The following statement can be attributed to FIRE’s Director of Public Advocacy Aaron Terr:
The Department of Justice is reportedly investigating elected officials for criticizing the administration’s immigration enforcement operations. If this is the basis for the investigation, it is blatantly unconstitutional and intolerable in a free society. The right to condemn government action without fear of government punishment is the foundation of the First Amendment.
This would not be the first time the administration has used boundless, imaginary definitions of “obstruction” or “incitement” that have no basis in the law and run headlong into constitutional limits. The few exceptions to the First Amendment are defined by narrow, exacting standards for a reason: to prevent the government from wielding its power to squash dissent.
If criticism of government policy can be rebranded as a crime, then constitutional protections become meaningless and the government becomes unaccountable. That is precisely the danger the First Amendment is meant to prevent, and it is a line no administration may cross.
by Madison Forde, The Hechinger Report January 12, 2026
Last month, a Boston University junior proudly posted online that he had spent months calling Immigration and Customs Enforcement to report Latino workers at a neighborhood car wash.
Nine people were detained, including siblings and a 67-year-old man who has lived in the U.S. for decades. The student celebrated the arrests and told ICE to “pump up the numbers.”
As the daughter of Caribbean immigrants and a researcher who studies immigrant-origin youth, I was shaken but not surprised. This incident, which did have some backlash, revealed a growing problem on college campuses: Many young people are learning to police one another rather than learn alongside one another.
That means the new border patrol could be your classmate. Our schools are not prepared for this.
That is why colleges must start treating immigration-based targeting as a serious threat to student safety and belonging and take immediate steps to prevent it — as they do with racism, antisemitism and homophobia.
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The incident at Boston University is bigger than one student with extreme views. We are living in a moment shaped by online outrage, anonymous tip lines and a culture that encourages reporting anyone who seems “suspicious.”
In this environment, some young people have started to believe that calling ICE is a form of civic duty.
That thinking doesn’t stay online. It walks right into classrooms, dorms and group projects. When it does, the impact is not abstract. It is deeply personal for the immigrant-origin youth sitting in those same rooms.
Many of these students grew up with fear woven into their daily lives. Their neighbors disappeared overnight, they heard stories of parents being detained at work and they began translating legal mail before they were old enough to drive. They know exactly what an ICE call can set into motion. They carry that fear with them to school.
These are not hypothetical harms. They show up in everyday decisions: where to sit, what to say, whom to trust. I’ve met students who avoid speaking Spanish on campus, refuse to share their address during class activities and sit near the exits because they’re not sure who views their family as “a threat.” It is not possible to learn well in an environment where you do not feel safe.
There is a strong body of developmental research highlighting belonging and social inclusion as central to healthy development. In her work on migration and acculturation, Carola Suárez-Orozco shows that legal-status-based distinctions among youth intensify exclusion and undermine both social integration and developmental well-being.
When belonging erodes, colleges begin to function like small border zones, where everyone is quietly assessing who might turn them in. It is nearly impossible for any campus community to thrive under that kind of pressure.
Quite frankly, nor can America’s democracy.
If we raise a generation of students who feel compelled to police the nation’s borders from their dorms, the immigrant-origin youth sitting beside them in classrooms will carry the psychological burden of those borders every single day. Yet colleges are almost entirely unprepared for this reality.
Most universities have clear policies for racial slurs, antisemitic threats, homophobic harassment and other identity-based harms. But very few have policies that address immigration-based targeting, even though the consequences can be just as severe and, in some cases, life-altering.
Boston University’s president acknowledged the distress caused by that student’s actions. Yet, the university did not classify the behavior as discriminatory, despite the fact that his calls targeted a specific ethnic and immigration-status group. That silence sends a clear message: Harm against immigrant communities is unimportant, incidental or simply “political.” But this harm is neither political nor the price of free expression or civic engagement; it is targeted intimidation, with real and measurable consequences for students’ safety, mental health and academic engagement.
In my view, colleges need to take three straightforward steps:
1. Define immigration-based harassment as misconduct. Calling ICE on classmates, doxxing immigrant peers or circulating immigration-related rumors should be classified under the same conduct codes that protect students from other forms of targeted harm. Schools know how to do this; they simply have not applied those same protections to immigrant communities.
2. Train faculty and staff on how to respond. Professors should have a clear understanding of what to do when immigration rhetoric is weaponized in the classroom, or when students express fear about being reported. Although many professors want to help, they may lack basic guidance.
3. Teach immigration literacy as part of civic education. Most students do not understand what ICE detention entails, how long legal cases can drag on or what it means to live with daily fear like their immigrant peers. Teaching these realities isn’t “political indoctrination,” it is preparation for a life in a multicultural democracy.
These three steps are not radical. They are merely the same kinds of protections colleges already provide to students targeted for other aspects of their identity.
The Boston University case is a warning, not an isolated moment. If campuses fail to respond, more young people will internalize the idea that policing their peers is simply part of student life. Immigrant-origin youth, who have done nothing wrong, will carry the emotional burden alone.
As students, educators and researchers, we have to decide what kind of learning communities we want to build and sustain. Schools can be places where students understand one another, or they can become places of intense surveillance. That choice will shape not just campus climates, but also the society current students will eventually lead.
Madison Forde is a doctoral student in the Clinical/Counseling Psychology program at New York University.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-colleges-must-start-treating-immigration-based-targeting-as-a-serious-threat-to-student-safety-and-belonging/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
This blog was kindly authored by Juliette Claro, Lecturer in Education at St Mary’s University Twickenham and Co-chair of the UCET Special Interest Group in Supporting International Trainee Teachers in Education.
The Immigration White Paper, published in Summer 2025, introduced sweeping reforms that will reshape England’s teacher workforce. One of the most consequential changes is the reduction of the Graduate Visa route from 24 to 18 months, which directly undermines the ability of international trainees to complete their Early Career Teacher (ECT) induction. Ahead of the debate at the House of Lords on the sustainability of Languages teachers and the impact of the immigration policies on the supply of qualified languages educators in schools and universities, this article examines the implications of this policy shift, supported by recent labour market data and the House of Lords paper by Claro and Nkune (2025), and offers recommendations for mitigating its unintended consequences.
