famous for its turquoise waterfalls — Havasupai means “people of the blue-green water” — Supai village greets visitors at the banks of Havasu Creek.

    The creek and waterfalls feed a hidden canyon oasis here. Trees bursting with blooms of apricot and pomegranate offer much-welcome shade for backpacking tourists and the mules carrying their gear. Tribal elders wind their way through Supai’s unmarked dusty roads as children on the preschool playground shield their eyes from sand swirling around the adjacent helipad. Benches, some made from milk crates, ring the town square at the front gate of Havasupai Elementary.

    Eight years ago, lawyer Alexis DeLaCruz sat on one of those benches in Supai town square. She had recently started working at the Native American Disability Law Center, a firm based in Farmington, New Mexico, that represents Native Americans with disabilities. The firm had recently hosted a training on special education law for parents, and several from Supai, incensed about their kids’ education, traveled out of the canyon to attend. They convinced DeLaCruz and two colleagues to book a helicopter ride into the village to hear directly from parents about their experiences with the BIE. 

    Parents described how their children couldn’t tell the difference between North and South America and, despite BIE regulations requiring Native culture in all curriculum areas, the students never had a class in Havasupai culture, history or language. Because of a teacher shortage, children learned in classes that combined students from three or even four grades. The school had 10 principals in as many years. The BIE closed Havasupai Elementary for nearly a month in 2015 because of insufficient staffing.

    About 100 students each year enroll in Havasupai Elementary School, one of 183 schools that the Bureau of Indian Education manages on 64 tribal reservations across the U.S. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report

    Siyuja, who graduated from the school in 2016, remembered cooks and janitors stepping in as teachers — and then having to leave class midday to check on school lunch or plumbing problems. 

    Until Siyuja reached the fourth grade, Havasupai Elementary, which serves about 80 students, had two tribal members on staff. They led culture and language classes, and Siyuja still owns a copy of the Havasupai dictionary they gifted her as a child. But then they left, and most of the other teachers soon followed, during the 2011-12 school year, she recalled.

    That’s when Obama tasked federal agencies with cutting a fifth of their administrative budgets, hollowing out the BIE’s ability to support its schools. In Supai, the already revolving door of educators suddenly started spinning much faster, Siyuja said.

    “We were just in this constant loop of relearning the same thing over and over,” she said.

    It wasn’t until college, at Fort Lewis College in Colorado, where Siyuja chose to study education, that she learned it was not normal for a school to lump so many grades together in one classroom. “That’s one of the major big no-nos,” she said. (In an email, a BIE spokesperson said, “Many schools implement implement multi-grade instruction as an intentional and effective educational model,” particularly in rural and remote locations, “to enhance individualized learning, maximize resources and promote peer collaboration.”)

    In January 2017, nine students from six families sued the BIE and the Interior Department, naming as defendants Dearman, Jewell — who did not respond to interview requests — her deputy assistant secretary and the Havasupai Elementary School principal. The lawsuit listed all plaintiffs under pseudonyms to protect their identity, and the two families involved in the lawsuit who spoke with The Hechinger Report for this story asked to remain anonymous even after the settlements were signed. Some of the students still attend BIE schools, and parents remain worried about exposing any of their children’s privacy, even as adults.

    The families hinged their case on a well-established federal right to education for Native American children.

    There is no federal right to education in the Constitution, according to a landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision. But for Native Americans, congressional statutes, executive orders, treaties and other Supreme Court opinions dating back virtually to this nation’s founding have cemented education as a major component of the government’s trust responsibility — a set of legal and moral obligations to protect tribal sovereignty and generally look out for the welfare of tribal members. In 1972, lawmakers made it even more clear with the Indian Education Act, which says that the “federal government has the sole responsibility for the operation and financial support” of tribal schools. They also required the BIA — the BIE had not yet been established — to work with tribes to create a system of schools of “the highest quality.” To this day, the BIE pitches itself as a provider of a “world class education.”

    Related: Native Americans turn to charter schools to reclaim their kids’ education

    DeLaCruz, not long after filing the Havasupai case, started imagining what impact it could have beyond that tiny community.

    “Most cases in our legal system end in money,” she said. “This isn’t the same calculus. We’re weighing what we think we can get in place that won’t just make a difference for students now but frankly for generations to come.”

    The lead plaintiff in the case was a sixth grader described in the lawsuit as Stephen C. Diagnosed with ADHD, he had never received counseling as mandated in his Individualized Education Program, or IEP, a legal document detailing the interventions and supports that a student with a disability will get from their school. None of the fifth grade teachers the school hired stayed more than two weeks, the lawsuit said, and Stephen C. was taught in a combined sixth, seventh and eighth grade class.

    His teacher’s attention split among kids across three grades, Stephen C. started to act out. The school sent him home three to four times a week for behavior issues related to his disability, the lawsuit alleged. Even as an eighth grader, he could barely read or write.

    In its friend-of-the-court brief, the Havasupai Tribe said its “people have been isolated at the bottom of one of the world’s most rugged canyons and for more than a century have been forced to depend on the federal government to educate their children.

    “Although the days of forced removal and assimilation are over,” the brief continued, “the BIE is still failing its students.”

    The federal government didn’t entirely dispute the claims of Stephen C. and his co-plaintiffs.

    The BIE and DOI, in June 2017, formally petitioned the U.S. District Court of Arizona to dismiss the case, arguing that the students couldn’t prove the BIE failed or refused to comply with its regulations for what counts as a “basic” education. Also, by that point Stephen C. and four other plaintiffs all had graduated or transferred from Havasupai Elementary, making them ineligible to pursue compensatory educational services, according to the government.

    But Lisa Olson, an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, also acknowledged the BIE’s shortcomings.

    “We are not saying there’s no accountability here. We are just saying that it’s for Congress and the executive to resolve these problems,” Olson said during a November 2019 hearing before U.S. District Judge Steven Logan. “The agency doesn’t dispute that its efforts have been unsatisfactory and they have fallen short.”

    Olson asked Logan to consider the many challenges of providing instruction in Supai: There was no funding for an agency helicopter to transport teachers in and out, for example, and new hires often failed their background checks or took other positions before the FBI checks were completed.

    “There’s nothing we can do to change that,” she said.

    Passengers load into a helicopter at a landing zone next to the preschool’s playground in a central part of Supai village.  Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report

    Logan seemed unmoved. “So what you are basically saying, counsel, is it is the problem of the parents, and they need to make better decisions about where they have children so they can be properly educated?” he said. Olson responded, saying, “It is not the parents’ fault, but we need the cooperation of the parents and the community.” She continued, “I’m saying that BIE is doing its best and tries to enlist the support of parents and the tribe.”

    Related: A crisis call line run by Native youth, for Native youth

    The families also presented a secondary argument — that the complex trauma of Native American children qualifies them for services and protections of the sort that are guaranteed for students with disabilities. They argued that exposure to adversity — specifically, the long-lasting trauma from this nation’s official policy to separate Native children from their families in order to eradicate their cultures and seize tribal land — limited their ability to access the benefits of a public education. To this day, Havasupai families must ship their children away to attend high school, often in other states, and the BIE has no plans to open one in the canyon.

