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  • Ten Education Issues to Watch at the Start of the School Year – The 74

    Ten Education Issues to Watch at the Start of the School Year – The 74


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    One big budget bill and 181 executive orders into the Trump administration, one thing is clear for those of us checking our crystal balls ahead of the school year.

    There is a big difference between policy change aligned to winning an election and disruption for the sake of chaos.

    The three-sentence email sent on June 30 that froze billions of dollars of funding across the education continuum in Republican and Democratic counties around the country the night before the funding was anticipated begs the overarching question facing those working in education:

    To state the obvious, the review of the federal funding could have been announced and conducted ahead of the date funds are normally made available, and the disruption could have been minimized.

    Instead, leaders on the right and the left had to write letters, file lawsuits, and respond to panicking constituents to move money Congress had already approved to be spent.

    “The education formula funding included in the FY2025 Continuing Resolution Act supports critical programs that so many rely on. The programs are ones that enjoy longstanding, bipartisan support,” said Republican U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia.

    Many leaders on both sides of the aisle, including Superintendent Mo Green, a Democrat, are hoping for “a return to the predictable, reliable federal partnership that our schools need to serve students effectively.”

    That remains aspirational as the federal Department of Education begins to be dismantled, more responsibility is handed off to states, and local and state education agencies have to find ways to work with multiple federal agencies moving forward.

    Recently at the summer convening of the National Governors Association, when Colorado Gov. Jared Polis asked U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon for clearer communication, she said, “No guarantees from me that we’ll eliminate all the communication gaps that do happen.”

    Our top 10 issues are not the ones featuring most prominently in the news cycle right now.

    DEI continues to be in the news, and in case you missed it, over the summer EdNC published perspectives on DEI by a policymaker, a former superintendent, and an educator.

    Cellphones and AI in classrooms also continue to be highlighted in the media.

    And we know there are many, many other issues you care about, including WNC recovery, literacy, youth wellbeing, learning differences, community schools, school safety, vaccines and school health, school performance and the portfolio model, LGBTQ+ youth, the health of teacher and principal pipelines, STEM, arts and education, and more.

    As we head back to school, the EdNC team will continue to cover all of those issues, but here are the top 10 issues we think will frame this school year.

    Access to education, opportunity, and the American dream

    1. Access to education for immigrants without legal status

    For more than 40 years, students without legal status to be in the country have been allowed to attend public schools free of charge in districts across the United States, and over time that has included access to early education and postsecondary opportunities.

    Federal case law cites reasons for this decision, including:

    • Not wanting to penalize children for their presence in the country;
    • Recognizing that many students will remain in the country, some becoming lawful residents or citizens;
    • Not perpetuating “a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare, and crime;” and
    • Concluding that “whatever savings might be achieved by denying these children an education, they are wholly insubstantial in light of the costs involved to these children, the State, and the Nation.”

    The 74 recently reported, “From cradle to career, President Donald Trump has launched a comprehensive campaign to close off education to undocumented immigrants, undercutting, advocates say, the very reason many came to the United States: for a chance at a better life.”

    Immigrants without legal status have had access to Head Start since a 1998 interpretation of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA).

    “Head Start is the federally funded, comprehensive preschool program designed to meet the emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological needs of children aged 3 to 5 and their families,” according to the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).

    “The Early Head Start program — established in 1994 — is the companion program created to address the same needs of children birth to age 3, expectant mothers, and their families,” says the DHHS website.

    On July 10, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said via press release, “Head Start is reserved for American citizens from now on.”

    “For too long, the government has diverted hardworking Americans’ tax dollars to incentivize illegal immigration,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

    The policy shift, says the release, aligns with “recent Executive Orders by President Trump, including Executive Order 14218 of February 19, 2025, ‘Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders,’ prioritizing legal compliance and the protection of public benefits for eligible Americans.”

    An HHS impact analysis finds, “These figures point to approximately 500,000 children under the age of 5 in poverty who have an unauthorized parent or are unauthorized themselves. Combining this estimate with an estimate that Head Start programs serve approximately 26% of the potentially eligible population, we anticipate that approximately 115,000 Head Start children and families could be impacted, or about 16% of total cumulative enrollment in Head Start programs in FY 2024.”

    Also on July 10, “The U.S. Department of Education today announced it will end taxpayer subsidization of illegal aliens in career, technical, and adult education programs.”

    The department says that postsecondary education programs — “including adult education programs authorized under Title II of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014, postsecondary career and technical education programs under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006, and other programs when used to fund postsecondary learning opportunities” — also constitute “federal public benefits” subject to citizenship verification requirements.

    “This policy shift threatens to undermine community development, workforce readiness, and economic mobility across the nation,” says a statement issued by The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, an alliance of American college and university leaders. “Many of the named programs are a central component of the nation’s community colleges and provide access for continuing and returning adult learners.”

    In 1988 — after the U.S. Supreme Court decision that safeguarded access to K-12 but before the 1996 law that expanded access beyond elementary and secondary education — Dallas Herring, beloved and known as the father of North Carolina’s community college system, wrote, “The twentieth century, by every standard of assessment, in the long view of history, must be considered one of the most remarkable in the experience of mankind. It is especially significant in education, for the opportunity to study and to learn has been extended during these times to almost all of the people everywhere in America. Total education is becoming a possibility as the people respond to the challenge of universal opportunity in education. The door, at last, is open.”

    Herring also wrote — as the dawn of not just a new century approached but of a new millennium — that “it was clear that the open door is not enough.”

    As the open door begins to close, Herring reminds us what is at stake. “Education of the masses of humanity, not only as economic beings, but especially as human beings, will be essential to the achievement of peace and prosperity,” he wrote.

    Data from the Census Bureau population estimates indicate that the nation’s population growth rate in 2023-24 was driven mostly by immigration.

    Twenty states and the District of Columbia have filed suit. North Carolina is not one of the 20.

    2. Pathways to work are more important than ever

    It is almost impossible these days to have a conversation about community colleges, postsecondary access, or attainment without the word pathways coming up.

    Sometimes leaders are talking about “guided pathways,” which is a college-wide approach to student success. Nationally, that work had been shifting from an outcomes approach to an access approach.

    A much anticipated book to be published by Harvard Education Press in August, “More Essential Than Ever: Community College Pathways to Educational and Career Success,” promises guidance for college leaders and state policymakers.

    The cliff notes, according to the authors: “Community colleges today will need to make concerted efforts to strengthen pathways to post-completion success in employment and further education and thus ensure that students’ investment of effort, time, and money pays off.”

    “Seamless pathways” often refer to agreements between community college and four-year colleges and universities that improve transfer and graduation rates by improving the student experience.

    In 24 states, more than 200 community colleges now offer four-year degrees. North Carolina is not one of them, and a recent essay says, “The debate over who and where bachelor’s degrees should be offered is too often driven by institutional priorities and policies set in the past…. Community colleges can play a central role in helping graduates achieve a bachelor’s degree. States and all colleges should support these low-cost, high-value degree pathways.”

    But, both across the nation and our state, it is the pathways for students to enlist, enroll, or employ so they have access to a family-sustaining living wage that is the focus for many leaders, organizations, and initiatives.

    And, in North Carolina, it is these pathways that are critically important to the state’s attainment goal.

    Citing the 4.6 million youth between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither enrolled in school nor working a job, the National Governors Association (NGA) is focusing this year on getting students ready for jobs.

    In partnership with NGA, America Achieves recently launched its Good Jobs Economy initiative, designed to “build a prosperous, competitive nation where everyone has clear pathways to good jobs, employers access the talent they need, and Americans at large scale can reach and stay in the middle class.”

    Lumina Foundation recently announced a new initiative called “FutureReady States” with the goal of increasing access to education and credential training that “pays off in the labor market.”

    StriveTogether — a national network with the goal of having 4 million more youth in the United States on a path to economic opportunity by 2030 — has an impact fund that identifies opportunities to improve the experiences of students in high school to set them on a path to college and careers.

    Much of this leadership at both the national and state level focuses on different experiences that expedite that pathway for students who want to go from high school or community college graduation straight into the workforce.

    It is in this work where terms like work-based learning, apprenticeships, internships, co-ops, and credentials of value; approaches like graduation from high school in three years; and innovative initiatives like SparkNC and the NC Works website come in.

    In keeping with this trend, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond is implementing a new approach to measuring success through its Survey of Community College Outcomes, “which broadens the definition of community college student success to include not only degree attainment, but also attainment of shorter-term credentials, such as certificates or industry licensures, successful transfer to a four-year institution, or persistence in enrollment beyond four years.”

    According to a press release from the N.C. Community College System, beginning in July 2026, the new Workforce Pell Grant program will allow eligible students to use federal financial aid for short-term, high-quality training programs — some as short as eight weeks depending on instructional hours and program design. These programs lead directly to jobs in high-demand fields like health care, engineering and advanced manufacturing, trades and transportation, and information technology, says the release.

    “This is a major step forward in making higher education more accessible and responsive to today’s workforce needs,” said Jeff Cox, president of the system.

    With a community college system that is 58 strong; a nationally watched model for funding community colleges called Propel; Boost, North Carolina’s accelerated college to career program; and a system whose leadership is in transition again, all eyes are on North Carolina.

    3. Exposing middle school students to college

    A May 2025 headline in the Associated Press asks, “Can middle schoolers handle college?”

    When students at Valle Crucis School (VCS) were displaced after Hurricane Helene, Caldwell Community College & Technical Institute stepped up to host Principal Bonnie Smith, her team, and 120 sixth through eighth grade students on the community college’s campus in Watauga County.

    President Mark Poarch said the middle school students were exposed through the experience to many positives and had the opportunity to learn more about college programs and how they connect to industries.

    “I think there are a lot of silver linings in having them on a college campus,” said Poarch. So many that the community college’s foundation guaranteed a scholarship for all current VCS middle school students.

    “It has brought new energy and new life to this campus unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” said Poarch.

    In Haywood County, another model for exposing middle school students to college will launch in 2026-27.

    The innovative new middle school, developed in partnership with Haywood Community College, will be academically rigorous and led by Lori Fox, the principal of Haywood Early College. Under her leadership, the early college is among the best in the nation and an Apple Distinguished School.

