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  • Five Ways to Use Group Work to Engage College Students (opinion)

    Five Ways to Use Group Work to Engage College Students (opinion)

    A few years ago, we hired an adjunct professor to teach a three-hour night class. After a few weeks, he came to us in frustration because he couldn’t get the students to discuss the material, and when he asked if there were any questions, they never responded.

    We probed more. Upon further discussion, we found that his course plan for each night was a three-hour lecture using PowerPoint slides; he didn’t take class planning beyond that. He felt overwhelmed by the responsibility for teaching the content of the course, but he didn’t know where to begin to get the students to contribute, ask questions and actively participate. We immediately put on our coaching hats, working to help him actively engage his class so that students had a deeper learning experience.

    We have heard about this frustration with getting students to participate actively in conversations with many other faculty members, in one-on-one coaching or during faculty development sessions. This often happens because faculty members are relying on lecture because that was the way their own professors taught and often the way they were trained to teach in their graduate programs.

    When moving into team projects, here are four key actions to take:

    1. Assign students to their teams in a way that is transparent and purposeful. Definitely don’t let students pick their own groups.
    2. Show students your grading rubric when you assign the project. We guarantee your students will be more successful when you do this.
    3. Train students on how to conduct peer evaluation, and include peer evaluations as part of the grade.
    4. Check in frequently with teams to see how they are progressing, and to answer any questions. Your students will appreciate this.

    In addition, the distractions that students face when preparing for class and during class time are increasing exponentially. Many are not doing the reading, some are on their phones, more than a few are shopping online during class and some just don’t have the bandwidth left to participate because of their very busy lives outside of school.

    How do we help these faculty members start to turn things around? In our experience as professors, group work is a great way to help instructors, new and experienced, to actively engage classes in discussions.

    The two of us have had extensive experience using in-class group work and executing in-depth team projects across many different disciplines. On most surveys, employers report that one of the top skills they want from college graduates is the ability to work in teams. Given what employers want, we’d of course like everyone to move away from lectures to engaging students with project-based teamwork. But not everyone is comfortable moving to a system that is so different from their current teaching methods.

    So how can we help our struggling adjunct faculty member, and other professors who want to more actively engage their students? Here are five quick and easy ideas to try.

    1. A think-pair-share exercise. This occurs when you pose a question, give students a brief time to reflect and think, and then ask them to turn to their neighbor and share their ideas. If you want them to develop their thoughts even more, you can ask them to turn to another pair and join them to discuss the issue (how many times you do this depends on the size of the class); you can even join up more dyads. Then ask the groups to report back with a few key points.
    2. Prepared discussion questions. Prepare a series of discussion questions based on the reading for that day or about a problem on which the class is working. Next, organize the class into four- or five-person groups. Give students a reasonable amount of time to work through the questions. While they are working, make sure to circulate through the groups, answer questions, make comments to illustrate some of the ideas and provide prompts to help them. At the conclusion of the discussion, have each group report on the highlights of their discussion and use the opportunity to give a series of mini-lectures on points they described and things they might have missed.
    3. Learning through discussion. Developed by William Fawcett Hill, this method is an even more structured approach to group work. We used this method in an upper-level theory course with excellent results. Learning through discussion puts considerable responsibility on a group leader, but if the groups rotate this leadership position across the group each week, it should even out the work (and as a bonus, it can help students develop team leadership skills). The leader synthesizes the material and initiates the discussion. The leader doesn’t teach the group but leads them through an eight-step process to identify major themes in the material and how it integrates with previous knowledge and application. Keeping students in the same groups helps them get used to working together and develop a sense of camaraderie. If you find you need to hold students accountable to help some less motivated ones prepare, you can collect their notes and have the group do quick peer evaluations.
    1. Each one, teach one. These sessions are a great way to have students cover a considerable amount of literature in what might be a psychologically safe environment for them. Divide your class into groups of four to five people. Then assign as many readings as you have members of the groups. Each person in the group completes one reading and then leads a group discussion about the article, partially teaching it to the other members of the group. You can have them accomplish all the outside readings during one week, or across multiple weeks, depending on your needs. Students learn from each other, and the one leading the discussion has to spend time learning to dissect one paper. 
    2. Team projects. Ad hoc group work as we’ve described in the first four ideas is a great way to help students to learn course material for the long haul and spark discussion. Team projects can do this even better. They do, however, take a little more work. Once you are comfortable with breaking the class into groups for ad hoc discussion, you can think about planning a team project. If you’ve never run one before, you may want to start with a small project, something short term (think three to five weeks). As you gain more experience and learn what works for you, your style, and your material, you can then move to bigger, longer projects.