The White Paper and the impact on shortage subjects
The National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) Annual Report (2025) confirms that Physics and Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) remain among the most under-recruited secondary subjects. Physics met just 17% of its Initial Teacher Training (ITT) target in 2024/25, while MFL reached 42%. These figures reflect a decade-long struggle to attract and retain qualified teachers International trainees have historically played a vital role in plugging these gaps, particularly in MFL, where EU-trained teachers once formed a significant proportion of the workforce.
Following the significant rise in international applicants for teacher training in shortage subjects such as Physics and MFL, The University Council for the Education of Teacher (UCET) launched in June 2025 a platform for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) providers to discuss the support of international trainee teachers through a Special Interest Group (SIG) composed of 83 members representing ITE providers across England. Members of the SIG shared their concerns towards the immigration reforms and the impact the White Paper may have on the recruitment and retention of teachers in shortage subjects such as Physics or MFL where a strong majority of applicants come from overseas.
Graduate visa reform: a critical barrier
The most contentious element of the 2025 Immigration White Paper is the reduction of the Graduate Visa route from 24 to 18 months, which started on 1 January 2026. The new 18-month limit creates a structural misalignment where international trainees will be forced to leave the UK before completing their two-year Early Career Framework (ECF) induction, unless their school sponsors them early through a Skilled Worker Visa. At this stage, many schools are unwilling or unable to undertake this process due to cost, administrative burden, and the complexity of the process.
UCET SIG members conducted a small-scale research in their settings to understand the barriers with school leaders to sponsor international Early Career Teachers (ECT). Across the sector, the reasons are complex and multilayered, reflecting the lack of financial and administrative support schools have to navigate sponsorship. This is especially true for smaller schools that are not part of a Multiple Academy Trust (MAT).
The changes in the White Paper not only disrupt career progression but also risk wasting public investment. International trainees in shortage subjects are eligible to receive bursaries of up to £29,000 in Physics and £26, 000 in MFL (2025-2026). If they are forced to leave before completing induction, the return on this investment is nullified. Coherence in policies between the Department for Education recruitment targets and the Home Office immigration policies is needed in a fragile education system.
The fragile pipeline of domestic workforce
Providers from the SIG who liaised with their local Members of Parliament and other officials were reminded that the White Paper encourages employers not to rely on immigration to solve shortages of skills. Moreover, the revised shortage occupation list narrows eligibility, excluding MFL and Physics teaching specialisms and requiring schools to demonstrate domestic recruitment efforts before sponsoring.
This adds friction to recruitment as the pipeline of domestic workforce for secondary school teachers in MFL, and Physics is relatively non-existent. The Institute of Physics highlighted in their 2025 report that 700,000 GCSE students do not have a Physics specialist in front of them in class. In MFL, the successive governments and decades of failed government policies to increase Languages students at GCSE and A Level are now showing the signs of a monolingual nation, reluctant to take on languages studies at Higher Education. This has contributed to a shortage of linguists willing to join the teaching profession.
Why do international teachers matter in modern Britain?
While the current political climate refutes the importance of immigration to sustain growth and skills in the economy, the White Paper undermines not only the Department for Education recruitment targets in a sector struggling to recruit and retain teachers in shortage subjects, but it also undermines the Fundamental British Values on which our curriculum and Teachers’ Standards are based on. Through a rhetoric that a domestic workforce is better than a foreign workforce, we both deny our young people the opportunity to be taught by subject specialists, and we refute the possibilities for our schools to promote inclusion in the teaching workforce.
International teachers bring a breadth of experience and expertise. This is being denied to students based on the assumptions that making visas more difficult to obtain and reducing the opportunities for sponsorship will make the economy stronger.
International trainee teachers joining the teacher training courses from Europe and the Global South often come to England with decades of experience teaching in their country. UCET SIG members’ small-scale research suggests that the majority of them want to stay and work in English schools after they qualify. The latest 2025 Government report on international teacher recruitment also highlights the fact that the majority of internationals aspire for careers progression in highly a performing education system in England. These studies suggest that the rhetoric behind the White Paper is not necessarily applicable in Education and needs reviewing.
International teachers show strength and resilience adapting to new curricula and new educational systems. They are role models and aspirations for learners not only sharing their expertise in the classroom but also their resilience and determination to thrive.
Recommendations
The following recommendations would help to address the current issues:
Restore the Graduate Visa to 24 months for teachers to align with the ECT induction period.
Introduce automatic Skilled Worker sponsorship for international trainees in shortage subjects who complete Year 1 of induction successfully.
Provide centralised visa support for schools, including legal guidance and administrative assistance.
Ring-fence bursary funding to ensure it supports retention, not short-term recruitment.
Monitor and publish retention data for international teachers to inform future policy.
To support the sector, Education andSkills England should collaborate with the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council and the Migration Advisory Committee to bring coherence to policies linked with sponsorship and visa waivers for shortage subjects for example in Languages and Physics.
Conclusion
The 2025 White Paper offers ambitious reforms to address England’s teacher shortages, but its immigration provisions risk undermining progress. The reduction of the Graduate Visa route creates a structural barrier to retention, particularly in MFL and Physics, where international trainees are most needed and the domestic workforce is not supplying the pipeline of specialist teachers. Without urgent policy realignment, England risks losing valuable talent and wasting public investment at a time when stability and inclusion should be the priority.
by Nirvi Shah, The Hechinger Report December 18, 2025
Even with a conservative think tank’s blueprint detailing how the second Trump administration should reimagine the federal government’s role in education, few might have predicted what actually materialized this year for America’s schools and colleges.
Or what might be yet to come.
“2025 will go down as a banner year for education: the year we restored merit in higher education, rooted out waste, fraud and abuse, and began in earnest returning education to the states,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon told The Hechinger Report. She listed canceling K-12 grants she called wasteful, investing more in charter schools, ending college admissions that consider race or anything beyond academic achievement and making college more affordable as some of the year’s accomplishments.
“Best of all,” she said, “we’ve begun breaking up the federal education bureaucracy and returning education control to parents and local communities. These are reforms conservatives have championed for decades — and in just 12 months, we’ve made them a reality.”
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McMahon’s characterization of the year is hardly universal. Earlier this month, Senate Democrats, led by independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, called out some of the administration’s actions this year. They labeled federal changes, especially plans to divide the Education Department’s duties across the federal government, dangerous and likely to cause chaos for schools and colleges.
“Already, this administration has cancelled billions of dollars in education programs, illegally withheld nearly $7 billion in formula funds, and proposed to fully eliminate many of the programs included in the latest transfer,” the senators wrote in a letter to Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, chair of the committee that oversees education. “In our minds, that is unacceptable.”