    California has been leading the way with exposing middle school students to college, and the state is now pushing to create access for more students — not just high achievers. In that state, middle school students may enroll in one community college course each semester free of charge.

    Recent legislation back here in North Carolina requires all middle and high school students in public schools to have career development plans.

    And a recent report using North Carolina data explores a new measure of school quality called “high school readiness.”

    “As the name suggests, the basic idea is to capture how well a middle school prepares its students for the next stage of their education by quantifying its effects on high school grades — or to be more precise, ninth-grade grade-point averages,” says this article about the report.

    4. Local, state, and philanthropic funding for the safety net for students and families

    The different types of investments in pathways all share in common academic and/or social support for students.

    The expensive and expansive budget bill recently passed by Congress cuts through the federal safety net that many in North Carolina and across the nation rely on, placing more of the responsibility on local and state governments.

    An estimated 520,000 North Carolinians could lose their health insurance, according to this press release.

    “When we think about Medicaid, we typically think about health insurance,” says an article published in Forbes about the impact of the policy change on schools. “But Medicaid is also among the largest funding sources for K–12 public schools, providing an estimated $7.5 billion annually to pay for essential services for student learning and development.”

    Note that the above data is district data prior to Medicaid expansion in North Carolina.

    Cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are “equally serious,” says Gov. Josh Stein. As many as 1.4 million North Carolinians — including 600,000 children — could lose food assistance. EdNC previously reported the impact of cuts to SNAP by county in North Carolina.

    According to reporting by the News & Observer, Stein also said, “the state has to be exceptionally conservative fiscally, meaning that we have to preserve the revenue sources we have to so that we can deal with issues like feeding hungry children, or ensuring that our health care system works for everybody.”

    Some counties are waiting to see how the state responds before they consider how to address the gap in federal support. Others counties, like Jackson County, are moving ahead with funding free schools meals for all for the school year.

    The advocacy of coalitions like School Meals for All NC has never been more important at every level of government.

    School choice and the funding of public education

    5. Wordsmithing school choice: Choice vs. fit, uniform vs. plural, quality vs. accountability, and the impact of churn

    Choice in the context of “school choice” is a political term. It’s not how parents talk or think. All over the world, parents use the word “fit” to describe how they select a school for their child.

    And fit is different for different parents. For some, it is about the teacher or the principal. For others, it is about attending school with kids from the neighborhood. For many, it is has to do with the type of educational experience the school provides.

    Public schools continue to provide more opportunities for fit than any other educational sector.

    In North Carolina, there are 115 school districts and 2,700 schools, including 208 charters, seven lab schools, three residential schools, and one regional school. Public schools offer an abundance of fit through the following types of school options: year-round, magnet, language immersion, single-sex, early college, career academies, virtual academies, community schools, alternative schools, and more.

    Check out how Buncombe County Schools is explaining why parents should choose public schools.

    EdNC continues to cover the inter-relationship of those two terms, and the choices parents are actually making to find the right fit for their students.

    We monitor enrollment across public schools, private schools, and homeschools. So far, even with school choice expansion fully funded, public school market share is holding steady at 84% — that’s 1,538,563 students.

    We track the data on private school vouchers, called Opportunity Scholarships in North Carolina. So far, since school choice expansion, it is estimated that more than 90% of the new applicants for vouchers were already attending private school.

    The data will be important moving forward in understanding parent choice and student fit, but there are broader trends to be aware of.

    In North Carolina, our state constitution mandates a “general and uniform system of free public schools.” In democracies around the world, according to the leading research on educational pluralism conducted by Ashley Rogers Berner at the John Hopkins School of Education, uniform isn’t the north star and states don’t exclusively deliver education. But where other countries build choice into their systems, they also build in quality control.

    Quality, not accountability, is the word of choice.

    The legislature has charged the recently established Office of Learning Research — led by Jeni Corn and part of the Collaboratory at UNC — to recommend a nationally standardized test for use in third and eighth grade by private and public schools for 2026-27. For more information, see section 3J.23 of this bill.

    A necessary first step, that in and of itself does not guarantee quality or accountability. EdNC joined a delegation from California that was in Boston looking at how the public schools there have more comprehensively partnered with religious schools, including in the areas of testing, professional development, and curriculum.

    Berner talks about why school choice isn’t enough, and why academic content needs to change and expectations need to increase regardless of setting.

    “To be blunt, a libertarian, let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom approach,” she says, is unlikely to move important data points at scale. She has interesting things to say about curriculum — think of the big bet Jackson County made on the Wit & Wisdom curriculum under the leadership of Superintendent Dana Ayers.

    Because fit matters to parents, with school choice comes more “churn,” sometimes also called “swirl.”

    “There are real, tangible impacts on a students’ learning and wellbeing at every churn — especially mid-year,” says a recent article titled, “School choice is great, but the churn it allows comes at a cost.” Researchers are calling for educational navigators, formal transfer windows, and better, more accessible information about schools for parents making the decisions.

    Ray Gronberg with the NC Tribune first reported on how the race between Phil Berger and Sam Page will feature key differences in school choice between Republican candidates.

    Berger favors what he calls “universal school choice.”

    Page’s website says he believes school “vouchers should be targeted to families who need them most.” That means, writes Gronberg, “income caps on school voucher eligibility to help working families, not the wealthy” and “policies to prevent private schools from inflating tuition due to vouchers.”

    6. The relationship between education spending and teacher pay

    Page also favors “raising teacher starting pay to $50,000 to keep North Carolina competitive,” which brings us to the relationship between education spending and teacher pay.

    As the wait for the Leandro decision on school funding continues, given the changes at the federal level and the impact of Hurricane Helene, there is going to be even more pressure on state appropriations for education unless and until Republicans come to a different meeting of the minds on tax policy.

    The N.C. Department of Public Instruction’s “Highlights” is our go-to source for information on education funding and budgets. North Carolina spent about $12.6 billion on public education in 2024-25, and almost 60% of that goes to instructional personnel and related services.

    Nationally, studies find that school spending is up, but teacher salaries are not.

    In 2024, the libertarian Reason Foundation published this report that found inflation-adjusted, per-pupil spending had risen across the country — in every state except North Carolina. “North Carolina’s inflation-adjusted education revenue grew from $10,806 per student in 2002 to $10,790 per student in 2020, a −0.1% growth rate that ranked 50th in the U.S.,” says the report.

    Meanwhile, writes Chad Aldeman, an education analyst, “pay for other college-educated workers has risen steadily, leaving teachers behind.”

    One consequence is that teachers are increasingly being priced out of housing in their district, finds Aldeman, citing research by the National Council on Teacher Quality.

    BEST NC has advocated for teacher pay as well as advanced teaching roles that are already leading to higher pay for educators. Leah Sutton, who used to work for BEST NC, now leads the advanced teaching roles program for DPI.

    The Public School Forum of North Carolina has been convening a working group to study a weighted-student funding formula. While that organization’s leadership is in transition, the work is ongoing, led by Lauren Fox and Elizabeth Paul. A recent grant from the Kellogg Foundation — in addition to other funding — will support the study moving forward with the working group next scheduled to meet in September.

    The support of legislators continues to be important.

    In 2023, Senators Michael Lee, Amy Galey, and Lisa Barnes sponsored a bill that would convert North Carolina’s funding formula to a weighted student funding (WSF) model. In early 2025, Lee led a discussion about school funding at the Hunt Institute’s Holshouser Retreat.

    “This is an incredibly important issue for education in North Carolina,” Lee said to his fellow legislators. “We have to move forward to get something done, and that will require us to work in a bipartisan way with Superintendent Green and the governor.”

    Nationally, 41 states use student-based funding in their formula, and in some Republican states, more than $1 billion has been invested in the shift.

    This issue is not new: One of WestEd’s supporting reports in the Leandro case addressed cost adequacy, distribution, and alignment of funding. It’s more than five years old now, but you can find it here.

    7. The health of district fund balances

    The Local Government Commission — a commission within the state treasurer’s office — annually collects fund balance data for North Carolina’s 115 school districts. In an email to EdNC from the LGC back in 2020, fund balances were described as “a savings account that schools can use” if they have unanticipated expenses or opportunities.

    In Durham County Public Schools and Winston-Salem/Forsyth Public Schools, fund balances have been in the news as districts cope with accounting errors, highlighting the important of the CFO role.

    In western North Carolina, fund balances have been in the news as school districts rely on them to make ends meet given the decline in local revenue from the loss of tourism.

    An interesting realization emerging from Hurricane Helene is that community colleges don’t have fund balances — which is a different problem.

    Last year, EdNC published a 10-year look at fund balances for school districts.

    Here is updated data through June 30, 2024, which is before both the Sept. 30, 2024 end of federal funding for COVID and Hurricane Helene. We are anxiously waiting to see the hit on fund balances that we anticipate in the June 30, 2025 data, which will likely be ready in early 2026.

    The state of messaging and advocacy

    In these polarized, politicized times, both messaging and advocacy are changing across party lines.

    When school choice expansion was announced in spring 2023, then-Gov. Roy Cooper reacted by declaring a state of emergency for public education. By January, he had iterated his language, declaring 2024 the year of public schools. He visited more than 60 child care centers, schools, community colleges, and businesses to highlight public education statewide.

    The N.C. School Boards Association launched this “public education matters” website.

    Higher Ed Works changed its name to Public Ed Works and launched a billboard campaign for teacher pay.

    Parents for Educational Freedom in NC (PEFNC) recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, including a fireside chat with Secretary McMahon. Their website links to this school choice website to help parents navigate, and PEFNC now has a team of 13 parent liaisons, including some who speak Spanish.

    Charter schools are having to navigate being both public schools and part of the school choice movement.

    A poll by The Carolina Journal in January 2025 found that 55.2% of those surveyed were dissatisfied with the quality of K-12 education students receive in local public schools, and it also found that 56.8% of those surveyed were comfortable sending their students to local public schools.

    Now draft pillars of Superintendent Mo Green’s strategic plan will include “Celebrate Why Public Education is the Best Choice” and “Galvanize Champions to Fully Invest In and Support Public Education.”

    What’s the right mix of messaging, advocacy, and lobbying across all lines of difference to ensure adequate funding and continuous improvement at all schools for all students?

    Sen. Kevin Corbin, R-Macon, tells constituents, “I can promise you what you won’t get. You won’t get things you don’t ask for.”