    These are just a few of the ways that you can use groups, or even teams, to actively engage students in the material.

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  • How AI Challenges Notions of Authorship (opinion)

    How AI Challenges Notions of Authorship (opinion)

    Have you seen the Apple Intelligence writing tools commercial featuring a dim-witted office drone named Warren? Tapping away on his iPhone, he writes a goofy, slangy email to his boss and then has the app transform his prose by selecting “Professional.” The manager reads the resulting concise memo and, stunned at the source, asks himself, “Warren?”

    Warren has a ghostwriter. In fact, we all do.

    I’m hardly alone in thinking AI chat bots such as ChatGPT are a lot like ghostwriting. In an Inside Higher Ed blog post, “ChatGPT: A Different Kind of Ghostwriting,” Ali Lincoln, herself a ghost, finds nothing wrong with using AI to write an outline or even a first draft. After all, she argues, “in both writing and editing, we’ve used some element of AI for many years, such as software that evaluates the readability of a written piece, programs to check writing like Grammarly, and even spell-check and autocorrect.”

    An especially intriguing piece appeared in, of all places, Annals of Surgical Oncology: “A Ghostwriter for the Masses: ChatGPT and the Future of Writing.” The author, a physician, writes mostly positively of the potential uses of ChatGPT to assist in medical and scientific writing.

    Throwing this discussion into sharper relief, there is even Ghostwriter OpenAI ChatGPT, an add-in that embeds ChatGPT directly into Microsoft Office. With Ghostwriter, you simply open Word and have the chat bot on the same screen as your document—a ghost in the machine.

    These arguments and recent AI developments have caught my attention, because throughout most of my academic career I moonlighted as a corporate ghostwriter. I wrote magazine articles on scientific topics for a large technical company, articles that were published under someone else’s name, typically a scientist or engineer whom I interviewed for the piece.

    My favorite moment in that role came when I sat down with a manager who was new to the company to discuss a writing project. She handed me an offprint of an op-ed by the division vice president, accompanied by his photo.

    “Study this,” she said, a bit officiously. “Everything you need to know is in his article.”

    Maybe you see where this is going. Notwithstanding the VP’s smiling face, I’d written every word.

    Ghostwriting can lead to this sort of haziness about authorial authenticity. But is it unethical?

    Certainly, I didn’t think so. I produced what was essentially the voice of the corporation placed in the mouths of its subject matter experts (SMEs) and executives, who were either too busy or incapable of writing the articles. The company hoped readers would contact the SMEs to learn more; they weren’t interested in anyone talking to me. And I was happy to remain in the shadows (yes, with my check).

    I explained as much to students in my professional writing classes, where I focused on the business of writing, pointing out that CEOs are no more likely to write their own op-ed pieces than are U.S. presidents to write their own speeches. But they were nevertheless uneasy with the practice. They couldn’t imagine writing anything without getting a byline, even when I explained the concept of work for hire.

    Ghostwriting is a kind of imposture, presenting to the world writing that is not one’s own. Nevertheless, like the spirits for which it is named, ghostwriting exists in a shadowy realm where things are not what they seem. It inhabits an ethical twilight zone.

    Kathleen Hall Jamieson stated as much in her groundbreaking work, Eloquence in an Electronic Age: The Transformation of Political Speechmaking:

    “When students fail to acknowledge the sources from which their essays are drawn or, worse, when they expropriate the language of another, we righteously cry plagiarism and penalize them; once the student attains the status of senator, congressperson, or president, the rules change. Feigning authorship of another’s thoughts and words is then not only expected but publicly funded.”

    When Jamieson wrote those words, in 1988, she could not have foreseen how ChatGPT would make ghostwriting available to everyone, not just politicians and celebrities, making questions about its ethicality even more pressing.

    I plugged into Ghostwriter OpenAI ChatGPT and asked it to expound briefly on the ethicality of ghosting:

    “Ghostwriting is a contentious practice within the realm of ethics. On one hand, proponents argue that it is a legitimate form of collaboration, where the writer’s expertise brings another individual’s ideas to life. It allows busy or less skilled individuals to share their knowledge and experiences through the written word. However, critics argue that ghostwriting undermines authenticity and intellectual integrity.”

    This isn’t exactly an incisive analysis of the topic, but it’s not a bad start. Yes, ghostwriting is ethically contentious. However, and this is a crucial point, it allows “less skilled individuals to share their knowledge and experiences through the written word.”

