Tag: Parents

  • School Admissions Anxiety Hits Parents of Young Children, Too – The 74

    School Admissions Anxiety Hits Parents of Young Children, Too – The 74

    A few factors have made selecting an elementary school particularly challenging in recent years. For one, there are simply more schools for parents to pick from over the past few decades, ranging from traditional public and private to a growing number of magnet and charter programs. There are also new policies in some places, such as New York City, that allow parents to select not just their closest neighborhood public school but schools across and outside of the districts where they live.

    As a scholar of sociology and education, I have seen how the expanding range of school options – sometimes called school choice – has spread nationwide and is particularly a prominent factor in New York City.

    I spoke with a diverse range of more than 100 New York City parents across income levels and racial and ethnic backgrounds from 2014 to 2019 as part of research for my 2025 book, “Kindergarten Panic: Parental Anxiety and School Choice Inequality.”

    All of these parents felt pressure trying to select a school for their elementary school-age children, and school choice options post-COVID-19 have only increased.

    Some parents experience this pressure a bit more acutely than others.

    Women often see their choice of school as a reflection of whether they are good moms, my interviews show. Parents of color feel pressure to find a racially inclusive school. Other parents worry about finding niche schools that offer dual-language programs, for example, or other specialties.

    Navigating schools in New York City

    Every year, about 65,000 New York City kindergartners are matched to more than 700 public schools.

    New York City kindergartners typically attend their nearest public school in the neighborhood and get a priority place at this school. This school is often called someone’s zoned school.

    Even so, a spot at your local school isn’t guaranteed – students get priority if they apply on time.

    While most kindergartners still attend their zoned schools, their attendance rate is decreasing. While 72% of kindergartners in the city attended their zoned school in the 2007-08 school year, 60% did so in the 2016-17 school year.

    One reason is that since 2003, New York City parents have been able to apply to out-of-zone schools when seats were available. And in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began, all public school applications moved entirely online. This shift allowed parents to easily rank 12 different school options they liked, in and outside of their zones.

    Still, New York City public schools remain one of the most segregated in the country, divided by race and class.

    Pressure to be a good mom

    Many of the mothers I interviewed from 2015 through 2019 said that getting their child into what they considered a “good” school reflected good mothering.

    Mothers took the primary responsibility for their school search, whether they had partners or not, and regardless of their social class, as well as racial and ethnic background.

    In 2017, I spoke with Janet, a white, married mother who at the time was 41 years old and had an infant and a 3-year-old. Janet worked as a web designer and lived in Queens. She explained that she started a group in 2016 to connect with other mothers, in part to discuss schools.

    Though Janet’s children were a few years away from kindergarten, she believed that she had started her research for public schools too late. She spent multiple hours each week looking up information during her limited spare time. She learned that other moms were talking to other parents, researching test results, analyzing school reviews and visiting schools in person.

    Janet said she wished she had started looking for schools when her son was was 1 or 2 years old, like other mothers she knew. She expressed fear that she was failing as a mother. Eventually, Janet enrolled her son in a nonzoned public school in another Queens neighborhood.

    Pressure to find an inclusive school

    Regardless of their incomes, Black, Latino and immigrant families I interviewed also felt pressure to evaluate whether the public schools they considered were racially and ethnically inclusive.

    Parents worried that racially insensitive policies related to bullying, curriculum and discipline would negatively affect their children.

    In 2015, I spoke with Fumi, a Black, immigrant mother of two young children. At the time, Fumi was 37 years old and living in Washington Heights in north Manhattan. She described her uncertain search for a public school.

    Fumi thought that New York City’s gifted and talented programs at public schools might be a better option academically than other public schools that don’t offer an advanced track for some students. But the gifted and talented programs often lacked racial diversity, and Fumi did not want her son to be the only Black student in his class.

    Still, Fumi had her son tested for the 2015 gifted and talented exam and enrolled him in one of these programs for kindergarten.

    Once Fumi’s son began attending the gifted and talented school, Fumi worried that the constant bullying he experienced was racially motivated.

    Though Fumi remained uneasy about the bullying and lack of diversity, she decided to keep him at the school because of the school’s strong academic quality.

    Pressure to find a niche school

    Many of the parents I interviewed who earned more than US$50,000 a year wanted to find specialty schools that offered advanced courses, dual-language programs and progressive-oriented curriculum.

    Parents like Renata, a 44-year-old Asian mother of four, and Stella, a 39-year-old Black mother of one, sent their kids to out-of-neighborhood public schools.

