Tag: Department

  • US Department of Education’s Failure to Address Food Insecurity Among College Students (Government Accountability Office)

    US Department of Education’s Failure to Address Food Insecurity Among College Students (Government Accountability Office)

    Nearly 25% of college students in 2020 reported
    limited or uncertain access to food. Despite being potentially eligible,
    most didn’t receive Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP)
    benefits—formerly known as “food stamps”—which could help them pay for
    food.

    A recent law gave the Department of Education
    authority to share students’ Free Application for Federal Student Aid
    data with federal and state SNAP agencies to identify and help students
    who may be eligible for benefits.

    But Education hasn’t made a plan to start sharing this data—nor have states received guidance about this opportunity.

    We recommended ways to address these issues.

    What GAO Found

    The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of
    Education have taken some steps to connect college students with
    Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to help them
    pay for food, but gaps in planning and execution remain. Effective July
    2024, a new law gave Education authority to share students’ Free
    Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) data with USDA and state
    SNAP agencies to conduct student outreach and streamline benefit
    administration. However, according to officials, Education had not yet
    developed a plan to implement these complex data-sharing arrangements.
    This risks delays in students getting important information that could
    help them access benefits they are eligible for. Following the passage
    of this new law, Education began providing a notification about federal
    benefit programs for students who may be eligible for them. However, it
    has not evaluated its method for identifying potentially eligible
    students. According to GAO analysis of 2020 Education data, Education’s
    method could miss an estimated 40 percent of potentially SNAP-eligible
    students.

    USDA encouraged state SNAP agencies to enhance student outreach and
    enrollment assistance. However, USDA has not included important
    information about the use of SNAP data and other student data in its
    guidance to state SNAP agencies. These gaps in guidance have left states
    with questions about how to permissibly use and share students’ data to
    help connect them with benefits.

    Student Food Assistance at a College Basic Needs Center

    Officials from the three selected states and seven colleges GAO
    contacted described key strategies for communicating with students about
    their potential SNAP eligibility. These include using destigmatizing
    language, linking students directly to an application or support staff,
    and coordinating outreach efforts with SNAP agencies. Officials from the
    states and colleges GAO contacted said it is helpful to have staff
    available on campus to assist students with the SNAP application. Some
    colleges have found it helpful to partner with their respective SNAP
    agencies to obtain information on the status of students’ applications.

    Why GAO Did This Study

    According to a national survey, almost one-quarter of college
    students were food insecure in 2020, yet GAO found many who were
    potentially eligible for SNAP had not received benefits. The substantial
    federal investment in higher education is at risk of not serving its
    intended purpose if students drop out because of limited or uncertain
    access to food. Studies have found using data to direct outreach to
    those potentially eligible can increase benefit uptake.

    GAO was asked to review college student food insecurity. This report
    addresses (1) the extent to which Education and USDA have supported data
    use to help college students access SNAP benefits, and (2) how selected
    states and colleges have used student data to help connect students
    with SNAP benefits.

    GAO reviewed relevant federal laws and agency documents. GAO also
    interviewed officials from Education, USDA, and national higher
    education and SNAP associations. GAO selected three states and
    interviewed officials from state SNAP and higher education agencies and
    seven colleges in these states. GAO visited one selected state in person
    and interviewed two virtually. States were selected based on actions to
    support food insecure students and stakeholder recommendations.

    Recommendations

    GAO is making five recommendations, including that Education develop a
    plan to implement FAFSA data-sharing and assess its benefit
    notification approach; and that USDA improve its SNAP agency guidance.
    The agencies neither agreed nor disagreed with these recommendations.

    Recommendations for Executive Action

    Agency Affected Recommendation Status
    Department of Education The
    Secretary of Education should develop a written plan for implementing
    provisions in the FAFSA Simplification Act related to sharing FAFSA data
    with SNAP administrators, to aid in benefit outreach and enrollment
    assistance. (Recommendation 1)
    Department of Education The
    Secretary of Education should, in consultation with USDA, evaluate its
    approach to identifying and notifying FAFSA applicants who are
    potentially eligible for SNAP benefits and adjust its approach as
    needed. (Recommendation 2)
    Department of Education The
    Secretary of Education should inform colleges and state higher
    education agencies that FAFSA notifications are being sent to applicants
    who are potentially eligible for SNAP benefits. (Recommendation 3)
    Department of Agriculture The
    Administrator of USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service should, in
    consultation with Education, issue guidance to state SNAP agencies—such
    as in its SNAP outreach priority memo—to clarify permissible uses of
    student data, including FAFSA data, for SNAP outreach and enrollment
    assistance. (Recommendation 4)
    Department of Agriculture The
    Administrator of USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service should issue
    guidance to state SNAP agencies—such as in its SNAP outreach priority
    memo—to clarify the permissible uses and disclosure of SNAP data to
    support SNAP student outreach and enrollment assistance. (Recommendation
    5)

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  • This week in 5 numbers: McMahon defends Education Department dismantling

    This week in 5 numbers: McMahon defends Education Department dismantling

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    From U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s recent comments to the Trump administration’s latest funding threat to an Ivy League institution, here are the top-line figures from some of our biggest stories of the week. 

