Tag: Education

  • ADL, other pro-Israel groups condemn AAUP Palestine webinar

    ADL, other pro-Israel groups condemn AAUP Palestine webinar

    The Anti-Defamation League and four other pro-Israel groups accused the American Association of University Professors of “demonizing Israel” in its framing of and publicity around a webinar titled Scholasticide in Palestine.

    Scholasticide is the intentional eradication of an education system. In a joint letter Thursday, the same day as the webinar, the ADL, the Academic Engagement Network, Hillel International, the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Federations of North America condemned the event’s use of this term.

    “Language used in the event’s description—including ‘scholasticide’ and ‘exterminationist’—suggests the adoption and promotion of a one-sided and inflammatory narrative which deviates from the mission of the AAUP,” the letter said. The groups said there’s “no evidence of any intent by Israel to ‘systemically destroy’ the education system in Gaza or elsewhere. The destruction of institutions, including educational ones, is a tragic byproduct of war, exacerbated when terror groups like Hamas embed their operations within school buildings and other civilian centers.”

    Six months into the latest war in Gaza, a group of independent United Nations experts said in a news release, “It may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system.” By then, the release said, the last Gazan university had already been destroyed and “more than 5,479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors have been killed in Gaza, and over 7,819 students and 756 teachers have been injured.”

    Miriam Elman, the Academic Engagement Network’s executive director, provided Inside Higher Ed with an email from Donna Murch, a member of the AAUP’s elected national council, inviting members to the webinar. Murch said the event would feature “academics and right-to-education organizers who have experienced, documented and challenged Israel’s ongoing and systematic destruction of the education system in Palestine.”

    An AAUP spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed, “We are not aware that anyone who is objecting to AAUP’s programming actually attended the event, which is part of an extended series of conversations about diverse topics of interest to our members. We take antisemitism very seriously and plan our programming consistent with the principles of academic freedom and academic responsibility that AAUP vigorously defends.”

    The pro-Israel groups also criticized the AAUP event’s promotional material for not mentioning Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israelis. The letter says, “We note with dismay that this divisive event is taking place within a wider context of the AAUP being perceived as increasingly moving in a virulently anti-Israel direction.”

    The AAUP has received criticism for its council’s August decision to abandon the group’s nearly 20-year categorical opposition to academic boycotts—such as those often called for against Israel.

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  • Trump’s upheavals worry job-hunting postdoctoral researchers

    Trump’s upheavals worry job-hunting postdoctoral researchers

    Julia Barnes, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellow, was watching President Donald Trump’s speech to Congress last week when she heard him refer to her work as an “appalling waste” that needs to end.

    In a list of expenses he called “scams,” Trump mentioned a $60 million project for Indigenous peoples in Latin America.

    “Empowering Afro-Indigenous populations in Colombia, South America, is exactly what I do,” Barnes said. “My project is explicitly DEI, and it is DEI-focused in a foreign country.” The Trump administration has targeted both foreign aid and diversity, equity and inclusion.

    Even before the speech, she knew her work helping such communities, which have faced atrocities, was under threat. Barnes said officials at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, where she’s based, last month asked her not to travel to Colombia for a planned research trip. She’s taken further precautions herself out of fear that she’ll be forced to repay any NSF grant money she uses, she said.

    She’s not using the money at all—even to pay herself, she said. “I’m drawing on my savings right now to pay rent and pay for groceries,” Barnes said. She’s also teaching at another university and freelancing for a nonprofit. (An NSF spokesperson pointed Inside Higher Ed to an agency webpage that says activities such as travel “are permitted to proceed in accordance with the terms and conditions of existing awards.”)

    “It’s pretty devastating,” she said. “This is the highest position I’ve ever gotten in my career. This is my dream job to do this research; it’s a cause that I care about very deeply.” She said, “It really breaks my heart to see this shift in values away from what I had initially hoped would become a tenure-track professorship and something—something greater.”

    Postdocs like Barnes are worried about their careers amid the tumult of the Trump administration, which has frozen federal funding; canceled grant review meetings; slashed National Institutes of Health payments for indirect research costs; targeted diversity, equity and inclusion activities without clearly defining DEI; and laid off swaths of federal research agency employees.

    Many of those actions have been in flux as judges block and unblock the administration’s orders amid courtroom fights, and as federal officials walk back terminations and other cuts. But university officials nonetheless appear unnerved, with some restricting Ph.D. program admissions and pausing hiring.

    “There’s a very complicated feeling in spending close to a decade of time and energy pursuing this type of career,” said Kevin Bird, who’s on the job hunt. He’s nearing the expiration of his stint as an NSF biology postdoc research fellow at the University of California, Davis, and said he’s always tried to work at public universities because he values their mission.

    “The whole process of striving for this for so long and making the sacrifices—to think it’s worth it—and then kind of having the entire system be attacked and sort of collapse in uncertainty has really been an unpleasant thing to experience,” Bird said.

    The White House didn’t provide an interview or statement last week.

    Looking Overseas

    Counting her undergraduate days, Amanda Shaver said she’s spent 19 years building a science career. Now an NIH postdoc fellow at Johns Hopkins University, she said she feels “so close to the finish line of trying to do everything right for so many years to get a faculty position”—only for it to now “feel unattainable.”

    Shaver said meetings to consider the career transition NIH award she applied for have been postponed, and she wonders whether Trump officials actually axed the program because they considered it a DEI initiative. The NIH didn’t respond to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment last week about the program’s status.

    Looking at the overall future of research and higher education in the U.S., Shaver said, “Things are not good.” She’s applying to positions in other countries.

    In the meantime, she awaits word on what’s happening with her NIH Pathway to Independence Award application. This award—also known as K99/R00—provides recipients money to finish work during their postdoc stints and then start labs at new institutions, Shaver said. “It really sort of elevates you in the candidate pool” for faculty jobs, she said.

    But Shaver—who describes herself as from a low-income family and a disadvantaged school district—said she applied for a version of the award known as MOSAIC, which is meant to keep talented people from underrepresented groups in the biomedical sciences field. That makes it a potential target of Trump’s anti-DEI crusade.