    In 2016, Renata described visiting multiple schools and researching options so she could potentially enroll her four children in different schools that met each of their particular needs.

    Stella, meanwhile, searched for schools that would de-emphasize testing, nurture her son’s creativity and provide flexible learning options.

    In contrast, the working-class parents I interviewed who made less than $50,000 annually often sought schools that mirrored their own school experiences.

    Few working-class parents I spoke with selected out-of-neighborhood and high academically performing schools.

    New York City data points to similar results – low-income families are less likely than people earning more than them to attend schools outside of their neighborhoods.

    For instance, Black working-class parents like 47-year-old Risha, a mother of four, and 53-year-old Jeffery, a father of three, who attended New York City neighborhood public schools themselves as children told me in 2016 that they decided to send their children to local public schools.

    Based on state performance indicators, students at these particular schools performed lower on standard assessments than schools on average.

    Cracks in the system

    The parents I spoke with all live in New York City, which has a uniquely complicated education system. Yet the pressures they face are reflective of the evolving public school choice landscape for parents across the country.

    Parents nationwide are searching for schools with vastly different resources and concerns about their children’s future well-being and success.

    When parents panic about kindergarten, they reveal cracks in the foundation of American schooling. In my view, parental anxiety about kindergarten is a response to an unequal, high-stakes education system.

    Bailey A. Brown, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Spelman College

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • 5 cheat sheets for parents of preschoolers

    5 cheat sheets for parents of preschoolers

    by Jackie Mader, The Hechinger Report
    November 27, 2025

    When my oldest child was a 2-year-old, we relocated to a new state and I found myself back at square one with my search for child care. In my new city, I now had a very good problem: There was an abundance of programs with availability, and I had a choice of where to enroll my son. As I toured a half-dozen of them, however, I worried that even as an early childhood reporter, I wasn’t asking the right questions or paying attention to the right thing. 

    A few months later, our early childhood team at Hechinger launched a project digging into the elements of a high-quality preschool. That article and the corresponding video became a quick and easy guide as I looked at options for my second child. It’s what I sent to friends who asked me for advice while navigating their own searches. 

    While I love telling stories from the field, my colleagues and I are also passionate about providing helpful tools and guides for teachers and caregivers. Here are a few of my favorite early ed “cheat sheets” from our decade of reporting on early childhood.

    1.  The five elements of a good preschool: What should you look for when you step inside a preschool classroom? What clues can you find on the walls or bookshelves? What questions should you ask teachers and school administrators? This video and article break it down. While classrooms and programs will vary by setting, many of these elements, like the way teachers talk to children and an emphasis on play, apply everywhere.

    2. Cracking down on unsafe sleep products: As an anxious new parent, nothing scared me more than hearing about infant deaths due to unsafe sleep products. Still, when desperate and exhausted, I tried several items that I heard would help my babies sleep, including some that the American Academy of Pediatrics later discouraged in updated safe sleep guidelines in 2022. While reporting this article, I was stunned by the lack of evidence and oversight of products that many parents like myself believe are tested before they are available to buy.

    3. How to boost math skills by talking about math with your kids: Most parents know how important it is to read to children. But did you know that there are easy ways caregivers can develop math skills? Earlier this year, my colleague Jill Barshay looked at a wave of research from the past dozen years on simple things adults can do to lay an early foundation in math. 

    4. How to answer tough questions about race and racism with your children: Research shows racial stereotypes start early, and that’s why it’s important to talk to young children about different races and read books and offer toys that have diverse characters. Many parents feel ill equipped for these conversations, however. In 2020, I asked three experts how they would respond to real questions from young kids about race and racism so adults feel better prepared for the questions that children inevitably ask.

    5. How parents can support their kids with play: With all the challenges of being a parent, it can be hard to hear there’s yet another thing we should be doing. But this 2023 conversation with researcher Charlotte Anne Wright helped me reframe the way I think about play and my role in it with my own children. While it’s important to give children opportunities for free play, Wright’s research shows “guided play,” or play with a learning goal in mind and light support from a parent, can have benefits for children, too. It’s not as heavy of a lift as it sounds, and Wright provides simple ways parents can engage in playful learning with their children on bus rides and trips to the laundromat.

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

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/5-cheat-sheets-for-parents-of-preschoolers/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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  • Why empowering students sets the best course for future success

    Why empowering students sets the best course for future success

    Key points:

    When middle school students make the leap to high school, they are expected to have a career path in mind so their classes and goals align with their future plans. That’s a tremendous ask of a teenager who is unaware of the opportunities that await them–and emerging careers that have yet to exist.