    By the numbers

     

    100+

    How many union employees were recently fired from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, the agency’s research and data arm. McMahon said Tuesday at an education and technology conference that the department is looking to revamp IES.

     

    9

    The number of demands made by the Trump administration to Harvard University for the Ivy League institution to keep its federal funding, according to a copy of the letter. The requirements include for Harvard to review academic programs the Trump administration considers “biased” and for the university to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

     

    15%

    The National Institutes of Health’s proposed rate cap on reimbursement for indirect research costs. However, a federal district judge permanently barred the NIH last week from implementing the policy, ruling the agency lacked the legal authority to make the change.

     

    3

    The number of federal lending programs the Education Department named when announcing plans to revise student aid regulations. The agency indicated it hopes to make changes to two income-driven repayment plans, as well as the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, which clears debts for public servants after they make a decade of qualifying payments.

     

    22,000

    How many students attending private nonprofit colleges who could be rendered ineligible for a popular grant program in Florida under a new legislative proposal. Florida lawmakers are mulling performance metrics — including minimum graduation rates — for institutions to be able to participate in the program.

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  • Education Department plans to propose regulatory changes to student aid programs

    Education Department plans to propose regulatory changes to student aid programs

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    The U.S. Department of Education plans to propose changes to student aid regulations, including those governing the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program and two income-driven repayment plans, it announced Thursday. 

    Under a process called negotiated rulemaking, the Education Department intends to bring together representatives from different factions of the higher education sector to hash out the details of new regulations. 

    If the representatives reach consensus on new policies, the negotiated rulemaking process requires the Education Department to adopt their regulatory language in its proposal, except in limited circumstances. If negotiators don’t reach agreement, however, the agency is free to write its own rules. 

    Before that process begins, the Education Department said it will seek public feedback on “deregulatory ideas” for Title IV student aid programs. 

    “This process will focus on how the Department can rightsize Title IV regulations that have driven up the cost of college and hindered innovation,” Acting Under Secretary James Bergeron said in a statement. “Not only will this rulemaking serve as an opportunity to identify and cut unnecessary red tape, but it will allow key stakeholders to offer suggestions to streamline and improve federal student aid programs.”

    Part of the negotiated rulemaking process will focus on the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. PSLF, enacted in 2007 by President George W. Bush, forgives the student loan balances of borrowers who make 10 years of payments and hold public service jobs, such as working for the government or a nonprofit. 

    The program has come under fire from President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order last month aiming to limit who is eligible. 

    The order alleges that the PSLF program has “misdirected tax dollars into activist organizations” and tells U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to propose program revisions barring borrowers from receiving forgiveness if they work for organizations that “have a substantial illegal purpose.” 

    The directive also accused the program of providing premature debt relief to borrowers. The Biden administration temporarily relaxed PSLF rules to make it easier for borrowers to receive debt relief through the program, which had extremely high denial rates due to confusing eligibility requirements and chronic loan servicer issues. 

    Some groups have pushed back on the executive order, arguing that it’s an attempt to revoke student loan forgiveness eligibility for borrowers working for nonprofits with missions that the Trump administration doesn’t support. 

    In a statement, Mike Pierce, executive director of Student Borrower Protection Center, called the order “blatantly illegal and an all-out weaponization of debt intended to silence speech that does not align with President Trump’s MAGA agenda.” 

    The Education Department is also planning to review regulations for two income-driven repayment plans: Pay as You Earn and Income-Contingent Repayment. 

    The agency restored the ability for borrowers to enroll in these programs late last month after previously taking down the online application forms. The freeze on the programs came in response to an appeals court ruling blocking a Biden-era income-driven repayment plan — Saving on a Valuable Education. 

    The suspension of the plans drew a legal challenge from the American Federation of Teachers. The Education Department restored access to them less than a day after the union petitioned a judge for emergency intervention, according to a news release. 

    Plans for negotiated rulemaking come amid the Trump administration’s move to dismantle the Education Department and move its responsibilities to other agencies.

    For example, Trump said he plans to move the department’s student loan portfolio to the newly-downsized Small Business Administration. Both conservatives and liberals have expressed concern that the SBA won’t have the staff or expertise to perform the job. 

    Fully eliminating the Education Department would require congressional approval.

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  • Education Department Plans to Review Rules for PSLF, IDR

    Education Department Plans to Review Rules for PSLF, IDR

    The Education Department will kick off the lengthy rule-making process later this month with a pair of hearings. 

