Tag: Education

  • Some Grad Schools Open to Admitting 3-Year Degree Holders

    Some Grad Schools Open to Admitting 3-Year Degree Holders

    Madeleine Green, executive director of the College-in-3 Exchange, called the findings “a positive indicator.”

    Photo illustration by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Chris Ryan/OJO Images/Getty Images

    As a handful of colleges debuted 90-credit degrees this fall, one of the questions most top of mind for students, institutions and accreditors alike was whether graduate schools would admit students with these unusual degrees.

    Now, the College-in-3 Exchange, an organization that advocates for the creation of such programs, has compiled some evidence that they will. The nonprofit conducted a study interviewing 10 graduate school admissions leaders from a range of institution types about how they would hypothetically respond if an applicant had a bachelor’s degree with fewer than the traditional 120 credits. The study was led by Christa Lee Olson, a senior program specialist with College-in-3.

    The majority of respondents said their policies currently preclude reduced-credit degrees, but several said they could see that changing in the future, especially as three-year degrees become more common. Two of the interviewees reported that their institutions had changed their policies to accommodate international three-year degrees, which are common in countries like the U.K. Some also indicated that while they don’t accept reduced-credit degrees, they have mechanisms to make exceptions for specific applicants, especially at the request of a faculty member.

    It’s an important step for College-in-3. As accreditors and state higher education leaders evaluate whether to allow institutions to launch three-year programs, one of their top concerns has been whether employers and graduate schools will accept the shortened degrees. Madeleine Green, the executive director of College-in-3, said she believes this report will serve as evidence to institutions, accreditors and state leaders that graduate programs are open to considering these degrees.

    “Because College-in-3 is such a young movement, and we don’t have evidence of what happens to the graduates … this is suggestive evidence,” she said. “We plan to disseminate this, share it with the states, share it with our members and use it as a positive indicator.”

    The recent surge in three-year programs seems to have shifted the perspectives of some of the admissions leaders included in the report. One respondent noted that institutions near them are creating reduced-credit degrees; when asked if their institution will consider accepting these three-year degrees, “the respondent replied that the value of the bachelor’s degree is not based on the arbitrary length of the degree but rather on how the program enables a student’s learning and development,” the report noted.

    Three respondents also said that their own institution was considering or in the process of developing reduced-credit programs.

    But not every participant felt positively about three-year degrees; one “expressed caution” about the programs and said they’re taking their cues from accreditors, according to the study. (Many accreditors have begun accepting 90-credit degrees, although in some cases, the programs are considered pilots that will be evaluated for their efficacy in several years.)

    The question of whether graduate schools would admit students with a reduced-credit degree speaks to one of the most fundamental challenges of graduate admissions, said Julie Posselt, a scholar of higher education at the University of Southern California and the author of Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, and Faculty Gatekeeping (2016, Harvard University Press): How does one translate the information on a transcript into information about a student’s knowledge and abilities?

    Posselt told Inside Higher Ed she could imagine master’s programs—many of which are revenue generators for their institutions—being open to admitting students with three-year degrees. But she has doubts that doctoral programs, especially at selective institutions, would be as welcoming.

    “A fundamental challenge of selection is that no two humans are created equal or have fundamentally equivalent records. All we have is the information the applicant gives us. Professors have a tendency when making decisions, and admissions decision-makers of all kinds have a tendency, to rely on the metrics they have in front of them,” she said. “Especially in the current environment and in selective programs, I think it’s unlikely to be that any three-year program is likely to generate the same perceived competence, excellence and academic preparation.”

    For that to change, the degrees would not only have to become significantly more common, she said; they would have to crop up at institutions perceived as prestigious.

    One of the respondents in the College-in-3 report shared a similar perspective, emphasizing “the value of engaging high-profile institutions in this conversation to elevate the status of these degrees.”

    The report concludes with recommendations about how to support students in three-year programs who hope to pursue graduate education. Along with continuing to familiarize the higher education world with the idea of three-year degrees, the report’s author also encouraged programs to prepare their students to explain the structure of their degree to graduate schools. In addition, it floated the idea of creating agreements between three-year degree programs and graduate programs.

    “Conventional wisdom tells us that colleges and universities are very slow to change but change they do,” the report concludes. “Although ten interviews did not provide exhaustive information, the willingness of the respondents to consider different pathways to graduate studies suggests that master’s and even doctoral degrees will not be beyond the reach of 3-year degree program graduates.”

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  • What Does It Mean to Use an LLM for a “Personal Statement”?

    What Does It Mean to Use an LLM for a “Personal Statement”?

    Here’s a question that I think lots of people in higher education may be confronting over the next few weeks: What should we do with the personal statement for graduate admissions?

    I’ve now seen multiple anecdotal reports on social media (and also in my email inbox) of faculty on graduate admission committees across different subjects remarking that they think students are making significant use of large language models in drafting their personal statements.

    This feels dismaying, particularly in disciplines like creative writing and English, where we would expect students to take some interest and pride in their own unique expression.

    The easy narrative around this behavior is to lament over declining standards and student capacities, a lament as long and loud as the existence of organized education, but a lament also that prevents a deeper look at what’s driving the behavior and, in turn, what we could do to incentivize choices that we feel are better aligned with the goals of the institution and program.

    Rather than blaming this on defective students, I think we’re incentivizing this kind of behavior, the same way we retain incentives for students to complete homework with large language model outputs.

    From the beginning I’ve argued that one of the chief benefits of large language models is that their capacity to mimic human outputs gives us an opportunity to consider more closely what we actually want from writing that is supposed to come from humans working as humans.

    Here’s my attempt at a deeper look at this phenomenon.

    First, what are students thinking and experiencing, and how do these things impact their choices?