    Shaver said the MOSAIC website disappeared temporarily, “and people thought that they just weren’t in existence anymore, and people were told to not submit those.” But she had already applied; a study section of faculty was supposed to meet in February to consider the application, she said. That was postponed once, and last week she received an email saying it’s been postponed again until May, she said.

    “I don’t know if they will actually meet or not,” Shaver said. She might apply for the regular version of the award in the future but will then have lost an application cycle and can only keep applying until the fourth year of her postdoc stint, she said.

    “The NIH is the worldwide leader in biomedical research,” she said. “And canceling different types of grants or delaying funding and firing people that are really qualified at the NIH, cutting the indirect costs at universities—all these things collectively are really harming the research industry.”

    She added, “It doesn’t make any sense—I think to any voter—to want to dismantle biomedical research … it’s like a degradation of an entire system that is built on facts and knowledge.”

    Amid the upheaval, it can be hard to tell whether university job cuts stem from Trump’s actions or other factors. Bird, the NSF postdoc at UC Davis, said searches for two tenure-track faculty positions he applied for have been canceled since Trump took office. One of the institutions he mentioned, North Carolina State University, told Inside Higher Ed the search is now progressing, and the other, Clemson University, said its search was canceled to “attract a broader and more qualified candidate pool” and the position will be reposted soon.

    Whatever the reasons for those cuts, “many people I’ve talked to now at institutions are feeling the crunch or feeling the concern about what the next few years might hold if the NIH cuts go through, if any aspect of the indirect rate shifts happen,” Bird said. “It’s kind of forcing a lot of universities to really plan for the worst, I think.” So far, a federal district court judge has blocked the NIH from implementing such cuts.

    He lamented the attacks on efforts to recruit into science more first-generation students and students from historically excluded groups. These attacks change “what the job I could even have would be like—if part of the job isn’t taking that mindset of broadening participation and bringing people into the career path like I was,” said Bird, who comes from a small town and a low-income family.

    All this turmoil is pushing him to start “broadening my horizons,” including looking at positions in Europe or other parts of the world that hopefully “will have more stable science institutions and stable higher education,” he said.

    Job cuts at federal research agencies and universities may increase competition-—and uncertainty—among those trying to take the next step in their careers. Julia Van Etten said, “I have a lot of friends who’ve lost their jobs” as early-career researchers in federal agencies.

    Van Etten, an NSF postdoc research fellow at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, said she’s looking for faculty jobs. But “it’s uncertain how many of those jobs will exist going forward.”

    “There’s a lot more people on the job market here,” Van Etten said. “There’s a lot of uncertainty on the job market here. There seems to be a general feeling that the overseas job markets—if they’re not already—are going to become saturated.”

    “It just feels like the job market is kind of bleak,” she said.

    Van Etten said the government—through funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy and other agencies—has already invested much in her education and work. And she’s invested time that might have been wasted.

    “I spent my entire 20s in grad school and working to get my Ph.D.,” she said. “And no one gets a doctorate just for the pay, right? I really love what I do, and I think my work in basic research is really important. And, for the first time in my entire life, I’ve had to start thinking about what I would do if I wasn’t a scientist anymore.”

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  • What Republican voters want for higher ed

    What Republican voters want for higher ed

    Republican voters believe in the value of college degrees but harbor concerns about accountability and affordability, according to a new national survey conducted by Third Way, a center-left think tank, and GS Strategy Group, a Republican polling group.

    The survey of 500 Republican voters found that most respondents, 63 percent, view four-year degrees as valuable—including 60 percent of voters who have “very favorable” perceptions of President Trump. Trade schools and community colleges enjoy particularly robust support; 91 percent and 87 percent of respondents, respectively, view them favorably. By comparison, 69 percent hold favorable views of four-year colleges and universities, and 37 percent feel positively toward for-profit universities.

    At the same time, Republicans surveyed believe the most needed reforms in higher ed today are greater accountability and greater affordability.

    Most respondents, 87 percent, support increased accountability for higher education institutions. And many believe the government should play various roles to ensure that principle is upheld. Seventy-one percent agree that the federal government should require transparency from institutions and accredit them based on their value to students. The same share believe there should be federal guardrails to prevent “bad actors” from charging students for low-quality degrees. And nearly half agree taxpayer dollars should be withheld from colleges that don’t offer a sufficient return on students’ investment.

    Toward that end, 83 percent of Republicans support the financial value transparency rule, which requires colleges to report program-level information like the total cost of attendance and the amount of private education loans disbursed to students. To make college more affordable, 81 percent of Republicans are in favor of Pell Grants, federal financial aid for low-income students, and 79 percent support the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program and income-driven repayment for student loans. Almost 70 percent favor borrower defense to repayment, allowing students who attended fraudulent institutions to have their student loans discharged.

    The report notes that many of these same policies “are being considered for cuts as budget reconciliation heats up.”

    “As Congress considers where to trim the budget this year, it’s important to remember that Republican voters aren’t looking for higher education cuts but rather a renewed emphasis on making it more affordable and holding institutions to the line for delivering a return on investment,” the report concludes.

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  • Will the use of generative AI shift higher education from a knowledge-first system to a skills-first system?

    Will the use of generative AI shift higher education from a knowledge-first system to a skills-first system?

    On the eve of the release of HEPI’s Student Generative AI Survey 2025, HEPI hosted a roundtable dinner with the report’s sponsor, Kortext, and invited guests to discuss the following essay question:

    How will AI change the university experience for the next generation?

    This was the third roundtable discussion we have hosted with Kortext on AI, over three years. Observing the debate mature from a cautious, risk-averse response to this forward-looking, employability-focused discussion has been fascinating. We spent much of the evening discussing a potential pivot for teaching and learning in the sector.

    The higher education sector places the highest importance on creating, collecting, and applying knowledge. ‘Traditional’ assessments have focused on the recollection of knowledge (exams) or the organisation and communication of knowledge (in essays). The advent of search engines has made acquiring knowledge more accessible, while generative AI has automated the communication of knowledge.

    If knowledge is easily accessible, explainable, and digestible, which skills should our graduates possess that cannot be replaced by ChatGPT, now or in the future? It was suggested that these are distinctly ‘human’ skills: relationship building, in-person communication, and leadership. Are we explicitly teaching these skills within the curriculum? Are we assessing them? Are we rebalancing our taught programmes from knowledge to irreplaceable skills to stay ahead of the AI curve?