So, what really happened to education this year? It was almost impossible for the average observer to keep track of the array of changes across colleges and universities, K-12 schools, early education and education research — and what it has all meant. This is a look back at how the education world was transformed.
The administration was especially forceful in the higher education arena. It used measures including antidiscrimination law to quickly freeze billions of dollars in higher education research funding, interrupting years-long medical studies and coercing Columbia, Brown, Northwestern and other institutions into handing over multimillion-dollar payments and agreeing to policy changes demanded by the administration.
A more widespread “compact” promising preference for federal funding to universities that agreed to largely ideological principles had almost no takers. But in the face of government threats, universities and colleges scrapped diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs that provided support based on race and other characteristics, and banned transgender athletes from competing on teams corresponding to genders other than the ones they were assigned at birth.
As the administration unleashed its set of edicts, Republicans in Congress also expanded taxes on college and university endowments. And the One Big Beautiful Bill Act made other big changes to higher education, such as limiting graduate student borrowing and eliminating certain loan forgiveness programs. That includes public service loan forgiveness for graduates who take jobs with organizations the administration designated as having a “substantial illegal purpose” because they help refugees or transgender youth. In response, states, cities, labor unions and nonprofits immediately filed suit, arguing that the rule violated the First Amendment.
The administration has criticized universities, colleges and liberal students for curbing the speech of conservatives by shouting them down or blocking their appearances on campuses. However, it proceeded to revoke the visas of and begin deportation proceedings against international students who joined protests or wrote opinions criticizing Israeli actions in Gaza and U.S. government policy there.
Meanwhile, emboldened legislatures and governors in red states pushed back on what faculty could say in classrooms. College presidents including James Ryan at the University of Virginia and Mark Welsh III at Texas A&M were forced out in the aftermath of controversies over these issues. — Jon Marcus
Since Donald Trump returned to office earlier this year, K-12 schools have lost millions of dollars in sweeping cuts to federal grants, including money that helped schools serve students who are deaf or blind, grants that bolstered the dwindling rural teacher workforce and funding for Wi-Fi hotspots.
Last summer, the Trump administration briefly froze billions of dollars in federal funding for schools on June 30, one day before districts would typically apply to receive it. Although the money was restored in late July, some school leaders said they no longer felt confident they’ll receive all expected federal funds next year.And they are braced for more cuts to federal budgets as the U.S. Department of Education is dismembered.
That process, as well as the end goal of returning the department’s responsibilities to the states, has raised uncertainty about whether federal money will continue to be earmarked for the same purposes. If the state of Illinois is in charge of federal funding for every school in the state, said Todd Dugan, superintendent of a rural Illinois district, will rural schools still get money to boost student achievement or will the state decide there are more pressing needs?
As part of layoffs at the Education Department during the government shutdown in the fall, the Trump administration cut loose almost everyone who works in the Office of Special Education Programs, alarming many parents and advocates. About 7.5 million children ages 3 to 21 are served under federal law protecting students with disabilities, and the office had already lost staffers after the Trump administration dismissed nearly half the Education Department’s staff in March. Some worry this additional round of layoffs is a big step toward moving oversight of how states treat students with disabilities to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Even as the Trump administration attempts to push more control over education to the states, it has aggressively expanded federal power over school choice and transgender student rights in public schools. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act will create a federal school voucher program, allowing taxpayers to donate up to $1,700 for scholarships that families can use to pay for private school. The program won’t start until 2027, and states can choose whether to participate — setting up potentially divisive fights over new money for education in Democratic-controlled states.
Already, some Democratic-led states have come to the defense of schools in funding and legal fights with the federal government over transgender athletes participating in sports. The U.S. departments of Education and Justice launched a special investigations team to look into complaints of Title IX violations, targeting school districts and states that don’t restrict accommodations or civil rights protections for transgender students. Legal experts expect the U.S. Supreme Court to ultimately decide how Title IX — a federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education — applies to public schools.
The federal government directly runs just two systems of schools — one for military families and the other for children of tribal nations. In an executive order signed in January, the president directed both systems to offer parents a portion of federal funding allocated to their children to attend private, religious or charter schools.
And as part of the dismantling of the federal Education Department, the Interior Department — which oversees 183 tribal schools across nearly two dozen states — will assume greater control of Indian education programs. In addition to rolling out school choice at its campuses, the department will take over Indian education grants to public schools across the country, Native language programs, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian programs, tribally controlled colleges and universities, and many other institutions. — Ariel Gilreath and Neal Morton
Early education was not at the top of Trump’s agenda when he returned to office. On the campaign trail, when asked if he would support legislation to make child care affordable, he gave an unfocused answer, suggesting tariff revenue could be tapped to bring down costs. Asked a similar question, Vice President JD Vance suggested that care by family members was one potential solution to child care shortages.
However, many of the administration’s actions, including cuts to the government workforce and grants, have affected children who depend on federal support. In April, the administration abruptly closed five of 10 regional offices supporting Head Start, the free, federally funded early childhood program for children from low-income families. Head Start program managers worried they would be caught up in a freeze on grant funding that affected all agencies. Even though administration officials said funds would keep flowing to Head Start, some centers reported having problems drawing down their money. The prolonged government shutdown, which ended Nov. 12 after 43 days, also forced some Head Start programs to temporarily close.
Though the shutdown is over, Head Start advocates are still worried. Many of the administration’s actions have been guided by the Project 2025 policy document created by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 calls for eliminating Head Start, which serves about 715,000 children from birth to age 5, for a savings of about $12 billion a year.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act contained some perks for parents, including an increase in the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,200. The bill also created a new program called Trump accounts: Families can contribute up to $5,000 each year until a child turns 18, at which point the Trump account will turn into an individual retirement account. For children born between Jan. 1, 2025, and Dec. 31, 2028, the government will provide a $1,000 bonus. Billionaires Michael and Susan Dell have also promised to contribute $250 to the account of each child ages 10 and under who lives in a ZIP code with a median household income of $150,000 or less.
That program will launch in summer 2026. — Christina A. Samuels
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/how-education-changed-in-one-year-under-trump/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
by Christina A. Samuels, The Hechinger Report December 18, 2025
Last year, Project 2025 was a conservative wish list: a grab bag of proposals large and small that would transform the federal government, including in education.