    The government warned Logan against following that line of logic, cautioning that it would set a dangerous precedent linking childhood adversity to a student’s ability to learn. The families filed their lawsuit under the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prevents discrimination against people with disabilities in federal programs. It does not include adversity or trauma on its list of qualifying conditions, and its applicable regulations expressly note that social disadvantage, such as homelessness or family violence, do not count as impairments, the government noted.

    Expanding that definition would threaten to impose “unwieldy” obligations on high-poverty schools across the U.S., the government’s attorneys argued.

    “The alleged ‘forced relocation, loss of homes, families and culture,’ and poverty within the Havasupai community … do not constitute a physical or mental impairment,” the motion to dismiss reads.

    In August 2020, the federal court issued a mixed decision. Logan allowed the case to continue for students with disabilities. The families also persuaded the court that complex trauma — including interaction with juvenile justice systems, extreme poverty and a denial of access to education — qualifies as a protected disability in the rehabilitation law. But he dismissed the general education claims, deciding that the older students, including Stephen C., had aged out of the school and no potential remedy would be precise enough for a court to enforce.  

    The Havasupai families cheered Logan’s ruling, but only in part. As they continued to pursue the special education claims, the Havasupai families challenged his decision to dismiss the rest of the case. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which includes Arizona, heard their arguments in February 2022.

    “The agency is attempting to comply,” Laura Myron, a Justice Department attorney, told the judges. There are, she added, “numerous, practical obstacles to operating a school at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.”

    Kathryn Eidmann, president and CEO of Public Counsel, a pro bono public interest law firm, represented the Havasupai families and argued that their ancestors never chose to permanently live in such an isolated location. The government restricted the tribe to the reservation to make way for Grand Canyon National Park.

    Hoai-My Winder, new principal at Havasupai Elementary Schools, holds a student’s hand while walking with him during recess. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report

    “The obstacles that the government is pointing to that make compliance hard are entirely problems of the government’s own making,” Eidmann said.

    In a short five-page decision, the 9th Circuit panel allowed the older students to continue their lawsuit against the BIE. They clarified that judges — namely, Logan — could indeed compel an agency to comply with its own regulations. 

    The three judges also ruled that the students could seek monetary compensation for the educational services they never received.

    Related: 3 Native American students try to find a home at college

    Tara Ford, also a pro bono attorney on the Stephen C. case, said at the time that the ruling would reverberate across Indian Country: “Students who have been harmed by the Bureau of Indian Education’s broken promises now have a path to hold the federal government accountable for its failures.”

    By then, the students and government had settled the special education claims. Their deal provided each student with $20,000 for compensatory services and required the BIE to follow anti-discrimination provisions of the Rehabilitation Act while creating its first-ever complaint process for parents to challenge suspected discrimination. After the 9th Circuit ruling, however, negotiations to settle the rest of the Stephen C. case stretched beyond a year.

    The eventual deal, signed in May 2023, established an $850,000 compensatory education fund for any student who attended Havasupai Elementary since 2011. The BIE estimates about 215 kids could qualify to use that money, meaning each child would receive roughly $4,000, less than some families had hoped for. It also agreed to pay stipends to help recruit and retain teachers in Supai, build additional housing for staff and hire a cultural instructor from the community. The BIE also had to form a new school board.

    A year after the case closed, Breanna Bollig, a fellow at the California Tribal Families Coalition, wrote in a legal publication that it could change Native education far beyond Supai.

    “The BIE could be held accountable at every other BIE school through similar lawsuits,” Bollig wrote. “Perhaps the federal right to education for Indian children can even be used to improve inadequate and inequitable state public schools that Indian children attend.”

    Billy Vides stopped counting at 19.

    That’s how many principals he worked with in his first three years as a teacher at Havasupai Elementary. He stayed two more years, submitting his resignation in June.

    A longtime educator in Phoenix public schools, Vides first heard of Supai from a pair of grandmothers at an early learning conference. He had considered retiring, but knew he would miss working with kids. Vides searched online for Havasupai, bookmarked an article calling it “America’s Worst Tribal School” and sent in his application.

    “I wanted to make a difference,” he said.

    The BIE hired Vides in 2019 as a kindergarten and first grade teacher. On his first day, the interim principal assigned him to a combined kindergarten, first, third and fourth grade class. The ages didn’t mix well, he said, and the older kids bullied and sometimes assaulted the younger children.

    Joy Van Est, a special education teacher who quit in June, said many of her students’ IEPs had not been updated for several years. It took her four months, the entirety of her tenure there, to update every child’s support plan.

    Related: Native American students miss school at higher rates. It only got worse during the pandemic

    As part of the settlement, an independent monitor every six months must visit Supai and inspect whether the BIE has complied with its own regulations at the school. The monitor must review 104 specific requirements covering student-to-teacher ratios, curriculum taught in each subject, textbooks, grading rules and more. In its first report following a January 2024 visit, the monitor found the bureau in violation of 72 of those requirements.

    The school had a curriculum for just one subject — English language arts — and no textbooks for math, science and social studies, the compliance report reads. Teachers used no lesson plans, in any subject, and the school had no librarian. Only one tribal member taught at the school, leading culture and language classes once a week for 45 minutes. 

    The compliance officer granted the BIE some credit for hiring a school counselor and physical education teacher. However, once-a-week P.E. classes only happened if the part-time teacher could catch a helicopter flight. The counselor started in November 2023, but staff shortages required her to cover teachers’ classrooms too often for her to do any counseling work, the compliance officer found. 

    The compliance report seemed to have some impact: In the spring, the BIE went on a hiring spree to replenish the beleaguered staff in Supai. A second counselor and special education teacher — Van Est — plus a few additional teachers meant Havasupai Elementary was fully staffed for the first time in years.

    A more recent work plan for the school, updated in December, documented further changes: The bureau hired enough staff to meet class size caps. Teachers now submit weekly lesson plans, and the school selected a curriculum and purchased computers for all grades.

    The recent recruits include Hoai-My Winder, the school’s new principal. Winder had been working for the Department of Defense, as an administrator at an elementary school in Japan. She previously taught and worked as an assistant principal in Las Vegas, where her family settled after fleeing Vietnam during the fall of Saigon.

    Havasupai Elementary School enrolls students from kindergarten through eighth grade. The Bureau of Indian Education directly operates the campus in Supai village, which visitors must reach via an 8-mile hike or helicopter ride. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report

    “Day Six!” Winder hollered one afternoon this past May as she entered the spiked gates that separate Havasupai Elementary from the rest of the village. It was her tally of the number of days she’d been principal — both at Havasupai Elementary and ever.

    While her husband unpacked boxes in their new home, Winder took inventory at her new school. She discovered 40-year-old math textbooks on classroom shelves. Havasupai teachers at some point had created a Supai dictionary and draft curriculum for language instruction; Winder found it collecting dust in a box.

    As she met with parents and tribal members during her first week, ahead of the eighth grade graduation ceremony that afternoon, Winder repeated a pledge to stay at Havasupai Elementary for at least five years, maybe 10.

    Felicia Siyuja, the longtime school secretary, stood next to Winder as families packed into the cafeteria for the ceremony. As the aroma of frybread wafted from the kitchen, Siyuja tapped the mic before addressing the 13 students sitting in the front row.

    “I also want to apologize,” she told the soon-to-be freshmen. “All the teachers and principals rotating for all these years. It was hard for me as a grown-up. I can’t imagine how it was for you.”