    1. With the personal statement, students don’t have a firm idea of what they’re being asked to do and what the audience might want in the piece of writing.

    The personal statement is a strange and unfamiliar genre to most of the people tackling them. The desirable end to the transaction—admission—is clear, but the communication that would result in that end is decidedly not clear. I have never been on the receiving end as part of an admission committee, but I have helped dozens of students attempt to draft these letters, and when I asked students what the school might be looking for in the statement, the reasoning becomes circular, orbiting around a general principle of “excellence.”

    This lack of knowing leads to great uncertainty and an impulse to pitch oneself to the committee, often through rather generic presentations of what “excellence” entails, usually descending into abstractions as a defense against the abstraction that is the idea of “excellence.”

    “Prove you’re more excellent than the other excellent people” is not a prompt likely to engender interesting or insightful writing.

    1. Students think the LLM will do a “better” job than they will on producing a text that will find favor with the committee.

    The black-box nature of the committee’s desire, combined with student unfamiliarity with the genre, results in doubt and fear, which can be resolved by turning to the text-production machine, which will, at least, generate something that “sounds good.”

    It will not be a truly meaningful piece of writing, but at least it won’t be outright wrong, or disqualifying. Students are missing key information that would allow them to write clearly and effectively inside the rhetorical situation. The world students are hoping to enter is foreign to them, and the LLM serves as a crude sort of translator to the discourse that they think might be expected of them.

    1. It is difficult to ask for a truly personal personal statement for an occasion and situation with such a high-stakes transaction at the other end and expect anything other than a sales pitch from the student.

    Students applying to these programs know they are competitive. They believe that failure to achieve admission may irreparably damage their future prospects. (Not true, but it’s what they believe.)

    When it comes to these statements, I think admission committees can’t handle the truth (or students, at least, perceive this) and so some portion of BS is going to result. Why not outsource the thing to the BS machine?

    So, what can we do about this?

    After some mutually frustrating experiences in trying to help students with their statements, brainstorming what committees might be looking for, I gave up on trying to help students hit a target that we couldn’t actually define and instead focused on something I do know: using writing as a way to better understand ourselves and then using that understanding to create a piece of writing that is interesting to read.

    I redirected the students to a different question. Rather than trying to convince a faceless committee of their general excellence, I asked them to write to themselves and answer three questions:

    1. Why do you want to do this specific thing?
    2. What makes you prepared to do this specific thing?
    3. How do you know that you’re going to follow through and complete this specific thing?

    The results of this shift were immediate and profound. In at least a third of the cases (maybe more), this exercise resulted in students deciding to not apply for the graduate program. By forcing them into a reflective practice—as opposed to writing a sales pitch as part of a transaction—students had to confront where their desires originated, and in a lot of cases the impulse toward a graduate program was primarily rooted in being “good at school” and not knowing what they should do next.

    For those who determined that a graduate program still fit their desires, this reflection helped on two fronts:

    1. It helped clarify their own motives, giving them specifics they could now explain to someone else (like a committee) about why they desired this path.
    2. It boosted their self-confidence in choosing this path, as they developed a more specific and concrete notion of the capacities they’d developed up to that point and what else they hoped to gain from additional study.

    I don’t know how committees received the writing that resulted from this process in terms of the transactional nature of the exchange, but I know for a fact that as pieces of writing they were far superior to what students had produced previously. I hope that at least made the admission committee’s work more interesting.

    I learned something from this exercise for myself for a different genre that is also transactional at its core, the book proposal.

    The book proposal was once my least favored genre, an exercise engineered for angst and writer’s block as I wrestled over what might be convincing to publishers to give me a shot at their support for a project.

    But then I realized that the first purpose of a book proposal was not to convince a publisher to fund it, but to convince myself that I could actually do it! The exercise became inherently more interesting as I explored what I knew, what I wanted to know and why I thought audiences might be interested in the results. Convincing myself of the viability of the project was, in many ways, harder than convincing a publisher. Multiple times I’ve wisely talked myself out of projects that I maybe could have sold if I treated the proposal solely as a pitch, but that I would’ve struggled to execute, primarily because I wasn’t as interested in the project as I needed to be.

    I’m three for three on the proposals that I’ve completed and taken to market using this method. The books I’ve published from these proposals are also better—and were completed more quickly—because of the process I went through to write these proposals. I metabolized much more of the material that would go into the books in a way that provided great fuel for the writing.

    As to what this means for the personal statement and admission committees, my recommendation is to think deeply about what kind of experience you’re seeking to engender in applicants and how that experience can be used to better inform your choices of whom to admit.

    This joining of students with institutions is a much deeper thing than a mere transaction. Ask applicants to produce something worthy of that fact.

    Or … drop the personal statement entirely. If it’s simply going to be a pro forma part of a larger process, why put everyone through an experience without meaning?

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  • Turning Over Jewish Employees’ Names Unconstitutional

    Turning Over Jewish Employees’ Names Unconstitutional

    The University of Pennsylvania has refused to disclose the names and personal information of Jewish employees to the Trump administration.

    The University of Pennsylvania filed its formal response Tuesday to the Trump administration’s demand that the university disclose the names of Jewish employees without their consent, arguing the request is unconstitutional and that it disregards the “frightening and well-documented history” of governmental cataloging of people with Jewish ancestry. 

    In a July subpoena, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission asked Penn to turn over the names and information of employees with Jewish faith or ancestry, as well as the personal information of employees affiliated with Jewish studies, organizations and community events. Penn has refused to do so and thus entered into a legal battle with the Trump administration, which is now seeking a court order to force Penn to comply.  

    “The government’s demand implicates Penn’s substantial interest in protecting its employees’ privacy, safety, and First Amendment rights,” the filing states. 