    Mentors, parents, and educators spend so much time urging students to focus on their future that we do them a disservice by distracting them from their present–their passions, their interests, their hobbies. This self-discovery, combined with exposure to various career fields, fuels students’ motivation and serves as a guidebook for their professional journey.

    To meet their mission of directing every student toward an individualized post-secondary plan, schools need to prioritize recognizing each student’s lifestyle goals. That way, our kids can find their best-fit career and develop greater self-awareness of their own identity.

    Give students greater autonomy over their career exploration

    The most problematic aspect of traditional career-readiness programs is that they’re bound so tightly to the classes in which a student excels.

    For example, a high schooler on a technology track might be assigned an engineer as a mentor. However, that same student may also possess a love for writing, but because their core classes are science-based, they may never learn how to turn that passion into a career in the engineering field, whether as a UX writer, technical editor, or tech journalist. 

    Schools have the opportunity to help students identify their desired lifestyle, existing strengths, and possible career paths. In Aurora Public Schools in Nebraska, the district partnered with our company, Find Your Grind, an ESSA Tier 2 validated career exploration program, to guide students through a Lifestyle Assessment, enabling them to discover who they are now and who they want to become. Through this approach, teachers helped surface personalized careers, mentors, and pathway courses that aligned with students’ lifestyle goals.

    Meanwhile, in Ohio, school districts launched Lifestyle Fairs, immersive, future-ready events designed to introduce students to real-world career experiences, industry mentors, and interactive learning grounded in self-discovery. Hilliard City Schools, for example, welcomed more than seventh-grade students to a Lifestyle Fair this past May. 

    Rather than rely on a conventional booth-style setup, Hilliard offered interactive activations that centered on 16 lifestyle archetypes, including Competitor, Explorer, Connector, and Entrepreneur. The stations allowed students to engage with various industry leaders and participate in hands-on activities, including rocket launch simulations and creative design challenges, to ignite their curiosity. Following the Fair, educators reported increased student engagement and a renewed enthusiasm for learning about potential career paths.

    Create a fluidity path for future success

    According to the World Economic Forum, by 2030, 97 million jobs will be displaced by AI, significantly impacting lower-wage earners and workers of color. At the same time, 170 million new jobs are expected to be created, especially in emerging fields. By providing students more freedom in their career exploration, educators can help them adapt to this ever-changing 21st-century job market.

    Now is the time for school districts to ensure all students have access to equitable career planning programs and work to close societal disparities that hinder professional opportunities. Instead of setting students on a predetermined pathway toward a particular field–which may or may not exist a decade from now–educators must equip them with future-proof and transferable core skills, including flexibility, initiative, and productivity, in addition to job-specific skills. As the job market shifts, students will be prepared to change direction, switch jobs, and pivot between careers. 

    In Hawaii, students are taking advantage of career exploration curriculum that aligns with 21st-century career and technical education (CTE) frameworks. They are better prepared to complete their Personal Transition Plans, which are required for graduation by the state, and have access to micro-credentials that give them real-world experience in different industries rather than one particular field.

    For decades, career planning has placed students in boxes, based on what the adults in their lives expect of them. Ensuring every child reaches their full professional potential means breaking down the barriers that have been set up around them and allowing them to be at the center of their own career journey. When students are empowered to discover who they are and where they want to be, they are excited to explore all the incredible opportunities available to them. 

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  • Eviction sets single mom on a quest to keep her kids in their schools

    Eviction sets single mom on a quest to keep her kids in their schools

    by Bianca Vázquez Toness, The Hechinger Report
    November 18, 2025

    This story was produced by the Associated Press and reprinted with permission.

    ATLANTA — It was the worst summer in years. Sechita McNair’s family took no vacations. Her younger boys didn’t go to camp. Her van was repossessed, and her family nearly got evicted — again.

    But she accomplished the one thing she wanted most. A few weeks before school started, McNair, an out-of-work film industry veteran barely getting by driving for Uber, signed a lease in the right Atlanta neighborhood so her eldest son could stay at his high school.

    As she pulled up outside the school on the first day, Elias, 15, stepped onto the curb in his new basketball shoes and cargo pants. She inspected his face, noticed wax in his ears and grabbed a package of baby wipes from her rental car. She wasn’t about to let her eldest, with his young Denzel Washington looks, go to school looking “gross.”