    The department is planning to consider regulatory changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, income-driven repayment plans and “other topics that would streamline current federal student financial assistance programs,” according to a Federal Register notice.

    Hearings are just the first step in negotiated rule making, which also includes convening an advisory committee to weigh in on regulatory changes over a series of meetings, proposing draft regulations and then a public comment period. Historically, the whole process takes at least a year.

    The Federal Register notice doesn’t say what specific changes the department is seeking to make aside from “redefining definitions of a qualifying employer.” The department also is planning to revise the regulations for Pay as You Earn and income-contingent repayment plans.

    In early March, President Donald Trump directed the Education Department to change which employers or companies are eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Under the executive order, activities that would disqualify a nonprofit could include aiding or abetting violations of federal immigration laws or what the government considers illegal discrimination. Advocates and Democrats decried the order as “un-American” and argued that it would disrupt borrowers’ lives.

    The department will hold an in-person hearing April 29 and a virtual hearing May 1. More information is available here.

    “This process will focus on how the Department can rightsize Title IV regulations that have driven up the cost of college and hindered innovation,” said Acting Under Secretary James Bergeron in a news release. Bergeron is also leading the Office of Federal Student Aid. (Title IV of the Higher Education Act authorizes federal financial aid programs.)

    He added that “not only will this rulemaking serve as an opportunity to identify and cut unnecessary red tape, but it will allow key stakeholders to offer suggestions to streamline and improve federal student aid programs.”

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  • Title IX Case Against Maine Schools Headed to U.S. Department of Justice – The 74

    Title IX Case Against Maine Schools Headed to U.S. Department of Justice – The 74


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    The conflict between the state of Maine and the Trump administration over transgender student athletes reached a new pivot point on Monday. As the first of several deadlines set by the federal government has now expired, whether Maine can continue to allow trans athletes to participate in school sports appears likely to be decided by the courts.

    Two separate federal agencies determined that Maine is in violation of Title IX based on the Trump administration’s interpretation of the anti-sex discrimination protection.

    The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a final warning Monday to the Maine Department of Education regarding its noncompliance with a federal directive for allowing trans girls to participate in girls’ sports.

    If the state does not propose an agreement that’s acceptable to the office by April 11, the case will be referred to the Department of Justice, the letter said.

    Meanwhile, a separate investigation by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ civil rights office that found Maine in violation of Title IX for “continuing to unlawfully allow” trans girls to compete in girl’s sports has been referred to the U.S. Department of Justice, according to a Monday social media post from the agency.

    In a letter dated March 17, HHS had given Maine a deadline of 10 days to comply with federal guidance. Monday marked ten business days from that warning.

    Both agencies determined that Maine had violated federal law after dayslong investigations that included no interviews, while typical investigations take months and are eventually settled with resolution agreements. The probes were launched after Gov. Janet Mills and President Donald Trump had a heated exchange over the state’s trans athlete policy. Millions of dollars in federal funding might be at risk, depending on how the cases proceed.

    “We just need an answer at this point as to, ‘Does the Trump administration have the authority to do what it’s doing when it comes to fast tracking the removal of federal funds?’” said Jackie Wernz, a former OCR lawyer for the Education Department who now represents school districts nationwide in these types of cases.

    “This is just unprecedented, and we’re not following the process that we’re used to. So I think it’s going to be really helpful for courts to start weighing in on whether or not they have the authority to do this.”

    Meanwhile, Republican state lawmakers said in a news conference on Tuesday that they want the state to repeal trans students’ rights to athletics, locker rooms and bathrooms, and to roll back inclusion of gender as a protected class in the Maine Human Rights Act.

    “The problem is that the term gender identity and the Human Rights Act is being interpreted way too broadly by the left,” said Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart (R-Aroostook). “And what it’s saying is there’s no boundary between men’s and women’s spaces.”

    Rep. Michael Soboleski (R- Phillips) said he is introducing a bill to remove consideration of gender identity from the act, and asked Democrats and Mills to support the legislation in order to avoid the risk of losing federal funding.

    Earlier this year, Iowa became the first state in the nation to remove civil rights from a state law when its Legislature voted to remove gender identity from its civil rights act.

    “This is not sustainable,” Stewart said. “We’re a poor state. We are heavily reliant on federal money. The governor needs to move on this.”

    On March 19, the Department of Education’s civil rights office notified Maine of its noncompliance and proposed a resolution agreement that would require the state to rescind its support of trans athletes, which is currently required by the Maine Human Rights Act. A Cumberland-area school district and the Maine Principals Association, which runs student athletics, that were also found in violation have already refused to sign the agreement.

    This development is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to enforce Title IX provisions concerning gender and athletics. Earlier this year, the administration launched investigations in several other states for similar policies allowing trans athletes to compete in alignment with their gender identity.