    Eighth graders wearing turquoise-and-gold colored gowns prepare for their graduation ceremony at Havasupai Elementary School. The tribal village, at the base of the Grand Canyon, is famous for its turquoise waterfalls. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report

    Aside from Winder and her supervisor, the BIE would not allow The Hechinger Report to interview school staff on the record. But six current or former Havasupai teachers, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity, placed blame on the bureau for Havasupai Elementary’s dysfunction.

    “The BIE is the problem,” said one teacher. “The BIE lacks humility.”

    The educator, who now works at another BIE school, said he never received cultural training to prepare him for working with Native children and families. Several colleagues resigned before winter break his first year in Supai, making him the most veteran teacher on staff. 

    “I had no curriculum. No student names, no mentor, no oversight or guidance,” he said. “You don’t want to be yet another teacher who comes and goes. After three years, it gets old. It’s just exhausting.”

    In a February 10 email, a BIE spokesperson wrote that cultural training, including language preservation, had been scheduled for later that month.

    Van Est, who joined the bureau specifically to support its mission of uplifting tribal communities, said last summer that she no longer believed it was capable of doing that job. “The entity that has most recently oppressed the Havasupai people is making absolutely no effort to use education as a tool for repair, as a gold mine for building their future,” she said.

    Related: Tribal colleges are falling apart. The U.S. hasn’t fulfilled its promise to fund the schools

    The BIE blames Havasupai Elementary School’s isolation and lack of housing for its troubles.

    Even before the Stephen C. lawsuit, the BIE offered lucrative stipends to lure educators to Supai. It also guarantees housing, in theory, but in a pinch has forced teachers to room together. And a recent hiring spree, to satisfy the settlement, has made housing even tighter.

    Dearman said a recent housing needs analysis determined the BIE now needs 30 beds in Supai, but has only 12. One teacher simply didn’t return to their position this fall when the bureau couldn’t secure housing for more than a few weeks.

    “That puts a major strain on us being able to keep staff there,” Dearman said about the housing shortage. “We have housing needs at other locations as well. However, Havasupai is so isolated that if you’re not able to stay in our quarters there, there’s no other options.”

    He said that it’s hard for some educators to uproot their lives to live in Supai. “It’s a difficult place to come in and out of. It really is,” Dearman said.

    Poverty surrounds many BIE schools on tribal reservations, largely as a result of former government policies to eradicate Native peoples. In Supai, nearly 40 percent of the tribe lives in poverty, almost four times the national average. Tourism provides an economic bedrock for the Havasupai economy, though many families rely on government assistance.

    Vides, the teacher, struggled with his decision to quit. His wife had remained 300 miles away in Phoenix, raising their 3-year-old daughter without him. He missed a lot of her firsts, and felt torn between her and the Havasupai children.

    “It was difficult. I was grieving for the future of these students,” Vides said.

    “Either the system is continually broken,” he added, “or the system is working successfully to slowly eradicate this tribe.”

    Long before Trump’s executive order in January, some conservatives had pushed school choice as a solution to the BIE’s troubles. In 2016, the right-wing Heritage Foundation proposed turning the BIE into an education savings account, or ESA, which would grant families a portion of their child’s per-pupil funding to spend on private school tuition, home-school supplies and other educational expenses. That same year, the late Arizona Sen. John McCain introduced legislation offering ESAs equal to 90 percent of what the BIE spends on each student.

    The bill didn’t advance, but Heritage resurrected the idea last year in its Project 2025 transition plan for the next president. Notably, the conservative think tank — despite citing the BIE’s poor track record as justification for converting much of its funding into vouchers — also proposed granting it even more authority over the education of all Native American students, in all U.S. public schools.

    In his January order, Trump required the BIE to identify “any available mechanisms” for families to tap federal funding for private and faith-based schools, as well as to report on the performance of its schools and identify alternatives for families to consider. The agency has until April to submit its plan, for implementation this fall. The White House did not respond to several requests for comment.

    In certain tribal communities across Arizona, some parents have started to consider opting out of the BIE system. The state passed a universal school voucher program in 2022, giving any family who wants roughly $7,400 to spend on private or parochial schools or other options. Christian academies on the Gila River Indian Community, a reservation near Phoenix, have already used the program to recruit students.

    The walls of Havasu Canyon surround the village of Supai, where water from Havasu Creek later connects to the Colorado River at the Grand Canyon.  Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report

    But in Supai, some residents worry the ESA option is meaningless. The closest private schools, in Kingman, are more than two hours away. Internet access in the village is virtually nonexistent, a hurdle for any parents trying to teach their kids at home.

    The National Indian Education Association, an advocacy group, has yet to issue a position on Trump’s order but said in a statement that it’s “closely monitoring” potential impact on cultural preservation and access to education for Native students. In the past, the group has said BIE is the best option to fulfill the federal government’s responsibility to educate Native students. It blames its poor results on Congress — the branch of government holding the purse strings.

    “The BIE in general, they just have a difficult time,” said Roman Nose, with the national group for tribal education departments. He noted that Department of Defense schools — the only other K-12 system run by the federal government — receive more funding. And Roman Nose worried how the recent federal layoffs and school choice proposal could further erode BIE’s ability to fulfill the trust responsibility.

    The BIE lost dozens of employees in the recent layoffs, sources told ICT. Among those laid off were approximately 30 from non-school positions in the BIE agency offices, excluding kindergarten through 12th grade schools.

    “There won’t be any progress made during this administration,” Roman Nose said. “It’s a difficult job, but these are treaty obligations.”

    Related: Schools bar Native students from wearing traditional regalia at graduation 

    Dearman, the bureau’s longtime director, insisted that the BIE could fulfill the government’s obligation to deliver a quality education to tribal nations.

    Under his leadership, the BIE has secured some financial wins for its schools. Lawmakers now funnel about $235 million into the bureau for school construction – it has asked for more than $400 million – and $150 million for replacing older campuses, according to the agency. Counselors and teachers now make the same amount as their counterparts in Department of Defense schools. And Dearman, a longtime champion of early childhood education, has expanded the bureau’s popular preschool program into more schools.

    Traditional beadwork decorates an eighth grader’s graduation cap at a Havasupai Elementary School ceremony. The school’s mascot is the eagle. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report

    Graduation rates have also climbed. Last year, according to the bureau, 75 percent of its high schoolers earned a diploma on time — a 31 percentage point jump since 2014 and slightly above the national average for Native American students. As of 2021, the last time the BIE reported achievement data, 17 percent of students tested on grade level in English language arts, and 11 percent in math. For three states where the BIE runs two-thirds of its schools, students have posted 8 percentage point increases on English exams and 13-point increases on math exams since 2016, according to the bureau.

    The U.S. Government Accountability Office, which has tracked the BIE’s “systemic management weaknesses” since 2013, recently reported that it had achieved substantial progress on school construction and safety. The bureau’s oversight of special education, distance learning and school spending remain open problems, the GAO found, while also noting in its report — released just days before Trump’s recent layoffs — that meager staffing “has been a challenge for BIE for over a decade.”

    DeLaCruz left the Native American Disability Law Center in October to work on education litigation for the Tulalip Tribe in northern Washington state. A little more than a year after closing the Havasupai case, she hesitated to call either settlement a win. 