    And to get a bit meta about it all, what AI skills are we teaching? Not just the practical skills of application of AI use in one’s field, but deep AI literacy. Recognising bias, verifying accuracy, understanding intellectual property rights and embracing digital ambition. (Professor Sarah Jones of Southampton Solent University has written about this here.)

    Given recent geopolitical events, critical thinking was also emphasized. When and why can something be considered the ‘truth’? What is ‘truth’, and why is it important?

    Colleagues were clear that developing students’ knowledge and understanding should still be a key part of the higher education process (after all, you can’t apply knowledge if you don’t have a basic level of it). In addition, they suggested that we need to be clearer with students about the experiential benefits of learning. As one colleague stated,

    ‘The value of the essay is not the words you have put on the page, it is the processes you go through in getting the words to the page. How do you select your information? How do you structure your argument more clearly? How do you choose the right words to convince your reader of your point?’

    There was further discussion about the importance of experiential learning, even within traditional frameworks. Do we clearly explain to students the benefits of learning experiences – such as essay writing – and how this will develop their personal and employability skills? One of the participants mentioned that they were bribing their son not to complete his Maths homework by using ChatGPT. As students increasingly find their time constrained due to paid work and caring responsibilities, how can we convince students of the value of fully engaging with their learning experiences and assessments when ChatGPT is such an attractive option? How explicitly are we talking to students about their skills development?

    There was a sense of urgency to the discussion. One colleague described this as a critical juncture, a ‘one-time opportunity’ to make bold choices about developing our programmes to be future-focused. This will ensure graduates leave higher education with the skills expected and needed by their employers, which will outlast the rapidly evolving world of generative AI and ensure the sector remains relevant in a world of bite-sized, video-based learning and increasing automation.

    Kortext is a HEPI partner.

    Founded in 2013, Kortext is the UK’s leading student experience and engagement expert, pioneering digitally enhanced teaching and learning in the higher education community. Kortext supports institutions in boosting student engagement and driving outcomes with our AI-powered, cutting-edge content discovery and study products, market-leading learner analytics, and streamlined workflows for higher education. For more information, please visit: kortext.com

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  • How is artificial intelligence actually being used in higher education?

    How is artificial intelligence actually being used in higher education?

    With a wide range of applications, including streamlining administrative tasks and tailoring learning experiences, AI is being used in innovative ways to enhance higher education.

    Course design and content preparation

    AI tools are changing the way academic staff approach course design and content preparation. By leveraging AI, lecturers can quickly generate comprehensive plans, create engaging sessions, and develop quizzes and assignments.

    For instance, tools like Blackboard Ultra can create detailed course plans and provide suggestions for content organisation and course layout. They can produce course materials in a fraction of the time it would traditionally take and suggest interactive elements that could increase student engagement.

    AI tools excel at aligning resources with learning outcomes and institutional policies. This not only saves time but also allows lecturers to focus more on delivering high-quality instruction and engaging with students.

    Enhancing learning experience

    AI and virtual reality (VR) scenarios and gamified environments are offering students unique, engaging learning experiences that go beyond traditional lectures. Tools like Bodyswaps use VR to simulate realistic scenarios for practicing soft and technical skills safely. These immersive and gamified environments enhance learning by engaging students in risk-free real-world challenges and provide instant feedback, helping them learn and adjust more effectively.

    Self-tailored learning

    AI also plays a role in supporting students to tailor learning materials to meet their individual and diverse needs. Tools like Jamworks can enhance student interaction with lecture content by converting recordings into organised notes and interactive study materials, such as flashcards.

    Similarly, Notebook LLM offers flexibility in how students engage with their courses by enabling them to generate content in their preferred form such as briefing documents, podcasts, or taking a more conversational approach. These tools empower students to take control of their learning processes, making education more aligned with their individual learning habits and preferences.

    Feedback and assessment

    Feedback and assessment is the most frequently referenced area when discussing how reductions in workload could be achieved with AI. Marking tools like Graide, Keath.ai, and Learnwise are changing this process by accelerating the marking phase. These tools leverage AI to deliver consistent and tailored feedback, providing students with clear, constructive insights to enhance their academic work. However, the adoption of AI in marking raises valid ethical concerns about its acceptability such as the lack of human judgement and whether AI can mark consistently and fairly.

    Supporting accessibility

    AI can play a crucial role in enhancing accessibility within educational environments, ensuring that learning materials are inclusive and accessible to all students. By integrating AI-driven tools such as automated captioning, and text-to-speech applications, universities can significantly improve the accessibility of digital resources.

    AI’s capability to tailor learning materials is particularly beneficial for students with diverse educational needs. It can reformat text, translate languages, and simplify complex information to make it more digestible. This ensures that all students, regardless of their learning abilities or language proficiency, have equal opportunities to access and understand educational content.

    Despite the benefits, the use of AI tools like Grammarly raises concerns about academic integrity. These tools have the potential to enhance or even alter students’ original work, which may lead to questions about the authenticity of their submissions. This issue highlights the need for clear guidelines and ethical considerations in the use of AI to support academic work without compromising integrity.

    Another significant issue is equity of access to these tools. Many of the most effective AI-driven accessibility tools are premium services, which may not be affordable for all students, potentially widening the digital divide.

    Student support – chatbots

    AI chatbots are increasingly recognised as valuable tools in the tertiary education sector, streamlining student support and significantly reducing staff workload. These increasingly sophisticated systems are adept at managing a wide array of student queries, from routine administrative questions to more detailed academic support, thereby allowing human resources to focus on tasks requiring more nuanced and personal interactions. They can be customised to meet the specific needs of a university, ensuring that they provide accurate and relevant information to students.

    Chatbots such as LearnWise are designed to enhance student interactions by providing more tailored and contextually aware responses. For instance, on a university’s website, if a student expresses interest in gaming, they can suggest relevant courses, highlight the available facilities and include extra curriculum activities available, integrating seamlessly with the student’s interests and academic goals. This level of tailoring enhances the interaction quality and improves the student experience.