    Title IX, the federal law banning sex-based discrimination, does not reference trans people directly, but the Trump administration has interpreted Maine’s policy as discrimination against cisgender girls.

    Rachel Perera, a fellow in the governance studies program for the Brown Center on Education Policy at national think tank The Brookings Institution, said the Trump administration’s interpretation of Title IX leaves room for questioning. If the policy goes to trial, she said federal courts may come up with a clearer interpretation.

    “It’s going to be really important to see how Maine proceeds, because they’re sort of setting the tone in terms of these other states and other localities who are going to be trying to navigate these very same dynamics,” she said.

    Maine Morning Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: info@mainemorningstar.com.


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  • What do the massive Education Department layoffs look like? See for yourself.

    What do the massive Education Department layoffs look like? See for yourself.

    President Donald Trump’s promise to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education was long heralded. Dating back to his first term, the vow was loudly and oft-repeated by candidate Trump on the campaign trail in 2024.

    But while the plan went nowhere during his first time in the White House, it has come to fruition through a slew of executive actions since his inauguration in January.

    What began with abruptly canceled education grants in February escalated with the confirmation of U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon on March 3 and her promise of “our department’s final mission” that same day. The culmination came in massive layoffs on March 11 and a Trump executive order a week later instructing McMahon to close the department “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”

    A handful of the Trump administration’s actions — including last week’s order — have already been challenged in court. But in the meantime, their impacts are tangible in everything from students’ civil rights protections to funding for teacher grants. 

    K-12 Dive obtained an organizational chart from the Education Department detailing the offices impacted by the March 11 layoffs, as well as a list of about 970 union employees out of 1,300 employees who were let go, which offices they had been employed in and their positions. While the list of employees isn’t comprehensive, it gives a general idea of where cuts were concentrated — and what that might mean for education in the long run. 

    Based on those documents, here are eight visuals to help understand Trump’s multiphased gutting of the Education Department and its widespread impact: 

    By the numbers

     

    $600 million

    Cut to “divisive” teacher training grants

     

    $900 million

    Cut to multiyear research contracts

    The March 11 layoffs were preceded by cuts to over $1 billion in grant funding. Research grants housed in the National Center for Education Statistics were on the chopping block, as were teacher training grants that the administration called “divisive.” 

    The teacher grants impacted include the Supporting Effective Educator Development Grant Program, the Teacher Quality Partnership Program, and the Teacher and School Leader Incentive Program. These cuts would later be successfully challenged through at least two lawsuits. This week, Trump filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the lower court ruling and seeking the immediate cancellation of $65 million in teacher training grants it says advances diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. 

    Former National Center for Education Statistics employees also confirmed to K-12 Dive that research grants related to student assessments were cut — a move that will likely result in a “barebones” approach to congressionally mandated tests like the Nation’s Report Card.

    By the numbers

     

    4,133

    number of employees prior to department’s gutting

     

    600

    number of employees that take buyouts prior to layoffs

     

    1,300

    number of staff fired on March 11

     

    2,200

    approximate number of employees following layoffs

    After the initial cuts to grants — and on the night of McMahon’s March 3 confirmation — employees were given an 11:59 p.m. ET deadline to voluntarily accept a $25,000 separation agreement in an effort to downsize the agency’s workforce. According to a later announcement by the department, about 600 employees took that offer leading up to the March 11 layoffs. 

    The layoffs would bring the total number of employees impacted by the reduction in force — part of McMahon’s “final mission” for the Education Department — to 1,900, or nearly half of its 4,133 count.

    FSA, OCR, and IES hit hard in March 11 layoff

    The data represents the 970 union workers laid off on March 11, 2025, and excludes non-union workers.

    On March 11, the administration laid off nearly 1,300 employees across various offices within the Education Department. Among offices losing the most people were Federal Student Aid, which students depend on to determine their eligibility for federal grants and loans for college. The move is the opposite of a recommendation made by the Government Accountability Office last year — following a botched FAFSA rollout — to “plan for and ensure hiring of sufficient staff to increase capacity” in the FSA office.

    The Institute for Education Sciences, home to the National Center for Education Statistics and oversight for the Nation’s Report Card, was cut down by over a hundred staff and left NCES with a skeletal staff of a handful.

    And the English Language Acquisition office was completely decimated, with all of its some dozen unionized employees laid off, according to the Education Department’s organizational chart. That move came less than two weeks after Trump signed an order making English the official language of the United States.

    Another Education Department arm significantly impacted was the Office for Civil Rights, which enforces laws that protect students’ civil rights. The reduction there comes after the Biden administration pleaded to Congress for an increase in funding and staff to address a case backlog, escalated by Title VI complaints based on shared ancestry or ethnicity in light of the Israel-Hamas war. The Trump administration has acknowledged the backlog but halved the office’s headcount rather than increasing staff.