    Cross-partisan strategies addressing the following key elements continue to hold promise at the local, state, and federal level, according to the Aspen Institute:

    • Challenges and solutions must be easy to communicate and appeal to a broad base,
    • Solutions are responsive to local context and garner local support,
    • Parents, teachers, the business community, or politicians in higher office are willing to provide political cover for policymakers,
    • Both sides can walk away claiming a win — even if each side’s “win” is different, and
    • Using the media as an accelerant.

    This year, we are paying close attention to how three important constituencies talk to the public and talk to policymakers: educators, business leaders, and parents.

    8. From grass roots to grass tops, educators are finding different ways to lean in

    Here are some examples of how educators at the local and state level are finding different ways to lean in to advocate with both the public and policymakers.

    On Aug. 20, 2025, North Carolina’s educator-in-chief, Superintendent Green, will launch his strategic plan for public education, including community members, leaders, parents, and educators.

    The North Carolina Principal of the Year Network is dedicated to showcasing the exemplary work occurring within North Carolina’s public schools, fostering a culture of excellence, and advocating for the advancement of school leaders and public education across the state. Their strategy is working: They have a new website, host regional trainings, and POY Elena Ashburn is now senior advisor for education policy to Gov. Stein.

    In early 2024, the North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) released a strategic plan whose first priority is “Grow Our Union.” The organization’s goal is to have 30,000 members by 2030.

    A principal in Madison County is circulating a proposal for teacher-storytellers to help us “better understand the state of every school system in WNC and eventually the state.”

    9. Will business leaders come together and align on issues that matter?

    When I was growing up, it seemed to me like business leaders — think Hugh McColl, Eddie Crutchfield, Rolfe Neill — had a bat line to both the governor and legislative leadership.

    At the young age of 90, McColl recently said if he worries about something, it is about education.

    The NC Chamber plays a critical role in education and workforce advocacy.

    BEST NC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan coalition of business leaders committed to improving the education system through policy and advocacy.

    The North Carolina Business Committee for Education (NCBCE) — a nonprofit that operates out of the office of the governor — works to make the critical connection between North Carolina employers and school districts through work-based learning.

    The Public School Forum of North Carolina hosted a summit and continues to convene and inform business executives about the future of public education.

    Nationally, the Business Roundtable is an association of more than 200 CEOs. Jim Goodnight, their website says, “spearheaded the creation of a national Business Roundtable report calling on business leaders to support and advocate for efforts to improve early learning and third-grade reading proficiency. In North Carolina, he rallied a group of CEOs to the cause.”

    What if these leaders and organizations worked together, stood together more?

    An example exists in philanthropy. Invest Early NC is an early childhood funders collaborative focused on outcomes for children and families prenatal to age 8 so children are healthy, safe, nurtured, learning, and ready to succeed by the end of third grade. The collaborative has adopted a bipartisan approach with public-private partnerships, lifting community voice to inform decision-making. The collaborative has staff, conducted a statewide landscape analysis, collectively weighs in on issues, and is now beginning to develop a 10-year plan.

    This state loves being #1 for business. Longer term, we need to strive to be #1 for students and workers for that trend to hold.

    10. This era for parent rights is complicated for students

    No doubt we are living in a political era that values parents’ rights.

    “Parents are the most natural protectors of their children. Yet many states and school districts have enacted policies that imply students need protection from their parents,” said Secretary McMahon. “These states and school districts have turned the concept of privacy on its head –prioritizing the privileges of government officials over the rights of parents and wellbeing of families. Going forward, the correct application of FERPA will be to empower all parents to protect their children from the radical ideologies that have taken over many schools.”

    For students, it’s more complicated than the politics.

    Schooling is compulsory in North Carolina, and teachers stand in loco parentis, or in the place of parents, for the 1,025 hours that children are in our public classrooms each year.

    But our students spend the other 7,735 hours of their year outside the classroom and the school.

    In data from 2015-23, you can see that one in 100 children in North Carolina now experience substantiated abuse or neglect by their parents, guardians, or caretakers.

    And, in 2024, North Carolina’s chronic absenteeism rate was 25%, up from 15% in 2018.

    The Hechinger Report finds, “Absenteeism cuts across economic lines. Students from both low- and high-income families are often absent as are high-achieving students.”

    North Carolina law urges and requires consideration of what is in the best interests of the child, prioritizing child wellbeing, safety, and development.

    Ensuring their best interests has historically required a comprehensive approach across all settings where they spend time — home, school, faith, and community — with teachers, parents, ministers, and community leaders all serving as checks on each other.

    This article first appeared on EdNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


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  • Parents Sued LAUSD Over Remote Learning. How the Settlement Will Benefit Students – The 74

    Parents Sued LAUSD Over Remote Learning. How the Settlement Will Benefit Students – The 74


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    This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

    More than 250,000 students in Los Angeles Unified will be eligible for extra tutoring, summer school and other academic help after the district settled a class-action lawsuit alleging that its remote learning practices during the pandemic were discriminatory.

    The settlement, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, was announced Wednesday by the law firm representing families who said their children fell disastrously behind during the Covid-related school shutdown in 2020-21.

    “After five years of tireless advocacy on behalf of LAUSD students and families, we are proud to have secured a historic settlement that ensures students receive the resources they need to thrive,” said Edward Hillenbrand, a partner at the law firm Kirkland & Ellis. “This critical support will help pave the way for lasting educational equity.”

    Los Angeles Unified had no comment on the case because the settlement has yet to be approved by the court. A hearing is set for December, although the settlement goes into effect immediately.

    During the COVID-19 pandemic, Los Angeles and nearly every other school district in California closed for in-person learning from March 2020 through fall 2021. Students attended classes virtually, and most fell behind academically. Test scores statewide plummeted after schools reopened. Chronic absenteeism soared.

    In fall 2020, a group of families whose children were languishing during remote learning sued Los Angeles Unified, saying the district wasn’t doing enough to ensure students were receiving an adequate education.

    One parent, Akela Wroten Jr., said that his second-grade daughter was behind before the pandemic and became even more lost during remote learning. She struggled with reading and never got the extra attention she needed because teachers weren’t assessing her progress.

    Another parent, Vicenta Martinez, said her daughter didn’t get any instruction in spring 2020, in part because she never received logon information for remote instruction and the school never followed up. When she finally did access remote classes, the lessons were short and teachers offered little feedback.

    “LAUSD’s remote learning plan fails to provide students with even a basic education and is not preparing them to succeed,” the lawsuit alleged.

    The suit singled out an agreement between the district and its teachers union that said teachers would only be required to work four hours a day, wouldn’t have to give tests and weren’t required to deliver live lessons — their lessons could be asynchronous, or recorded beforehand. In addition, the agreement said the district wouldn’t evaluate or monitor teachers during that time.

    United Teachers Los Angeles supports the settlement, saying it provides more assistance for students while leaving teachers’ “hard-won contractual rights” intact and avoiding “unwarranted judicial interference” in the district.

    The union also noted that student test scores have recovered significantly since the pandemic..

    The plaintiffs argued that the district’s policies discriminated against low-income, Black, Latino, disabled and English learner students, because those were the students least likely to have adequate support to succeed in remote learning. Those student groups also comprise the vast majority of students in the district, the nation’s second-largest.

    The settlement requires the district to offer a host of academic support, including summer school and after-school tutoring, to the 250,000 students who were enrolled in L.A. Unified during the pandemic and are still with the district. Among those students, 100,000 who are performing below grade level will be eligible for 45 hours of one-on-one tutoring every year through 2028.

    This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.


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  • Kamehameha Schools’ Admission Policies May Face Legal Challenge – The 74

    Kamehameha Schools’ Admission Policies May Face Legal Challenge – The 74


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    A conservative mainland group whose lawsuit against Harvard University ended affirmative action in college admissions is now building support in Hawaiʻi to take on Kamehameha Schools’ policies that give preference to Native Hawaiian students.

    Students for Fair Admissions, based in Virginia, recently launched the website KamehamehaNotFair.org. It says that the admission preference “is so strong that it is essentially impossible for a non-Native Hawaiian student to be admitted to Kamehameha.”

    “We believe that focus on ancestry, rather than merit or need, is neither fair nor legal, and we are committed to ending Kamehameha’s unlawful admissions policies in court,” the website says.

    Kamehameha’s Board of Trustees and CEO Jack Wong said in a written statement that the school expected the policy would be challenged. The institution — a private school established through the estate of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop to educate Hawaiians — successfully defended its admission policy in a series of lawsuits in the early 2000s. The trustees and Wong promised to do so again.

    “We are confident that our policy aligns with established law, and we will prevail,” the statement said.

    The campaign also drew criticism from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, established in the late 1970s for the betterment of Native Hawaiians. OHA’s Board of Trustees called it an “attack on the right of Native Hawaiians to care for our own, on our own terms.”

    “These attacks are not new — but they are escalating,” the trustees said in a written statement. “They aim to dismantle the hard-won protections that enable our people to heal, rise, and chart our future.”

    Several groups have tried and failed in the past to overturn Kamehameha’s admissions policy. Federal courts, siding with Kamehameha, have ruled that giving preference to Native Hawaiians helps alleviate historical injustices they faced after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893.

    In the 2006 decision upholding Kamehameha Schools’ admissions policy, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel pointed to longstanding challenges Native Hawaiian students have faced in schools. 

    “It is clear that a manifest imbalance exists in the K-12 educational arena in the state of Hawaiʻi, with Native Hawaiians falling at the bottom of the spectrum in almost all areas of educational progress and success,” Judge Susan Graber wrote in the majority opinion. 

    These disparities persist. Just over a third of Native Hawaiian students in public schools were proficient in reading in 2024, compared to 52% of students statewide. Less than a quarter of Native Hawaiian students were proficient in math.

    The state education department has also fallen short of providing families with adequate access to Hawaiian language immersion programs, according to two lawsuits filed against the department this summer. The Hawaiian immersion programs are open to all students, not just those of Hawaiian ancestry.  

    Moses Haia III, a lawyer and former director of the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., said that improving outcomes for Hawaiian students is Kamehameha’s primary reason for existing. He said this new challenge appears to be based on ignorance of Hawaiʻi’s history.