    He grimaced and broke away.

    “No kiss? No hugs?” she called out.

    Elias waved and kept walking. Just ahead of him, at least for the moment, sat something his mother had fought relentlessly for: a better education.

    The link between where you live and where you learn

    Last year, McNair and her three kids were evicted from their beloved apartment in the rapidly gentrifying Old Fourth Ward neighborhood of Atlanta. Like many evicted families, they went from living in a school district that spends more money on students to one that spends less.

    Thanks to federal laws protecting homeless and evicted students, her kids were able to keep attending their Atlanta schools, even though the only housing available to them was in another county 40 minutes away. They also had the right to free transportation to those schools, but McNair says the district didn’t tell her about that until the school year ended. Their eligibility to remain in those schools expired at the end of last school year.

    Still wounded by the death of his father and multiple housing displacements, Elias failed two classes last year, his freshman year. Switching schools now, McNair fears, would jeopardize any chance he has of recovering his academic life. “I need this child to be stable,” she says.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education.

    With just one week before school started, McNair drove extra Uber hours, borrowed money, secured rental assistance and ignored concerns about the apartment to rent a three-bedroom in the Old Fourth Ward. At $2,200 a month, it was the only “semi-affordable” apartment in the rapidly gentrifying ward that would rent to a single mom with a fresh eviction on her record.

    On Zillow, the second-floor apartment, built in 2005, looked like a middle-class dream with its granite countertops, crown molding and polished wood floors. But up close, the apartment looked abused and held secrets McNair was only beginning to uncover.

    The first sign something was wrong came early. When she first toured the apartment, it felt rushed, like the agent didn’t want her to look too closely. Then, even as they told her she was accepted, the landlord and real estate agent wouldn’t send her a “welcome letter” laying out the agreement, the rent and deposit she would pay. It seemed like they didn’t want to put anything in writing.

    When the lease came, it was full of errors. She signed it anyway. “We’re back in the neighborhood!” she said. Elias could return to Midtown High School.

    But even in their triumph, no one in the family could relax. Too many things were uncertain. And it fell to McNair — and only McNair — to figure it out.

    The first day back

    Midtown is a high school so coveted that school administrators investigate student residency throughout the year to keep out kids from other parts of Atlanta and beyond. For McNair, the day Elias returned to the high school was a momentous one.

    “Freedom!” McNair declared after Elias disappeared into the building. Without child care over the summer, McNair had struggled to find time to work enough to make ends meet. Now that the kids were back in class, McNair could spend school hours making money and resolving some of the unsettled issues with her new apartment.

    McNair, the first person in her family to attend college, studied theater management. Her job rigging stage sets was lucrative until the writers’ and actors’ strike and other changes paralyzed the film industry in 2023. The scarcity of work on movie sets, combined with her tendency to take in family and non-family alike, wrecked her home economy.

    The family was evicted last fall when McNair fell behind on rent because of funeral expenses for her foster daughter. The teen girl died from an epileptic seizure while McNair and everyone else slept. Elias found her body.

    McNair attributes some of Elias’s lack of motivation at school to personal trauma. His father died after a heart attack in 2023, on the sidelines of Elias’s basketball practice.

    On his first day back at school this August, Elias appeared excited but tentative. He watched as the seniors swanned into school wearing gold cardboard crowns, a Midtown back-to-school tradition, and scanned the sidewalk for anyone familiar.

    If Elias had his way, his mom would homeschool him. She’s done it before. But now that he’s a teenager, it’s harder to get Elias to follow her instructions. As the only breadwinner supporting three kids and her disabled uncle, she has to work.

    Elias hid from the crowds and called up a friend: “Where you at?” The friend, another sophomore, was still en route. Over the phone, they compared outfits, traded gossip about who got a new hairdo or transferred. When Elias’s friend declared this would be the year he’d get a girlfriend, Elias laughed.

    When it was time to go in, Elias drifted toward the door with his head down as other students flooded past.

    The after-school pickup

    Hours later, he emerged. Despite everything McNair had done to help it go well — securing the apartment, even spending hundreds of dollars on new clothes for him — Elias slumped into the backseat when she picked him up after class.

    “School was so boring,” he said.

    “What happened?” McNair asked.

    “Nothing, bro. That was the problem,” Elias said. “I thought I was going to be happy when school started, since summer was so horrible.”