    Still, she noted in an email that the creation of a school board at Havasupai Elementary had been a big step forward: “The fact there is a community-led School Board to ask questions and voice concerns to the BIE is vital to improving education at Havasupai Elementary School.”

    Kambria Siyuja works during her summer break at Supai’s preschool program. Siyuja graduated from Havasupai Elementary School down the road and plans to teach there after graduating from Fort Lewis College next year. Credit: Matt Stensland for The Hechinger Report

    The morning after the eighth grade graduation ceremony, Kambria Siyuja walked past her old elementary school as the sun crawled over the rust-red walls of Supai Canyon.

    She greeted parents dropping off their sleepy toddlers at the federal Head Start preschool. Siyuja has worked there every summer break in college, hoping to decide whether to pursue a job in early learning or teaching down the road, at Havasupai Elementary.

    Her grandmother, Bernadine Jones, attended Havasupai Day School in the 1960s, when it only offered K-2 classes, before attending and graduating from a Phoenix high school. She eventually returned to Supai and taught at her old school and the village preschool for 20 years. Siyuja’s mother teaches at the tribal Head Start program.

    Academically, Siyuja finally feels prepared to be a teacher.

    “It’s really weird taking a class in college and learning stuff they should have taught me at that elementary school,” she said. “Now I’m really able to understand math, and also teach math.”

    This winter, Siyuja returned home for break with big news. Not only had she finally finished remedial math and qualified for a math class this past semester that would earn her full college credit, she’d passed it, receiving a B.

    Siyuja also recently learned she qualified for about $3,500 from the Stephen C. settlement. She said she had planned to use the money to pay for her spring semester of college, but as of February, had not heard back from a BIE representative about the payment.

    She graduates from Fort Lewis College, the former site of a notorious Indian boarding school, in 2026. 

    Despite her misgivings about the BIE, she said she views becoming an educator at the school as the best way possible to help her community. “I just want the younger kids to have a much better education than we got.”

    Contact staff writer Neal Morton at 212-678-8247 or [email protected].

    This story about the Bureau of Indian Education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, in collaboration with ICT (formerly Indian Country Today). Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. Sign up for the ICT 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.

    Join us today.

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  • Judge extends block on controversial NIH cuts

    Judge extends block on controversial NIH cuts

    A federal judge Friday extended a temporary block on the National Institutes of Health’s plan to slash funding for universities’ indirect research costs amid a legal battle over the policy change.

    The nationwide block, which U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley put in place Feb. 10 soon after a coalition of state attorneys general, research advocates and individual universities sued the agency, was set to expire Monday. But it will now remain in place until Kelley has time to consider the arguments the plaintiffs and NIH presented at a hearing Friday morning.

    It’s unclear when Kelley will rule. But after the two-hour hearing, she said she certainly “has a lot of work to do” to before making a decision.

    “This case is not about whether as a policy matter the administration can target waste, fraud and abuse,” Katherine Dirks, an attorney for the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, told the judge during the hearing. “It’s contrary to the regulations which govern how these costs are determined and how these payments are disbursed. If there were an intention on the administration’s part to change the mechanism by which those occur, there’s a process for it—a statutory process and a regulatory process. Neither of those were followed here.”

    But the NIH’s legal team said the agency has the right to unilaterally cap reimbursements for costs related to research—such as hazardous waste removal, facilities costs and patient safety—at 15 percent. 

    “This is not cutting down on grant funding,” said Brian Lea, a lawyer for the NIH, said at Friday’s hearing. “This is about changing the slices of the pie, which falls squarely within the executive’s discretion.”

    Counsel for the plaintiffs, however, argued that the policy is unlawful and, if it’s allowed to move forward during a protracted litigation process, will cause “irreparable harm” to university budgets, medical breakthroughs and the patients who may not be able to enroll in clinical trials as a result. 

    “A clinical trial is for a lot of people a last hope when there’s not an FDA–approved medicine that will treat their condition. Any minute that they’re not enrolled in that trial brings the risk of irreparable harm,” said Adam Unikowsky, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “Part of these institutions’ mission is serving these patients, and this cut will irreparably harm their ability to fulfill that mission.” 

    Since 1965, institutions have been able to periodically negotiate their reimbursement rates directly with the federal government; university rates average about  28 percent. However, rates can vary widely depending on factors such as geographic cost differences and the type of research, and some institutions receive indirect reimbursement rates of more than 50 percent of their direct grants. 

    Although the NIH argued in court that indirect costs are “difficult to oversee” as a justification for cutting them, the plaintiffs refuted that claim, pointing to a complex negotiation process and regular audit schedule that’s long been in place to ensure the funds are being used to support NIH research. 

    In fiscal year 2024, the NIH sent about $26 billion to more than 500 grant recipients connected to colleges—$7 billion of which went to indirect costs. 

    Saving or Reallocating $4B?

    This isn’t Trump’s first attempt to cap indirect costs, which Elon Musk—the unelected billionaire bureaucrat overseeing the newly created Department of Government Efficiency—recently characterized as a “rip-off” on X, the social media site he owns.  

    In 2017, Congress rebuked President Trump’s attempt to cap indirect costs, and it has written language into every appropriations bill since specifically prohibiting  “deviations” from negotiated rates. Given that, Kelley asked the Trump Administration’s legal team, how in his second term, Trump “can unilaterally slash these previously negotiated indirect cost rates which Congress prevented him from doing previously?” 

    “The money that is saved—it’s not being saved, it’s being reallocated—will be taken from indirect costs and filed into new grants that will be using the same funding formula,” said Lea, who told the judge he was using air quotes around the word saved. “The money is not being pocketed or being shipped somewhere else. It’s being applied back into other research in a way that best fits NIH and what will best serve the public’s health.”

    But Lea’s claims that the money will simply be reallocated contradicted the NIH’s own social media post from Feb. 7, which said the plan “will save more than $4B a year effective immediately,” and Kelley asked for an explanation.  

    In response, Lea said the NIH’s “tweet was at best sort of a misunderstanding of what the guidance does.” 

    The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, did not immediately respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment on whether it plans to issue a widespread public correction on social media and its other platforms to clarify its policy and inform taxpayers that their plan to cap indirect costs is not intended to save them any money. As of Friday afternoon, the post was still up on X.

    Layoffs, Canceled Clinical Trials

    But Unikowsky, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said that funneling money away from indirect costs would still harm the nation’s esteemed scientific enterprise, which is grounded in university research. 

    “Indirect costs are real costs associated with doing research,” said Unikowsky, pointing to the California Institute of Technology as an example. The institute spent $200 million to build a state-of-the-art laboratory and is counting on indirect cost reimbursements from the NIH to help pay off the debt it incurred to construct it. 

    “There’s going to be a hole in Cal Tech’s research budget” and the “money is going to have to come from somewhere else,” Unikowsky added.

    Unikowsky also listed nine different institutions, including the Universities of Florida, Kansas and Oregon, that have said they will have to lay off skilled workers who support medical research, including nurses and technicians, if the cap goes into effect. 

    Lea, the lawyer for the Trump Administration, countered that destabilizing university budgets doesn’t amount to immediate and permanent harm warranting injunctive relief on the rate caps. 

    “That’s not an irreparable thing, or else every business that’s in a money pinch could just come in and get an injunction,” he said. “I understand that many institutions would prefer to use endowments and tuition for other purposes, but unless they’re barred from doing so—and the inability to do so would cause some non-monetary harm—that’s not irreparable harm.”