Months later, many of those wishes have become reality. That includes, at least in part, Project 2025’s ultimate goal of doing away with the Education Department.
The department still exists — getting rid of it completely would require congressional action— but it is greatly diminished: Much of the department’s work is being farmed out to other federal agencies. Half of its workforce of about 4,100 people have left or been fired. And Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote after her confirmation that she was leading the department’s “final mission.”
Eliminating the Education Department was just one of many goals, however. While the administration did not meet all the other tasks in this “to-do” list below, compiled by The Hechinger Report and taken directly from Project 2025, there’s still three more years to go.
Early childhood
Eliminate Head Start: NO. Head Start, which provides free preschool for low-income children, still exists, though some individual centers had problems accessing their money because of temporary freezes from the Department of Government Efficiency and the prolonged government shutdown. The federal government also closed five of 10 Head Start regional offices, which collectively served 22 states.
Pay for in-home child care instead of universal (center-based) daycare: NO. Project 2025 states that “funding should go to parents either to offset the cost of staying home with a child or to pay for familial, in-home childcare.” There have been no moves to fulfill this goal, but the budget reconciliation bill the president signed in July increased the child tax credit and introduced “Trump Accounts” for children under age 18.
Expand child care for military families:YES. The National Defense Authorization Act, passed on Dec. 17 and sent to the president for his signature, authorizes over $491 million to design and build new child care centers for these families, among other provisions. The Department of Defense provides child care to military families on a sliding scale based on income. However, about 20 percent of military families who need child care can’t get it because there is not enough space.
Give businesses an incentive to provide “on-site” child care: NO. Project 2025 states that “across the spectrum of professionalized child care options, on-site care puts the least stress on the parent-child bond.”
K-12 education
Move the National Center for Education Statistics to the Census Bureau; transfer higher education statistics to the Labor Department: NO. Education data collection remains at the Education Department. However, the agency’s capacity has been sharply reduced following mass firings and the termination of key contracts — a development not envisioned in Project 2025. At the same time, Donald Trump directed the center to launch a major new data collection on college admissions to verify that colleges are no longer giving preferences based on race, ethnicity or gender.
Expand choice for families by making federal funding portable to many school options: PARTIAL. In January, the president signed an executive order encouraging “educational freedom.” One of the order’s provisions requires the departments of Defense and Interior — which run K-12 schools for military families and tribal communities, respectively — to allow parents to use some federal funding meant for their children’s education at private, religious and charter schools. However, that initiative for Indian schools ended up being scaled back after tribes protested. The “big, beautiful” spending bill signed in July created a national voucher program, but states have to opt in to participate.
Send money now controlled by the federal government, such as Title I and special education funding, to the states as block grants: NO. In the current fiscal year, about $18.5 billion in Title I money flowed to districts to support low-income students. States received about $14 billion to support educating children with disabilities. Project 2025 envisions giving states that money with no strings attached, which it says would allow more flexibility. While the administration has not lifted requirements for all states, it is considering requests from Indiana, Iowa and Oklahoma that would allow those states to spend their federal money with less government oversight. Also, in his fiscal 2026 budget proposal, Trump floated the idea of consolidating several smaller education programs, such as those supporting rural students, homeless students and after-school activities, into one $2 billion block grant. That would be far less than the combined $6.5 billion set aside for these programs in the current budget.
Reject “radical gender ideology” and “critical race theory,” and eliminate requirements to accept such ideology as a condition of receiving federal funds:YES. Immediately after Trump was sworn into office, he reversed a Biden administration rule that included protection of LGBTQ+ students under Title IX, which bans sex-based discrimination in education programs and activities that receive federal money. Trump also signed an executive order threatening to withhold federal dollars from schools over what the order called “gender ideology extremism” and “critical race theory.” In the months since, the administration launched Title IX investigations in school districts where transgender students are allowed to participate on sports teams and use bathrooms that align with their gender identity. It sent letters to schools across the country threatening to pull funding unless they agree to its interpretation of civil rights laws, to include banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies and initiatives. The Education Department also pulled federal research grants and investigated schools and colleges over DEI policies it calls discriminatory.
Pass a federal “parents’ bill of rights,” modeled after similar bills passed at the state level: NO. House Republicans passed a Parents’ Bill of Rights Act two years ago, which would have required districts to post all curricula and reading materials, require schools receiving Title I money to notify parents of any speakers visiting a school, and mandate at least two teacher-parent conferences each year, among other provisions. The Senate did not take it up, and lawmakers have not reintroduced the bill in this session of Congress. About half of the states have their own version of a parentsʼ bill of rights.
Shrink the pool of students eligible for free school meals by ending the “community eligibility provision” and reject universal school meal efforts: NO. Under current rules, schools are allowed to provide free lunch to all students, regardless of their family’s income, if the school or district is in a low-income area. That provision remains in place. The Trump administration has not changed income eligibility requirements for free and reduced-price lunch at schools: Families that earn within 185 percent of the federal poverty line still qualify for reduced lunch and those within 130 percent of the poverty line qualify for free lunch.
Higher education
Roll back student loan forgiveness and income-driven repayment plans: PARTIAL.Three income-driven repayment plans will be phased out next year and a new one — the Repayment Assistance Plan — will be added. RAP requires borrowers to make payments for 30 years before they qualify for loan forgiveness. The administration also reached a proposed agreement to end even earlier the most controversial repayment plan known as SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education). Trump officials have referred to the SAVE plan as illegal loan forgiveness. Under the plan, some borrowers were eligible to have their loans cleared after only 10 years, while making minimal payments.
End Parent PLUS loans: PARTIAL. These loans, which parents take out to help their children, had no limit. They still exist, but as of July 2026, there will be an annual cap of $20,000 and a lifetime limit of $65,000 per child. Grad PLUS loans, which allow graduate students to borrow directly on behalf of themselves, are being phased out. Under the Repayment Assistance Plan, graduates in certain fields, such as medicine, can borrow no more than $50,000 a year, or $200,000 over four years.
Privatize the federal student loan portfolio: NO. The Trump administration reportedly has been shopping a portion of the federal student loan portfolio to private buyers, but no bids have been made public. Project 2025 also called for eliminating the Federal Student Aid office, which is now housed in the Education Department and oversees student loan programs. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the Treasury Department would be a better home for the office, but no plans for a move have been announced.