    Of all of the classes he was taking — geometry, gym, French, world history, environmental science — only gym interested him. He wished he could take art classes, he said. Elias has acted in some commercials and television programs, but chose a science and math concentration, hoping to study finance someday.

    After dinner at Chick-fil-A, the family visited the city library one block from their new apartment. While McNair spoke to the librarian, the boys explored the children’s section. Malachi, 6, watched a YouTube video on a library computer while Derrick, 7, flipped through a book. Elias sat in a corner, sharing video gaming tips with a stranger he met online.

    Related: Schools confront a new reality: They can’t count on federal money 

    “Those people are learning Japanese,” said McNair, pointing to a group of adults sitting around a cluster of tables. “And this library lets you check out museum passes. This is why we have to be back in the city. Resources!”

    McNair wants her children to go to well-resourced schools. Atlanta spends nearly $20,000 per student a year, $7,000 more than the district they moved to after the eviction. More money in schools means smaller classrooms and more psychologists, guidance counselors and other support.

    But McNair, who grew up in New Jersey near New York City, also sees opportunities in the wider city of Atlanta. She wants to use its libraries, e-scooters, bike paths, hospitals, rental assistance agencies, Buy Nothing groups and food pantries.

    “These are all resources that make it possible to raise a family when you don’t have support,” she said. “Wouldn’t anyone want that?”

    Support is hard to come by

    On the way home, the little boys fall asleep in the back seat. Elias asks, “So, is homeschooling off the table?”

    McNair doesn’t hesitate. “Heck yeah. I’m not homeschooling you,” she says lightly. “Do you see how much of a financial bind I’m in?”’

    McNair pulls into the driveway in Jonesboro, the suburb where the family landed after their eviction. Even though the family wants to live in Atlanta, their stuff is still here. It’s a neighborhood of brick colonials and manicured lawns. She realizes it’s the dream for some families, but not hers. “It’s a support desert.”

    As they get out of the car, Elias takes over as parent-in-charge. “Get all of your things,” he directs Malachi and Derrick, who scowl as Elias seems to relish bossing them around. “Pick up your car seats, your food, those markers. I don’t want to see anything left behind.” Elias would be responsible for making the boys burritos, showering them and putting them to sleep.

    McNair heads out to drive for Uber. That’s what is necessary to pay $450 a week to rent the car and earn enough to pay her rent and bills.

    But while McNair is out, she can’t monitor Elias. And a few days after he starts school, Elias’s all-night gaming habit has already drawn teachers’ attention.

    “I wanted to check in regarding Elias,” his geometry teacher writes during the first week of school. “He fell asleep multiple times during Geometry class this morning.”

    Elias had told the teacher he went to bed around 4 a.m. the night before. “I understand that there may be various reasons for this, and I’d love to work together to support Elias so he can stay focused and successful in class.”

    A few days later, McNair gets a similar email from his French teacher.

    That night, McNair drives around Atlanta, trying to pick up enough Uber trips to keep her account active. But she can’t stop thinking about the emails. “I should be home making sure Elias gets to bed on time,” she says, crying. “But I have to work. I’m the only one paying the bills.”

    Obstacles keep popping up

    Ever since McNair rented the Atlanta apartment, her bills had doubled. She wasn’t sure when she’d feel safe giving up the house she’d been renting in Clayton County, given the problems with the Atlanta apartment. For starters, she was not even sure it was safe to spend the night there.

    A week after school started in August, McNair dropped by the apartment to check whether the landlords had made repairs. At the very least, she wanted more smoke detectors.

    She also wanted them to replace the door, which looked like someone had forced it open with a crowbar. She wanted a working fridge and oven. She wanted them to secure the back door to the adjoining empty apartment, which appeared to be open and made her wonder if there were pests or even people squatting there.

    But on this day, her keys didn’t work.

    She called 911. Had her new landlords deliberately locked her out?

    When the police showed up outside the olive-green, Craftsman-style fourplex, McNair scrolled through her phone to find a copy of her lease. Then McNair and the officer eyed a man walking up to the property. “The building was sold in a short sale two weeks ago,” he told McNair. The police officer directed the man to give the new keys to McNair.

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

    The next day, McNair started getting emails from an agent specializing in foreclosures, suggesting the new owners wanted McNair to leave. “The bank owns the property and now you are no longer a tenant of the previous owner,” she wrote. The new owner “might” offer relocation assistance if McNair agreed to leave.

    McNair consulted attorneys, who reassured her: It might be uncomfortable, but she could stay. She needed to try to pay rent, even if the new owner didn’t accept it.