    Although Kelley gave no indication on when or how she plans to rule, some university leaders who listened to the hearing came away optimistic that she’ll favor the plaintiff’s arguments. 

    “We look forward to the judge’s ruling,” said Katherine Newman, provost at the University of California which is one of the universities suing the NIH. “[We] maintain our position that the Administration’s misguided attempt to cut vital NIH funding is not only arbitrary and capricious but will stifle lifesaving biomedical research, hobble U.S. economic competitiveness and ultimately jeopardize the health of Americans who depend on cutting-edge medical science and innovation.”

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  • Faculty Profile vs. LinkedIn Profile for Academics

    Faculty Profile vs. LinkedIn Profile for Academics

    This article isn’t about which is better for you: faculty profile or LinkedIn profile. It would be great for your online presence if you had both. Hi, I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I help Higher Education faculty, researchers, and scientists with their digital presence for academics.

    I just got off a call with an Associate Professor client. We worked on both his LinkedIn profile and faculty profile together (which just went live, yay!). This professor is really an in-person networker. When we 1st met he said, “people know me,” but if you searched online? At the time there wasn’t a comprehensive academic profile or online presence that could help people know who he is now.

    Are you “not really a social media person” too? I’ve written about how I still recommend having a filled out LinkedIn profile if you’re an academic who “doesn’t want to be on social media.” It’s okay to not post on social media. It’s okay to lurk. It’s okay to like or repost without sharing original posts yourself. There are many ways to be on social media as an academic. And what feels right for you now may change in the future too. While I love personal academic websites as a long-term solution for professors, researchers, and scientists, having a website isn’t right for everyone.

    However you choose to have an online presence (if that’s a goal for you at all) is fine. There isn’t a one size fits all solution for academics and researchers online.

    As an academic who wants to have a stronger online presence, it’s a best practice to update your faculty profile and your LinkedIn profile at least 1/year.

    A few years ago I asked a professor client to reach out to his college to ask if they had specific guidelines for their faculty profiles. We were redoing his academic bio. His done for you bio writing package included a new faculty profile. When we got on our call to chat about it, he started laughing, because when the college replied to him, they’d sent back his own faculty profile as “a great example.” 🤣

    You can have a “great example” of a faculty profile, and still feel like it doesn’t reflect who you are and what you value as an academic now.

    We grinned because the profile we envisioned for him was such an improvement. I say that not to disregard or belittle the work he’d done on his own faculty profile. Like most professors, he’d only ever written his own bios. But the time we created to talk through who he is, his story, and the change he’s working to create in the world? It made such an impact for the words we ultimately chose to share.

    Your faculty profile is the 1st place for many of your students, colleagues, and people in your field will go to learn more about you. Some faculty profiles are robust with space for things like your bio, teaching, research, awards, and university media mentions. Others are streamlined with the details people most need like your job title and department and recent publications. Most professors I’ve chatted with express a lack of enthusiasm for their faculty profile, “it’s there, but it isn’t exciting.” And that’s fine, your professor or researcher profile on your university’s website doesn’t have to be enhanced unless you want it to be.

    Problems faculty have run into updating their faculty profiles

    I really like the mix of having both your faculty profile and your LinkedIn profile because professors who come to me with help for their online presence have occasionally reached out in distress:

    “No one knew who to ask. I don’t think any of my colleagues have updated their faculty profile in years.”

    “The person in our department who knew how to update the faculty profiles left, no one’s been able to update their profile in over a year.”

    “My university moved all our faculty profiles to an intranet…that was my whole online presence.”

    “They said they’re updating the faculty profile system. There won’t be an option to update my faculty profile for months.”

    “The IT people said no emails on faculty profiles, so they’re gone. How are people supposed to get in touch with me?”

    That last one had me on high alert. When I ask professors, “How do people usually get in touch with you?” They typically say something like, “People look up my faculty profile, my emails right there.”

    Some universities have removed email addresses from faculty profiles in hopes of limiting phishing emails. A few have eliminated faculty profiles altogether. I get that there are IT limitations and protection needs that sometimes force these decisions. But I also deeply mourn the loss of connection that happened to each of those faculty members overnight. What things were lost? What connection?

    It’s the same way I feel about adjunct professors, lecturers, and staff who make such an impact on campus, but often aren’t given space on their university website beyond their listed name.

    • You deserve a space online if you want one.
    • You can choose to have a stronger online presence if you want one.
    • You have agency in how you show up online.

    Updating your faculty profile

    The most frequent audience for your faculty profile is your students, colleagues, and people at your university. But those aren’t the only people who may visit your faculty profile. These are steps you can take to improve your faculty or researcher profile on your university’s website.

    • When you Google your name, does your faculty profile show up? Tip: Use a private or incognito browser mode for results not personalized to you.
    • Visit your faculty profile. What types of information are available? Does anything feel like it’s missing?
    • Make list of what needs to be updated. For instance, are the keywords for your research out of date? Do your recent publications appear there, or is that section a few years old? What about your bio? Does it still reflect who you are now? Many professors have only filled out a portion of their faculty profile, leaving unused sections blank. This is a good opportunity to improve your online presence by thinking about which section may be helpful at add in. What might help your students or other researchers in your field long-term? You don’t have to do the work to make these changes now. Making a list of the updates you want will help you prioritize your time later.
    • Find out who to contact about implementing your updates. You might do this before actually writing the updates in case you get word that “the system is changing” or “we’ll have a new format for faculty profiles soon.” I don’t want to you to makeover your faculty profile and then not be able to implement those changes. If you have the ability to make changes to your faculty profile yourself, skip this step.
    • Add a time to your calendar to gather materials, writing, or any update you want to have on your faculty profile. Block more time on your calendar than you anticipate just in case.

    Good luck with updating your faculty profile! If you can only focus on 1 thing to improve, choose your academic bio. Your bio is a living document that can adapt to fit your needs. I had a great conversation with Dr. Echo Rivera where I share my top tips for your academic bio. I hope you find it helpful.

    Don’t want to write your own academic bio?

    There are many ways to have a stronger online presence as a professor or researcher. You don’t need to work with me to be more intentional about how you show up online as an academic. Not sure where you should start? Join my free online presence course to help you know where to focus your time and energy.

    I’m happy to help you if you want a done for you academic bio too. It’s hard to be introspective about yourself. It may feel “uncomfortable” or like it’s time “too focused on me.” It’s okay if your brain wants to focus on other things instead of writing a new bio for yourself. That’s okay!

    When we work together on done for you bio writing, you’ll get general use bios at different word lengths so you always have something ready to go. It also includes a custom bio like your new faculty profile done for you so you have a document ready to send to the person who implements changes at your university. If you want a “template” easy for you to update and adapt to their academic life for years to come, let’s chat about working together.

    I like LinkedIn profiles for academics because they have many more capabilities than your faculty profile. You’re not job searching. You may be wondering, “does LinkedIn still make sense for me?” Let’s find out.

    LinkedIn is great for faculty and researchers to…

    Which of these benefits of having a LinkedIn presence as an academic stand out to you?