    A university spokesperson said the filing is “comprehensive and speaks for itself.” Faculty at Penn and other higher ed groups have backed Penn in its fight to avoid disclosure.

    “The charge does not refer to any employee complaint the agency has received, any allegation made by or concerning employees, or any specific workplace incident(s) contemplated by the EEOC, nor does it even identify any employment practice(s) the EEOC alleges to be unlawful or potentially harmful to Jewish employees,” the filing states.

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  • Empowered Virginia Democrats Move Fast to Reshape Higher Ed

    Empowered Virginia Democrats Move Fast to Reshape Higher Ed

    When Virginia’s new Democratic leaders took control of the governor’s office and attorney general position last week, they wasted no time overhauling higher ed.

    Abigail Spanberger, the new governor, immediately appointed more than two dozen members to the governing boards of the Virginia Military Institute, George Mason University and the University of Virginia, meaning she’s already appointed the majority of members on the George Mason and UVA boards. Her Republican predecessor, Glenn Youngkin, stocked university boards with conservatives who cracked down on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. UVA went through high-profile controversies under its Youngkin-era board, including the resignation of former president Jim Ryan under pressure.

    Now, Spanberger’s appointees—at least 13 of whom donated to her gubernatorial campaign—are expected to lead universities in a different direction. Spanberger also signed an executive order Saturday directing her education secretary to assess the board member appointment process and recommend legislative changes, including possible modifications to term lengths, term starts and reappointments. In the order, Spanberger wrote that the Trump administration’s actions necessitate this review.

    “Virginia colleges and universities have faced unprecedented challenges from shifts in federal policy to attacks on institutional autonomy and mission,” Spanberger said. “These pressures underscore the urgent need for the Commonwealth to reevaluate how governing boards are appointed, ensuring they are composed of individuals dedicated to upholding the quality, independence, and reputation of our institutions.”

    The new attorney general, Jay Jones, also moved swiftly. He fired GMU’s university counsel K. Anne Gambrill Gentry and associate counsel Eli Schlam, leaving the institution with two remaining in-house lawyers, the university said. Jones also ousted VMI general counsel Patrick O’Leary; a spokesperson for the institution said O’Leary “notified us that he received a letter late last week informing him that his services were no longer required.”

    Furthermore, on Tuesday, Jones’s office withdrew his Republican predecessor’s agreement with the Justice Department to disregard a state law that provides in-state tuition rates to undocumented students. The department sued the state Dec. 29, seeking to invalidate the law, and the next day—on his way out of office—former Virginia attorney general Jason Miyares concurred in a court filing that the law was unconstitutional.

    In a news release on the reversal, Jones said, “On day one, I promised Virginians I would fight back against the Trump Administration’s attacks on our Commonwealth, our institutions of higher education, and most importantly—our students.”

    And Democrat General Assembly members—who control both legislative chambers, including a supermajority in the House for the first time since the 1980s—have already expressed interest in higher ed changes. Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell filed a bill in the current legislative session that would, among other things, lengthen governing board members’ terms from four to six years and add one faculty, one staff and one student voting member to each board.

    Furthermore, House member Dan Helmer filed a resolution to create a task force to determine whether VMI—where the Youngkin-era board last year rejected a contract extension for the university’s top leader—should no longer be a public university that receives public funding. If the resolution passes, the task force will explore “expanding programs at other public institutions of higher education to replace the role of VMI” in training commissioned military officers.

    Among other things, the resolution calls for the group to audit whether the university responded to a report to the 2021 State Council of Higher Education for Virginia detailing discrimination by initiating “any substantial changes” to “reduce acts within their student body that could be perceived or classified as racist, sexist, or misogynistic or as an act of sexual harassment or sexual assault,” and whether the university “possesses the capacity as an institution to end celebration of the Confederacy.”

    In an email to Inside Higher Ed, a VMI spokesperson said, “We are reviewing many pieces of legislation, including Del. Helmer’s, and plan to work with our elected officials to demonstrate VMI’s progress.”

    Altogether, the moves show state Democrats’ willingness to act quickly to counteract the rapid changes to higher ed that Republicans—at both the state and federal level—rushed into place last year. Democratic leaders don’t appear afraid of attracting the ire of the Trump administration after its interventions in 2025, including the Justice Department’s demand that Ryan step down from leading UVA and Justice and Education Department investigations into George Mason that observers feared would oust the president there.

    But Surovell’s bill, and Spanberger’s recent statements to the General Assembly, also suggest that Democrats are seeking more than to bask in their newfound, but likely fleeting, power; they’re aiming to insulate higher ed decision-making from future political turnovers.

    “Virginia has some of the finest colleges and universities in the world,” Spanberger told lawmakers in a Monday address. “And yet, news story after news story isn’t about their successes—it’s about them becoming political battlegrounds.”

    She touted her review of the appointments process but added that she “will also work with this General Assembly to pursue reforms that prevent any future governor—Democrat or Republican—from imposing an ideological agenda on our universities. As governor, I have and will appoint serious, mission-driven individuals to our Boards of Visitors—people whose allegiance is to the institutions they serve, not to any political agenda.”

    The state’s Republican Party didn’t respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

    A Question of Stability

    Walt Heinecke, past president of UVA’s American Association of University Professors chapter and a current member of the Virginia state AAUP conference’s executive committee, opposed Ryan’s ouster from UVA and the Youngkin-era board’s appointment of a new president on their way out the door.

    “This has just been a mess for a year, and it’s important for us to clean house,” Heinecke said.

    He said Democrats “realized that, since last January, there’s been an attempt to basically take over universities with the Trump agenda, and I think they’re sick and tired of the moves that have been made.”