End public service loan forgiveness: NO. PSLF allows borrowers to have part of their debt erased if they work for the government or in nonprofit public service jobs and make at least 120 monthly payments. The structure remains, but a new rule could narrow the definition of the kinds of jobs that qualify for loan forgiveness. The proposed rule raises concerns that borrowers working for groups that assist immigrants, transgender youth or provide humanitarian aid to Palestinians, for example, could be disqualified from loan forgiveness. The new rule would go into effect in July.
Rescind Biden-era rules around sexual assault and discrimination: YES. The Department of Education almost immediately jettisoned changes that the Biden administration had made in 2024 to Title IX, which governs how universities and colleges handle cases of sexual assault and discrimination. Under the Biden rules, blocked by a federal judge days before Trump’s inauguration, accused students were no longer guaranteed the right to in-person hearings or to cross-examine their accusers. The Trump Education Department then returned to a policy from the president’s first term, under which students accused of sexual assault will be entitled to confront their accusers, through a designee, which the administration says restores due process but advocates say will discourage alleged victims from coming forward.
Reform higher education accreditation: YES. In an executive order, Trump made it easier for accreditors to be stripped of their authority and new ones to be approved, saying the existing bodies — which, under federal law, oversee the quality of colleges and universities — have ignored poor student outcomes while pushing diversity, equity and inclusion. Florida and Texas have started setting up their own accreditors and said the administration has agreed to expedite the typically yearslong approval process. The Department of Education has earmarked $7 million to support this work and help colleges and universities switch accreditors.
Dismantle DEI programs and efforts: PARTIAL. Though the administration called for eliminating college DEI programs and efforts, most of the colleges that have shut down their DEI offices have done so in response to state-level legislation. Around 400 books removed from the Naval Academy library because of concerns that they contained messages of diversity or inclusion, but most of the books were ultimately returned. The National Science Foundation canceled more than 400 grants related to several topics, including DEI.
Jill Barshay, Ariel Gilreath, Meredith Kolodner, Jon Marcus, Neal Morton and Olivia Sanchez contributed to this report.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/trump-administration-makes-good-on-many-project-2025-education-goals/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
by Jackie Mader, The Hechinger Report December 10, 2025
Close to 40,000 foreign-born child care workers have been driven out of the profession in the wake of the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation and detainment efforts, according to a new study by the Better Life Lab at the think tank New America. That represents about 12 percent of the foreign-born child care workforce.
Child care workers with at least a two-year college degree are most likely to be leaving the workforce, as well as workers who are from Mexico, a demographic targeted by ICE, or those who work in center-based care, the left-leaning think tank found. The disruption has worsened an already deep shortage of child care staffers, threatening the stability of the industry and in turn is contributing to tens of thousands of U.S.-born mothers dropping out of the labor market because they don’t have reliable child care.
In addition to workers facing detainment or deportation, many people are staying home to avoid situations where they may encounter Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the report found. Agents are detaining people who have not traditionally been the focus of ICE actions, including those following legal pathways like asylum seekers and green card applicants. Child care centers were once considered “sensitive locations” exempt from ICE enforcement, but the White House rescinded that in January. In at least one example, a child care worker was detained while arriving for work at a child care program.
“What’s different now is the ferocity of the enforcement,” said Chris Herbst, a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs and one of the authors of the report, in an interview with The Hechinger Report. “ICE is arresting far more people, the number of deportations has risen dramatically,” he added. “People are scared out of their minds.”
Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.
America has long relied on immigrants to fill hard-to-staff caregiving positions and enable parents to work. Across the country, around 1 in 5 child care workers is an immigrant. In Florida and New York, immigrants account for nearly 40 percent of the child care workforce. One study that compared native-born and immigrant child care workers found that nearly 64 percent of immigrants had a two- or four-year college degree, compared to 53 percent of native-born workers. The study also noted that immigrant workers are more likely than native-born workers to have child development associate credentials and to invest in professional development activities.
Overall, the child care industry supports more than $152 billion in economic activity.
In Wisconsin, Elaine, the director of a child care center, said her program has benefited greatly from a Ukrainian immigrant who has been teaching there for two years, ever since arriving in the United States as part of a humanitarian parole program. (The Hechinger Report is not using Elaine’s last name or the city where her child care center is located because she fears action by immigration enforcement.) Elaine’s center has experienced a teacher shortage for the past 13 years, and the immigrant, who has a college degree and past experience in social services, has been a steady presence for the children there.
“She’s their consistent person. She spends more time than a lot of the parents do with the children during their waking hours,” Elaine said. “She’s there for them, she’s loving, she provides that support, that connection, that security that young children need.”
In January, the Trump administration suspended the Uniting for Ukraine program, which allowed Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion to live and work in the United States for two years. While the program later opened up a process to apply for an extension, Elaine’s employee has encountered delays, like many others.
The teacher’s parole expired this month. Under the law, she is now supposed to return to Ukraine, where her home city in southeast Ukraine is still under attack by Russian forces.
Elaine fears what will happen if the center loses her. “As a business, we need her. We need a teacher we can count on,” Elaine said. “For our teachers’ mental health, to have her leave and knowing where she would go would be really difficult.”
Elaine has decided to allow the employee to keep working, and is appealing to state lawmakers to help extend her stay. Several parents have also joined in the effort, writing letters to Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin telling her how much their children love the teacher — and how important she is to the local economy. One factor in granting an extension is that the person offers a “significant public benefit” to the country.
The authors of the new report found immigrants are not the only caregivers affected by ICE enforcement this year. There has also been a drop in U.S.-born child care workers in the industry, especially among Hispanic and less-educated caregivers. This could be the result of a “climate of fear and confusion” surrounding enforcement activity, according to the report, as well as a “perceived pattern of profiling or discriminatory enforcement practices.”
“These deportations have been sold under the theory that they are going to be a boon for U.S.-born workers once we sort of unclog the labor market by removing large numbers of undocumented immigrants,” Herbst said. “We’re finding at least in the child care industry, and at least in the short run, that appears not to be the case.” Some foreign-born and U.S.-born workers have different skills and do not seem to be competing for the same caregiving jobs, he added.
Not all workers are leaving the caregiving industry altogether. Some immigrants are shifting to work as nannies or au pairs, Herbst said, “finding refuge” in private homes where they are less likely to come into contact with state child care regulators or be part of formal wage systems. (Already, an estimated 142,000 undocumented immigrants work as nannies and personal care or home health aides nationwide.) That contact with regulators and other authorities may be a reason why center-based early childhood educators are leaving the field in greater proportions now, Herbst said.