    Administrative efficiency

    AI is positively impacting the way administrative tasks are handled within educational institutions, changing the way everyday processes are managed. By automating routine and time-consuming tasks, AI technologies can alleviate the administrative load on staff, allowing them to dedicate more time to strategic and student-focused activities.

    AI tools such as Coplot and Gemini can help staff draft, organise, and prioritise emails. These tools can suggest responses based on the content received, check the tone of emails and manage scheduling by integrating with calendar apps, and remind lecturers of pending tasks or follow-ups, enhancing efficiency within the institution.

    Staff frequently deal with extensive documentation, from student reports to research papers and institutional policies. AI tools can assist in checking, proofreading and summarising papers and reports, and can help with data analysis, generating insights, graphs and graphics to help make data more easily digestible.

    How is AI being used in your institution?

    At Jisc we are collating practical case studies to create a comprehensive overview of how AI is being used across tertiary education. This includes a wide range of examples supporting the effective integration of AI into teaching and administration which will be used to highlight best practice, support those just getting started with the use of AI, overcome challenges being faced across the sector and to highlight the opportunities available to all.

    We want to hear how AI is being used at your organisation, from enhancing everyday tasks to complex and creative use cases. You can explore these resources and find out how to contribute by visiting the Jisc AI Resource Hub.

    For more information around the use of digital and AI in tertiary education, sign up to receive on-demand access to key sessions from Jisc’s flagship teaching and learning event – Digifest running 11–12 March.

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  • Why do we punish low-income students for entering education?

    Why do we punish low-income students for entering education?

    Much has been written about the financial challenges many students face in going to university, and the fact that maintenance loans fall quite some way short of covering the cost of living for students.

    Much has also been written about the national trend of mature students numbers coming to university being in decline, with particular implications for certain sectors such as healthcare, where we are struggling to meet workforce need.

    These two areas of concern are quite likely related and linked to what we believe is a fundamentally unfair and regressive policy which impacts people who are in receipt of Universal Credit.

    Under the current Universal Credit (UC) system, for people who are in work, UC is reduced by 55p for every £1 earned as income.

    However, if you are entitled to receive Universal Credit and decide to go to university, for every £1 you receive in maintenance loan funding, your UC entitlement is reduced by £1 – and not by 55p as is the case for earned income.

    Make it make sense

    On the face of it, this seems highly inequitable – why should income derived from a student loan (which will, of course, need to be repaid with interest) be treated more harshly than earned income?

    Another reaction to this approach might be to ask,  “Why wouldn’t students who are eligible to receive UC simply not draw down their maintenance loan at all?”.

    Unfortunately, this option is not open to those students, because the rules around reductions to UC make clear that the pound-for-pound deductions from UC are based upon the maximum maintenance loan for which you are eligible, regardless of whether you actually take the loan.

    It is worth highlighting that, in general, full time university students are not eligible to claim Universal Credit. However, exceptions do apply, such as if you are under 21 and do not have parental support, or if you are responsible for the care of a child (the full list of eligibility criteria can be found here). In other words, students who we know are more likely to need additional support to be successful in higher education.

    The Child Poverty Action Group have dedicated information for students who are entitled to claim UC, to explain the impact of having access to a maintenance loan on their UC payments.

    In their worked example, a single mother of a 3yr old child, living in private rented accommodation, could have UC payments of £1399.60 reduced to £475.71 per month as a result of going into full time higher education and having access to a maintenance loan.

    In other words, this mother would be taking on a personal loan debt of well over £900 per month – on top of the cost of tuition fees – which would otherwise have been paid as UC if she had not decided to access education.

    We believe that this scenario may be without precedent in terms of our UC and wider benefit system, in that we know of no other situation in which someone who is entitled to claim benefits would be told that they need to take out a personal loan to replace their benefits entitlement.

    In a recent ministerial question on this issue, the government explicitly confirmed that:

    …successive Governments have held the principle that the benefit system does not normally support full-time students. Rather, they are supported by the educational maintenance system.

    This principle may have been fine when maintenance support was distributed as a grant rather than a loan, but we would argue that there is something deeply regressive about asking students from backgrounds who are already less likely to access education to forego benefit support to which they would be otherwise fully entitled.

    Breaking down barriers

    The current government has set out an ambitious set of missions to “Build a Better Britain”, which includes a mission to “Break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage”.

    We would argue strongly that the impact of having access to a maintenance loan on UC payments is an unfair and unnecessary barrier to students who wish to access higher education, and may well be a significant factor in why some mature learners are seeing university study as a less attractive option.

    Finding and fixing barriers of this kind – which could be easily addressed by allowing students who are eligible to access UC to continue doing so – would be entirely consistent with this government’s mission.

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  • DOGE Education Cuts Hit Students with Disabilities, Literacy Research – The 74

    DOGE Education Cuts Hit Students with Disabilities, Literacy Research – The 74


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    When teens and young adults with disabilities in California’s Poway Unified School District heard about a new opportunity to get extra help planning for life after high school, nearly every eligible student signed up.

    The program, known as Charting My Path for Future Success, aimed to fill a major gap in education research about what kinds of support give students nearing graduation the best shot at living independently, finding work, or continuing their studies.

    Students with disabilities finish college at much lower rates than their non-disabled peers, and often struggle to tap into state employment programs for adults with disabilities, said Stacey McCrath-Smith, a director of special education at Poway Unified, which had 135 students participating in the program. So the extra help, which included learning how to track goals on a tool designed for high schoolers with disabilities, was much needed.

    Charting My Path launched earlier this school year in Poway Unified and 12 other school districts. The salaries of 61 school staff nationwide, and the training they received to work with nearly 1,100 high schoolers with disabilities for a year and a half, was paid for by the U.S. Department of Education.

    Jessie Damroth’s 17-year-old son Logan, who has autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and other medical needs, had attended classes and met with his mentor through the program at Newton Public Schools in Massachusetts for a month. For the first time, he was talking excitedly about career options in science and what he might study at college.

    “He was starting to talk about what his path would look like,” Damroth said. “It was exciting to hear him get really excited about these opportunities. … He needed that extra support to really reinforce that he could do this.”