    Of course, the person who turns to AI for these answers may not do any deep thinking about the topic—or any thinking, at all. And this is what we ask of writing, especially in the academic setting, that it serve as a way to wrestle with ideas and arguments, to write our way toward conclusions. Further, this is why the answer to the question “May students use ChatGPT to write essays?” must be a hard no.

    Still, we have to face the question of ghostwriting’s ethicality in other instances. When is it allowable? I think for practical, workaday writing chores, AI technology has already won out.

    When I began teaching professional writing some 40 years ago, I included instruction on putting together an effective memo. I did something similar in numerous training sessions I conducted for corporations. Today, with AI ghosts haunting every classroom and office, this sort of coaching would be like teaching a driver how to read a road map.

    Universities have long privileged writing, introducing students to the academic enterprise in freshman composition classes and making writing central to innumerable courses. Now, the primacy of writing skills is being challenged by the ghosts of AI. And not just for students: I cannot point to any data; however, my experience with colleagues suggests that faculty are using ChatGPT and other AI applications to assist in their writing. A draft journal article I reviewed recently included text stating the authors used ChatGPT to edit their manuscript.

    Kathleen Jamieson argued that the rules for authorial authenticity change when people become elected officials. Now they change when we have access to the internet.

    Ghosts are everywhere.

    Patrick M. Scanlon is a professor emeritus in the School of Communication at Rochester Institute of Technology.

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  • International School of Paphos acquired by Globeducate

    International School of Paphos acquired by Globeducate

    Globeducate has officially welcomed the International School of Paphos (ISOP) into its global network.

    With more than 65 bilingual and international schools and online programs across 11 countries, Globeducate serves over 40,000 students worldwide, delivering globally recognised curricula including the National Curriculum for England and the International Baccalaureate.

    Established in 1987 by Theodoros Aristodemo, ISOP – the first private English school in Paphos – recently became the latest addition to Globeducate’s presence in Cyprus, which already includes PASCAL International Education and the Education Group Olympion.

    We are delighted to welcome the International School of Paphos to Globeducate
    Luca Uva, Globeducate

    “We are delighted to welcome the International School of Paphos to Globeducate, further strengthening our presence in Cyprus and our commitment to investment in education on the island,” said Luca Uva, CEO of Globeducate.

    “We are excited to collaborate with the school’s leadership and community to build on its strong foundations. Globeducate is committed to providing students with an outstanding education through a diverse range of national and international curricula, and we look forward to supporting the school in offering even greater opportunities within our global network.”

    The school’s enriched curriculum, based on the National Curriculum for England, incorporates a strong focus on Greek language and cultural studies, providing students with a well-rounded and globally relevant education.

    Along with its diverse student cohort and staff from over 40 nationalities, the school is fostering global awareness and cross-cultural practices through various partnerships with cultural and educational institutions such as the British Council, Goethe-Institut, Confucius Institute, French Institute, and several embassies.

    Students are encouraged to lead and innovate outside of the classroom through initiatives like the Mediterranean Model United Nations (MEDIMUN), the Duke of Edinburgh’s International Award, the European Parliament Ambassador School Programme, and ECO School activities.

    The school promotes a holistic educational philosophy that combines academic excellence with the cultivation of emotional intelligence, social skills, and self-confidence, while fostering respect and empathy.

    Theodoros Aristodemou, the founder and chairman of the International School of Paphos, said that joining the Globeducate network of schools is undoubtedly a milestone in the school’s journey, which will expand its horizons through this collaboration.

    “We are very proud of what we have achieved over the years, creating a model school at a time when the necessary infrastructure did not even exist in Paphos,” he said.

    “Surely this would not have been possible without the excellent cooperation of our dedicated staff and leadership team, the longstanding support of our parents and students, as well as the smooth supervision of the board of directors.

    “Our decision to collaborate with such an established and esteemed education group like Globeducate was made after careful planning, with the aim of better serving the long-term interests of our community, staff, students, and families.”

    Aristi Andriotis, managing director of the International School of Paphos, commented: “As part of the Globeducate family, we will gain access to a wealth of resources, expertise, and support to enhance teaching practices and enrich our students’ learning experiences. Globeducate’s mission, closely aligned with our own, is to prepare each student to become a global citizen who can shape the future.

    “While joining Globeducate offers exciting opportunities, our school’s values and traditions will remain unchanged,” added Andriotis.

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  • Bank holiday reading: Government control of US universities

    Bank holiday reading: Government control of US universities

    • Gill Evans is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History at the University of Cambridge.