    Jon Becker, a tenured associate professor of educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University, said the speed with which Spanberger moved to appoint new board members was “no surprise.” Starting last year, Democrats blocked several of Youngkin’s board appointments, and those boards needed people.

    “At UVA, they were effectively without a board,” Becker said, adding that George Mason’s board similarly lacked the required number of members to conduct business. He said it was “fairly urgent” for Spanberger to appoint members to allow those boards to function again.

    Going forward, Becker said, “I would expect the focus on board reform to continue.”

    “A good, thorough review would show that there are practices in other states that might bring better governance to higher education in Virginia,” he said, such as requiring geographic diversity on boards and other ways of making them more representative of the state. He said, “Board members are mostly … kind of wealthier people, and they really should be more representative of the citizens.”

    But he also sees the Democratic moves as an attempt to tell the federal government to keep its hands off the state’s universities. And he said he thinks Virginia is indicative of what other states will do regarding higher ed when a single party takes control and realizes it needs to move fast to make change.

    Alex Keena, a tenured associate professor of political science at Virginia Commonwealth, said, “I think what we’ve seen here in Virginia is a reflection of national trends, where national party politics is starting to influence how things are done at the state level.”

    “You have positions in government that used to be insulated from partisan politics that are now like the latest battlegrounds,” Keena said. In certain cases, he said, Youngkin’s board appointments were “antagonistic to the whole project” of higher ed, or “had very extreme ideas about the future of higher ed.”

    Now, Keena said, Democrats seem to be reacting to what the Youngkin and Trump administrations did last year, “which is this politicization of these boards that we really hadn’t seen in Virginia.” While Democrats will probably offer some stability for universities, he said, “it doesn’t really change the big picture—that you have this very hostile approach from the federal government.”

    Keena said he wonders how Spanberger will respond to attacks from the Trump administration.

    “How will she deal with that friction?” he said. “It’s a lot of uncertainty.”

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  • Trump’s national school voucher program could mean a boom in Christian education

    Trump’s national school voucher program could mean a boom in Christian education

    by Anya Kamenetz, The Hechinger Report
    January 22, 2026

    LACONIA, N.H. — Three dozen 4- and 5-year-olds trooped out onto the stage of the ornate, century-old Colonial Theatre of Laconia in this central New Hampshire town. Dressed in plaid, red, green and sparkles, some were grinning and waving, some looked a bit shell-shocked; a tiny blonde girl sobbed with stage fright in her teacher’s arms. 

    No sooner did the children open their mouths to sing, “Merry Christmas! … This is the day that the Lord was born!” than the house lights came up and a fire alarm went off. 

    It was an unusually eventful annual Christmas concert for Laconia Christian Academy. Then again, it’s been an unusually eventful year. In a small, aging state, where overall school enrollment has been dropping for more than two decades, Laconia reported a 130 percent increase in enrollment in its elementary school since 2020 — and began a three-quarter-million-dollar campus expansion on its 140 acres outside town.

     “We are in a season of incredible growth,” the school’s website reads. 

    One reason for the season: Almost every student at the academy is enrolled in New Hampshire’s Education Freedom Account program, said Head of School Rick Duba. Regardless of their family income, they receive thousands of dollars each in taxpayer money to help pay their tuition.   

    In June, New Hampshire became the 18th state to pass a universal private school choice program. After signing the bill into law, Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte announced, “Giving parents the freedom to choose the education setting that best fits their child’s needs will help every student in our state reach their full potential.” 

    Yet, as these programs proliferate, with significant expansion since the pandemic, Democrats, teachers unions and other public school advocates are raising the alarm about accountability, transparency and funding. And with President Donald Trump passing a federal voucher program to start in 2027, some are concerned about the future of public education as a whole. 

    “I think these programs are the biggest change in K-12 education since Brown v. Board of Ed,” said Douglas Harris, a scholar at Tulane who recently published two papers on the impact of universal private school choice programs. He argues that vouchers were originally introduced in the 1950s in part to resist desegregation by funding white families to attend private schools.

    According to his October 2025 paper, private school choice “allows schools to discriminate against certain students, entwines government with religion, involves a large fiscal cost, and has shown fairly poor, or at best inconclusive, academic results.” Harris said in an interview, “It changes fundamentally all the basic traditions of the education system.” 

    New Hampshire could be a harbinger of that fundamental change. Experts say the state has one of the broadest and least regulated universal school choice programs in the country. “Universal” refers to the fact that families, regardless of income, are eligible for an average $5,200 a year from the government to pay tuition at a private school or supplement the cost of homeschooling. The number of recipients reached 10,510 this year, and it’s likely to grow again next year.

    Related: A lot goes on in classrooms from kindergarten to high school. Keep up with our free weekly newsletter on K-12 education.

    “Universal” also describes the fact that any type of school — or nonschools, such as an unaccredited storefront microschool, an online curriculum provider, a music camp or even a ski slope — can be eligible for these funds. 

    These schools and organizations don’t have to abide by state or federal laws, like those requiring accommodation for students with disabilities or other antidiscrimination laws. A 2022 Supreme Court decision, Carson v. Makin, affirmed the right of parents to use public money, in the form of voucher and education savings account funds, specifically for religious schools. 

    And indeed, it seems that in New Hampshire, as nationally, a disproportionate amount of the funding is going to small Christian schools, particularly to evangelical Protestant schools like Laconia. The Concord Monitor found that in the past four years, 90 percent of the revenue from the previous, income-capped EFA program went to Christian schools. This was true even though most of the state’s private schools are not religious. The Concord Monitor found in the first five years of the program, the top 10 recipients grew in enrollment by 32 percent. With the exception of Laconia, none of these schools responded to repeated requests for comment from The Hechinger Report. 