    “Ultimately, what I see is these people being uneducated,” Haia said of the mainland group. “Not knowing the history of Hawaiʻi, not knowing the reasons for Kamehameha’s existence, and just once again trying to push Hawaiians into this box… and wanting to be on top.”

    Past Challenges 

    The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that private schools can’t discriminate based on race in a case called Runyon v. McCrary, which involved Black school students trying to gain admission to private schools that had yet to integrate non-white students.

    An anonymous student sued Kamehameha in 2003, invoking the 1976 ruling and alleging that the school’s policy of giving preference to Hawaiian children was discriminatory. The case eventually landed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

    A majority of the appeals court judges sided with Kamehameha. They used a part of the Civil Rights Act that prohibits discrimination in the workplace as a legal framework for looking at the admissions policy.

    Judge Graber wrote that a preference for Native Hawaiian students “serves a legitimate remedial purpose by addressing the socioeconomic and educational disadvantages facing Native Hawaiians, producing Native Hawaiian leadership for community involvement, and revitalizing Native Hawaiian culture, thereby remedying current manifest imbalances resulting from the influx of western civilization.”

    But it was a narrow victory for Kamehameha, an 8-to-7 vote. Dissenting judges wrote that admitting mostly Hawaiian students didn’t create a diverse student body; others said that the policy was clearly discriminatory.

    The anonymous student appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But Kamehameha entered a $7 million settlement with the student and their mother before the court decided whether to take up the case.

    While the settlement safeguarded the admission policy from a ruling by the nation’s highest court it also meant lawyers punted the issue.

    Another group of anonymous students challenged the admissions policy a few years later and again took that case to the Supreme Court. But the court declined to take up that case in 2011.

    Students for Fair Admissions previously brought two landmark cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, arguing that the two schools’ race-conscious admissions policies discriminated against Asian American and white applicants. The Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that colleges cannot use race as a factor in their admissions, although the decision didn’t specify what this could mean for K-12 schools.

    Last fall, the number of Black students enrolled at both universities fell, although some researchers cautioned that colleges might not see the full impact of the Supreme Court ruling until a few admissions cycles have passed. 

    The challenge to Kamehameha Schools’ admissions policies comes amid national pushback on efforts to promote diversity in schools. In February, the U.S. Department of Education said any colleges and K-12 schools using race-based practices in hiring and admissions could lose federal funding, although a court subsequently prevented the department from enforcing those requirements. 

    Kamehameha receives no funding from the federal government, according to its tax filings. The school, which is the state’s largest private landowner, has assets valued at about $15 billion.

    This story was originally published on Honolulu Civil Beat.


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  • The New COVID Vaccine Rules Leave Parents with More Questions than Answers – The 74

    The New COVID Vaccine Rules Leave Parents with More Questions than Answers – The 74


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    The federal government’s latest guidelines for COVID-19 vaccines make it difficult to know who, exactly, will be able to access shots this fall. While Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and some of his staff claim anyone will be able to access a shot in consultation with their doctor, medical groups are warning that the new guidance will impact a broad swath of people, including postpartum people and healthy children.

    “For children and young adults that I see, there are constraints, and they are significant,” said Dr. Molly O’Shea, a pediatrician in Michigan and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

    It might also take several more weeks to know who will be able to receive no-cost COVID-19 vaccines covered by health insurance. That decision partly depends on formal recommendations from a vaccine panel that isn’t scheduled to meet until mid-September. 

    Actions by the Food and Drug Administration last week mean that none of the COVID-19 vaccines that are slated to be on the U.S. market this fall will have an emergency use authorization that had allowed their quick (yet still rigorously tested) approval at the height of the pandemic. The removal of this designation means the drug company Pfizer will no longer offer COVID-19 vaccines to very young children, limiting parents’ brand options and potentially impacting supply.

    Moderna, Pfizer and Novavax, the three main COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, have all shared news releases about what they’ve been approved to offer:

    • Moderna, Pfizer or Novavax will offer shots to anyone who is 65 and older, irrespective of medical history.
    • Pfizer will offer shots to anyone between the ages of five and 64 if they have at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19.
    • Moderna will offer shots to anyone between six months and 64 if they have at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19.
    • Novavax, the only company providing a non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, will offer shots to anyone between 12 and 64 if they have at least one underlying condition that puts them at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19.

    The vaccine panel known as the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP) is expected to make formal recommendations on these FDA-approved vaccines, and those recommendations have historically determined whether insurance providers will cover a vaccine at no cost under insurance.

    An HHS spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for information and comment from The 19th, but in a post on X, Kennedy said: “These vaccines are available for all patients who choose them after consulting with their doctors.” Separately, USA Today reported on a document from HHS stating the FDA’s actions do “not affect access to these vaccines for healthy individuals. These vaccines remain available to those who choose them in consultation with their healthcare provider.”

    Dr. Marty Makary, FDA commissioner, added in a separate X post: “100% of adults in this country can still get the vaccine if they choose. We are not limiting availability to anyone.”

    But what that means practically for everyday people who want to access a COVID-19 shot — everything from whether their doctor will prescribe it, or if a pharmacy will be able to administer it, and whether there will be an out-of-pocket cost — is unclear for now. 

    How will it impact postpartum people?

    Pregnant people are expected to still have access to the vaccine because the CDC continues to list pregnancy as an underlying condition that puts an individual at high risk for severe outcomes from COVID-19. (The list of at least two dozen conditions also includes chronic health conditions and immunocompromised conditions.)

    But Kennedy, who has repeatedly questioned the safety of COVID-19 vaccines despite research that shows their effectiveness, announced in May that the CDC would no longer formally recommend such vaccines to pregnant people and healthy children, a move that seemed to contradict his own department. 

    Lactating and postpartum individuals must have an underlying medical condition to be eligible for one of the FDA’s approved vaccines, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)’s understanding of the announcement. ACOG continues to recommend COVID-19 vaccination to people who are contemplating pregnancy, are pregnant, were recently pregnant or are now lactating.

    “We recognize that now, disappointingly, only lactating and postpartum individuals with an underlying condition will be eligible for vaccination. Still, it remains critical that pregnant patients receive the vaccines so that they are able to provide passive immunity from COVID-19 to their infants in those first few months of life before they can be vaccinated,” said ACOG President Steven J. Fleischman in an email.

    How will it impact healthy children?

    Healthy children will likely still be able to access the COVID vaccine, but the cost for a parent or guardian, as well as availability, will be impacted by these decisions.

    Charlotte A. Moser, co-director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, said parents who want to get their kids the COVID-19 vaccine should still be able to do so through what is called shared clinical decision-making in consultation with their child’s health care provider, according to the CDC’s current vaccine schedule. But it’s unclear whether this will change when ACIP meets again.

    But physicians who prescribe a COVID-19 vaccine outside of the parameters of how the FDA approved them would be OKing use of the shot “off-label” — a designation that means a medical product is being used outside of how the FDA approved it. That raises questions about access and cost. Physicians might not be willing to prescribe off-label because of concerns about liability.

    “I think that there will be a substantially smaller number of pediatricians, pharmacies, etc., who will be comfortable taking that risk,” O’Shea said.

    Dr. Dial Hewlett, medical director of tuberculosis services at Westchester County Department of Health in New York and a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America, said an off-label prescription might also not be covered by insurance.

    “A mother or father can go in with their child and say, ‘I’d like for them to have the vaccine,’ but they may be told, ‘Well we’ll give it, but you’re going to have to pay $200,’” he said.

    The science on COVID vaccines has consistently indicated they are safe for children to receive.
    (Joseph Prezioso / AFP / Getty Images)

    Depending on the circumstances, pharmacists may also not be able to provide off-label vaccines. Some states tie pharmacist immunization authority to FDA approval,which has the potential to create a hodgepodge of access. The New York Times reported that CVS and Walgreens, the country’s largest pharmacy chains, have begun restricting COVID-19 shots in some states to people with a prescription. 

    “There may be some variability from state to state, but it’s a big barrier if FDA approval is not there, and the FDA approvals have been pulled back from where they were previously,” Hewlett said.

    The FDA announcement is “concerning,” added Moser, who noted that limiting Pfizer’s vaccine will make it more difficult for all children to get a COVID-19 vaccine this year because of anticipated supply limitations.

    O’Shea, the pediatrician in Michigan, said her office is currently deciding how many COVID-19 shots to stock, and it’s proving tricky as they weigh the cost vs. demand — the percentage of children under 18 getting the shot is under 15 percent.

    “Figuring out how much we want to have at any one time, and how we are going to give it to people — this really makes it a lot more complicated,” she said.

    What happens next?

    Moser said the announcement adds confusion for providers and families, and noted that the unilateral approach by Kennedy so far when it comes to vaccine policy “removes hundreds of voices of clinicians and scientists that were part of the process.” Moser recently served on ACIP and is among the members that Kennedy removed. He has replaced the panel with people who do not have relevant experience.

    “That army of voices ensured a process informed by clinical experience and scientific expertise to which the small group making these decisions now cannot possibly compare,” she said in an email.

    The revamped ACIP panel is scheduled to meet over two days beginning on September 18. Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a doctor who is chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, is now questioning whether that panel has enough legitimacy to meet, especially amid a leadership shakeup at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

    “Serious allegations have been made about the meeting agenda, membership, and lack of scientific process being followed for the now announced September ACIP meeting,” he said in a statement. “These decisions directly impact children’s health and the meeting should not occur until significant oversight has been conducted. If the meeting proceeds, any recommendations made should be rejected as lacking legitimacy given the seriousness of the allegations and the current turmoil in CDC leadership.”

    AAP called Kennedy’s latest COVID guidelines “deeply troubling” and urged COVID vaccine decision-making to remain between medical experts and families. 

    Dr. Susan J. Kressly, president of AAP, said in a statement that any barrier to COVID-19 vaccination as the nation enters the respiratory virus season creates “a dangerous vulnerability for children and their families.”

    “Any parent who wants their child vaccinated should have access to this vaccine,” she said, adding that HHS’ action “not only prevents this option for many families, but adds further confusion and stress for parents trying to make the best choices for their children.”

    This story was originally reported by Barbara Rodriguez of The 19th. Meet Barbara and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.


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  • Range of Factors Spurred Campus Cutbacks in August

    Range of Factors Spurred Campus Cutbacks in August

    Multiple colleges and universities, including some ultrawealthy ones, have announced plans to cut jobs and academic programs, as well as implement other changes, due to financial challenges driven by a range of factors.