    In early March 2025, the Trump administration sent letters to 60 US universities warning them that they faced ‘potential enforcement actions’ for what it described as ‘failure to protect Jewish students on campus’ during the widespread pro-Palestinian protests on campuses during the last year. This Government direction not only permitted terms to be set on which continuing funding was to be conditional for a specific higher education provider, but also allowed those terms to encroach on the academic freedom of an institution to choose what to teach and how. This ‘Project 2025’  also allowed the President to require a significant proportion of funding to go to the provision of ‘business’ courses. 

    There were wider consequences of these Government directions. The resulting limitation of funding for research quickly prompted hints of restricted publication of results and encouraged US academics to seek employment in Canada, the UK and Europe.

    Though it was joined in its active resistance by Yale and Princeton, Harvard became a test case. It objected to the Government demand that it immediately agree:

    to implement the Trump administration’s demands to overhaul the University’s governance and leadership, academic programs, admissions system, hiring process, and discipline system—with the promise of more demands to come

     and thus ‘overtly seek to impose on Harvard University political views and policy preferences advanced by the Trump administration and commit the University to punishing disfavored speech’. [1] The US Education Department speedily responded, announcing on 14 April that it was freezing about $2.3bn of Harvard’s funding. On 15 April, Trump threatened to remove Harvard’s tax-exempt status,

    US universities are divided into the ‘private’ and ‘public’ on the basis of their funding and therefore differ in the extent to which they are at risk of loss of funding in attacks on their academic freedom. The ‘private’ Ivy League universities enjoy substantial endowments, making them less dependent on their supplementary Government funding than their ‘public’ counterparts.

    The Office for Students funds and regulates higher education in England. MEDR, the Welsh Commission for Tertiary Education and Research, funds and regulates higher education in Wales, taking these responsibilities over from the former Higher Education Funding Council for Wales. The counterpart body for Scotland is the Scottish Funding Council. This depends on the Scottish Government for the funding it disburses to providers.

    English higher education providers enjoy an institutional autonomy, strengthened by the fact that Government funding for English higher education was greatly reduced with the progressive ending of a ‘block grant’ under the Higher Education Act of 2004 and the raising of tuition fees in 2012. That was replaced by much higher student tuition fees under the Higher Education and Research Act of 2017.

    Under the same legislation the autonomy of higher education providers in England is protected, with express reference to their right to design their own courses, choose their students and appoint their academic staff.  This extends to higher education at tertiary education levels 4 and 5 as well as to ‘degree-level’ 6 and postgraduate degrees at levels 7 and 8.

    This legislative permission does not allow a free-for-all. ‘University’ is a ‘sensitive term’ in English law, as are ‘higher’ and ‘accreditation’ when used of education. New providers may grant their own degrees and call themselves ‘universities’ only if they have powers to do so. In the case of new providers that requires Registration by the Office for Students (OfS). The OfS is subject only to ‘guidance on strategic priorities from the Department for Education’, though its activity is open to expressions of Parliamentary concern. For example, on 2 April 2025, the House of Commons debated ‘the impact of university finances on jobs in higher education’. It was suggested that ‘the funding model, which depends on international students paying higher fees, has harmed universities since Brexit’, but it was recognised that only public funding and such broad policy preferences lay with the Government.

    The accreditation of qualifications in the UK is the responsibility of a number of agencies, some of which are professional and some are public bodies. In the USA ‘relying on private, independent accrediting agencies has been the most important tool for preventing the centralized political control of higher education in the United States’.  The authority of the Trump directive over these seemed clear at first.

    What protects the institutional autonomy of US Universities? The nearest US counterpart to the Office for Students is the Higher Learning Commission, an independent agency founded in 1895. It accredits institutions granting degrees. The University of Michigan, for example seeks renewal of its accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission every ten years. Its ‘evaluations’ are conducted by reviewers from other institutions not the HLC itself.

    The award of ‘University title’ and degree-awarding powers is not restricted in the US as it is in England.  For example they may derive from a Charter establishing the institution. Its own Charter granted the Trustees of Columbia University degree-awarding powers and powers to create such:

    ordinances and by-laws which to them shall seem expedient for carrying into effect the designs of their institution; Provided always, That such ordinances or by-laws shall not make the religious tenets of any person a condition of admission to any privilege or office in the said college, nor be inconsistent with the constitution and laws of this state, nor with the constitution and laws of the United States.