    Then the Trump administration pulled the plug.

    Charting My Path was among more than 200 Education Department contracts and grants terminated over the last two weeks by the Trump administration’s U.S. DOGE Service. DOGE has slashed spending it deemed to be wasteful, fraudulent, or in service of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility goals that President Donald Trump has sought to ban. But in several instances, the decision to cancel contracts affected more than researchers analyzing data in their offices — it affected students.

    Many projects, like Charting My Path, involved training teachers in new methods, testing learning materials in actual classrooms, and helping school systems use data more effectively.

    “Students were going to learn really how to set goals and track progress themselves, rather than having it be done for them,” McCrath-Smith said. “That is the skill that they will need post-high school when there’s not a teacher around.”

    All of that work was abruptly halted — in some cases with nearly finished results that now cannot be distributed.

    Every administration is entitled to set its own priorities, and contracts can be canceled or changed, said Steven Fleischman, an education consultant who for many years ran one of the regional research programs that was terminated. He compared it to a homeowner deciding they no longer want a deck as part of their remodel.

    But the current approach reminds him more of construction projects started and then abandoned during the Great Recession, in some cases leaving giant holes that sat for years.

    “You can walk around and say, ‘Oh, that was a building we never finished because the funds got cut off,’” he said.

    DOGE drives cuts to education research contracts, grants

    The Education Department has been a prime target of DOGE, the chaotic cost-cutting initiative led by billionaire Elon Musk, now a senior adviser to Trump.

    So far, DOGE has halted 89 education projects, many of which were under the purview of the Institute of Education Sciences, the ostensibly independent research arm of the Education Department. The administration said those cuts, which included multi-year contracts, totaled $881 million. In recent years, the federal government has spent just over $800 million on the entire IES budget.

    DOGE has also shut down 10 regional labs that conduct research for states and local schools and shuttered four equity assistance centers that help with teacher training. The Trump administration also cut off funding for nearly 100 teacher training grants and 18 grants for centers that often work to improve instruction for struggling students.

    The total savings is up for debate. The Trump administration said the terminated Education Department contracts and grants were worth $2 billion. But some were near completion with most of the money already spent.

    An NPR analysis of all of DOGE’s reported savings found that it likely was around $2 billion for the entire federal government — though the Education Department is a top contributor.

    On Friday, a federal judge issued an injunction that temporarily blocks the Trump administration from canceling additional contracts and grants that might violate the anti-DEIA executive order. It’s not clear whether the injunction would prevent more contracts from being canceled “for convenience.”

    Mark Schneider, the recent past IES director, said the sweeping cuts represent an opportunity to overhaul a bloated education research establishment. But even many conservative critics have expressed alarm at how wide-ranging and indiscriminate the cuts have been. Congress mandated many of the terminated programs, which also indirectly support state and privately funded research.

    The canceled projects include contracts that support maintenance of the Common Core of Data, a major database used by policymakers, researchers, and journalists, as well as work that supports updates to the What Works Clearinghouse, a huge repository of evidence-based practices available to educators for free.

    And after promising not to make any cuts to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation’s report card, the department canceled an upcoming test for 17-year-olds that helps researchers understand long-term trends. On Monday, Peggy Carr, the head of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees NAEP, was placed on leave.

    The Education Department did not respond to questions about who decided which programs to cut and what criteria were used. Nor did the department respond to a specific question about why Charting My Path was eliminated. DOGE records estimate the administration saved $22 million by terminating the program early, less than half the $54 million in the original contract.

    The decision has caused mid-year disruptions and uncertainty.

    In Utah, the Canyons School District is trying to reassign the school counselor and three teachers whose salaries were covered by the Charting My Path contract.

    The district, which had 88 high schoolers participating in the program, is hoping to keep using the curriculum to boost its usual services, said Kirsten Stewart, a district spokesperson.

    Officials in Poway Unified, too, hope schools can use the curriculum and tools to keep up a version of the program. But that will take time and work because the program’s four teachers had to be reassigned to other jobs.

    “They dedicated that time and got really important training,” McCrath-Smith said. “We don’t want to see that squandered.”

    For Damroth, the loss of parent support meetings through Charting My Path was especially devastating. Logan has a rare genetic mutation that causes him to fall asleep easily during the day, so Damroth wanted help navigating which colleges might be able to offer extra scheduling support.

    “I have a million questions about this. Instead of just hearing ‘I don’t know’ I was really looking forward to working with Joe and the program,” she said, referring to Logan’s former mentor. “It’s just heartbreaking. I feel like this wasn’t well thought out. … My child wants to do things in life, but he needs to be given the tools to achieve those goals and those dreams that he has.”

    DOGE cuts labs that helped ‘Mississippi Miracle’ in reading

    The dramatic improvement in reading proficiency that Carey Wright oversaw as state superintendent in one the nation’s poorest states became known as the “Mississippi Miracle.”

    Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast, based out of the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University, was a key partner in that work, Wright said.

    When Wright wondered if state-funded instructional coaches were really making a difference, REL Southeast dispatched a team to observe, videotape, and analyze the instruction delivered by hundreds of elementary teachers across the state. Researchers reported that teachers’ instructional practices aligned well with the science of reading and that teachers themselves said they felt far more knowledgeable about teaching reading.

    “That solidified for me that the money that we were putting into professional learning was working,” Wright said.

    The study, she noted, arose from a casual conversation with researchers at REL Southeast: “That’s the kind of give and take that the RELs had with the states.”

    Wright, now Maryland state superintendent, said she was looking forward to partnering with REL Mid-Atlantic on a math initiative and on an overhaul of the school accountability system.

    But this month, termination letters went out to the universities and research organizations that run the 10 Regional Educational Laboratories, which were established by Congress in 1965 to serve states and school districts. The letters said the contracts were being terminated “for convenience.”

    The press release that went to news organizations cited “wasteful and ideologically driven spending” and named a single project in Ohio that involved equity audits as a part of an effort to reduce suspensions. Most of the REL projects on the IES website involve reading, math, career connections, and teacher retention.