    But state officials have stopped releasing data on exactly where recipients of the Education Freedom Accounts are using those dollars. They told the Concord Monitor that the data is not subject to public record requests because it’s held by the nonprofit that administers the funds, the Children’s Scholarship Fund of New Hampshire. State officials did not respond to Hechinger queries. The Children’s Scholarship Fund directed The Hechinger Report to its website, which features a partial accounting of less than 10 percent of 2025-26 student. This accounting, which may or may not be representative, showed 671 of these students currently attend Christian schools, 64 attend non-Christian private schools and 50 are homeschooled. 

    A national analysis released in September by Tulane’s Harris of publicly available data showed that in New Hampshire and ten other states with similar policies, vouchers have boosted private school enrollment by up to 4 percent. The increases were concentrated at small Protestant religious schools like Laconia. The federal tax credit scholarship program will allow even more funds in additional states to be directed to these schools. 

    One reason that Christian schools are coming out on top, Harris said, is that this type of school tends to have lower tuition than independent private schools, meaning a $5,000 subsidy can make the difference for more families. The schools do this in part by paying teachers less.

    “ Typically, Christian school teachers see their work as a ministry and are willing to work for significantly less than their public counterparts,” said Duba, Laconia’s leader. He added that he is working with his board to try to pay a “living wage” of $55,000. 

    Related: The new reality with universal school vouchers: Homeschoolers, marketing, pupil churn

    At the Christmas concert in Laconia, after the fire department gave the all clear and the performance resumed, the little ones were tuckered out from the extra excitement. In the theater lobby, Nick Ballentine cradled his kindergartner, Perna, who wore two big red bows in her hair and a dress that read “Merry” on the front in cursive. 

    Ballentine said his family chose Laconia because “it was local and it wasn’t a public school.” He also liked that it was Christian and had small class sizes, but his opposition to public school is staunch: “I don’t like public schools, nor the policies that guide them, because they come from the government.” 

    Duba said that families come to Laconia for the small class sizes, the TimberNook outdoor program that has elementary school students spending five hours each week of class time in the woods, and “ for faith.”

    “They don’t want their kids in public schools where their kids are being taught by people who don’t express faith in Christ,” he said. While the school doesn’t require students to have a “profession of faith” to attend, there are lessons about the life of Jesus in preschool, daily prayers and service mission trips for the high school students as far away as Rwanda. 

    Duba said the biggest “social issue” that drives families away from public schools and toward schools like his is “ sexuality and gender identity.” The Concord Monitor previously reported that many of the schools that are the top recipients of aid in New Hampshire won’t admit students who have anyone in their family who is openly LGBTQ+ or supports gay or trans rights. Laconia Christian Academy’s nondiscrimination policy says it does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin, but it doesn’t mention sexual orientation or gender identity. Asked about the policy, Duba declined to comment. 

    Like other private schools, these schools also aren’t required by law to serve students who have disabilities. The state says 8.47 percent of EFA recipients are in special education, compared to 20 percent in the state’s public schools. 

    Adam Laats, an education historian at Binghamton University, said these universal school choice programs are part of a long history of conservative evangelical Protestants seeking to make existing public schools more Christian in character on the one hand and divert public money to explicitly Christian schools on the other. 

    “For 100 years, public schools have been the sort of litmus test of whether the U.S. is a Christian nation,” he said, citing battles over teaching evolution, sex education, prayer in schools and more recently climate change, the treatment of race and American history, LGBTQIA rights and book banning. 

    Alongside the culture wars in public schools, said Laats, there have been successive waves of founding and expansion of Christian private schools: “There’s a burst in the 1920s, the next big bump comes in the ’50s and a huge spike in the 1970s, during the height of busing, when for a while there was one new school opening a day in the U.S. of these conservative evangelical schools.” 

    Laats agrees with Harris that the 1950s and 1970s booms were in part responses to desegregation efforts. But, he said, previous enrollment booms have eventually faded, because “it’s expensive” to educate students and offer amenities like sports and arts education. “That’s why the Christians have pushed hard for vouchers.” 

    Related: Arizona gave families public money for private school. Then private schools raised tuition 

    Funding fairness is a hot-button issue right now in New Hampshire. 

    In the summer of 2025, the State Supreme Court found that New Hampshire’s schools are officially inadequately funded. School funding in the low-tax, live-free-or-die state depends heavily on local property taxes, which vary radically area to area. The state spends an average of 4,182 per head; the court found it should spend at least $7,356. 

    So far, the overall percentage of New Hampshire students enrolled in public schools has remained steady at 90 percent. That implies most of the ESA money, so far, is subsidizing families who already were choosing private schools or homeschooling, rather than fueling a mass exodus from public schools. 

    Yet some districts are feeling the bite. According to recently released data from the state, in the small town of Rindge, 29 percent of students are EFA recipients — the highest of any community in the state. 

    “It is taking money away from public education,” said Megan Tuttle, president of New Hampshire’s state teacher union. “If you have a couple kids that are leaving the classroom to take the money, that doesn’t change the staffing that we have at the schools, heat, oil, electricity, all those types of things. And so, what’s happening is the money’s leaving, but the bills aren’t.”

    Duba looks at the math differently, pointing out that the EFA doesn’t equal the full cost of educating a student. “Let’s say I took 30 kids from Laconia. I did not, but for the sake of argument,” he said. “ They don’t have to do anything with those 30 kids anymore. They’re gone.”  

    This year, the advocacy group Reaching Higher NH calculated that the education savings account program will siphon $50 million from the state’s $2.61 billion education trust fund, and it will grow from there. “We’re functionally trying to fund two systems,” said Alex Tilsley, the group’s policy director. “And we couldn’t even fund one system fully.” 

    As the program grows in New Hampshire, the opposition is growing too. 