    Private US universities

    The privately funded Ivy League Universities were set up with a degree of constitutional independence. Each had a State-based beginning. Harvard was established as a College by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 with funding of £400. Its stated purpose was to ensure that the Puritans should be provided with educated ministers, by advancing ‘learning’ to meet the needs of ‘posterity’ and to avoid leaving churches with ‘an illiterate ministry’. Princeton, founded in 1746 by the Presbyterian Synod as the College of New Jersey, had its name changed to Princeton University in 1896. Its present charter dates from 1748. It too has Trustees.  In an age when it could be expected that those arriving from England would be practising members of the Church of England, it was insistent about religious freedom:

    Petitioners have also expressed their earnest Desire that those of every Religious Denomination may have free and Equal Liberty and Advantage in the Said College any different Sentiments in Religion notwithstanding.

    Columbia, too, began as a College. It was granted a Royal Charter in 1754, making its governors a ‘body corporate’. In 1912, the corporate name was changed to ‘Columbia University’. A series of amendments followed,  with an Act of the people of the State of New York in 1810 clarifying the position. Its Trustees were to form ‘a body politic and corporate’ ‘in the City of New York’, with ‘continual succession for ever’ and a common seal. The powers of its Trustees as governors were set out in detail, separating them decisively from the ‘professors’ and ‘tutors ‘. The Trustees were to:

    have full power and authority to direct and prescribe the course of study, and the discipline to be observed in the said college, and also to select by ballot or otherwise, a president of the said college, who shall hold his office during good behavior,

    but no ‘professor, tutor, or other assistant officer’ was to be a Trustee.   There was to be an executive body, consisting of eleven of the Trustees, constituting ‘a quorum for the despatch of all [routine] business’.  

    Its Statutes include a ‘Code of Academic Freedom and Tenure’:

    Academic freedom implies that all officers of instruction are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subjects; that they are entitled to freedom in research and in the publication of its results; and that they may not be penalized by the University for expressions of opinion or associations in their private or civic capacity; but they should bear in mind the special obligations arising from their position in the academic community.

    In March 2025, seeking to force the University of Columbia to comply with his instructions, the President of the USA withdrew $400m of federal funding.  Nine specific ’reforms’ had been called for in this case, including a change of Departmental Head and modifications to its provision of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies. A Senior Vice-Provost was to review the educational programmes.

    The University published a statement of its own view that certain ‘protests in academic buildings, and other places necessary for the conduct of University activities, are generally not acceptable under the Rules of University Conduct’ because of the likelihood of disrupting academic activities’.  Yet Columbia acceded to the Trump administration’s demands, including an agreement to expand ‘intellectual diversity’ as ‘defined by the Trump administration’.

    Princeton spoke of resistance when the ‘Trump administration suspended dozens of grants to the University from several agencies, including the Department of Energy, NASA, and the Department of Defense’, pending ‘an investigation into antisemitism on campus’. Yale too declared its resistance in a letter signed by 900 of its Faculty, protesting at ‘unlawful demands that threaten academic freedom and university self-governance’. On March 31, Cornell published an op-ed by its President in the New York Times, describing the point which had been made in the interests of freedom of speech when the University held a Panel conversation exploring ‘pathways to peace’ for Israel and Palestine.

    On 24 March, the American Association of University Professors and Democracy Forward explained the decision to litigate. On 11 April 202,5 Harvard began its own litigation about ‘the Trump administration’s unlawful and unprecedented misuse of federal funding and civil rights enforcement authority to undermine academic freedom and free speech on a university campus’. It complained that on March 31 ‘an investigation of Harvard University’ had been announced and on April 3 this had been followed by an order to ‘adopt a list of vague yet sweeping programmatic and structural changes to university management, operations, and curriculum’ as a condition of the University continuing to be the ‘recipient’ of $9 billion ‘federal taxpayer dollars’.

    Harvard argued that the Government had failed to take the required preliminary steps under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. These requirements, it pointed out, existed because ‘Congress recognized that allowing federal agencies to hold funding hostage, or to cancel it cavalierly, would give them dangerously broad power in a system in which institutions depend so heavily upon federal funding’.  It pointed out that the Trump administration had:

    frozen over $1 billion in funding for Cornell University and $790 million for Northwestern University, with an even more shocking lack of process, not even purporting to issue communications providing notice under Title VI or any other legal authority.