    For some institutions, belt-tightening measures are directly tied to the economic forces battering the sector as a whole: declining enrollments, rising operating costs and broad economic uncertainty. For others, financial pressure from the Trump administration, which has frozen federal research funding at multiple institutions, prompted cuts. State lawmakers have also forced program reductions at some public institutions.

    Here’s a look at job and program cuts and other cost-cutting efforts announced in August.

    University of Chicago

    Despite its $10 billion endowment, the private institution is slashing expenses by $100 million, shedding 400 staff jobs and pausing admissions into multiple graduate programs.

    Chicago president Paul Alivisatos wrote in a statement to faculty that the university’s financial woes are twofold, tied to a persistent operating deficit, with expenditures outpacing revenues, combined with the “profound federal policy changes of the last eight months [that] have created multiple and significant new uncertainties and strong downward pressure on our finances.”

    In recent years, UChicago has been squeezed by debt, which has ballooned to more than $6 billion as leadership continued to invest in building projects, prompting critics to question how well administrators have managed the institution’s finances.

    Middlebury College

    The private liberal arts college in Vermont is shutting down the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, across the country in California, officials announced last week.

    Middlebury president Ian Baucom said the university is winding down graduate programs at the campus over a period of two years. Managing such graduate programs was “no longer feasible,” said Baucom, who added that the decision was made for financial reasons.

    Earlier this year, the college announced it was taking action to close a budget deficit that was projected to be as high as $14.1 million. In that announcement, officials said the Middlebury Institute of International Studies was responsible for $8.7 million—more than half—of the shortfall.

    Middlebury plans to sunset programs at the California campus by June 2027.

    University of New Hampshire

    Officials at the public university in Durham last month announced the elimination of 36 jobs, 13 of which were vacant, and 10 employees had their hours reduced, according to The Portsmouth Herald.

    The layoffs are part of an effort to cut $17.5 million from UNH’s budget.

    University president Elizabeth Chilton also announced other cost-cutting efforts last month, including “scaling back professional development, student employment, building hours, dining hall hours, travel, printing, and other support services.”

    Carnegie Mellon University

    The private research university in Pittsburgh laid off 18 employees in administrative and academic support roles in early August, WESA reported, and more changes are on the horizon.

    Those cuts and other moves are part of an effort to reduce expenses by $33 million, President Farnam Jahanian wrote in a message to campus last month, noting that CMU is not operating at a deficit but is “facing significant constraints and unprecedented uncertainty.” Jahanian pointed to lower-than-expected graduate tuition revenues and federal research funding challenges.

    CMU has also paused merit raises and limited hiring. While Carnegie Mellon is undertaking a review of education offerings, Jahanian wrote that “we do not have broad layoffs planned.” Jahanian added that such measures remain “a last resort.”

    Bennington College

    The private liberal arts college in Vermont announced in mid-August that it was eliminating 15 staff jobs “as part of ongoing efforts to address budget challenges,” VT Digger reported.

    In an announcement, President Laura Walker called the cuts “a painful moment” but noted that, like its peer institutions, Bennington is “confronting an uncertain economy and a challenging overall environment for higher education.” She added that no “regular faculty positions” were cut and that the college is providing severance to affected employees.

    Utah State University

    The public institution laid off seven full-time researchers last month after the federal government terminated grants that supported those jobs, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

    The layoffs precede what will likely be deep cuts across multiple public universities in the state, forced by new laws that require institutions to cut some programs and positions and reinvest in others that lawmakers argue are better aligned with workforce needs. So far eight institutions have proposed axing 271 programs and 412 jobs, though those cuts still await final state approval.

    Ohio University

    Fallout from the Advance Ohio Higher Education Act, which went into effect in June, continues as Ohio University announced plans to suspend 11 underenrolled programs and merge 18 others.

    The new law requires universities to take action on underenrolled programs, though Ohio University officials noted that they have submitted waiver requests to continue offering seven other programs that fall below the required threshold of at least five graduates, on average, across the past three years. The institution is seeking a waiver for undergraduate offerings in economics, dance, music therapy, nutrition science and hospitality management, among other degree programs.

    Officials cited state workforce needs or “the unique nature” of the programs in waiver requests.

    University of Connecticut

    Following a review that began last fall, trustees of the public system approved the closure of seven academic programs with low enrollment—four graduate certificate and three degree programs, CT Insider reported.

    Nearly 70 other programs are being monitored for enrollment and completion rates. Officials called the review process “good academic housekeeping.”

    Milligan University

    Citing the need to “exercise strong fiscal management,” officials at the Christian college in Tennessee announced they are suspending enrollment in six degree programs, WJHL reported.

    Milligan will no longer accept students in film, journalism, computer science, cybersecurity, information systems or a graduate coaching and sports management program. University officials pointed to falling enrollment in those programs when they announced the changes.

    University of Nebraska

    The public university system is offering buyouts to faculty members across all its campuses as part of an effort to address a $20 million budget shortfall, Nebraska Public Media reported.

    Tenured faculty members older than 62 with at least 10 years of service at Nebraska are eligible to opt in to the voluntary separation incentive program, which opened this week and closes on Sept. 30. Faculty members that opt in will receive a lump-sum payment amounting to 70 percent of their annual base salary and remain employed through June or August, depending on their contract.

    University of California, Los Angeles

    One of the wealthiest institutions on this list, UCLA announced last month that it has temporarily paused faculty hiring and is making other belt-tightening moves.

    Officials also said UCLA is looking to “streamline services,” starting with information technology.

    The public university’s move comes at least partly in response to its standoff with the Trump administration, which froze hundreds of millions in research funding to the university last month as it pressured administrators over alleged antisemitism on campus. (Some funding has been restored by a court order.) The Trump administration has also demanded a $1 billion payout from the university, which California governor Gavin Newsom called “extortion.”

    University of Kansas

    The public university announced last month that it was implementing a temporary hiring freeze as administrators aim to reduce spending by $32 million, The Lawrence Journal-World reported.

    “We are again navigating an uncertain fiscal environment because of external factors, such as disruptions to federal funding, changes in federal law, stagnant state funding, rising costs, changes in international enrollments, and a projected nationwide decline in college enrollment,” KU officials wrote in a message to campus.

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  • Exploring a new standard for preparing students for the future of work

    Exploring a new standard for preparing students for the future of work

    Key points:

    According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, nearly 40 percent of workers’ core skills will change in just the next five years. As AI, automation, and global connectivity continue to reshape every industry, today’s students are stepping into a world where lifelong careers in a single field are increasingly rare.

    Rather than following a straight path, the most successful professionals tomorrow will be able to pivot, reinvent, and adapt again and again. That’s why the goal of education must also shift. Instead of preparing students for a fixed destination, we must prepare them to navigate change itself.

    At Rockingham County Schools (RCS), this belief is at the heart of our mission to ensure every student is “choice-ready.” Rather than just asking, “What job will this student have?” we’re asking, “Will they be ready to succeed in whatever path they choose now and 10 years from now?”

    Choice-ready is a mindset, not just a pathway

    Let’s start with a quick analogy: Not long ago, the NBA underwent a major transformation. For decades, basketball was largely a two-point game with teams focused on scoring inside the arc. But over time, the strategy shifted to where it is today: a three-point league, where teams that invest in long-range shooters open up the floor, score more efficiently, and consistently outperform those stuck in old models. The teams that adapted reshaped the game. The ones that didn’t have fallen behind.

    Education is facing a similar moment. If we prepare students for a narrow, outdated version of success that prepares them for one track, one career, or one outcome, we risk leaving them unprepared for a world that rewards agility, range, and innovation.

    At RCS, we take a global approach to education to avoid this. Being “choice-ready” means equipping students with the mindset and flexibility to pursue many possible futures, and a global approach expands that readiness by exposing them to a broader range of competencies and real-world situations. This exposure prepares them to navigate the variety of contexts they will encounter as professionals. Rather than locking them into a specific plan, it helps them develop the ability to shift when industries, interests, and opportunities change.

    The core competencies to embrace this mindset and flexibility include:

    • Creative and analytical thinking, which help solve new problems in new contexts
    • Empathy and collaboration, which are essential for dynamic teams and cross-sector work
    • Confidence and communication, which are built through student-led projects and real-world learning

    RCS also brings students into the conversation. They’re invited to shape their learning environment by giving their input on district policies around AI, cell phone use, and dress codes. This encourages engagement and ownership that helps them build the soft skills and self-direction that today’s workforce demands.

    The 4 E’s: A vision for holistic student readiness and flexibility

    To turn this philosophy into action, we developed a four-part framework to support every student’s readiness:

    1. Enlisted: Prepared for military service
    2. Enrolled: Ready for college or higher education
    3. Educated: Grounded in academic and life skills
    4. Entrepreneur: Equipped to create, innovate, and take initiative

    That fourth “E”–entrepreneur–is unique to RCS and especially powerful. It signals that students can create their opportunities rather than waiting for them. In one standout example, a student who began producing and selling digital sound files online explored both creative and commercial skill sets.

    These categories aren’t silos. A student might enlist, then enroll in college, then start a business. That’s the whole point: Choice-ready students can move fluidly from one path to another as their interests–and the world–evolve.

    The role of global education

    Global education is a framework that prepares students to understand the world, appreciate different perspectives, and engage with real-world issues across local and global contexts. It emphasizes transferable skills—such as adaptability, empathy, and critical thinking—that students need to thrive in an unpredictable future.

    At RCS, global education strengthens student readiness through:

    • Dual language immersion, which gives students a competitive edge in a multilingual, interconnected workforce
    • Cultural exposure, which builds resilience, empathy, and cross-cultural competence
    • Real-world learning, which connects academic content to relevant, global challenges

    These experiences prepare students to shift between roles, industries, and even countries with confidence.

    Redesigning career exploration: Early exposure and real skills

    Because we don’t know what future careers will be, we embed career exploration across K-12 to ensure students develop self-awareness and transferable skills early on.

    One of our best examples is the Paxton Patterson Labs in middle schools, where students explore real-world roles, such as practicing dental procedures on models rather than just watching videos.

    Through our career and technical education and innovation program at the high school level, students can:

    • Earn industry-recognized credentials.
    • Collaborate with local small business owners.
    • Graduate workforce-ready with the option to pursue higher education later.