    Jannelle Kubinec, CEO of WestEd, an education research organization that held the contracts for REL West and REL Northwest, said she never received a complaint or a request to review the contracts before receiving termination letters. Her team had to abruptly cancel meetings to go over results with school districts. In other cases, reports are nearly finished but cannot be distributed because they haven’t gone through the review process.

    REL West was also working with the Utah State Board of Education to figure out if the legislature’s investment in programs to keep early career teachers from leaving the classroom was making a difference, among several other projects.

    “This is good work and we are trying to think through our options,” she said. “But the cancellation does limit our ability to finish the work.”

    Given enough time, Utah should be able to find a staffer to analyze the data collected by REL West, said Sharon Turner, a spokesperson for the Utah State Board of Education. But the findings are much less likely to be shared with other states.

    The most recent contracts started in 2022 and were set to run through 2027.

    The Trump administration said it planned to enter into new contracts for the RELs to satisfy “statutory requirements” and better serve schools and states, though it’s unclear what that will entail.

    “The states drive the research agendas of the RELs,” said Sara Schapiro, the executive director of the Alliance for Learning Innovation, a coalition that advocates for more effective education research. If the federal government dictates what RELs can do, “it runs counter to the whole argument that they want the states to be leading the way on education.”

    Some terminated federal education research was nearly complete

    Some research efforts were nearly complete when they got shut down, raising questions about how efficient these cuts were.

    The American Institutes for Research, for example, was almost done evaluating the impact of the Comprehensive Literacy State Development program, which aims to improve literacy instruction through investments like new curriculum and teacher training.

    AIR’s research spanned 114 elementary schools across 11 states and involved more than 23,000 third, fourth, and fifth graders and their nearly 900 reading teachers.

    Researchers had collected and analyzed a massive trove of data from the randomized trial and presented their findings to federal education officials just three days before the study was terminated.

    “It was a very exciting meeting,” said Mike Garet, a vice president and institute fellow at AIR who oversaw the study. “People were very enthusiastic about the report.”

    Another AIR study that was nearing completion looked at the use of multi-tiered systems of support for reading among first and second graders. It’s a strategy that helps schools identify and provide support to struggling readers, with the most intensive help going to kids with the highest needs. It’s widely used by schools, but its effectiveness hasn’t been tested on a larger scale.

    The research took place in 106 schools and involved over 1,200 educators and 5,700 children who started first grade in 2021 and 2022. Much of the funding for the study went toward paying for teacher training and coaching to roll out the program over three years. All of the data was collected and nearly done being analyzed when DOGE made its cuts.

    Garet doesn’t think he and his team should simply walk away from unfinished work.

    “If we can’t report results, that would violate our covenant with the districts, the teachers, the parents, and the students who devoted a lot of time in the hope of generating knowledge about what works,” Garet said. “Now that we have the data and have the results, I think we’re duty-bound to report them.”

    This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.


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  • TN Schools Could Exclude Immigrant Kids Without Legal Status in GOP-Backed Bill – The 74

    TN Schools Could Exclude Immigrant Kids Without Legal Status in GOP-Backed Bill – The 74


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    Tennessee lawmakers on Wednesday voted to advance a bill that would require public K-12 and charter schools to verify student immigration status and allow them to bar children who cannot prove they lawfully reside in the United States unless they pay tuition.

    The 5-4 vote by the Senate Education Committee came despite the Legislature’s own fiscal analysis, which said the proposed legislation “may jeopardize federal funding to the state and to local governments” and violate the federal Civil Rights Act, which specifically prohibits discrimination based on national origin in programs receiving federal dollars. Three Republicans joined the committee’s sole Democrat in voting “no.”

    Immediately after the vote was cast, shouts of “so shameful” and “that’s trash” erupted inside the hearing room. Others, including school-age children in attendance, streamed out of the room in tears.

    The bill (HB793/SB836) by Sen. Bo Watson, a Hixson Republican, and House Majority Leader William Lamberth, a Portland Republican, says that local school districts and public charter schools “shall require” students to provide one of three forms of documentation: proof of U.S. citizenship, proof the student is in the process of obtaining citizenship or proof they have legal immigration status or a visa.

    Students who lack one of the three forms of documentation could then be barred by their local school district from enrolling unless their parents paid tuition.

    Watson,  the bill’s sponsor, said he brought the measure in response to the increasing cost to the state of providing English-as-a-second-language instruction.

    “Remember, we are not talking about people who are here lawfully,” Watson said. “What I’m trying to discuss here is the financial burden that exists with what appears to be an increasing number of people who are not lawfully here.”

    In response to a question from Sen. Raumesh Akbari of Memphis, the sole Democrat on the panel, Watson said he had received no formal request from any school official to introduce the measure.

    “In an official capacity, this is one of those issues people do not talk about,” Watson said. “This is a very difficult bill to present. It is very difficult to have all these eyes on you.”

    “In an unofficial capacity at numerous events, have people mentioned this problem to me? Absolutely,” Watson said.

    Akbari responded: “I’m from the largest school district in the state. I have not had those conversations.”

    “I am offended by this legislation,” Akbari said. “I find that it is so antithetical to the very foundation of this country….This is saying that babies – you start school at five years old – that you do not deserve to be educated.”

    The bill’s sponsors have acknowledged the measure is likely to face a legal challenge if enacted. The proposed legislation, they have said, is intended to serve as a vehicle to potentially overturn the Supreme Court’s Plyler v. Doe decision, which established a constitutional right to a public school education for all children. The 1982 decision was decided by a 5-4 vote, Watson noted.

    “Many 5-4 decisions taken to the court today might have a different outcome,” Watson said.

    The proposed legislation is part of an unprecedented slate of immigration-related bills introduced in the Tennessee legislature this year as Gov. Bill Lee and the General Assembly’s GOP supermajority seek to align with the Trump Administration’s immigration policies.

    Lee last month signed into law legislation to create a state immigration enforcement office to liaise with the Trump administration, create distinct driver’s licenses for noncitizens and levy felony charges at local elected officials who vote in favor of sanctuary policies.

    Among nearly three dozen other immigration-related bills still being considered is one to require hospitals that accept Medicaid payments to report on the immigration status of their patients. Another bill would open up charitable organizations, including churches, to lawsuits if they have provided housing services to an individual without permanent legal immigration status and that individual goes on to commit a crime.