    Public US universities

    US public universities are subject to national Government control as recipients of Government funding. State legislation about them is also significant. The University of North Carolina was established by legislation in 1789, becoming America’s first public university. Its many schools and offshoots were brought together by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1972.  The Constitution of the State of Texas states that its legislature shall ‘establish, organise and provide for the maintenance, support, and direction of a University of the first class’ with a new ‘undergraduate curriculum’ and also ‘establish a more demanding standard for leadership of academic departments and research centres’. As a public research university, the University of Texas at Austin (founded 1883) now describes itself as ‘the flagship institution of the University of Texas System’.

    Conclusion

    A wise US university makes provision to respond to both Government and State supervision. Michigan has a Vice President for Government Relations, acting ‘as the university’s bridge between local, state, and federal governments’. Its ‘State Relations team is committed to building and nurturing strong relationships with state government officials and agencies’, seeking ‘to secure funding, influence policy, and represent the university’s interests in state-level discussions.  It also has a Federal Relations team ‘dedicated to fostering and maintaining collaborative relationships between the university and federal government entities including the U.S. Congress’. It too has been subject to Donald Trump’s demands and has stopped the successful diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) program it has run since 2016,  and closed the office it had set up to deal with it.

    It remains to be seen how far the present President of the USA will succeed in enlarging Government control of the nation’s institutions of higher education by linking direction of academic activity with their funding. Former President Barack Obama did not hesitate to express his support for Harvard, calling Trump’s action ‘unlawful and ham-handed‘.

    [1] Harvard Faculty Chapter, and American Association of University Professors v. United States Department of Justice, filed 11 April, 2025.

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  • Taking Grades (Stress) Out of Learning – Faculty Focus

    Taking Grades (Stress) Out of Learning – Faculty Focus

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  • Florida State University Mass Shooting (CBS News)

    Florida State University Mass Shooting (CBS News)

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  • Head Start zeroed out in Trump’s preliminary budget plan

    Head Start zeroed out in Trump’s preliminary budget plan

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    Dive Brief:

    • Head Start would be eliminated under a draft fiscal 2026 budget that the Trump administration is preparing to send to Congress, according to a preliminary budget planning document acquired by K-12 Dive’s sister publication Healthcare Dive.
    • The program is among other initiatives targeted for termination that support low-income families and children — including the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and the Community Services Block Grant — under the preliminary budget document for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
    • Even if sent to Congress as currently drafted, however, the proposals have a long road to travel before gaining congressional approval and being finalized. Still, advocates and policymakers are raising alarms, with one advocacy group — The Child Care for Every Family Network — calling the potential elimination of Head Start an “absolute disaster for families and [the] economy.”

    Dive Insight:

    The budget cuts would be in line with the Trump administration’s efforts to dramatically reduce the size of the federal government. For FY 2024, Congress funded Head Start at about $12.2 billion, the Community Services Block Grant at around $758 million, and LIHEAP at $4 billion.  

    HHS did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

    Some Republicans in Congress and conservative organizations have criticized Head Start in the past as unsafe and ineffective at increasing children’s academic performances. Project 2025 — a blueprint for the current Republican administration issued during the presidential campaign by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank — recommended zeroing out the program.

    But the National Head Start Association, an advocacy organization that represents program leaders, families and children, points to research showing positive academic, social and economic returns on investment from Head Start.

    The program, which celebrates its 60th anniversary next month, serves nearly 800,000 infants, toddlers and preschool children from families with low incomes. More than 17,000 Head Start centers operate nationwide. A companion Early Head Start program provides prenatal services.

    The proposal to terminate Head Start “reflects a disinvestment in our future,” said Yasmina Vinci, executive director of NHSA, said in a Thursday statement. “Eliminating funding for Head Start would be catastrophic. It would be a direct attack on our nation’s most at-risk children, their well-being, and their families.”

    The Head Start system is already under fiscal strain, advocates say. Mass layoffs at HHS on April 1 led to the closing of five Office of Head Start regional offices: Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle. Those offices are to be consolidated into the five remaining offices in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Dallas, Kansas City and Denver. The regional offices provide guidance on federal policy, training and technical assistance to Head Start providers.

    However, in an April 3 announcement to Head Start grant recipients, Laurie Todd-Smith, HHS deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development, said the closures would not impact “critical services.” 

    Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a Wednesday statement that data shows the Trump administration issued nearly $1 billion less in federal grants to Head Start centers nationwide to date this year compared to the same period last year — a 37% decrease. 

    “So far this year, Trump has slow-walked $1 billion in funding from going out the door to Head Start programs, and we are beginning to see the devastating consequences: centers closing, kids kicked out of the classroom, teachers losing their jobs, and entire communities losing out,” Murray said.