    7 OCR regional offices closed, affecting half the nation

    The civil rights arm also lost seven of its dozen regional office. 

    OCR is responsible for keeping schools in compliance with civil rights laws and handles investigations that in the past often took months or even years to complete. Those investigations, among other things, ensure equal access to education for sexual assault survivors, students with disabilities and students from all races and ethnicities.

    Attorneys and equal opportunity employees were most common positions cut

    The data represents the 970 union workers laid off on March 11, 2025, and excludes non-union workers.

    Out of hundreds of OCR employees fired, a significant number were civil rights attorneys and equal opportunity employees, leaving the office with a skeletal crew to oversee more than 12,000 currently open investigations. At least 200 employees in total were let go. 

    These attorneys carried out the majority of OCR’s work, including determining case outcomes and sometimes helping to develop policy guidance. 

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  • Higher Education Inquirer Asks State Department for List of Student Visa Revocations

    Higher Education Inquirer Asks State Department for List of Student Visa Revocations

    The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) has requested a list of more than 300 students who have had their visas revoked.  The State Department has acknowledged receipt.  We hope other media outlets will follow suit.  At this point, we only know of a handful of these cases.  We will keep the public informed as this story develops. 

     

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  • Democratic senators call for probe of Trump Education Department cuts

    Democratic senators call for probe of Trump Education Department cuts

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    Democrat efforts to challenge President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the U.S. Department of Education mounted Thursday, as 11 senators asked the agency’s acting inspector general, René Rocque, to investigate the push. 

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren and senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were among those requesting an evaluation of whether the administration is undermining the Education Department’s ability to provide students with equal access to education and to help state and local governments’ education systems

    “Decimating the Department of Education’s abilities to administer financial aid, investigate civil rights violations, conduct research on educational outcomes, and oversee the use of federal education grants threatens to have disastrous consequences for American students, teachers and families,” they wrote in a March 27 letter to Rocque. 

    “The Trump Administration’s further attempts to close the Department entirely and transfer its responsibilities over to other agencies will likely interrupt and degrade education programs and services, causing additional pain for the 62 million students across the country that the Department serves.” 

    The administration’s gutting of the Education Department not only impacted nearly half of the department’s workforce, but also left civil rights investigation and enforcement offices at half their previous capacity, cut the Federal Student Aid office by over 450 employees, and slashed 90% of the Institute of Education Sciences staff. 

    These decisions would likely impede key functions of the department, including ensuring all students’ civil rights are protected, administering federal loans and overseeing lenders and FAFSA, and tracking students’ educational outcomes and the condition of education in the nation, the Democratic senators told Rocque.

    Rocque, who joined the Education Department’s Office of Inspector General as deputy inspector general in December 2023, became acting director in January.

    As with many other issues dividing lawmakers today, Democrats and Republicans have been starkly divided over the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate the department altogether. This makes attaining a Senate supermajority of 60 votes — which is required to officially shut the department — unlikely. 

    House Democrats introduced a resolution on March 21 calling for transparency and information from the administration, including unredacted copies of all federal documents referring to the department’s closure and information on workforce reduction decisions.

    About a week after the massive reduction in force on March 11, Democrat lawmakers from both the House and Senate wrote the department demanding information on the layoffs, saying that halving its workforce could impact the agency’s ability to perform vital functions required by law.

    Meanwhile, Republicans in some states have taken the opportunity to ask the administration for more leeway in their education spending. 

    On March 25, for example, Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters sent a letter to the Education Department requesting a waiver to receive a block grant for all funds allocated to his state under the Every Student Succeeds Act. Such a consolidated block grant would “significantly enhance local flexibility” so “schools will be able to address their unique needs and priorities,” Walters wrote.

    The block grant would be used to “expand educational choices,” including attendance at private schools, and would loosen federal oversight of education spending requirements.

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  • Education Department Cuts and an Ultimatum for Columbia: The Key

    Education Department Cuts and an Ultimatum for Columbia: The Key

    The third month of the second Trump administration is coming to a close, and the White House has shown no signs of slowing down on the number of actions it’s taking that directly impact the higher education sector. 

    In the latest episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast, Editor in Chief Sara Custer checks in on the latest developments with news editor Katherine Knott and federal policy reporter Jessica Blake. 

    They discuss the huge staff cuts at the Department of Education, an executive order to shutter the agency, arrests and intimidation of international students and scholars, and a $400 million ultimatum to Columbia University. They share what IHE has learned from the people at the center of these stories.  

    They also consider what legal and policy experts have said about the potential for these actions to be challenged in courts or through Congress. 

    Listen to the latest episode here and find more episodes of The Key here.