These findings come at the end of a difficult year for the child care workforce, which has long been in crisis due to dismally low pay and challenging work conditions. More than half of child care providers surveyed this year by the RAPID Survey Project at Stanford University reported experiencing difficulty affording food, the highest rate since the survey started collecting data on provider hunger in 2021. Other recent reports have found child care providers are at a higher risk for clinical depression, and in some cities an increasing number are taking on part-time jobs to make ends meet.
Across the country this year, early childhood providers have seen drops in enrollment as families pull their children out of schools and programs to avoid ICE. Child care centers are losing money and finding that some staff members are too scared to come to work or have lost work authorization after the administration ended certain refugee programs. Many child care workers have taken on additional roles driving children to and from care, collecting emergency numbers and plans for children in their care in case parents are detained and dropping off food for families too scared to leave their homes.
This story about immigration enforcement was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/immigration-enforcement-is-driving-away-early-childhood-educators/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
At the time of his initial arrest, Gouvea said he was hunting rats.
APCortizasJr/iStock/Getty Images
Immigration authorities arrested Carlos Portugal Gouvea, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, on Wednesday after his J-1 visa was revoked for shooting a BB gun outside of a Boston-area synagogue Oct. 2, the day of Yom Kippur. Gouvea agreed to voluntarily leave the United States rather than be deported.
The Department of State revoked Gouvea’s visa Oct. 16, and a month later, Gouvea accepted a plea deal “on the charge of illegal use of the air rifle while his other charges for disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and vandalizing property were dismissed,” the Department of Homeland Security wrote in a news release.
Gouvea shot the pellet gun outside Temple Beth Zion in Brookline, Mass., just a few miles south of the Harvard campus, The New York Times reported. Private security guards for the synagogue heard a loud noise outside, and the temple was put in a lockdown. When a guard saw Gouvea behind a tree and attempted to arrest him, they engaged in a brief physical struggle and then Gouvea fled, the Times reported. He was later arrested by Brookline police. Gouvea fired two total shots, one of which police later discovered had shattered a car window. Harvard officials put Gouvea on administrative leave shortly after his October arrest.
In its news release, the Department of Homeland Security called the act an “anti-Semitic shooting incident,” a characterization federal officials have maintained since the incident.
“It is a privilege to work and study in the United States, not a right. There is no room in the United States for brazen, violent acts of anti-Semitism like this. They are an affront to our core principals as a country and an unacceptable threat against law-abiding American citizens,” Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, said in a statement. “We are under zero obligation to admit foreigners who commit these inexplicably reprehensible acts or to let them stay here. Secretary Noem has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can come to America and commit anti-American and anti-Semitic violence and terrorism should think again. You are not welcome here.”
At the time of his initial arrest, Gouvea said he was “hunting rats.” He was not charged with a hate crime by local police, and leaders from Temple Beth Zion told the Times they did not believe the shooting was motivated by bias.
“From what we were initially told by police, the individual was unaware that he lived next to, and was shooting his BB gun next to, a synagogue, or that it was a religious holiday,” Benjamin Maron, the synagogue’s executive director, and Larry Kraus, its president, wrote in the statement to the Times. “It is potentially dangerous to use a BB gun in such a populated spot, but it does not appear to have been fueled by antisemitism.”
A lawyer for Gouvea also told the Times in October that the matter was “a total misunderstanding of an entirely innocent situation.”
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Dive Brief:
Los Angeles Unified School District’s enrollment fell 4% year over year to 392,654 for 2025-26 — a greater-than-expected drop in a year where the school system has faced heightened immigration enforcement. The dip is “deeply connected to the realities our immigrant families are facing,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho told K-12 Dive in a statement Tuesday.
Other districts affected by increased immigration enforcement activities have also reported enrollment drops, including Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida and Chicago Public Schools. The uptick in enforcement followed a Trump administration policy change in January that allows immigration raids at schools.
In many areas, these declines are partly driven by lower enrollment for newcomers, defined as students who have been enrolled for three years or fewer in any U.S. school, were born outside the U.S., and are English learners.
Dive Insight:
“These declines reflect a climate of fear and instability created by ongoing immigration crackdowns, which disrupt family stability, housing, and mobility,” said Carvalho. “These fears are now exacerbating pre-existing factors that were already driving statewide enrollment declines — including falling birth rates, rising housing costs, and broader economic pressures.”
LAUSD and its surrounding areas have seen an increase in immigration enforcement activity in both the current and previous school years, including incidents in which U.S. Department of Homeland Security officers attempted to gain entry into elementary schools by allegedly making false claims they had parent permission to speak with students. In another instance, agents apprehended a high school student with a disability while he was enrolling for classes in an apparent case of mistaken identity.
LAUSD families and those in other areas hit by heightened immigration enforcement have also experienced activity during school pickup and dropoff hours.
The impact of these activities on attendance has led some school leaders to emphasize the possibility of virtual schools.
Now, the apparent toll on enrollment — including that of newcomers — is set to impact districts’ budgets.
In LAUSD, newcomer enrollment for students who were expected to return for the 2025-26 school year is down 9% at 16,668, compared to the projected 18,232.
“Unless these overlapping issues are addressed at the state level, California’s public schools will face long-term ramifications that will affect classrooms, staffing, programming, and the future of public education itself,” said Carvalho.
Late last month, congressional Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon in which they inquired about steps the department is taking to protect students as raids impact their families and communities. The lawmakers wrote that they are “deeply concerned” about the fallout.
“The chaotic manner in which raids and apprehensions are being carried out is injecting needless trauma into these communities, which then makes its way into schools and contributes to absenteeism,” said lawmakers, led by House Education and Workforce Committee Ranking Member Bobby Scott, D-Va. Students, regardless of their immigration status, are being impacted, they wrote.
“The consequences of the Administration’s actions show that our nation’s students, families, and schools need resources to help in the days ahead,” the lawmakers wrote.
This story was produced by The 19th and reprinted with permission.
The mother was just arriving to pick up her girls at their elementary school in Chicago when someone with a bullhorn at the nearby shopping center let everyone know: ICE is here.
The white van screeched to a halt right next to where she was parked, and three Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents piled out. They said something in English that she couldn’t decipher, then arrested her on the spot. Her family later said they never asked about her documentation.