    • help people get in touch with you
    • show up in internet search results with a profile you control
    • share who they are and what they care about (in more engaging format than your CV)
    • connect with people in your research / teaching field
    • connect with your alma maters
    • be in network with your past affiliations
    • reconnect with former colleagues
    • find the people you’re looking for (LinkedIn has advanced search features)
    • connect with people across research fields and disciplines
    • connect with people in other regions around the world
    • invite deeper engagement with your research
    • help your research find an audience that cares
    • connect with editors and people in publishing
    • reach people who your research helps most
    • engage with the public
    • reach policymakers and practitioners
    • meet potential collaborators and partners
    • meet with potential community partners
    • meet potential corporate partners
    • attract potential research funders
    • be open to media requests and engagement
    • invite aligned opportunities for yourself and your students
    • help your students have a larger network
    • share a short recommendation for your student
    • connect with your alumni and former mentees with ease
    • reshare posts your audience may find useful
    • have conversations that invite people to participate (like in the comments of a post)
    • have conversations privately, via messages or groups
    • share media related to your Experiences and Education
    • show a bit more of your story than faculty profiles typically allow
    • start a newsletter
    • publish articles

    Whoa, that list got longer than I expected. That was just a short brainstorm session too.

    Did 1 or more of those feel like a good reason for you to be more intentional about your LinkedIn presence as an academic?

    P.S. If you’re finding this article helpful, save it to your bookmarks for later. Please share it as a resource if you think a friend or colleague would find it helpful.

    Here are 3 ways to get your LinkedIn profile if you want to do-it-yourself

    In workshops for grad students and faculty, I’ve recommended blocking your calendar, to set time aside in your agenda for your LinkedIn profile. I’m someone who likes deep focused work, so that big chunk of time is often the best way for me to focus. How about you?

    Here are 3 other possibilities to explore when it comes to fitting your LinkedIn profile into your academic life:

    • Do it section-by-section. When I 1st release my LinkedIn Profile for Professors and Researchers course, it was a challenge. Each week a new lesson was released helping you update just 1 section of your LinkedIn profile. Breaking your LinkedIn profile into smaller chunks let’s to create transformation for your online presence in a schedule that works for your life. Don’t feel like you need to change everything all at once. Any small change or improvement you make can help people better connect with your online presence as an academic.
    • Set a time to co-work on your LinkedIn profile. Are you someone that likes co-working? Get some friends, colleagues, or even your students together for a LinkedIn co-working session. You can each update your profiles, and even organize a quick review of each other’s at the end to check for typos. This can be virtual or in person, whatever you prefer.
    • Create intentional space for your lab, department, or school. Even though this is more work, you may have better motivation or more positive feelings about the time you take for your LinkedIn profile if you’re helping other people. You don’t need me to come in for a workshop at your university to create a professional development opportunity for LinkedIn you can all benefit from.

    It’s okay if none of these work for you. If you’re someone who’s been wanting to do it yourself and you just haven’t? It’s okay to get support. Each of my professor clients who’ve chosen a done for you LinkedIn profile had the capability to do it themselves. Some even took my LinkedIn Profile course and found “I just can’t make the time,” and “I just want it done for me.” You can have a stronger online presence through LinkedIn, and we can totally work together on this.

    For those of you wanting to DIY your LinkedIn profile as an academic, I hope these tips for your LinkedIn profile help you:

    Don’t have the time for your LinkedIn profile?

    Need to prioritize other things in your academic life? I totally understand. First, it’s totally okay if LinkedIn isn’t a goal for you right now. You don’t need a stronger online presence unless you want one.

    Find free resources to help you on The Social Academic blog, podcast, and YouTube channel. You’ve got this (whenever you’re ready)! 🌟

    My professor clients can do their own LinkedIn profile, for sure. They just don’t have the time. They’re not job searching. They want a stronger online presence. They’re busy academics who want to feel better connected with people in their field and reach people their research/teaching/leadership supports. They need to focus on their academic priorities and their personal ones, like their family.

    You don’t have to do it yourself if you don’t want to. I’ll build your academic LinkedIn profile for you on your VIP Day. We’ll have a planning meeting to talk about your CV, review your existing profile, and chat about your goals. Then, on your VIP Day your LinkedIn profile will be fully done-for-you. After, we’ll meet on Zoom for your Review and Training Meeting, make any needed changes in real time. We’ll build your capacity and practice using LinkedIn for your specific needs. What works for one professor may not be a good fit for you, so we’ll talk about solutions personalized for your life/goals.

    Who do I typically work with on the LinkedIn VIP Days service? You may want a done-for-you profile if you just don’t have the time to do it yourself (or you don’t want to). My LinkedIn profile clients have been

    • Mid career academics
    • Senior academics
    • Higher Ed administrators
    • Principal Investigators (PIs)

    Early career researchers, we may create a greater impact for your academic life by partnering on done for you bio writing instead. Not that I wouldn’t be happy to do your LinkedIn profile for you. Just know that you don’t need to work with me for a great LinkedIn profile. I promise you can do this yourself if you want to.

    If you’re like, “actually I don’t got this.” Or, “I know I’m not gonna do this on my own.” That’s okay. I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I’ve been helping professors feel confident when showing up online since 2018 through personal websites and social media. I’m here to help you too.

    Let’s chat on a no pressure Zoom call about your LinkedIn VIP Day for a done-for-you profile. Or, a 1 hour LinkedIn consultation with me. Schedule a time on my online calendar.

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  • OCR’s new Title VI letter: FIRE’s analysis and recommendations

    OCR’s new Title VI letter: FIRE’s analysis and recommendations

    Last week, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights published a “Dear Colleague Letter” describing educational institutions’ obligations under federal anti-discrimination law and explaining how OCR will interpret Title VI and other legal authorities.

    Since FIRE is, at its core, an organization dedicated to free expression, we reviewed OCR’s letter through that lens. In this blog entry, we offer recommendations to OCR to ensure that it does not unlawfully censor educational institutions or pressure them to censor their students and faculty, and we ask for additional clarification of the letter. We also offer recommendations to colleges and universities to prevent overreactions to the DCL and to ensure they continue to protect student and faculty free speech rights.

    Overview of Title VI and OCR’s ‘Dear Colleague’ Letter

    Title VI prohibits educational institutions receiving federal funding from discriminating against individuals on the basis of race, color, or national origin. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. UNC, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down racial preferences in college admissions for violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of Civil Rights Act of 1964. In interpreting Title VI, the Equal Protection Clause, and the SSFA decision, OCR’s letter states:

    Although SFFA addressed admissions decisions, the Supreme Court’s holding applies more broadly. At its core, the test is simple: If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law [ . . .] Put simply, educational institutions may neither separate or segregate students based on race, nor distribute benefits or burdens based on race.

    The letter also advises institutions to:

    1. Ensure that their policies and actions comply with existing civil rights law;
    2. Cease all efforts to circumvent prohibitions on the use of race by relying on proxies or other indirect means to accomplish such ends; and
    3. Cease all reliance on third-party contractors, clearinghouses, or aggregators that are being used by the institutions in an effort to circumvent prohibited uses of race. 

    The letter warns that “[i]nstitutions that fail to comply with federal civil rights law may, consistent with applicable law, face potential loss of federal funding.”

    Irrespective of whether one agrees or disagrees with race-conscious policies, OCR is likely within its authority to prohibit institutions from providing or denying benefits to individuals based on their race. But while FIRE has no institutional position on affirmative action programs, we routinely see government actors use anti-discrimination rationales to censor First Amendment-protected speech. 