    “There’s broad opposition to EFAs from the teacher unions, from public school groups and from voters,” sums up Tilsley.* “It’s not generally speaking a highly favored policy across the state.” But with a Republican trifecta in control of state government, school choice in New Hampshire is not going anywhere. And with a national education tax credit program in the offing, more states will soon face these debates. As in New Hampshire, the federal money will be able to be used for private schools, homeschooling costs or anything in between. 

    *Correction: This sentence has been updated to correct the spelling of Alex Tilsley’s last name.

    Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at [email protected].

    This story about Christian 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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  • 4 education legal and policy trends to watch in 2026

    4 education legal and policy trends to watch in 2026

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    After a tumultuous 2025, education policy and legal experts expect no let-up in 2026. The second Trump administration and its Education Department are continuing to reshape the direction of federal support for K-12, and courts are routinely hearing cases of great consequence for school district policies. 

    Continual change to the education landscape “makes it very difficult to plan and prepare, and to provide students with the quality public education they deserve,” said Sasha Pudelski, director of advocacy for AASA, The School Superintendents Association. “School district leaders are facing mounting uncertainty, and should brace for more in 2026.”

    Here are four K-12 legal and policy trends for district leaders to monitor in the coming year. 

    Uncertainty around federal support

    The Trump administration’s push to “return education to the states” means that superintendents can expect less federal support and more change in 2026. This ranges from less help with administering the National Assessment of Educational Progress and managing federally funded programs, to unpredictability around the availability of federal funds and the makeup of the U.S. Education Department, education policy experts said. 

    “Anything that they’re used to getting from the federal government, I would expect them to essentially expect less,” said Jonathan Collins, assistant professor of political science and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

    Collins said districts in blue states can also anticipate being targeted for policies related to diversity, equity and inclusion —  including programs that support diversifying the teacher workforce — as well as LGBTQ+ rights.

    “You should expect them to turn up the heat,” Collins said of the federal government’s crackdown on Title VI and Title IX issues, which bar race- and sex-based discrimination, respectively, in federally funded education programs. 

    In the past, the federal government typically invoked the statutes to protect underserved students, but the Trump administration has instead used them to target DEI efforts and protections for LGBTQ+ students. “I think the nozzle on the gas is going to change to an even higher level this upcoming year,” Collins added. 

    A bigger religious footprint in public education

    Recent years have seen a surge in First Amendment lawsuits related to the religious rights of parents and teachers, especially spurred on by the parental choice movement circling around issues like curriculum and LGBTQ+ culture in schools. 

    In 2025, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court required a Maryland district to allow curriculum opt-outs for parents who don’t want their children exposed to LGBTQ+-related content. That ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor set legal precedent for other districts’ policies on such opt-outs. 

    In 2026, additional rulings on similar issues are expected to influence district policies, according to education policy experts. For example, lawsuits are pending on LGBTQ+ student pronoun usage and state laws requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms. 

    Districts, especially those in red states, can expect “to exercise even more authority” over school prayer, teaching of the 10 Commandments, “and just any initiative or program or aspect of schooling that especially caters to Christianity,” said Collins. “I think you can expect to see an even bigger upsurge in those kinds of things happening.” 

    Religious-based organizations are also likely to continue pushing — under the mantle of the First Amendment — for the creation of religious public charter schools.

    As a result of a deadlock due to Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s recusal in one such case, the Supreme Court kept in place an Oklahoma ruling that blocked what would have been the nation’s first religious public charter school. However, after that Catholic school’s failed launch, another religious charter was proposed for Oklahoma in November —  this time by a Jewish organization. Whether that school succeeds, and what it could mean for other efforts to establish religious public schools, will be watched in 2026.

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  • 10 talking points on the UK’s new international education strategy

    10 talking points on the UK’s new international education strategy

    1. Growth is the target, but not from student recruitment
    The international education strategy sets out a bold ambition for the UK’s thriving education sector: to collectively grow education exports to £40 billion per year by 2030, but the plan makes it clear that will need to come from the broader education ecosystem including transnational education (TNE), ELT, skills and edtech.

    2. The government’s love affair with TNE continues
    The UK’s TNE boom – seen most evidently in India, with a slew of UK branch campuses opening over the next year or so – shows no sign of slowing down. The IES sets out an intention to grow the government’s leadership in TNE, as well as using the Education Sector Action Group (ESAG) to look out for partnership opportunities and educating providers on the technical risks of operating overseas.

    3. Soft power and diplomacy is an explicit focus
    The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) has joined the Department for Education (DfE) and the Department for Business & Trade (DBT) as authors of the strategy and as a result soft power is a core feature. The strategy talks about ‘rolling out a new diplomacy‐led approach’, by appointing heads of missions to act as local education champions in priority countries. The upcoming HMG Soft Power Strategy will also dictate what global partnerships are a priority for the country.

    4. The ESAG will deliver action plans
    This reformed ministerially chaired forum will bring together industry, government, and representative bodies from across the education sector to tackle key concerns and identify opportunities for partnerships. Each representative will lead on an action plan, published within the first 100 days of appointment to ESAG, outlining how their members will support delivery of the three ambitions of this strategy. But who is ESAG? We’ve broken it down for you here.

    5. Sir Steve Smith continues his work with priority countries as international education champion
    Priority countries named in the strategy are still India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, as per the 2019 IES and the work of Sir Steve Smith. Emerging economies such as Brazil, Mexico and Pakistan are mooted as wider opportunities without any further details given. Pakistan is an outlier given the recent problems with high asylum applications and visa delays.

    6. The levy and tough immigration policy is reaffirmed
    The publication of the strategy was delayed in response to the government’s immigration whitepaper and the Autumn Budget, which announced the international student levy. It remains to be seen how this will be applied to students – however, the strategy doubles down on reaffirming this policy and how the IES will adhere to wider government immigration policy.