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  • For Puerto Rican schools, Trump’s campaign to dismantle the Department of Education has a particular bite

    For Puerto Rican schools, Trump’s campaign to dismantle the Department of Education has a particular bite

    Maraida Caraballo Martinez has been an educator in Puerto Rico for 28 years and the principal of the elementary school Escuela de la Communidad Jaime C. Rodriguez for the past seven. She never knows how much money her school in Yabucoa will receive from the government each year because it isn’t based on the number of children enrolled. One year she got $36,000; another year, it was $12,000.

    But for the first time as an educator, Caraballo noticed a big difference during the Biden administration. Because of an infusion of federal dollars into the island’s education system, Caraballo received a $250,000 grant, an unprecedented amount of money. She used it to buy books and computers for the library, white boards and printers for classrooms, to beef up a robotics program and build a multipurpose sports court for her students. “It meant a huge difference for the school,” Caraballo said.

    Yabucoa, a small town in southeast Puerto Rico, was one of the regions hardest hit by Hurricane Maria in 2017. And this school community, like hundreds of others in Puerto Rico, has experienced near constant disruption since then. A series of natural disasters, including hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and landslides, followed by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, has pounded the island and interrupted learning. There has also been constant churn of local education secretaries — seven in the past eight years. The Puerto Rican education system — the seventh-largest school district in the United States — has been made more vulnerable by the island’s overwhelming debt, mass emigration and a crippled power grid.

    Maraida Caraballo Martinez has been an educator in Puerto Rico for 28 years and is now the principal of an elementary school. Her school has been slated for closure three times because of mass emigration from the island. Credit: Kavitha Cardoza for The Hechinger Report

    Under President Joe Biden, there were tentative gains, buttressed by billions of dollars and sustained personal attention from top federal education officials, many experts and educators on the island said. Now they worry that it will all be dismantled with the change in the White House. President Donald Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the U.S. territory, having reportedly said that it was “dirty and the people were poor.” During his first term, he withheld billions of dollars in federal aid after Hurricane Maria and has suggested selling the island or swapping it for Greenland. 

    A recent executive order to make English the official language has worried people on the island, where only 1 in 5 people speak fluent English, and Spanish is the medium of instruction in schools. Trump is seeking to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education and has already made sweeping cuts to the agency, which will have widespread implications across the island. Even if federal funds — which last year made up more than two thirds of funding for the Puerto Rican Department of Education, or PRDE — were transferred directly to the local government, it would likely lead to worse outcomes for the most vulnerable children, say educators and policymakers. The PRDE has historically been plagued by political interference, widespread bureaucracy and a lack of transparency.

    And the local education department is not as technologically advanced as other state education departments, nor as able to disseminate best practices. For example, Puerto Rico does not have a “per pupil formula,” a calculation commonly used on the mainland to determine the amount of money each student receives for their education. Robert Mujica is the executive director of the Puerto Rico Financial Oversight and Management Board, first convened under President Barack Obama in 2016 to deal with the island’s financial morass. Mujica said Puerto Rico’s current allocation of education funds is opaque. “How the funds are distributed is perceived as a political process,” he said. “There’s no transparency and there’s no clarity.”

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    In 2021, Miguel Cardona, Biden’s secretary of education, promised “a new day” for Puerto Rico. “For too long, Puerto Rico’s students and educators were abandoned,” he said. During his tenure, Cardona signed off on almost $6 billion in federal dollars for the island’s educational system, leading to a historic pay increase for teachers, funding for after-school tutoring programs, hiring of hundreds of school mental health professionals and the creation of a pilot program to decentralize the PRDE.

    Cardona designated a senior adviser, Chris Soto, to be his point person for the island’s education system to underscore the federal commitment. During nearly four years in office, he made more than 50 trips to the island. Carlos Rodriguez Silvestre, the executive director of the Flamboyan Foundation, a nonprofit in Puerto Rico that has led children’s literacy efforts on the island, said the level of respect and sustained interest felt like a partnership, not a top-down mandate. “I’ve never seen that kind of attention to education in Puerto Rico,” he said. “Soto practically lived on the island.”

    Soto also worked closely with Victor Manuel Bonilla Sánchez, the president of the teachers union, Asociación de Maestros de Puerto Rico, or AMPR, which resulted in a deal in which educators received $1,000 more a month to their base salary, a nearly 30 percent increase for the average teacher. “It was the largest salary increase in the history of teachers in Puerto Rico,” Bonilla said, though even with the increase, teachers here still make far less money than teachers on the mainland.

    One of the biggest complaints Soto said he heard was how rigid and bureaucratic the Puerto Rico Department of Education was, despite a 2018 education reform law that allows for more local control. The education agency — the largest unit of government on the island, with the most employees and the biggest budget — was set up so that the central office had to sign off on everything. So Soto created and oversaw a pilot program in Ponce, a region on the island’s southern coast, focusing on decentralization.