    So McNair messaged the agent, asking where she should send the rent, and requested the company make necessary repairs. Eventually, the real estate agent stopped responding.

    Some problems go away, but others emerge

    Finally, McNair moved her kids and a few items from the Jonesboro house to the Atlanta apartment. She didn’t allow Elias to bring his video game console to Atlanta. He started going to bed around 11 p.m. most nights. But even as she solved that problem, others emerged.

    It was at Midtown’s back-to-school night in September that McNair learned Elias was behind in most of his classes. Some teachers said maybe Midtown wasn’t the right school for Elias.

    Perhaps they were right, McNair thought. She’d heard similar things before.

    Elias also didn’t want to go to school. He skipped one day, then another. McNair panicked. In Georgia, parents can be sent to jail for truancy when their kids miss five unexcused days.

    McNair started looking into a homeschooling program run by a mother she follows on Facebook. In the meantime, she emailed and called some Midtown staff for advice. She says she didn’t get a response. Finally, seven weeks after the family’s triumphant return to Midtown, McNair filed papers declaring her intention to homeschool Elias.

    It quickly proved challenging. Elias wouldn’t do any schoolwork when he was home alone. And when the homeschooling group met twice a week, she discovered, they required parents to pick up their children afterward instead of allowing them to take public transit or e-scooters. That was untenable.

    Elias wanted to stay at home and offered to take care of McNair’s uncle, who has dementia. “That was literally killing my soul the most,” said McNair. “That’s not a child’s job.”

    Hell, no, she told him — you only get one chance at high school.

    Then, one day, while she was loading the boys’ clothes into the washing machine at the Atlanta apartment, she received a call from an unknown Atlanta number. It was the woman who heads Atlanta Public Schools’ virtual program, telling her the roster was full.

    McNair asked the woman for her opinion on Elias’s situation. Maybe she should abandon the Atlanta apartment and enroll him in the Jonesboro high school.

    Let me stop you right there, the woman said. Is your son an athlete? If he transfers too many times, it can affect his ability to play basketball. And he’d probably lose credits and take longer to graduate. He needs to be in school — preferably Midtown — studying for midterms, she said. You need to put on your “big mama drawers” and take him back, she told McNair.

    The next day, Elias and his mother pulled up to Midtown. Outside the school, Elias asked if he had to go inside. Yes, she told him. This is your fault as much as it’s mine.

    Now, with Elias back in school every day, McNair can deliver food through Uber Eats without worrying about a police officer asking why her kid isn’t in school. If only she had pushed harder, sooner, for help with Elias, she thought. “I should have just gone down to the school and sat in their offices until they talked to me.”

    But it was easy for her to explain why she hadn’t. “I was running around doing so many other things just so we have a place to live, or taking care of my uncle, that I didn’t put enough of my energy there.”

    She wishes she could pay more attention to Elias. But so many things are pulling at her. And as fall marches toward winter, her struggle continues. After failing to keep up with the Jonesboro rent, she’s preparing to leave that house before the landlord sends people to haul her possessions to the curb.

    As an Uber driver, she has picked up a few traumatized mothers with their children after they got evicted. She helped them load the few things they could fit into her van. As they drove off, onlookers scavenged the leftovers.

    She has promised herself she’d never let that happen to her kids.

    Bianca Vázquez Toness is an Associated Press reporter who writes about the continuing impact of the pandemic on young people and their education.

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

    This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org/she-wanted-to-keep-her-son-in-his-school-district-it-was-more-challenging-than-it-seemed/”>article</a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://hechingerreport.org”>The Hechinger Report</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://i0.wp.com/hechingerreport.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cropped-favicon.jpg?fit=150%2C150&amp;ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>

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  • Truth vs. risk management: How to move forward

    Truth vs. risk management: How to move forward

    Key points:

    In the world of K-12 education, teachers are constantly making decisions that affect their students and families. In contrast, administrators are tasked with something even bigger: making decisions that also involve adults (parents, staff culture, etc.) and preventing conflicts from spiraling into formal complaints or legal issues. Therefore, decisions and actions often have to balance two competing values: truth and risk management.