    President Donald Trump is expected to release his proposed FY 2026 budget later this month or early next month, according to news reports. Congress will then debate the recommended allocations before sending appropriations bills to the president for signature. The federal fiscal year starts Oct. 1.

    Sydney Halleman, editor for Healthcare Dive, contributed to this story.

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  • Two Killed and Seven, Including Suspect, Injured in FSU Shooting

    Two Killed and Seven, Including Suspect, Injured in FSU Shooting

    One suspect has been taken into custody after a shooting that left two victims dead and six injured at Florida State University’s student union on Thursday, law enforcement officials said in a press briefing.

    The suspect, who was identified as Phoenix Ikner, a 20-year-old FSU student and the son of a school resource deputy with the Leon County Sheriff’s Department, has also been hospitalized. He was shot by police after he “did not comply with commands,” according to Tallahassee Police Department chief Lawrence E. Revell.

    The two deceased victims were not students, Revell said, but he couldn’t share any other information about the victims’ identities.

    FSU president Richard McCullough called this a “tragic day for Florida State University” at the briefing.

    “We’re working to support the victims, the families and everyone affected,” he said.

    FSU students and employees received an emergency notification at 12:02 p.m. to shelter in place due to an active shooter near the campus’s student union. According to Revell, FSU campus police arrived on the scene “almost immediately” after the shooting began just before noon. Other local law enforcement agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Jacksonville field office and its Tallahassee suboffice, were involved in the response to the shooting. The Tallahassee police will lead the investigation.

    Over three hours later, police notified the campus that they had “neutralized the threat” but asked the public to continue avoiding the student union and the surrounding area. Students were advised to remain indoors except to walk to their dorms or the designated reunification point.

    Revell said the handgun Ikner used was his mother’s former service weapon. The suspect also had a shotgun with him, Revell said, but it was unclear if he had used it. Revell said the police did not yet know of any motive for the shooting and that Ikner had invoked his right not to speak with police.

    At the press briefing, McCullough said he had just returned from visiting the victims in the hospital.

    “Right now our top priority is safety and well-being for all the people on our campus,” he said.

    One FSU junior, McKenzie Heeter, told NBC that the assailant shot at her with what she thought was a rifle as she was exiting the student union with her lunch just before noon, but he missed. He then returned to his car and retrieved a handgun and shot another individual, at which point Heeter began running away from the student union and back to her apartment.

    “It was just me and like three other people that noticed at first, but we were walking in the opposite direction away from the union, so we started running. I just told everybody that I could see, stay away from campus,” she told NBC.

    Another group of about 40 individuals avoided the shooter by locking themselves in a bowling alley in the student union’s basement, The Tallahassee Democrat reported.

    Classes at FSU are canceled through Friday, and athletic events are canceled through the end of the weekend.

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  • Limestone University needs $6M to avoid shutdown or going online-only

    Limestone University needs $6M to avoid shutdown or going online-only

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    Dive Brief:

    • Limestone University, in South Carolina, may move to online-only classes or shut down entirely in the near future as it wrestles with a financial crisis, the 179-year-old institution announced Wednesday. 
    • To avoid closing or going exclusively online, the private nonprofit’s board of trustees said it would need an “immediate” infusion of $6 million in emergency funding, though it didn’t indicate where it might find the funds. 
    • Limestone attributed its financial woes to enrollment declines, rising costs and “long-standing structural pressures facing small, private institutions.”

    Dive Insight:

    Describing the current crisis as a “turning point,” Limestone’s announcement Wednesday listed multiple possible paths forward, and in doing so the university threw general uncertainty over its future. 

    “While full closure remains a risk, the institution is considering a scenario that would discontinue all in-person academic operations and all other activities, including athletics, in Gaffney,” the university said. “The fully online model would effectively end the traditional college campus experience.”

    Limestone’s board is set to meet April 22 to discuss next steps.

    Many of the Christian university’s travails stem from a drop-off in students. Between 2018 and 2023, fall enrollment plummeted 27% to 1,782 students.

    Under financial pressure, Limestone has been leaning heavily on its endowment, the university’s financials show. In 2023, with approval from the state attorney general, the university suspended a policy of spending no more than 5% of the endowment’s total value. Between fiscal years 2023 and 2024, Limestone’s net assets fell by more than $12 million, to $61 million.

    With cash and investments dwindling, and amid persistent budget deficits — to the tune of $9.2 million in fiscal 2024, following an $11.4 million gap in 2023 — the university’s auditors warned that it may not be able to continue operating as a “going concern.”