    For the first time, the local community elected an advisory board of education, and superintendent candidates had to apply rather than be appointed, Soto said. The superintendent was given the authority to sign off on budget requests directly rather than sending them through officials in San Juan, as well as the flexibility to spend money in his region based on individual schools’ needs.

    In the past, that wasn’t a consideration: For example, Yadira Sanchez, a psychologist who has worked in Puerto Rican education for more than 20 years, remembers when a school got dozens of new air conditioners even though it didn’t need it. “They already had functioning air conditioners,” she said, “so that money was lost.”

    The pilot project also focused on increasing efficiency. For example, children with disabilities are now evaluated at their schools rather than having to visit a special center. And Soto says he tried to remove politics and increase transparency around spending in the PRDE as well. “You can improve invoices, but if your political friends are getting the work, then you don’t have a good school system,” he said.

    A school bus under a tree that fell during Hurricane Maria, which hit the island of Puerto Rico in September 2017. More than a year later, it had not been removed. Credit: Al Bello/Getty Images for Lumix

    Under Biden, Puerto Rico also received a competitive U.S. Department of Education grant for $10.5 million for community schools, another milestone. And the federal department started including data on the territory in some education statistics collected. “Puerto Rico wasn’t even on these trackers, so we started to dig into how do we improve the data systems? Unraveling the data issue meant that Puerto Rico can properly get recognized,” Soto said.

    But already there are plans to undo Cardona’s signature effort in Ponce. The island’s newly elected governor, Jenniffer González Colón, is a Republican and a Trump supporter. The popular secretary of education, Eliezer Ramos Parés, returned earlier this year to head the department after leading it from April 2021 to July 2023 when the governor unexpectedly asked him to resign — not an unusual occurrence within the island’s government, where political appointments can end suddenly and with little public debate. He told The Hechinger Report that the program won’t continue in its current form, calling it “inefficient.”

    “The pilot isn’t really effective,” he said, noting that politics can influence spending decisions not only at the central level but at the regional level as well. “We want to have some controls.” He also said expanding the effort across the island would cost tens of millions of dollars. Instead, Ramos said he was looking at more limited approaches to decentralization, around some human resource and procurement functions. He said he was also exploring a per pupil funding formula for Puerto Rico and looking at lessons from other large school districts such as New York City and Hawaii.

    Related: In Puerto Rico, the odds are against high school grads who want to go to college

    While education has been the largest budget item on the island for years, it’s still far less than any of the 50 states spend on each student. Puerto Rico spends $9,500 per student, compared with an average of $18,600 in the states.

    The U.S. Department of Education, which supplements local and state funding for students in poverty and with disabilities, has an outsized role in Puerto Rico schools. On the island, 55 percent of children live below the poverty line, compared with 17 percent in the 50 states; for students in special education, the figures are 35 percent and 15 percent, respectively. In total, during fiscal year 2024, more than 68 percent of the education budget on the island comes from federal funding, compared to 11 percent in U.S. states. The department also administers Pell Grants for low-income students — some 72 percent of Puerto Rican students apply — and supports professional development efforts and initiatives for Puerto Rican children who move back and forth between the mainland and territory.

    Linda McMahon, Trump’s new education secretary, has reportedly said that the government will continue to meet its “statutory obligations” to students even as the department shuts down or transfers some operations and lays off staff. The U.S. Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment.

    Some say the Biden administration’s pouring billions of dollars into a troubled education system with little accountability has created unrealistic expectations and there’s no plan for what happens after money is spent. Mujica, the executive director of the oversight board, said the infusion of funds postponed tough decisions by the Puerto Rican government. “When you have so much money, it papers over a lot of problems. You didn’t have to deal with some of the challenges that are fundamental to the system.” And he said there is little discussion of what happens when that money runs out. “How are you going to bridge that gap? Either those programs go away or we’re going to have to find the funding for them,” Mujica said.

    He said efforts like the one in Ponce to bring decision making closer to where the students’ needs are is “vitally important.” Still, he said he’s not sure the money improved student outcomes. “This was a huge opportunity to make fundamental changes and investments that will yield long-term results. I’m not sure that we’ve seen the metrics to support that.”

    Related: Are the challenges of Puerto Rico’s schools a taste of what other districts will face?

    Puerto Rico is one of the most educationally impoverished regions, with academic outcomes well below the mainland. On the math portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, a test that students across the U.S. take, just 2 percent of fourth graders in Puerto Rico were proficient, the highest score ever recorded for the island, and zero percent of eighth graders were. Puerto Rican students don’t take the NAEP for reading because they learn in Spanish, not English, though results shared by Ramos at a press conference in 2022 showed only 1 percent of third graders were reading at grade level.

    There are some encouraging efforts. Flamboyan Foundation, the nonprofit in Puerto Rico, has been leading an island-wide coalition of 70 partners to improve K-3 literacy, including through professional development. Teacher training through the territory’s education department has often been spotty or optional.