    Some individuals, such as teachers, are very truth-oriented. They document interactions, clarify misunderstandings, and push for accuracy, recognizing that a single misrepresentation can erode trust with families, damage credibility in front of students, or most importantly, remove them from the good graces of administrators they respect and admire. Truth is not an abstract concept–it is paramount to professionalism and reputation. If a student states that they are earning a low grade because “the teacher doesn’t like me,” the teacher will go through their grade-book. If a parent claims that a teacher did not address an incident in the classroom, the teacher may respond by clarifying the inaccuracy via summarizing documentation of student statements, anecdotal evidence of student conversations, reflective activities, etc.

    De-escalation and appeasement

    In contrast, administrators are tasked with something even bigger. They have to view scenarios from the lens of risk management. Their role requires them to deescalate and appease. Administrators must protect the school’s reputation and prevent conflicts or disagreements from spiraling into formal complaints or legal issues. Through that lens, the truth sometimes takes a back seat to ostensibly achieve a quick resolution.

    When a house catches on fire, firefighters point the hose, put out the flames, and move on to their next emergency. They don’t care if the kitchen was recently remodeled; they don’t have the time or desire to figure out a plan to put out the fire by aiming at just the living room, bedrooms, and bathrooms. Administrators can be the same way–they just want the proverbial “fire” contained. They do not care about their employees’ feelings; they just care about smooth sailing and usually softly characterize matters as misunderstandings.

    To a classroom teacher who has carefully documented the truth, this injustice can feel like a bow tied around a bag of garbage. Administrators usually err on the side of appeasing the irrational, volatile, and dangerous employee, which risks the calmer employee feeling like they were overlooked because they are “weaker.” In reality, their integrity, professionalism, and level-headedness lead administrators to trust the employee will do right, know better, maintain appropriate decorum, rise above, and not foolishly escalate. This notion aligns to the scripture “To whom much is given, much is required” (Luke 12:48). Those with great abilities are judged at a higher bar.

    In essence, administrators do not care about feelings, because they have a job to do. The employee with higher integrity is not the easier target but is easier to redirect because they are the safer, principled, and ethical employee. This is not a weakness but a strength in the eyes of the administration and that is what they prefer (albeit the employee may be dismissed, confused, and their feelings may be hurt, but that is not the administration’s focus at all).

    Finding common ground

    Neither perspective (truth or risk management) is wrong. Risk management matters. Without it, schools would be replete with endless investigations and finger-pointing. Although, when risk management consistently overrides truth, the system teaches teachers that appearances matter more than accountability, which does not meet the needs of validation and can thus truly hurt on a personal level. However, in the work environment, finding common ground and moving forward is more important than finger-pointing because the priority has to be the children having an optimal learning environment.

    We must balance the two. Perhaps, administrators should communicate openly, privately, and directly to educators who may not always understand the “game.” Support and transparency are beneficial. Explaining the “why” behind a decision can go a long way in building staff trust, morale, and intelligence. Further, when teachers feel supported in their honesty, they are less likely to disengage because transparency, accuracy, and an explanation of risk management can actually prevent fires from igniting in the first place. Additionally, teachers and administrators should explore conflict resolution strategies that honor truth while still mitigating risk. This can assist in modelling for students what it means to live with integrity in complex situations. Kids deserve nothing less.

    Lastly, teachers need to be empathetic to the demands on their administrators. “If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out. Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ’s law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived” (Galatians 6:1-3). This scripture means that teachers should focus less on criticizing or “keeping score” (irrespective of the truth and the facts, and even if false-facts are generated to manage risk), but should work collaboratively while also remembering and recognizing that our colleagues (and even administrators) can benefit from the simple support of our grace and understanding. Newer colleagues and administrators are often in survival mode.

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  • More parents are homeschooling–and turning to podcasts for syllabus support

    More parents are homeschooling–and turning to podcasts for syllabus support

    Key points:

    A revolution quietly underway in American education: the rise of homeschooling. In the past decade, there’s been a 61 percent increase in homeschool students across the United States, making it the fastest growing form of education in the country. You might not have noticed (I didn’t, at first), because only about 6 percent of students are homeschooled nationally. But that number is nearly double what it was just two years ago.

    Then I noticed something that made me take a closer look closer to home. At Starglow Media, the podcast company I founded in 2023, nearly 20 percent of our listenership comes from homeschool families. That substantially overindexes against the national population. In other words, podcasts were particularly popular in the homeschool community.

    I was curious, for my business and in general. We make podcasts for kids (and their parents)  without any specific content for homeschool families. Why was audio resonating so well with this audience? I did some digging, and the answers surprised me.