    For students who need immediate income after graduation, RCS offers meaningful preparation that doesn’t close off future opportunities, keeping those doors open.

    And across the system, RCS tracks success by student engagement and ownership, both indicators that a learner is building confidence, agency, and readiness to adapt. This focus on student engagement and preparing students for the world postgraduation is already paying dividends. During the 2024-25 school year, RCS was able to increase the percentage of students scoring proficient on the ACT by more than 20 points to 44 percent. Additionally, RCS increased both the number of students who took AP exams and the number who received a passing score by 12 points to 48 percent.

    Preparing students for a moving target

    RCS knows that workforce readiness is a moving target. That’s why the district continues to evolve with it. Our ongoing focus areas include:

    • Helping graduates become lifelong learners who can retrain and reskill as needed
    • Raising awareness of AI’s influence on learning, creativity, and work
    • Expanding career exploration opportunities that prioritize transferable, human-centered skills

    We don’t know exactly what the future holds. We do know that students who can adapt, pivot, and move confidently from one career path to another will be the most prepared–because the most important outcome isn’t fitting students into today’s job market but preparing them to create value in tomorrow’s.

    At Rockingham County Schools, that’s what being “choice-ready” really means. It’s not about predicting the future. It’s about preparing students to thrive within it wherever it leads.

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  • Test yourself on the past week’s K-12 news

    Test yourself on the past week’s K-12 news

    This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback.

    How well did you keep up with this week’s developments in K-12 education? To find out, take our five-question quiz below. Then, share your score by tagging us on social media with #K12DivePopQuiz.

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  •  How Being a Feline Escort in a Muslim Country Reaffirmed My Patriotism—Even if That’s a Dirty Word in Higher Ed

     How Being a Feline Escort in a Muslim Country Reaffirmed My Patriotism—Even if That’s a Dirty Word in Higher Ed

    This summer, I did a gig as an international cat courier. As a favor, I agreed to fly from my home in Spokane, Wash., to D.C., meet my sister-in-law and travel with her to her new government post—taking responsibility for one of her two cats—on a plane to Algiers.

    Having never visited a Muslim country, I was game, though people who’d traveled widely warned me that Algiers is unusually conservative and restrictive. I got warnings not to ask about religion or politics. A friend who works for the U.N. gave me a talking-to about what to wear, which boiled down to: no exposed skin.

    My sister-in-law would start work the day after we arrived, so I’d be on my own in a country where my options were limited. You cannot use credit cards, only cash, and can’t change money. I’d tough it out and then five days later head to Italy for a vacation.

    The only thing I could do in Algiers was walk around, make friends with many street cats, and talk to strangers. In French brushed up from college with some recent Duolingo practice, I spoke with shopkeepers, chatted with security guards outside embassies and met people hanging out on the streets. I didn’t always bother conjugating verbs and probably misgendered every noun.

    What I found were people who love their homeland and were eager to show me around. Even in a country that fought for independence in the 1960s, endured a bloody civil war in the ’90s and now exists under a repressive government, pride endured. But I also noticed what wasn’t there: easy travel, open political discourse, casual criticism of authority. Their pride lived alongside careful silence.

    In my layover on the way home, I struck up a conversation with a Delta employee from Algeria. I told him how generous and openhearted I’d found everyone I’d met. His face lit up. “It’s good now. It’s better.” But when he spoke of the government and the civil war—even in the Minneapolis airport—his voice dropped to a whisper.

    He now lived in the U.S., scanning bags as they rode around the carousel, having earned a Ph.D. in economics in his home country and taught for 30 years at a university in Poland. He would be going “home” to Algeria in September.

    People, I’m just gonna go there and say it: I love America.

    Given my politics, profession and (hippie Vietnam War–protesting) parentage (father: regional public faculty; mother: community college and Ivy lecturer), I’m a little surprised to find myself feeling a surge of patriotism, especially these days, I know I’m expected to be cynically critical of everything our (legitimate) government does. Many of my friends and colleagues dismiss folks who vote differently from us and wave a virtue flag at “those people” who drape their homes in red, white and blue.

    And yet, many who share my convictions about diversity, equity and inclusion have often been intolerant of others. We’ve gotten shouty, telling others they’re wrong, uneducated and a bucket of creeps. Maybe some of them are. Maybe some of us are, too. But we sure have stopped talking to each other. We’re not even getting the same news or finding the same facts. Some of my friends say they’ve become numb to what’s coming out our nation’s capitol. Not me. Every day I am shocked by where we are now, and where I fear we might be heading (another bloody civil war).

    In academe, we have the luxury to spout off. We spouted and in 2016 learned a big lesson: Not everyone was buying what we were selling. Which is how we got to the current political, cultural and societal shit show.

    And yet, I still love America. I love the values expressed in the documents that established us, written in such beautiful language I often assign them to creative writing students. The autobiography of our funniest founder—the first best-selling book—still carries so much wit and wisdom I’m filled with awe and envy when I reread it. The America Lincoln described in speeches with the brevity and power of a prose poem can bring me to my knees. And I love that over the past two centuries, our best leaders hoped by their criticism to form a more perfect union, to correct the many things we’ve gotten wrong.

    Just before I boarded a long and uncomfortable flight, a friend sent me a link to Ronald Reagan’s last speech. In it, he quoted from a letter he’d received: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman … But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.” His point: “If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.”

    If you’d told me decades ago I’d write in praise of Ronald freaking Reagan, I’d have said that’s as likely as 2001: A Space Odyssey’s HAL becoming reality. But, well, here we are.

    We can’t stop critiquing our country—that’s the essence of democracy and the real value of higher ed. But instead of just spouting off about what’s wrong with America, we need to model how to engage constructively with imperfect institutions. We need to teach our students how to critique while also participating, how to demand better while acknowledging what’s worth preserving.

    Seeing a country like Algeria, that has closed itself down politically, isolated from the other North African nations and in many ways the rest of the world, even after throwing off colonial rule, felt like a cautionary example. In higher education, when we shut ourselves off to uncomfortable truths or dismiss those who disagree with us, we risk becoming like that whispered conversation in the airport—fearful, constrained, diminished.

    Which is why, after five days of wandering Algiers with bad French and heat-slick layers of covered skin, I boarded my flight to Rome to stuff myself with pasta alla carbonara, gelato and vigorous discussions about what’s wrong with today’s world with an odd mix of relief and resolve. You don’t have to think your country’s perfect to love it, but you do have to notice when the door’s still open and fight to keep it that way. In democracy, as in academe, the moment we stop letting in new voices, new challenges, new possibilities, we begin to die from the inside out.

    Rachel Toor is a contributing editor at Inside Higher Ed and the co-founder of The Sandbox, a weekly newsletter that allows presidents and chancellors to write anonymously. She is also a professor of creative writing and the author of books on weirdly diverse subjects. Reach her here with questions, comments and complaints compliments.

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  • Thinking About AI’s Threat to the Writing Process

    Thinking About AI’s Threat to the Writing Process

    I will never forget the student who—upon being given 15 minutes at the end of class to get rolling on the writing assignment I’d just given—whipped out their phone and starting furiously typing away.

    At first, I thought this was an act of defiance, a deliberate wasting of time I’d been generous enough to provide following a carefully constructed discussion activity that was meant to give students sufficient kindling to get the flames of the first draft flickering to life.

    I said something about maybe texting people later and the student said that they were working on their draft, that they, in fact, first wrote everything on their phone. Not wanting to make a fuss in the moment, I shut up about it, but a week or so later in an individual conference I asked the student about their method, and they showed me the reams and reams of text in their phone’s Notes app.

    The phone itself was a fright, the screen cracked, a particularly dense web of fractures at the bottom, but when I asked the student to show me how they used the app for writing, it became clear that they could type at a speed comparable or better to the average student on a computer keyboard.

    I’d been teaching the writing process for my entire career, talking students through the steps and sequence to producing a satisfactory piece of work—prewriting, drafting, revision, editing, proofreading—with more detailed dives into each of those stages, but until that incident I didn’t fully appreciate that I shouldn’t be teaching the writing process per se, I should be giving students the kinds of challenges that allowed them to develop their own writing processes.

    As I considered this distinction, I realized how truly idiosyncratic my own process is and how different it can be depending on the occasion and situation. An outside observer looking at how I put together a column or book or proposal would see all manner of inefficiency and declare my method … madness.

    But the key thing about my method is that it’s mine, and I think I have sufficient proof that it works. It may continue to evolve over time, which I suppose we could equate with improvement, but it’s really just different.

    My student’s strategy was rooted in resource constraints, both time and money. Typing on the phone had started as a way to get stuff done during brief in-between times when working as a bicycle delivery person for one of the downtown-Charleston sandwich shops. They’d capture a draft on the phone on the fly and then transfer it to a computer for further development. The phone text had notes like “put thing from that thing here” as place markers for sources or evidence.

    I realized that this method required the student to fundamentally work from a place of their own thoughts and ideas, something that was actually at odds with some of their first-year writing classmates who had been conditioned to defer to their readings, seeing their job as students to prove that they’d read and (generally) understood the content, rather than building on that content with ideas of their own, as I’d been asking them to do.

    At the time of the conference, the student didn’t even have a computer, having had theirs stolen and not having sufficient funds at the time to immediately replace it. The student had been using the terminals in the library computer lab for the nonphone work.

    This conference also revealed the reason for the rather up-and-down nature of this student’s work that semester. This was a clearly curious and driven person who had a number of extra challenges at simply completing the work of college. The assignment we were working on at the time, an alternate history analysis where students had to take a past event, change some aspect of it and imagine a different future, was probably the most challenging experience of the semester, but according to my archives at least, it proved to be this student’s best work.

    Writing the initial draft untethered from any sources or even being able to easily move between information online and the text on the screen required the student to think creatively and analytically in ways that unlocked interesting insights into their choice of subject. Because of fate and circumstance, and without me really planning it, this student was getting a high-level experience in how to harness their own mind.

    I started thinking more deeply about the intersection between the affordances of the tools and the writing process. One of the biggest shifts in my method over the years was when I acquired an external monitor that allowed me to see two full pages of text simultaneously on screen. This was something I’d longed for for years but resisted because I’m cheap. I now have a hard time working without it.