    Recommendations for OCR

    FIRE has seen a number of states seek to rein in DEI-related administrative offices at their state educational institutions. We’ve told those legislatures repeatedly that, while they have significant authority to manage nonacademic bureaucracies at their public higher education institutions, they cannot restrict which ideas can be taught in the college classroom, including on topics related to “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or related concepts. They also cannot restrict student organizations from forming around or advocating on behalf of DEI initiatives.

    OCR’s new Dear Colleague letter chides educational institutions for “routinely us[ing] race as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring, training, and other institutional programming.” [Emphasis added.] It states that over the past few years, schools have “toxically indoctrinated” students, asserting that institutions have been “smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline.” [Emphasis added.]

    West Virginia Executive Order on ‘DEI’ unconstitutionally limits university classroom discussions.

    News

    West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order to eliminate DEI practices in state agencies and organizations that receive state money.


    Read More

    While OCR is free to criticize colleges for overstepping the bounds of the law on  DEI-related issues over the past few years, it must be careful when turning that criticism into policy. When a regulatory agency with the authority to cut off all federal funding to institutions cites certain types of “programming” as evidence that institutions could be violating federal anti-discrimination law, it risks chilling speech on those topics. That is especially true when the term “programming” is left undefined in the letter. Private institutions also maintain broad First Amendment rights of their own, and threats to punish them for their own speech about DEI or affirmative action risks violating the free speech rights of those institutions. 

    To abate any confusion arising from the letter, OCR should provide additional guidance to describe in more detail the types of programming it thinks violates Title VI and other anti-discrimination laws. Does OCR seek to prohibit institutions from hosting outside speakers who espouse disfavored ideas about DEI? Does OCR seek to limit particular classwork or research at institutions? If so, it has strayed beyond the First Amendment’s boundary. 

    To avoid chilling protected speech, OCR should clarify the distinction between providing benefits or preferences to individuals based on race or other protected characteristics, and pure speech about DEI and affirmative action — and make clear that it is not banning the latter. OCR must also be careful about regulating institutional trainings at private institutions in ways that violate institutional free speech rights. 

    As FIRE has made clear many times over the course of several administrations, OCR is bound by the First Amendment and cannot order or compel colleges and universities to violate it. 

    Courts have struck down government attempts to regulate DEI-related trainings offered by private businesses. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, for example, upheld an injunction blocking Florida’s Stop WOKE Act insofar as it applied to private business trainings, writing that “by limiting its restrictions to a list of ideas designated as offensive, the Act targets speech based on its content. And by barring only speech that endorses any of those ideas, it penalizes certain viewpoints—the greatest First Amendment sin.” 

    FIRE hopes OCR will quickly provide institutions with additional clarity about the full scope of its Title VI interpretations. 

    FIRE is challenging other parts of the Stop WOKE Act that restrict classroom instruction in higher education on First Amendment grounds. After a federal district court issued a preliminary injunction preventing the state from enforcing those sections of the law, our case is now before the Eleventh Circuit.  

    To the extent OCR is concerned about the lawfulness of certain mandatory training programs, OCR could require state institutions to make public their training materials on DEI-related issues. FIRE’s Intellectual Freedom Protection Act, which prohibits public colleges from requiring mandatory DEI statements — or any other political litmus test — as a condition of hiring or promotion, contains a provision that could be a useful starting point: 

    Each public institution of higher education in the state shall post and make publicly available all training materials used for students, faculty, and staff, on all matters of nondiscrimination, diversity, equity, inclusion, race, ethnicity, sex, or bias, and all of its policies and guidance on those issues, on its website. 

    Such a requirement would provide both regulators and the public with a better idea of how institutions train its students about DEI-related topics. 

    Recommendations for institutions interpreting recent executive orders, memos, and letters

    If there is a conflict — real or perceived — between federal guidance and the First Amendment, the First Amendment prevails. For public institutions, this means they cannot violate faculty or student speech or associational rights regardless of federal agency guidance. For private institutions, this means federal guidance cannot unlawfully restrict the institution’s speech or pressure the institution to unlawfully suppress the speech or association of their faculty or students. 

    Campus administrators nationwide should not over-read this Dear Colleague Letter to justify censoring student or faculty expression. It would be wise to read it in conjunction with President Trump’s Jan. 21 Executive Order “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” the directive that likely led to this letter and that contains provisions expressly protecting free speech and academic freedom:

    (b)  This order does not prevent State or local governments, Federal contractors, or Federally-funded State and local educational agencies or institutions of higher education from engaging in First Amendment-protected speech.

    (c)  This order does not prohibit persons teaching at a Federally funded institution of higher education as part of a larger course of academic instruction from advocating for, endorsing, or promoting the unlawful employment or contracting practices prohibited by this order.

    Since the Justice Department has a role in enforcing Title VI alongside that of the Education Department’s OCR, institutions should also note Attorney General Bondi’s memo on “Ending Illegal DEI and DEIA Discrimination and Preferences.” Her memo expressly notes:

    This memorandum is intended to encompass programs, initiatives, or policies that discriminate, exclude, or divide individuals based on race or sex. It does not prohibit educational, cultural, or historical observances—such as Black History Month, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or similar events—that celebrate diversity, recognize historical contributions, and promote awareness without engaging in exclusion or discrimination. 

    When read together in the context of these companion documents, the new DCL should provide no justification for institutions to believe they must censor students, student organizations, or faculty, or rush to cancel university-sponsored cultural events or celebrations. Moreover, doing so may well violate the First Amendment at public universities—and again, courts will always give precedence to constitutional guarantees over guidance and regulations. Colleges will, however, need to end any policy or programs that actively separate individuals or provide benefits based on race.

    Given the tight timeline for compliance, FIRE hopes OCR will quickly provide institutions with additional clarity about the full scope of its Title VI interpretations. In the meantime, we again remind colleges and universities to honor their constitutional duties or institutional promises to protect the freedom of expression and academic freedom of their students and faculty. 

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  • NIH cuts remain on hold as judge extends temporary pause

    NIH cuts remain on hold as judge extends temporary pause

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    A federal judge extended an emergency restraining order Friday against the National Institutes of Health, temporarily preventing the agency from making massive cuts to indirect research funding. 

    The restraining order bars NIH from implementing a 15% cap on indirect cost reimbursement and requires the agency to file regular status reports confirming disbursement of funds. U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley, a Biden appointee, is considering a more permanent injunction against NIH’s plan after nearly two hours of oral arguments Friday. 

    NIH unveiled the new policy earlier in February. Historically, institutions negotiate their own indirect cost reimbursement rates with the agency, with an average of 27% to 28%. The change was met swiftly with multiple lawsuits, including by higher education groups and 22 state attorneys general. The cases were considered together at the hearing Friday.

    Several universities have already frozen hiring and taken other budgetary measures amid the NIH funding uncertainty, despite Kelley’s initial pause on the funding cap. 

    The funding for indirect costs — also known as facilities and administrative, or F&A, costs — covers a wide array of staffing and infrastructure for research activity.

    “Indirect costs are the backbone of IHEs [institutions of higher education] research programs and cover everything from utilities to facilities and equipment maintenance to payroll for faculty and staff to compliance programs, hazardous waste disposal, and more,” 22 state attorneys general said in their original request for a temporary restraining order on NIH. “They quite literally keep the lights on.”