    Limestone currently offers online courses in addition to in-person classes, but it trumpets what it said is $150 million economic impact on South Carolina’s Cherokee County from its campus. That sum would be imperiled with a move to online-only operations.

    “This potential shift to online-only instruction threatens not only the campus experience, but local jobs and the cultural presence Limestone has provided for nearly two centuries,” the institution said. 

    The $6 million emergency fund — which the university’s trustees proposed without detailing — would “stabilize operations and give the university the opportunity to pursue long-term solutions that preserve its on-campus identity,” Limestone said. 

    “Limestone remains committed to our students and we will work directly with current students to help them identify the best path to successfully complete their educational journey,” board Chair Randall Richardson said in a statement. 

    Other colleges in recent years have likewise sought emergency cash funding infusions to stay afloat in troubled times. 

    For example, Northland College, a private nonprofit in Wisconsin, last year announced a multimillion-dollar Hail Mary fundraising campaign. Without $12 million, the college said last spring, it would be forced to close. 

    Northland wound up falling well short of that goal, but pursued a turnaround on what it called “transformative” gifts and an initiative to pare back its programs. Despite those efforts, the college announced in February that it will close at the end of the current academic year. 

    Other similarly situated colleges, including Hampshire College, have had better luck after an existential fundraising blitz. After falling into financial distress, Hampshire launched a $60 million fundraising campaign that kept it afloat and helped it revamp its programs and operations.

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  • Despite layoffs, NAEP to continue as planned in 2026

    Despite layoffs, NAEP to continue as planned in 2026

    Despite massive layoffs that left the U.S. Department of Education with a skeleton crew in charge of administering and analyzing the Nation’s Report Card, the agency said on Thursday the assessment will continue as planned next year.

    “The Department will ensure that NAEP [the National Assessment of Educational Progress] continues to provide invaluable data on learning across the U.S,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in a statement on Thursday. “The 2026 NAEP assessments in reading and math are on track for administration in January 2026.” 

    In addition to assessing math and reading in 4th and 8th grades in January 2026, a letter sent to states Thursday shows U.S. history and civics will be administered for 8th graders as planned prior to the March layoffs.

    NCES is preparing for the 2025-26 cycle now and will administer the assessments between Jan. 26 and March 20, 2026, according to the letter. Math and reading results for the nation, states, and districts participating in the Trial Urban District Assessment, which tracks academic progress in urban districts, will be released in early 2027.

    National results for civics and U.S. history are expected to be released later in 2027. District and state-level data for those assessments will not be released. 

    Melissa McGrath, chief of staff for the Council of Chief State School Officers, said in a statement that NAEP “offers an important measure of student achievement and we are pleased that it will be administered in reading and math in 2026.”

    The department’s update on testing in all subject areas — including optional ones — partially addresses concerns that have been stewing for over a month among education and testing experts that cuts to the agency would sacrifice the integrity of the Nation’s Report Card.

    Former employees of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the Nation’s Report Card, had worried that the mass layoffs would result in a “barebones” assessment that produced lower-quality data. 

    The Education Department has maintained that most of NAEP’s work was done through contracts, which it said remain in place.

    “Despite spending hundreds of millions in taxpayer funds annually, IES has failed to effectively fulfill its mandate to identify best practices and new approaches that improve educational outcomes and close achievement gaps for students,” Madi Biedermann, the department’s deputy assistant secretary for communications, told sister publication Higher Ed Dive in March. Biederman said the Institute of Education Sciences is going to be restructured “to improve student outcomes while maintaining rigorous scientific integrity and cost effectiveness.” 

    In her statement Thursday, McMahon said NAEP is “a critical tool for parents, educators, and experts to assess our students’ preparedness and advise on necessary interventions.”

    McMahon said that while the “final mission” — to close the department to the maximum extent possible as ordered by President Donald Trump in a March executive order — continues, she is still “committed to providing states with the tools and best practices to advance the educational achievement of our nation’s students.” 

    Modernizations of the assessment, which have been in the works for years, will also continue, the Thursday letter to states said — including pilot assessments in mathematics and reading in grades 4, 8, and 12 to help the assessment transition to updated mathematics and reading frameworks.

    It is still unclear whether plans for other innovations such as remote, device-agnostic and adaptive administrations of the exam will still roll out.

    In 2022, NCES Commissioner Peggy Carr — who was put on administrative leave as part of March’s layoffs — told K-12 Dive that assessments were set to become device agnostic in 2026, meaning students were going to be able to eventually test on any device. The Education Department had also planned to pull out most of its field administration staff, relying instead on school staff to administer assessments where possible, Carr said.

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