    7. Cross-government collaboration welcome, but will bureaucracy slow delivery down?
    There is a clear effort to include all stakeholders in the process and direction, including the government’s vast overseas networks – but will many more stakeholders prevent the UK from being agile? Global competition is ramping up again as Australia has undertaken its own strategy review and the big four study destinations expand to the big 10. Read our analysis here.

    8. No new policy levers, tactics or funding included
    Despite the obvious challenges, there appear to be no new tactics being presented in the strategy to meet the growth target. Instead, the report reiterates the strength of existing scholarships and campaigning by The British Council. The UK’s return to Erasmus is a welcome feature mentioned in the document and a new development after the previous IES – but that was technically announced by the government at the end of 2025. TNE and innovation are expensive and at present there is no government support offered to kick-start activity.

    9. Sustainable recruitment is the name of the game, but are the Home Office official stakeholders?
    The need for sustainable international recruitment is a theme mentioned repeatedly in the latest IES, with a focus on attracting “high-quality” talent from overseas. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the government’s aim of controlling immigration to the UK, the aim seems to be to maintain the UK’s stellar reputation as a study destination without seeing the same post-pandemic surge in numbers. The Home Office is implicitly involved as guardians of the new BCA metrics to which sponsors must adhere, but it remains to be seen if the previous disconnect between the UKVI and the national education exports strategy has been resolved.

    10. Qualifications are a valuable export for the UK
    In keeping with a renewed government focus on skills after the publication of the post-16 education and skills paper last year, the IES hones in on the value of UK qualifications abroad. It also wants to open up new markets overseas by benchmarking international credentials against UK standards.

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  • The 3 learning advantages of 3D printing

    The 3 learning advantages of 3D printing

    Key points:

    It’s truly incredible how much new technology has made its way into the classroom. Where once teaching consisted primarily of whiteboards and textbooks, you can now find tablets, smart screens, AI assistants, and a trove of learning apps designed to foster inquiry and maximize student growth.

    While these new tools are certainly helpful, the flood of options means that educators can struggle to discern truly useful resources from one-time gimmicks. As a result, some of the best tools for sparking curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking often go overlooked.

    Personally, I believe 3D printing is one such tool that doesn’t get nearly enough consideration for the way it transforms a classroom.

    3D printing is the process of making a physical object from a three-dimensional digital model, typically by laying down many thin layers of material using a specialized printer. Using 3D printing, a teacher could make a model of a fossil to share with students, trophies for inter-class competitions, or even supplies for construction activities.

    At first glance, this might not seem all that revolutionary. However, 3D printing offers three distinct educational advantages that have the potential to transform K–12 learning:

    1. It develops success skills: 3D printing encourages students to build a variety of success skills that prepare them for challenges outside the classroom. For starters, its inclusion creates opportunities for students to practice communication, collaboration, and other social-emotional skills. The process of moving from an idea to a physical, printed prototype fosters perseverance and creativity. Meanwhile, every print–regardless of its success–builds perseverance and problem-solving confidence. This is the type of hands-on, inquiry-based learning that students remember.
    2. It creates cross-curricular connections: 3D printing is intrinsically cross-curricular. Professional scientists, engineers, and technicians often use 3D printing to create product models or build prototypes for testing their hypotheses. This process involves documentation, symbolism, color theory, understanding of narrative, and countless other disciplines. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how these could also be beneficial to classroom learning. Students can observe for themselves how subjects connect, while teachers transform abstract concepts into tangible points of understanding.     
    3. It’s aligned with engineering and NGSS: 3D printing aligns perfectly with Next Gen Science Standards. By focusing on the engineering design process (define, imagine, plan, create, improve) students learn to think and act like real scientists to overcome obstacles. This approach also emphasizes iteration and evidence-based conclusions. What better way to facilitate student engagement, hands-on inquiry, and creative expression?

    3D printing might not be the flashiest educational tool, but its potential is undeniable. This flexible resource can give students something tangible to work with while sparking wonder and pushing them to explore new horizons.

    So, take a moment to familiarize yourself with the technology. Maybe try running a few experiments of your own. When used with purpose, 3D printing transforms from a common classroom tool into a launchpad for student discovery.

    Latest posts by eSchool Media Contributors (see all)

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  • Honoring Martin Luther King, the Nobel Peace Prize He Earned

    Honoring Martin Luther King, the Nobel Peace Prize He Earned

    The United States celebrated the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. this week. On the national holiday named for him and at numerous other times throughout each year, I reflect on what King taught the world through his justice-seeking philosophies, agendas and actions. I typically do so in writing, with the aim of thoughtfully connecting King to what is happening in our country at the time. For example, two years ago, I published an article in which I contended that he would be appalled by the politicized attacks on and dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. This year, I decided to write about something else that has been in the news lately for all the wrong reasons.

    The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to King in 1964, four years before he was assassinated. He earned it. King did not beg for it or annoyingly insist that it should be awarded to him. He did not make boastful claims about all he had single-handedly done to help end human suffering in America and abroad. Instead, he bravely put his life on the line for peace and justice, not for a prize.

    The Nobel Foundation was persuaded enough by King’s impact to celebrate it. No one had to donate their award to the civil and human rights icon. Same with Barack Obama—his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize did not come via whining, self-aggrandizement, public expressions of entitlement or donation from a prior recipient who desperately endeavored to gain political favor with a U.S. president.

    I learned very little about the prize in my K–12 schools, college or graduate school. I did at least know that King had been awarded it, because it is often a prominent detail in his biography. There is a chance that today’s students (including collegians) still do not learn much about the prize in textbooks or anyplace else. Perhaps few would be able to name five prior recipients. But King would probably be one name that most of them call.