    Brian Lea, an attorney for NIH, said at Friday’s hearing that money saved by cutting and capping F&A funding would be “ploughed into” funding for research costs. However, in a Feb. 7 post from the agency on the social media site X, NIH said the funding cap “will save more than $4B a year effective immediately.” 

    Asked by Kelley about the post, Lea said that it was “at best a misunderstanding” of NIH’s guidance.

    Plaintiffs attorneys argued that the F&A cap violates federal laws and regulations, pointing out that Congress passed an appropriations bill during President Donald Trump’s first term that prohibits modifications to NIH’s indirect cost funding. 

    Lea maintained that NIH’s guidance was compliant with regulations and statutes and within the “broad discretionary power of the executive branch” to allocate funding. 

    Attorneys for the plaintiffs further argued that an injunction was necessary to prevent “immediate and irreparable” harm, pointing to numerous universities that have detailed how their research, budgets and infrastructure would suffer from the cap. An official at Yale University, for example, said in court papers that the NIH rate cap could threaten the viability of many of its ongoing clinical trials for medical research.

    “It is not hyperbole to say that, absent immediate injunctive relief, Plaintiff States’ IHEs will face catastrophic financial consequences, which could result in layoffs and furloughs, research program closures, financial defaults, and disruptions to clinical trials, potentially jeopardizing people’s lives and health,” the attorneys general said in their motion, filed earlier in February. 

    Lea questioned whether harms such as funding losses were irreparable, suggesting that they could be undone later through private funding or operational adjustments.

    As the case winds on, NIH has laid off more than 1,000 employees, according to press reports.

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  • Another reprieve for gainful employment, financial value transparency reporting deadline

    Another reprieve for gainful employment, financial value transparency reporting deadline

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    Dive Brief:

    • The U.S. Department of Education is extending the reporting deadline for the gainful employment and financial value transparency regulations to Sept. 30, according to an agency announcement last week. 
    • The seven-month extension aims to give college officials more time to submit the required information and to allow institutions that have already sent in their data to make corrections. 
    • The Education Department has pushed back the reporting deadline several times amid concerns that colleges didn’t have enough time or guidance to provide the data required under the new regulations. This extension, the first one under the Trump administration, will be the last, the announcement said.

    Dive Insight:

    The Education Department originally asked colleges to submit the gainful employment and financial value transparency data by July 2024, but higher education institutions requested more time given last year’s bumpy rollout of the revamped Free Application for Federal Student Aid. 

    The Biden administration released final gainful employment and financial value transparency regulations in 2023. 

    Under the gainful employment rules, career education programs must prove that their graduates earn enough money to pay off their student loans and that at least half of them make more than workers in their state who only have high school diplomas. Programs that fail those tests risk losing their access to Title IV federal financial aid. 

    Although the financial value transparency regulations don’t threaten federal financial aid, they create new reporting requirements for all colleges. Under the rule, the Education Department will post data collected from institutions about their programs — such as costs and debt burdens — on a consumer-facing website to help students make informed decisions about their college attendance. 

    The Biden administration extended the deadline for reporting requirements three times. Despite the delays, Education Department officials said late last year that they still expected to produce data in the spring to help students select their colleges. 

    With its latest announcement, the Trump administration’s Education Department is delaying that timeline also. 

    “The Department does not plan to produce any FVT/GE metrics prior to the new deadline and will take no enforcement or other punitive actions against institutions who have been unable to complete reporting to date,” it said. 

    It’s so far unclear how the Trump administration will handle the gainful employment regulations. In President Donald Trump’s first term, then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded the Obama-era version of the rules, saying they unfairly targeted the for-profit college sector. 

    The Education Department is facing at least one lawsuit over the Biden administration’s version of the gainful employment rule. However, a federal judge earlier this month paused legal proceedings for 90 days after the new administration sought more time “to become familiar with and evaluate their position regarding the issues in the case,” according to court documents.

    The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators — one of the organizations that pushed for a delay — applauded the move to extend the regulatory reporting deadline.

    The change “is a sensible and welcome decision that will give financial aid offices much needed breathing room while they navigate unresolved issues in submitting their data and make necessary corrections to ensure the data they submit is accurate,” NASFAA Interim President and CEO Beth Maglione said in a statement last week.

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  • SCOTUS decision safeguards schools’ E-rate discounts

    SCOTUS decision safeguards schools’ E-rate discounts

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    The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday unanimously ruled that reimbursement requests filed with the federal E-rate program, which subsidizes internet access for schools and libraries, qualify as claims under the False Claims Act, allowing a whistleblower suit to proceed against a telecommunications company.

    Whistleblower Todd Heath alleged in 2008 that telecommunications provider Wisconsin Bell overcharged schools and libraries by not offering them discounted rates required under the E-rate program and submitting reimbursement requests for higher amounts than E-rate should have paid. The False Claims Act allows civilians to bring lawsuits against companies on behalf of the government when federal money is at stake.

    E-rate is administered by the Universal Service Administrative Co. under the direction of the Federal Communications Commission. Wisconsin Bell argued that because the Universal Service Administrative Co. is a private, nonprofit corporation and program money comes from fees collected by service providers, its reimbursement requests didn’t qualify as claims under the False Claims Act.

    Under that law, a request for money qualifies as a claim if the government “provides or has provided any portion of the money or property requested or demanded.” Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court, rejected Wisconsin Bell’s arguments because the government provided part of the funds that schools and libraries applied for.

    “In the years in which those requests were made, the Government transferred more than $100 million from the Treasury into the pool of funds used to pay E-Rate subsidies,” Kagan wrote. “That is enough to create a ‘claim’ under the Act, and to allow a suit alleging fraud to go forward.”

    Wisconsin Bell’s argument that the $100 million was entirely from fees collected by carriers also overlooked the government’s role in delivering that money to the program, Kagan wrote, stating that the government was not a “passive throughway” for those funds.

    The Supreme Court sent Wisconsin Bell, Inc. v. United States, ex rel. Todd Heath back to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for its whistleblower claims to proceed.

    The Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition hailed the ruling as helping to strengthen enforcement measures and safeguard broadband funding.

    “This decision is a win for schools and libraries who rely on the E-rate program for essential broadband services,” said John Windhausen, the coalition’s executive director, in a statement. “By clarifying the applicability of the False Claims Act to E-rate reimbursements, the Court helps ensure that schools and libraries are able to obtain prices that are no higher than the rates charged to similarly situated customers. This ruling helps improve the efficiency of the Universal Service Fund and the E-Rate program.”

    Attorney Allyson Ho, who represented Wisconsin Bell in the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    The narrow scope of the ruling, however, makes it difficult to forecast how the justices might rule on another pending E-rate matter this term. In a case consolidated from two pre-existing ones FCC v. Consumers’ Research and Schools, Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition v. Consumers’ Research — the program’s future could be decided as the court determines the constitutionality of the funding mechanism for the FCC’s Universal Service Fund, which is overseen by USAC.

    “The court was very clear in its emphasis that it has no opinion on issues regarding the constitutionality of the universal fund and of USAC’s role that it will decide in that upcoming Consumers case,” said Noelle Ellerson Ng, associate executive director of advocacy and governance for AASA, The School Superintendents Association. 

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