    This incident happened as I was also experimenting with approaches to alternative grading, so it became a natural fit to start asking students to reflect more purposefully on the literal mechanics of their writing process so they could identify missing needs that they might be able to fulfill.

    At the time I hadn’t yet come up with my framework of the writer’s practice, but now I can see how integral asking students to be this mindful about their own process can be to the development of a practice.

    It’s also a good route for introducing mindfulness into the choices they may make when it comes to using generative AI tools. If they understand their labor and its meaning, they will have the capacity to assess how using the tool may enhance or—what I think is more likely—distort their process. It is also a reminder to us to design challenges that encourage the kind of labor we want students to be doing.

    Before we retreat to old technology that dodges these challenges, like blue books, I think we could do a lot of good by really leaning in to helping students see writing as an experience that will differ based on their unique intelligences, and that if they pay attention, if what they are doing matters, they can come to know themselves a bit better.

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  • Ky. Tackles Credit for Prior Learning for Veterans

    Ky. Tackles Credit for Prior Learning for Veterans

    Approximately 65 percent of the 1.2 million active-duty service members in the U.S. armed forces have less than an associate degree level of education, according to 2023 data; many of them hold some college credits but no degree. Federal aid programs make enrolling in college and earning a degree more accessible for military-affiliated students, but not every student is aware of academic interventions that can help them complete a credential sooner, including credit for prior learning.

    A 2024 research article found that prospective students with military experience were most likely to prioritize academic programming when selecting a college, followed by financial assistance and affordability. CPL is one way colleges and universities seek to expedite student veterans’ ability to enroll in and graduate from college, recognizing the learning already accomplished while in the armed forces.

    In the most recent episode of Voices of Student Success, host Ashley Mowreader speaks with three experts from the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education—senior fellows Matt Bergman and Dallas Kratzer, and Tracy Teater, associate director of adult learner attainment—to discuss the state’s adult education attainment goals, challenges in CPL rollout and other models of success across the country.

    An edited version of the podcast appears below.

    Inside Higher Ed: Just to get us started, Matt, can you talk a little about the connection between credit for prior learning and adult learner success? What is that link and why is this an important starting point when it comes to engaging adult learners?

    Matthew Bergman, senior fellow at the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and an associate professor at the University of Louisville

    Matt Bergman: Credit for prior learning has been around quite a long while, from the early 1930s to when we saw the transition of many military back into higher education. [We were] thinking about, how we could transition individuals that are work-ready but have some college-level and credit-worthy learning that would create more efficient pathways?

    Credit for prior learning has been a huge benefit to so many of those folks with that experience. And this is just not experience alone; this is very thoroughly and rigorously assessed learning that we can translate and map directly to curriculum.

    The University of Louisville was part of a 72-institution study by the Council on Adult and Experiential Learning, or CAEL, and the CPL Boost came out with some really hard-hitting empirical evidence that not only do people get to graduation faster, but they graduate at a higher rate, and also those that actually engage in this work take more credit hours.

    That might seem a bit counterintuitive, but what it boils down to is this idea that you increase retention and persistence by percentage points that create a net-positive revenue for institutions along the way. So the myth of taking away tuition from the university is gone. We’ve got empirical evidence that not only does it benefit students and they save money, but actually the institutions are making more money in the long term because they are creating paths that are efficient, meaningful and impactful for these adult learners, military and beyond.

    Inside Higher Ed: Why are students with military experience a focus area when it comes to CPL?

    Dallas Kratzer poses for a headshot wearing a gray suit coat and checked collared shirt and glasses.

    Dallas Kratzer, senior fellow at the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education

    Dallas Kratzer: The American Council on Education has done the evaluation of a lot of military workplace learning, which can include not only the courses they’ve taken in their military careers but also the learning that they’ve had on the job.

    In the military, we have a lot of different types of things that we do, and ACE has evaluated many of those. In those evaluations, the great thing is, those types of jobs and skills line up to the civilian sector. About 85 percent of what we do in the military is done in the civilian sector. So, if we can get it right and benchmark off of what ACE has done, it makes it really easy for a higher ed institution to then step across the line to the civilian sector and say, “ACE evaluated it this way. This is how it looks in the civilian sector. We can take that same credit recommendation and make some linkage there.”

    As a matter of fact, O*NET has a military jobs crosswalk to civilian jobs. So linking all of that together, and the program that Matt worked on at the University of Louisville, he and I both worked with it, they use it really heavily to make that crosswalk, or that linkage between those two.

    Inside Higher Ed: Part of this is from the institution side—making it clear how military experience fulfills civilian responsibilities or those job functionalities. But there’s also making that linkage for the student; if you are somebody with military experience, maybe you haven’t considered the ways that that can translate into the transition outside the civilian world.

    Kratzer: You are so on the mark with that comment, because so many folks in the military just see that they’re doing their job. I did 35 years in the Air Force and worked extensively with the Army in the later years, and [military personnel] often think that what they’ve learned on the job or the things that they are doing in their career fields are just that—a job. They don’t see the experiential learning that comes along with that and how that can be translated into college credit.

    I’ve had times where I’ve worked with individuals, and I’m like, “So have you gone to college?” Yes, some of them have. “Have you completed a degree?” “No, but I’ve got some college.” And then about a third of them don’t even think about it, and they would say, “No, I don’t have any college [credit] at all.” I’m like, “Actually, you do. There’s this thing called a joint service transcript, and your workplace learning, your military courses have been evaluated, and you have this pot of credits that you need to take to your higher ed institution and say, ‘How does this translate into me completing my degree?’”

    Inside Higher Ed: Kentucky has a large plan at the state level to support adults and nontraditional students; how does CPL fit into this vision of student success?

    Tracy Teater smiles for a headshot wearing a green blouse against a white background

    Tracy Teater, associate director of adult learner attainment

    Tracy Teater: The Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education is committed to supporting and improving learner pathways, both to access and then successfully complete postsecondary goals across the age continuum, whether that is a traditional or a post-traditional student. We recognize that supporting our adult learners—whether they be adults with high school equivalency diplomas, adults enrolling for the first time or adults re-enrolling to finish their degree—leads to increased economic mobility for them and their families, increased workforce for Kentucky, of course, and an increased college-going rate for the next generation.

    Because our adult learners are often parents, I can’t stress that point enough: By investing in our adult learners and our adult learner returners, we are investing in those generations to come.

    Credit for prior learning is a key part of Kentucky’s larger vision for student success. It removes barriers and accelerates pathways for those adults to earn meaningful credentials. That supports Kentucky’s 60 by 30 goal, our North Star, if you will.

    To ensure 60 percent of working-age adults hold that postsecondary credential by 2030, it requires that we recognize the learning and experiences that our adults often bring with them from military service, from work, from industry certifications and from their life experiences. This saves tuition dollars for our families and increases return on investment, as Matt shared earlier on, for both the campus and the state. I think also important and sometimes overlooked in this conversation is the fact that it sends a powerful message to the learner that you belong on campus and you’re respected and valued for the college credit–worthy experiences you bring. And so this sense of belonging, I think, impacts persistence towards learning goals. And so CPL for Kentucky is not a stand-alone effort. It’s woven into the broader student success agenda as a way to re-engage adults, and it’s been really exciting to be a part of the work, because Kentucky has a demonstrated commitment to adult learners.

    The goals of the Kentucky Student Success Collaborative are we want to set the conditions for a culture of collaboration, and we want to build capacities of our campus partners to innovate and then ultimately accelerate progress.

    Kratzer: I’d like to make a comment or tag on to what Tracy just said about one part of that, and that is the tuition dollars and how we can reduce the cost of going to college or returning to college through credit for prior learning. But more importantly, to the military community, the thing that we need to keep in mind is if they have already earned the training and the learning, and we don’t recognize that in higher ed, we’re not being a good steward of the taxpayers’ dollars, because we’re having them go back and take training that they’ve already accomplished. So this is such an important aspect to that military credit recommendation.

    Inside Higher Ed: We’ve laid out a lot of the reasons why CPL is so beneficial to the state, to the institution, to the student, to their families, to their future families. But if CPL were easy to do, everyone would be doing it, and they’d be doing it well. So I wonder if we can talk about some of those hurdles when it comes to implementing and executing CPL effectively, and what sort of resources and time it takes to do this work and to do it well.

    Bergman: There are a number of barriers, because it is labor-intense. In some ways now, as a result of the American Council on Education, we have military acknowledgment and recommendations for these credits that make it very tangible, almost as though it is transfer credit for most institutions. But the portfolio process that goes beyond that is a bit more labor-intense and faculty-driven. So that is a bit of a barrier.

    But what we are seeing as a result of the people on this call here—Dallas, Tracy and so many others that are doing research in this field—we have seen barriers declining. The skepticism of this whole process is starting to wane in a way that is creating pathways for us to reach other institutions in Kentucky, but also nationally. And that’s good. A lot of thanks goes to some of the seminal authors in this work, like Nan Travers and Becky Klein-Collins. These individuals have produced scholarship that has really rooted empirical proof that this is most valuable. It creates efficiency. It helps with tax dollars, and when you boil down all of the pieces and parts, it becomes very process-oriented and very standard in approach.

    Now, that has been a long road getting to this moment. So when you talk about barriers, they have been there for so many years that they are starting to diminish, and we are so grateful for that—not only in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, but beyond, because institutions and specifically faculty, which were the biggest barrier in acknowledgment of CPL, are starting to come onboard. Not only because of the demographic cliff, but also because of some of the skepticism that we have in higher education and the shortages that we have in enrollment now. [Faculty] are more likely open to this concept because we are taking this work, we are showing the process, we are showing a portfolio and we are being very transparent about how we calculate and assess learning and translate that to academic credit. In the moment that we do that, we show the robust process. We have new advocates for this work.

    When we think about military personnel directly, we plug those individuals into some of those more traditional classes and disciplines, and those faculty are immediately like, “Bring every military learner into my class. They are so mission-driven. They are so committed to this goal of getting to the degree that I want every military learner in my classroom.”

    When institutions become military-friendly, that’s when you see the pipeline. Because military folks are insular in their process of communicating about the programs that work well, that are very “military engaged,” to use the phrase from Dallas, but you have to be military engaged and ready for these learners if you’re going to serve them well. And more and more institutions are doing that, showing that commitment.