    In addition to not knowing enough people who have won it, it is plausible that few students know much about the origins of the prize and the process by which laureates are selected. Because “peace” is in its name, most would likely deduce that the honor is in recognition of recipients’ extraordinary efforts to promote peace. Students also would likely presume the awardees to have themselves been peaceful people, certainly not sustainers of chaos or promoters of divisiveness.

    King had lots of opponents. But he did not waste time in pulpits, in his Birmingham jail cell, on streets all over America or on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (the site of his famed “I Have a Dream” speech) talking about how much he hated those who violently challenged and rejected his agenda. Love, forgiveness, unity and peace are what he extended to and invited from them. He urged others to pursue the same with neighbors and co-workers who were from different races, socioeconomic circumstances, religions and political parties. King hated racism. He hated poverty. Notwithstanding, he proposed and aggressively pursued remedies for them from a standpoint of love.

    I know for sure that were he still alive, King would be fighting like hell right now to ensure that millions of Americans—including whites who jailed him, spat in his face and wanted him dead—get to keep access to high-quality, affordable health care. There is no way he would have sat idly by as the recent politicization of food-stamp benefits placed low-income citizens at risk of starvation. I suspect that King would make the point that poverty and sickness unfairly place people in desperate, unhealthy contexts in which conflict ensues. In myriad ways, equity and equality are strongly connected to his writings about peace, several of which are published in a 736-page anthology of speeches, letters, sermons and op-eds.

    On the eve of this year’s MLK holiday here in the U.S., instead of devoting full attention to honoring one of its most recognizable laureates, the Nobel Foundation had to spend its time articulating the sacredness of its award and making sure people understand that “a laureate cannot share the prize with others, nor transfer it once it has been announced.” Its statement released last week went on to specify, “A Nobel Peace Prize can also never be revoked. The decision is final and applies for all time.”

    Absurdity will neither diminish King’s irrefutable impact nor the Nobel Peace Prize bestowed upon him. In the most dignified manner, King accepted the honor in Oslo 62 years ago: “Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace,” he declared in his acceptance speech. “If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”

    In celebration of what would have been his 97th birthday, I chose to reflect on King as a courageous, relentless pursuer of peace who himself was a peaceful leader.

    Shaun Harper is University Professor and Provost Professor of Education, Business and Public Policy at the University of Southern California, where he holds the Clifford and Betty Allen Chair in Urban Leadership. His most recent book is titled Let’s Talk About DEI: Productive Disagreements About America’s Most Polarizing Topics.

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  • Faculty Say AI Is Impactful, but Not In a Good Way

    Faculty Say AI Is Impactful, but Not In a Good Way

    About a quarter of faculty don’t use any AI tools at all, and about a third don’t use them in teaching, according to the survey.

    Oleh Stefaniak/iStock/Getty Images Plus

    Faculty overwhelmingly agree that generative artificial intelligence will have an impact on teaching and learning in higher education, but whether that impact is positive or negative is still up for debate.

    Nine in 10 faculty members say that generative AI will diminish students’ critical thinking skills, and 95 percent say its impact will increase students’ overreliance on AI tools over time, according to a report out today from the American Association of Colleges and Universities and Elon University.

    In November, the groups surveyed 1,057 faculty members at U.S. institutions about their thoughts on generative AI’s impact. Eighty-three percent of faculty said the technology will decrease students’ attention spans, and 79 percent said they think the typical teaching model in their department will be affected by AI.

    Most professors—86 percent—said that the impact of AI on teachers will be “significant and transformative or at least noticeable,” the report states. Only 4 percent said that AI’s effect on teaching will “not amount to much.” About half of faculty respondents said AI will have a negative effect on students’ careers over the next five years, while 20 percent said it will have a positive effect and another 20 percent said it will be equally negative and positive.

    Faculty are largely unprepared for AI in the classroom, the report shows. About 68 percent of faculty said their institutions have not prepared faculty to use AI in teaching, student mentorship and scholarship. Most of their recent graduates are underprepared, too. Sixty-three percent of professors said that last spring’s graduates were not very or not at all prepared to use generative AI at work, and 71 percent said the graduates were not prepared to understand ethical issues related to AI use.

    About a quarter of faculty don’t use any AI tools at all, and about a third don’t use them in teaching, according to the report. This faculty resistance is a challenge, survey respondents say. About 82 percent of faculty said that resistance to AI or unfamiliarity with AI are hurdles in adopting the tools in their departments.

    “These findings explain why nearly half of surveyed faculty view the future impact of GenAI in their fields as more negative than positive, while only one in five see it as more positive than negative,” Lynn Pasquerella, president of the AAC&U, wrote in her introduction to the report. “Yet, this is not a story of simple resistance to change. It is, instead, a portrait of a profession grappling seriously with how to uphold educational values in a rapidly shifting technological landscape.”

    While most professors—78 percent—said AI-driven cheating is on the rise, they are split about what exactly constitutes cheating. Just over half of faculty said it’s cheating for a student to follow a detailed AI-generated outline when writing a paper, while just under half said it is either a legitimate use of AI or they’re not sure. Another 45 percent of faculty said that using generative AI to edit a paper is a legitimate use of the tool, while the remaining 55 percent said it was illegitimate or they were unsure.

    Despite their agreement on generative AI’s overall impact, faculty are split on whether AI literacy is important for students. About half of professors said AI literacy is “extremely or very important” to their students’ success, while 11 percent said it’s slightly important and 13 percent said it’s irrelevant.

    Professors held a few hopeful predictions about generative AI. Sixty-one percent of respondents said it will improve and customize learning in the future. Four in 10 professors said it will increase the ability of students to write clearly, and 41 percent said it will improve students’ research skills.

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