She was only able to get one phone call out before she was taken away. “The girls,” was all she said to her sister. Her daughters, a third grader and a fourth grader, were still waiting for her inside the school.
Luckily, the girls’ child care provider had prepared for this very moment.
Sandra had been taking care of the girls since they were babies, and now watched them after school. She’d been encouraging the family to get American passports for the kids and signed documents detailing their wishes should the mother be detained.
When Sandra got the call that day in September, she headed straight to the school to pick up the girls.
Since President Donald Trump won a second term, Sandra has been prepping the 10 families at her home-based day care, including some who lack permanent legal status, for the possibility that they may be detained. (The 19th is only using Sandra’s first name and not naming the mother to protect their identities.)
She’s worked with families to get temporary guardianship papers sorted and put a plan in place in case they were detained and their kids were left behind. She even had a psychologist come and speak to the families about the events that had been unfolding across the country to help the children understand that there are certain situations their parents can’t control, and give them the opportunity to talk through their fears that, one day, mamá and papá might not be there to pick them up.
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And for two elementary school kids, that day did come. Sandra met them outside the school.
“When they saw me, they knew something wasn’t right,” Sandra said in Spanish. “Are we never going to see our mom again?” they asked.
For all her planning, she was speechless.
“One prepares for these things, but still doesn’t have the words on what to say,” Sandra said.
Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.
After that day, Sandra worked with the mother’s sister to get the girls situated to fly to Texas, where their mother, who had full custody of them, was being detained, and then eventually to Mexico. She hasn’t heard from them in over a month. The girls were born in the United States and know nothing of Mexico.
“I think about them in a strange country,” Sandra said. “‘Who is going to care for them like I do?’ Now with this situation I get sad because I think they are the ones who are going to suffer.”
In this year of immigration raids, child care providers have stepped up to keep families unified amid incredible uncertainty. Some are agreeing to be temporary guardians for kids should something happen to their parents. The workers themselves are also under threat — 1 in 5 child care workers are immigrant women, most of them Latinas, who are also having to prepare in case they are detained, particularly while children are in their care. Already, child care workers across the country have been detained and deported.
“The immigration and the child care movements, they are one in the same now,” said Anali Alegria, the director of federal advocacy and media relations at the Child Care for Every Family Network, a national child care advocacy group. “Child care is not just something that keeps the economy going, while it does. It’s also really integral to people’s community and family lives. And so when you’re destabilizing it, you’re also destabilizing something much more fundamental and very tender to that child and that family’s life.”
A loose network of resistance has emerged, with detailed protection plans, ICE lookout patrols, and Signal or Whatsapp chats. Home-based providers like Sandra have been especially involved in that effort because their work often means their lives are even more intertwined with the families they care for.
“All the families we have in our program, I consider them family. We arrive in this country and we don’t have family, and when we get support, advice or the simple act of caring for kids, as child care providers we are essential in many of these families — even more in these times,” said Sandra, who has been caring for children in the United States for 25 years. All the families she cares for are Latinx, 70 percent without permanent legal status.
According to advocacy groups, child care providers are increasingly being asked to look after kids in case they are detained, typically because they are the only trusted person the family knows with U.S. citizenship or legal permanent residence. Parents are asking child care workers to be emergency contacts, short-term guardians and, in some cases, even long-term guardians.
“We heard this under the first Trump administration, and we’re hearing it much more now. It’s not so much a matter of if, but when, right now, and it used to be the other way around,” said Wendy Cervantes, the director of immigration and immigrant families at the Center for Law and Social Policy, an anti-poverty nonprofit. “It adds just additional stress and trauma because they deeply care about these kids. Many of them have kids of their own and obviously have modest incomes, so as much as they want to say, ‘yes’, they can’t in some cases.”
The question was posed to Claudia Pellecer a couple weeks ago. A home-based child care provider in Chicago for 17 years, Pellecer cares for numerous Latinx families, at least one of whom doesn’t have permanent legal status.
In October, one of those moms was due to appear before ICE for a regular check-in as part of her ongoing asylum case. But she knew that many have been detained at those appointments this year.
The mother asked Pellecer to be her 1-year-old son’s legal guardian should she be taken away.
“I couldn’t say no because I am human, I am a mother,” Pellecer said.
Claudia Pellecer, who runs a small daycare for young children out of her home, stands for a portrait outside her house. Credit: Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th
They got to work getting the baby a passport and filling out the necessary guardianship paperwork. Pellecer kept the originals and copies. The mother closed her bank account, cleaned out her apartment and prepped two bags, one for her and one for the baby. If the mother was deported, Pellecer would fly with him to meet her in Ecuador, they agreed.
The day of the appointment, she dropped the baby off with Pellecer and set the final plan. Her appointment was at 1 p.m. “If at 6 p.m. you haven’t heard from me, that means I was detained,” she told Pellecer, who cried and wished her luck.
At the appointment, the judge asked her three sets of questions:
“Why are you here?”
“Are you working? Do you have a family?”
“Do you have proof of what happened to you in your country?”
Claudia Pellecer plays games with children in the living room of her home daycare, where she cares for up to eight young children a day. Credit: Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th
The judge agreed to let her stay and told her to continue working. The mother won’t have a court date again until 2027.
“We learned our lesson,” Pellecer said. “We had to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”
But their relief was short-lived. Recent events in Chicago have sent child care workers and families into panic, as the people who have tried to keep families together are now being targeted.
Resistance networks have sprung up rapidly in Chicago in recent weeks after a child care worker was followed to Spanish immersion day care Rayito de Sol on the city’s North Side and arrested in front of children and other teachers. The arrest was caught on camera and has sparked demonstrations across the city.
Erin Horetski, whose son, Harrison, was cared for by the worker who was arrested at Rayito de Sol in early November, said parents there had been worried ICE might one day target them because the center specifically hired Spanish-speaking staff.
The morning of the arrest, parents were texting each other once they heard ICE was in the shopping center where the day care is located.
Children crawl on a colorful rug while playing educational games at Claudia Pellecer’s home daycare. Credit: Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th
Her husband was just arriving to drop off their boys as ICE was leaving. The first thing out of his mouth when he called her: “They took Miss Diana.”
Agents entered the school without a warrant to arrest infant class teacher Diana Patricia Santillana Galeano, an immigrant from Colombia. DHS said part of the reason for her arrest was because she helped bring her two teenage children across the southern U.S. border this year. “Facilitating human smuggling is a crime,” DHS said. Santillana Galeano fled Colombia fearing for her safety in 2023, filed for asylum and was given a work permit through November 2029, according to court documents. She has no known criminal record. After her arrest, a federal judge ruled that her detention without access to a bond hearing was illegal and she was released November 12.