    The organization now works closely with the University of Puerto Rico and, as part of that effort, oversees spending of $3 million in literacy training. Approximately 1,500 or a third of Puerto Rico’s K-5 teachers have undergone the rigorous training. Educators were given $500 as an incentive for participating, along with books for their classrooms and three credit hours in continuing education. “It was a lot of quality hours. This was not the ‘spray and pray’ approach,” said Silvestre. That effort will continue, according to Ramos, who called it “very effective.”

    A new reading test for first through third graders the nonprofit helped design showed that between the 2023 and 2024 school years, most children were below grade level but made growth in every grade. “But we still have a long way to go so that this data can get to teachers in a timely manner and in a way that they can actually act on it,” Silvestre said.

    Kristin Ehrgood, Flamboyan Foundation’s CEO, said it’s too soon to see dramatic gains. “It’s really hard to see a ton of positive outcomes in such a short period of time with significant distrust that has been built over years,” she said. She said they weren’t sure how the Trump administration may work with or fund Puerto Rico’s education system but that the Biden administration had built a lot of goodwill. “There is a lot of opportunity that could be built on, if a new administration chooses to do that.”

    Another hopeful sign is that the oversight board, which was widely protested when it was formed, has cut the island’s debt from $73 billion to $31 billion. And last year board members increased education spending by 3 percent. Mujica said the board is focused on making sure that any investment translates into improved outcomes for students: “Our view is resources have to go into the classroom.”

    Related: A superintendent made big gains with English learners. His success may have been his downfall

    Betty A. Rosa, education commissioner and president of the University of the State of New York and a member of the oversight board, said leadership churn in Puerto Rico drives its educational instability. Every new leader is invested in “rebuilding, restructuring, reimagining, pick your word,” she said. “There is no consistency.” Unlike her New York state position, the Puerto Rican education secretary and other positions are political appointments. “If you have permanent governance, then even when the leadership changes, the work continues.”

    Ramos, who experienced this instability when the previous governor unexpectedly asked to resign in 2023, said he met McMahon, the new U.S. secretary of education, in Washington, D.C., and that they had a “pleasant conversation.” “She knows about Puerto Rico, she’s concerned about Puerto Rico, and she demonstrated full support in the Puerto Rico mission,” he said. He said McMahon wanted PRDE to offer more bilingual classes, to expose more students to English. Whether there will be changes in funding or anything else remains to be seen. “We have to look at what happens in the next few weeks and months and how that vision and policy could affect Puerto Rico,” Ramos said.

    Ramos was well-liked by educators during his first stint as education secretary. He will also have a lot of decisions to make, including whether to expand public charter schools and close down traditional public schools as the island’s public school enrollment continues to decline precipitously. In the past, both those issues led to fierce and widespread protests.

    Soto says he’s realistic about the incoming administration having “different views, both ideologically and policywise,” but he’s hopeful the people of Puerto Rico won’t want to go back to the old way of doing things. “Somebody said, ‘You guys took the genie out of the bottle and it’s going to be hard to put that back’ as it relates to a student-centered school system,” Soto said.

    Cardona, whose grandparents are from the island, said Puerto Rico had seen “academic flatlining” for years. “We cannot accept that the students are performing less than we know they are capable of,” he told The Hechinger Report, just before he signed off as the nation’s top education official. “We started change; it needs to continue.”

    Related: What’s left after a mass exodus of young people from Puerto Rico?

    Principal Carabello’s small school of 150 students and 14 teachers has been slated for closure three times already, though each time it has been spared in part because of community support. She’s hopeful that Ramos, with whom she’s worked previously, will turn things around. “He knows the education system,” she said. “He’s a brilliant person, open to listen.”  

    Escuela de la Communidad Jaime C. Rodriguez is a Montessori school in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, that did not have any sports facilities for its students. It recently began work on a multipurpose sports center, made possible by federal funds under former President Joe Biden. Credit: Kavitha Cardoza for The Hechinger Report

    But the long hours of the past several years have taken a toll on her. She is routinely in school from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. “You come in when it’s dark and you leave when it’s dark,” she said. There have been many new platforms to learn and new projects to implement. She wants to retire but can’t afford to. After decades of the local government underfunding the pension system, allowances that offset the high price of goods and services on the island were cut and pension plans were frozen.

    Now instead of retiring with 75 percent of her salary, Carabello will receive only 50 percent, $2,195 a month. She is entitled to Social Security benefits, but it isn’t enough to make up for the lost pension. “Who can live with $2,000 in one month? Nobody. It’s too hard. And my house still needs 12 years more to pay.”

    Carabello, who is always so strong and so optimistic around her students, teared up. But it’s rare that she allows herself time to think about herself. “I have a great community. I have great teachers and I feel happy with what I do,” she said.

    She’s just very, very tired. 

    This story about Puerto Rican schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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