    Following Wednesday’s hearing in the Senate Education Committee, hundreds congregated in a hallway of the Legislature, chanting “education for all” and pledged to return as the bill winds through the committee process.

    The bill “instills fear and hopelessness in these students,” said Ruby Aguilar, a Nashville teacher who testified against the bill during the hearing.  “Education is not merely a privilege, it is a shared human right every child should have access to.”

    Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: [email protected].


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  • Trump order restricts PSLF eligibility for certain nonprofits

    Trump order restricts PSLF eligibility for certain nonprofits

    Despite a public push to cancel student debt among civil servants, only a small number of Public Service Loan Forgiveness applications were approved by the first Trump administration.

    Drew Angerer/Getty Images

    In his latest executive action, President Donald Trump directed the Education Department to limit eligibility for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.

    The order, issued late Friday evening, would require the Education Department to go through a complex and lengthy process known as negotiated rule making, so the directive doesn’t change anything immediately. And Education Secretary Linda McMahon pledged at her confirmation hearing that PSLF will not be eliminated completely, as “that’s the law.” However, the changes could lead to the denial of student loan forgiveness for thousands of nonprofit employees.

    The administration argued the order was a necessary step to “restore the program” and end the subsidization of “illegal activities” such as “illegal immigration, human smuggling, child trafficking, pervasive damage to public property, and disruption of the public order.”

    But Democrats and debt relief and consumer protection advocates say it’s another attempt to weaponize the federal government and block funds from reaching public servants in fields the president disagrees with.

    “Don’t be fooled, today’s executive order is blatantly illegal,” Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, said in a statement Friday. “It is an attack on working families everywhere and will have a chilling effect on our public service workforce doing the work every day to support our local communities.”

    Like Trump’s other executive orders, this directive is likely to face legal challenges.

    Congress created the PSLF program in 2007 with bipartisan support under former president George W. Bush. It was designed to incentivize Americans to work in public service, by promising student loan forgiveness to federal, state, local or tribal government staff members; civilians working in the military; and the employees of certain nonprofit organizations after they make 10 years of qualifying payments on an approved federal loan repayment plan.

    Historically, recognized nonprofits have included emergency management and crime-reduction services, public interest and civil rights legal groups, and institutions of public health and education. More than two million borrowers are eligible for the program, according to December data from the Education Department, the Associated Press reported.

    But gaining access to the program’s benefits hasn’t always been easy. In 2019, during the first Trump administration, the American Federation of Teachers sued then–education secretary Betsy DeVos, alleging “gross mismanagement” of the program. Data showed that of the roughly 76,000 applications submitted between 2017 and the filing of the lawsuit, only about 1 percent had been approved.

    Although the department reached a settlement in fall 2021 and committed to reconsider every application it denied, when the first Trump administration exited office, only 7,000 Americans had received forgiveness. Comparatively, the Biden administration prioritized making the program easier to access and provided more than $74 billion in relief to more than one million borrowers over the course of four years.

    Now, under the new stipulations, fewer borrowers could see relief, advocates said.

    “The PSLF Program has misdirected tax dollars into activist organizations that not only fail to serve the public interest, but actually harm our national security and American values, sometimes through criminal means,” the order says. “The Secretary of Education shall propose revisions … that ensure the definition of ‘public service’ excludes organizations that engage in activities that have a substantial illegal purpose.”

    According to the order, activities that would disqualify a nonprofit include: aiding or abetting violations of federal immigration laws, supporting terrorism, engaging in violence for the purpose of obstructing federal policy, the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children “or the trafficking of children to so-called transgender sanctuary States for purposes of emancipation from their lawful parents,” and aiding and abetting illegal discrimination.

    Although the president didn’t say so directly, experts interpret the order as yet another attempt to discourage activism and chill efforts Trump disagrees with, such as diversity, equity and inclusion; LGBTQ+ advocacy; pro bono defense for undocumented immigrants; and Palestinian statehood.

    Representative Tim Walberg, a Republican from Michigan and chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, praised the president’s intentions in a statement, saying President Trump is protecting Jewish students from “the hatred they’ve been enduring” on college campuses.

    “Federal dollars shouldn’t fund antisemitism,” he said. “President Trump is stepping up by preventing these activists from receiving windfalls in forgiveness benefits footed by taxpayers.”

    Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington and former chair of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, says Trump is “holding resources owed to hardworking Americans hostage.”

    “President Trump is once again trying to use his office to force his extreme political views on the American people by choking off promised relief for people who’ve served our country in ways he disagrees with,” she said. “It is as outrageous as it is un-American.”

    But the Trump administration says the order is about more than just preventing “subsidized wrongdoing.” In his view, it’s also a matter of limiting “perverse incentives” for higher education institutions.

    Rather than alleviating worker shortages, the president said, PSLF encourages colleges and universities to increase the cost of tuition and load students in “low-need majors” with “unsustainable” debt.

    To that, debt-relief advocates like the Student Debt Crisis Center say, “Public service workers are the backbone of this country.”

    “This executive order is both illegal and deeply troubling for all nonprofit workers,” SDCC president Natalia Abrams said in a statement. “Relentless political attacks on education and existing programs are not just policy decisions—they disrupt the lives and financial stability of Americans with student debt and their families. This must stop.”

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  • Trump admin cancels $400M in grants at Columbia U

    Trump admin cancels $400M in grants at Columbia U

    The Trump administration announced Friday that it’s cutting $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University as a result of what Republican officials say is “continued inaction” and failure to protect Jewish students at the Ivy League institution.

    The accusations were made in a joint news release from the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, Education, and the General Services Administration, all of which are members of an antisemitism task force the president assembled just one month ago through an executive order. Earlier in the week, the task force said it was reviewing Columbia’s $5 billion in federal grants and hinted that it could halt some of the university’s contracts. That notice was the task force’s first major action, and other universities could face similar reviews, experts said Friday.

    “For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in the release. “Today, we demonstrate to Columbia and other universities that we will not tolerate their appalling inaction any longer.”

    It remains uncertain exactly what grants and contracts will be affected, and the Department of Education did not respond to Inside Higher Ed’s request for clarity.