Horetski said the incident, the first known ICE arrest inside a day care, has spurred the community to action. A GoFundMe account set up by Horetski to support Santillana Galeano, has raised more than $150,000.
Horetski said what’s been lost in the story of what happened at Rayito is the humanity of the person at the center of it, someone she said was “like a second mother” to her son.
“At the end of the day, she was a person and a friend and a mother and provider to our kids — I think we need to remember that,” Horetski said.
Now, the parents are the ones coming together to put in place a safety plan for the teachers, most of whom have continued to come to the school and care for their children.
They are working on establishing a safe passage patrol, setting up parents with whistles at the front of the school to stand guard during arrival and dismissal time to ensure teachers can come and go to their cars or to public transit safely. Parents are also establishing escorts for teachers who may need a ride to work or someone to accompany them on the bus or the train. A meal train set up by the parents is helping to send food to the teachers through Thanksgiving, and two local restaurants have pitched in with discounts. Some of the parents are also lawyers who are considering setting up a legal clinic to ensure workers know their rights, Horetski said.
A young child watches an educational TV show in the living room of Claudia Pellecer’s home daycare in Chicago. Credit: Jamie Kelter Davis for The 19th
Figuring out how to come together to support teachers and the children who now have questions about safety is something that “continues to circle in all of our minds and brains,” Horeski said. “It’s hard to not have the answers or know how to best move forward. We’re in such uncharted territory that you’re like, ‘Where do you go from here?’ So we’re kind of paving that because this is the first time that something like this has happened.”
Prep is top of mind now for organizers including at the Service Employees International Union, where Sandra and Pellecer are members,who are convening emergency child care worker trainings to set up procedures, such as posted signs that say ICE cannot enter without a warrant, showing them what the warrants must include to be binding, helping them set a designated person to speak to ICE should they enter and talking to their families to offer support.
Cervantes has been doing this work since Trump’s first term, when it was clear immigration was going to be a key focus for the president. This year has been different, though. Child care centers were previously protected under a “sensitive locations” directive that advised ICE to not conduct enforcement in places like schools and day cares. But Trump removed that protection on his first day in office this year, signaling a more aggressive approach to ICE enforcement was coming.
Cervantes and her team are currently in the midst of a research project about child care workers across the country, conversations that are also illuminating for them just how dire the situation has become for providers.
“We are asking providers to make protocols for what is basically a man-made disaster,” she said. “They shouldn’t have to worry about protecting children and staff from the government.”
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Like students across the country, Gutierrez got dragged into a nicotine-fueled war between vape manufacturers, who used celebrity marketing and fruity flavors to hook kids on e-cigarettes, and educators, who’ve turned to surveillance tools and discipline to crack down on the youngest users. Gutierrez was suspended for a week after she was nabbed vaping in a crowded school bathroom during her lunch hour.
In my latest investigative deep dive, co-published this week with WIRED, I reveal how school districts across the country have spent millions to install vape-detecting sensors in school bathrooms — once considered a digital surveillance no-go. The devices prioritize punishment to combat student nicotine addiction.
Eamonn Fitzmaurice/The 74
My analysis of public records obtained from Minneapolis Public Schools reveals the sensors inundated administrators with alerts — about one per minute during a typical school day, on average. Their presence brought a spike in school discipline, records show, with suspensions dwarfing treatment services and younger middle school students facing the harshest consequences.
The sheer volume of alerts, more than 45,000 over seven months across four schools, raises questions about whether they’re an effective way to get kids to give up their vape pens. And some students voiced privacy concerns about the sensors, the most high tech of which can now reportedly detect keywords, how many young people are in the bathroom at one time and for how long.
“Surveillance is only a diagnosis,” Texas student activist Cameron Samuels told me. “It only recognizes symptoms of a failed system.”
In the news
Charlotte, North Carolina, school officials reported more than 30,000 students absent on Monday, two days after federal immigration agents arrested 130 people there in their latest sweep. That more recent data point underscores the 81,000 school days missed by more than 100,000 students in California’s Central Valley after immigration raids earlier this year, according to a newly peer reviewed Stanford University study. | The 74
Los Angeles schools have lost thousands of immigrant students — from 157,619 in the 2018-19 school year to just 62,000 this year — because of the city’s rising prices and falling birth rates. Now, that trend has intensified after the “chilling effect” of recent federal immigration raids, district officials said. | The 74
Student enrollment is dropping in school districts across the country amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. In Miami, for example, the number of new immigrant students has decreased by more than 10,000 compared to last year. | The Associated Press
Ten Commandments: Siding with the families of students who argued they infringed on their religious freedom, a federal judge on Tuesday ordered some Texas public school districts to remove Ten Commandment displays from their classroom walls by next month. | The New York Times
28 Bills, Ten Commandments and 1 Source: A Christian Right ‘Bill Mill’. | The 74
Online gaming platform Roblox announced it will block children from interacting with teens and adults in the wake of lawsuits alleging the platform has been used by predators to groom young people. | The Guardian
Furry and freaky: “Kumma,” a Chinese-made teddy bear with artificial intelligence capabilities and marketed toward children, is being pulled from shelves after researchers found it could teach its users how to light matches and about sexual kinks. | Futurism
A teenage girl from New York reported to a police officer at school that her adoptive father had been raping her at home for years. The officer, who didn’t believe her, bungled the case — and she was abused again. | New York Focus
‘Brazen cruelty’: A federal judge has ordered the release of a 16-year-old Bronx high schooler who has spent nearly a month in federal immigration custody despite having a protective status reserved for immigrant youth who were abused, neglected or abandoned by a parent. | amNewYork
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Civil rights groups have decried proposed federal changes to the Education Department’s data collection on racial disparities in special education that could make it more difficult to identify and address service gaps. | K-12 Dive
‘Dead-naming’ enforced: A Texas law now requires school employees to use names and pronouns that conform to students’ sex at birth. Several transgender students whose schools are complying say it has transformed school from a place of support to one that rejects who they are. | The Texas Tribune.
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Education Secretary Linda McMahon has signed agreements with other agencies to take over major K-12 and higher education programs in keeping with President Donald Trump’s effort to shut down the Department of Education. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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