    Kratzer: Just to add to what Matt’s talking about, this whole thing really boils down to awareness. And back in 2015, ACE and a couple of other organizations got together and produced this document called “Credit for Prior Learning: Charting Institutional Practice For Sustainability,” and they identified four major challenges: organizational structure, organizational awareness, student awareness and student engagement. When we see what the challenges are and then address those challenges, it’s really awareness. People just need to become more aware of the population and how what we do in the military can be translated to other sectors and other affinity groups and very easily done.

    We’re in a spot right now in higher education. And Tracy alluded to this with the demographic cliff, that we see that adult learners have become a recognized population, and in that adult learner population are different subsets that we can engage with. I think the military one is the best one to start with, because so much of the work has been done and it’s just capitalizing on that. Additionally, the military community is a different set of learners. Military training is about learning, and in the military today, it is very technical thought processes, processing information, very much focused on that academic rigor. So that’s why they make some of the best students today, and anything that we can do to help attract them to our institutions will be incredibly beneficial for all of us.

    Inside Higher Ed: We’ve mentioned CAEL and ACE and some other well-known organizations who are supporting this work, but are there other states that you’re learning from or other organizations that you think are doing this work well?

    Bergman: One in particular is North Carolina, and through the Belk [Endowment], my buddy Mike Krause is making magic happen down there through InsideTrack and their connection to reconnecting learners that have some college and no degree, but also tying in CPL and then military-connected learners. They are going full force with the type of resources to really re-engage those learners and create a very clear path.

    Oftentimes when trying to reconnect with people, they need to see how this might fit into a compartment of their lives. Because we know, as we serve these learners, they have No. 1, No. 2, No. 3 priorities and then education might come into the conversation [later]. So it’s really important for when we engage these types of learners, when we think about military learners, we have to understand that [education] is not likely priority No. 1.

    I use this analogy of “Would you give up some streaming services or social media scrolling to the tune of four to five hours a week for a bachelor’s degree in two years?” And oftentimes people are going to say, “What do you mean? Of course I would.” And I say, “OK, let me break this down and work backwards,” and you look at the number of credits one can earn that they get from CPL, but also what they’ve accumulated thus far, and you start to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

    States like North Carolina, Tennessee have done an absolutely wonderful job. California has gone all in on CPL as well, to really try and reconnect learners and show them that the light at the end of the tunnel is quite bright.

    We learn from one another—these people are just colleagues in the weeds, really grinding, trying to find ways to really replicate and make it respective to our own institutions and just chop and drop these policies so that we really can scale and impact more and more learners. Now we have battled for years and years and years, and you can hear my passion in this, but we have fought the very traditional mechanisms of institutions, and we are starting to break down so many of those barriers, partially because of the demographic cliff, partially because of some of the skepticism. But as Dallas said, adult learners, military learners are on the forefront. We are at the table for traditional higher ed, and that is a huge change in such a benefit for these learners, because there are new funding models, there are scholarships, grants and then CPL, creating efficiency that we just didn’t have 15 years ago.

    Kratz: A couple of organizations that I think are doing some interesting work here … the Council of College and Military Educators. They do an amazing job at bringing the senior leadership of the Department of Education, Department of Labor, Veterans Affairs, all these folks together to talk about education related to the military community.

    One that I see as a rising star is NASPA Vets. They have a military-connected students conference every year. I was very excited to see what they’re doing, because it’s helping student affairs administrators to better understand the military population, and part of this is this whole awareness and how we can serve that community.

    Of course, Student Veterans of America, it’s a great organization to have on your campus. The work they’re doing in getting the word out to service members is so important … “Hey, come and be in higher education, because we have space for you. This is part of your culture and you can be part of it through this student organization.”

    Some states to add on to what Matt was saying about Tennessee and California: Ohio started this thing called Collegiate Purple Star, and I think we need to do that across the country. The reason for that is everybody’s military-friendly right now, but with both Ohio and Indiana’s Collegiate Purple Star, it’s about not only being military-friendly, but military-ready, meaning that you’ve gone the extra mile and you’ve created the pathways to degree completion for service members based on their experiential learning that they’ve had during their military careers.

    Inside Higher Ed: How are you all tracking effectiveness and the impact of the work that you’re doing? What does it mean to apply data to CPL for military-affiliated students? What are some of those metrics that you’re tracking?

    Teater: I would back up one step to say that data alignment has been a gap that we have learned firsthand about during this pilot. One of the things that we know is that across the broader CPL opportunities, our campus partners are tracking that in different ways, which means that it is a definite gap of how we can track impact as a state without having aligned ways to do that. I wouldn’t call it a challenge; I think I’d call it an opportunity. But it’s something that we definitely want to end this with state recommendations so that we can do a really, really good job of tracking all types of CPL across the state. That’s one gap we’ve seen that I think we will be able to end this with a definite solution to and again, looking at some of our neighboring states and how they’ve been able to address that.

    Bergman: It’s important to note that the state work that we’re engaged in, the CPL Council on Postsecondary Education initiative, we are collecting data around metrics directly in growth of CPL, total numbers of credits earned, those programs that are offering them—so additional programs beyond just single adult-friendly programs at institutions—and then actually the number of humans that are connected in the work, so hiring individuals that are responsible for CPL and tracking data through the institutional research office.

    We are seeing great growth there, but this is also a direct by-product of what we are seeing in the field, in research and scholarship. I did my dissertation roughly 15 years ago, and it was a really challenging enterprise to find empirical work and scholarship that would really drive my dissertation forward, looking at adult military persistence. What I see today, as I am looking at journals almost daily, is new articles, new empirical pieces and new national work and research that is popping up almost monthly now that is focused on these populations. It is such a boon to our work, because individuals are doing this work, not only for their dissertations, but in their research and scholarship field.

    There were not a lot of folks doing this work many years ago, but now we have a new crop of young people jumping in as advocates and allies of military and adult learners, and it truly is making a direct impact, because we have data to lean on and say, “Here is empirical proof of how this directly impacts this individual program or this particular state or this region,” and using that to guide a lot of our push and our nudging that we do, both in Kentucky and beyond, to make institutions think differently about how they formalize policy to really attract these folks and know that they can get them to and through more efficiently.

    Kratzer: ACE and CAEL just partnered together to do the national landscape of credit for prior learning, talking about how states are making those recommendations. And I think there’s a lot of work to be done yet to help states, particularly at the legislative position, to understand how to help systems better collect the information. Because from the state, we hear them say, “Yes, you must accept military credit recommendations.” And the schools go, “OK, we accepted, but we don’t apply it well.” We need to be better at counting how we apply it so that we can provide back better information to say, “It does. It is valued in our state. It’s not just brought in as elective credit, but it’s brought in as degree credit that will accelerate degree completion,” and we’re not tracking that as well as I think we could.

    Inside Higher Ed: I think you bring up a really valuable point there about the different types of credit. Just because it’s accepted doesn’t necessarily mean it’s helpful to the student in their specific career goal. But I think making sure that all credit is recognized and supported as part of a degree pathway is definitely the next step that we need to see.

    Bergman: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that we have nearly 150 institutions involved in the prior learning assessment network. So for listeners that are checking in on this particular podcast, you can say, “Hey, I’m going to connect with Dallas,” or “I’m going to reach out to Matt and join this prior learning assessment network and hear from these institutions that are doing this work on the ground.” Each month, it costs zero money—we have a featured individual from an institution talking about, whether it be marketing or military credit recommendation or policy implementation or the admissions process in CPL; we are looking at all angles of CPL through the prior learning assessment network from people on the ground.

    Inside Higher Ed: That’s amazing. I love especially when we can talk about different institution sizes and types, because what works for one institution might not be easy to do at another.

    Bergman: And the best part of that is it’s free. We are not charging individuals. We are just a community of committed professionals that have been working for so many years trying to make an impact, and now we see our crop of individuals growing and growing every single month.

    Inside Higher Ed: I want to hear more about what’s next for the state as you all consider adult learners and that lofty goal of 60 percent attainment.

    Teater: Matt laid it out beautifully from a national perspective; from a Kentucky perspective, we hope to do the exact same thing.

    We are exploring ways to align data collection efforts so we can accurately gauge impact across the state, impact for the institutions and then impact, of course, for the adult learner. We also hope to explore ways to align and standardize credit mobility across our two-year and four-year campuses, so that credit earned at one institution can be recognized at another, so that our two-year graduates can seamlessly transfer to our four-year campuses, and then this will lead to state standards and policies to further support CPL efforts. We’re looking to some of our neighboring states on best practices there.

    Then finally, we are, in the fall, launching our Kentucky Adult Attainment Network, from which we will convene a state working group and community of practice to continue to build champions for the work, but also share resources, best practices and be able to offer up policy recommendations that will enact to further address this key part of our adult learner action plan.

    Inside Higher Ed: Do you have any advice or insight for others looking to support military-affiliated learners?

    Kratzer: I think the big thing that my peers need to know and to understand about the military community is that there’s a significant amount of learning that they gain from their military experience. However, the service member doesn’t always appreciate it the way that we as academics can understand it. They just say, “Hey, I was just doing my job.”

    Well, that job has worth and value beyond what you did when you were in the service. There’s so much more we can do. The leadership training that they get—business and industry are just dying for that kind of professional development, so let’s recognize it. Let’s help them to see how they can transition to the civilian sector and bring those great learning skills into the workplace and into higher education.

    Bergman: CPL for military and beyond is being done very effectively. If your institution is not doing it perfect or is not even involved, it is being done and there are so many people that are ready to provide open-source information, policy practice, forms, strategies, techniques and nuanced information to your institution directly for free, so that you can engage in this work without having to start from scratch. So to boil it down, you don’t have to start from scratch. So many institutions are doing so well in this work, and if you want to engage, just reach out and we will plug you into the prior learning assessment network or any type of forums at the University of Louisville or share data or information that we use in the state of Kentucky’s CPL initiative. We are ready to share these things because it matters and it’s impactful.

    Teater: The awareness is critical, and that’s awareness across states, across institutions and within institutions. One of the things that we have seen is sometimes just a gap in awareness on what’s possible, what’s available and then how best to pull the technical levers to make those things happen for students. So I would say every single conversation that we come out of, we learn something new, and hopefully others learn something new as well. And I just think that that awareness can’t be underestimated.

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