    Columbia officials said the university is “reviewing the announcement” and pledged to “work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding.”

    “We take Columbia’s legal obligations seriously … and are committed to combating antisemitism,” a spokesperson said in an email to Inside Higher Ed.

    Columbia has been a frequent target for Republicans who have taken issue with how colleges responded to a spate of demonstrations protesting Israel’s war in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023. That criticism ratcheted up last spring after pro-Palestinian student protesters erected an encampment of tents and later took over a campus building in hopes of persuading the university to divest from companies affiliated with Israel. Those protests, and Columbia’s decision to call in city police in response, not only sparked a national movement but also attracted strong opposition from critics who declared the demonstrations antisemitic and accused the colleges of failing to defend Jewish students.

    Trump officials have pledged to crack down on campus antisemitism, and this action against Columbia could serve as an early test case of how exactly the new administration could follow through on campaign trail promises.

    But canceling a university’s grants and contracts would be unprecedented. Higher education policy experts say that even if it’s just a threat, the concept of pulling funds without proper investigation from the Office for Civil Rights is deeply alarming.

    “You don’t get to punish people just because you don’t like what they’re doing,” said Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education. “The fact that the administration is choosing to simply ignore not just precedent, not just norms, but the actual law covering this should be concerning to a lot of people, not just people at Columbia.”

    The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is tasked with enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race and national origin, including antisemitic and Islamophobic discrimination. The department’s rules and regulations, which Fansmith said are mandated by Title VI, outline how OCR conducts investigations and what to do if the office finds a violation. OCR is required to attempt to reach a resolution with the institution. In the rare case that a college refuses to comply with the law, the case can be referred to the Department of Justice.

    “So while the law doesn’t specifically dictate the process, it dictates the necessity of the process,” Fansmith said. “Nowhere in federal law is the government given the authority to arbitrarily select different types of federal funding and withhold them from an institution absent any prior finding or decision.”

    Republicans from the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, on the other hand, praised the decision.

    “Americans do not want their money sent to institutions that serve as breeding grounds for hatred and support for terrorism,” Representative Tim Walberg, the Michigan Republican who chairs the committee, said in a statement. “I applaud the Trump administration for listening to the American people and holding institutions accountable when they fail to combat antisemitic, anti-American values.”

    Walberg and then–committee chair Representative Virginia Foxx were key figures in a scathing interrogation of then–Columbia president Minouche Shafik last spring. They also subpoenaed the university for records in August and published a deep-dive campus antisemitism report in November.

    But these congressional actions, as well as the department’s civil rights investigations, are separate from the actions of the task force.

    “The entire House report would be—what I’m sure many people would consider—a great piece of evidence in an OCR investigation,” Fansmith said. “The Trump administration is just missing the step where OCR does an investigation … which they’re required to in statute.”

    The statement said that Columbia should expect more cancellations.

    ‘Weaponizing’ Funding Cuts

    Similarly to Fansmith, First Amendment advocates see the Trump administration’s move as an overreach designed to intimidate institutions and chill campus free speech rather than address civil rights violations and hate speech.

    Kristen Shahverdian, program director for campus free speech at PEN America, said in a statement that while universities must urgently respond to concerns about antisemitism and ensure that students can participate fully and equally in campus life, they also need to be given “space, time and resources” to do so. The task force has not allowed that, and as a result federal research funding hangs in the balance.

    The Trump administration is “weaponizing nearly every instrument it has to suppress ideas it disfavors and pressure institutions into enforcing ideological alignment,” Shahverdian said. “The threat is sure to reverberate across the higher education sector, just as it seems intended to do.”

    Tyler Coward, lead counsel of government affairs at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told Inside Higher Ed that though the loss of funds is a potential consequence for institutions that violate antidiscrimination law, they may only face liability if they fail to address the unlawful conduct.

    “If the administration is cutting funding to Columbia for violating Title VI, it must be clear and transparent about how it arrived at that decision and follow all relevant procedural requirements before doing so,” Coward said. And First Amendment–protected speech cannot be punished with the retraction of federal funds, he added. (The release offered no specifics on how the task force made its decision.)

    This “immediate cancellation” violates the law. If the Admin thinks Columbia has violated Title VI by being deliberately indifferent to antisemitic harassment, it has to give Columbia a chance for a hearing first, make findings on the record, & wait 30 days.

    www.nytimes.com/live/2025/03…

    [image or embed]

    — Sam Bagenstos (@sbagen.bsky.social) March 7, 2025 at 1:27 PM

    Fansmith said he was “not in a position to say” whether Columbia’s response to the student protests, building raids and encampments of 2024 would qualify for punishment under a proper OCR investigation. But the Trump administration “clearly thinks so,” he added.

    “If they are so certain of what the outcome will be, then there’s no harm from conducting an investigation,” he said. But “there’s plenty of harm from not doing it.”

    Trump ‘Walking the Talk’

    But right-leaning advocates for the protection of Jewish students and faculty members say the move was justified and necessary.

    Kenneth Marcus, a prominent civil rights lawyer who ran OCR during Trump’s first term, described Trump’s latest actions as “incredible.”

    “If anyone wasn’t paying attention before, this will get their attention,” said Marcus, who also founded the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. “There can now be no doubt that the Trump administration has prioritized campus antisemitism far higher than any prior administration has done. They have Columbia University in their scopes today, but no one should doubt that they will be coming after other universities as well.”

    McMahon affirmed Marcus’s take on the situation in an interview with Fox News shortly after the funding cuts were announced.

    “The president has said he’s absolutely not going to allow federal funds to be going to these universities that continue to allow antisemitism,” she said. “Kids ought to go to college and parents ought to feel good about their kids going to college, knowing they’re in a safe environment.”

    Marcus also applauded the Trump administration for utilizing multiple agencies to tackle the problem at once. The Department of Justice was minimally involved in responding to campus antisemitism during Trump’s first term, he said, but this time “the DOJ is leading the charge” and “the difference is palpable.” This weekend, all university administrators should be meeting with their general counsels and ensuring they are doing everything they can to protect all students, Marcus advised.

    “The last administration spoke of a whole-of-government approach. This administration is walking the talk,” he said.

    Liam Knox contributed to this report.



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