    First, I wanted to find out why homeschooling was booming. According to the Washington Post, the explosive growth is consistent across “every measurable line of politics, geography, and demographics.” Experts have offered multiple explanations. Some families started homeschooling during COVID and never went back, others want greater say in what their children learn. Some families feel their kids are safer from violence and discrimination at home, others think it’s a better environment for children with disabilities. All these reasons collectively suggest a broader motivation: people are dissatisfied with the traditional education system and are taking it into their own hands.

    None of these factors, however, explained why podcasts were popular among homeschool families. So I decided to ask the question myself. I reached out to some Starglow listeners in the Starglow community to hear what about the format was appealing to them. Three main themes emerged.

    Many people told me that podcasts are uniquely well-suited to address educational hurdles facing homeschool families. When you’re a homeschool parent, it can be difficult to navigate all the resources that inform lesson planning while ensuring that the content is age- and subject-appropriate. Parents have found podcasts to be an intuitive way to elevate their curricula. They can search for subjects, filter by age group, and trust that the content is suitable for their kids. Ads on the network add another layer of value–because parents can trust the content, they tend to trust further educational materials promoted via the same channels. Simply put, the podcast ecosystem offers a reliable means to supplement lesson plans.

    They also offer a clear financial benefit. Homeschooling can be expensive, especially in STEM, but the majority of states don’t offer government subsidies for homeschool education. Podcasts have proven to be a cost-effective way to supplement at-home learning modules. Parents appreciate that it’s free to listen.

    Lastly–and this came up in nearly every conversation–they fit in well to homeschool life. Routine is a critical part of any educational context, and podcasts are useful anchors in the school day. Parents can easily pair podcasts with lessons at any point in their day, whether it’s a current events primer paired with a news podcast over breakfast or a specific episode of “Who Smarted” (our most popular educational podcast) about how snow forms worked into a science lesson. In this way, podcasts are becoming an integral part of family life in the homeschool community. Educational content like “Who Smarted” or an age-appropriate audiobook of “Moby Dick” may be the gateway, but families tend to co-listen throughout the day, whether it’s to KidsNuz over coffee or a Koala Moon story at night.

    What does all this mean? Homeschooling is growing, and with it is the need for flexible, affordable, and trustworthy educational content. To meet that demand, families are turning to audio, which offers age-appropriate solutions that can be worked into family life through regular co-listening.

    I expect that the homeschool movement will continue to grow, because new formats and strategies are offering families new opportunities. That’s good news, because we need innovation in education right now. Test scores are falling, literacy is in decline, and school absenteeism hasn’t fully bounced back from the pandemic. The homeschool surge is just one indicator of our increased dissatisfaction with the status quo. If we want to course correct, we all need to embrace new resources, podcasts or otherwise, to enhance education at home and in the classroom. New media has the potential to transform how people teach–we should embrace the opportunity.

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  • Universal vouchers have public schools worried about market share

    Universal vouchers have public schools worried about market share

    by Laura Pappano, The Hechinger Report
    November 6, 2025

    TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — As principal of Hartsfield Elementary School in the Leon County School District, John Olson is not just the lead educator, but in this era of fast-expanding school choice, also its chief salesperson.

    He works to drum up enrollment by speaking to parent and church groups, offering private tours and giving Hartsfield parents his cell phone number. He fields calls on nights, weekends and holidays. With the building at just 61 percent capacity, Olson is frank about the hustle required: “Customer service is key.”

    It’s no secret that many public schools are in a battle for students. As school started in Florida this August, large districts, including Hillsborough, Miami-Dade and Orange, reported thousands fewer students, representing drops of more than 3 percent year over year. In Leon County, enrollment was down 8 percent from the end of last year.

    Part of the issue is the decline in the number of school-age children, both here and across the country. But there’s also the growing popularity of school choice in Florida and elsewhere — and what that means for school budgets. Leon County’s leaders anticipate cutting about $6 million next year unless the state increases its budget, which could mean reduced services for students and even school closures. 

    Other Florida school districts are also trimming budgets, and some have closed schools. As districts scramble for students, some are hiring consulting firms to help recruit, and also trying to sell seats in existing classes to homeschoolers. There is also the instability of students frequently switching schools — and of new charter or voucher schools that open and then shut down, or never open at all as promised. 

    Two years after the Florida Legislature expanded eligibility for school vouchers to all students, regardless of family income, nearly 500,000 kids in the state now receive vouchers worth about $8,000 each to spend on private or home education, according to Step Up For Students, the nonprofit that administers the bulk of the scholarships. And Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship, created in 2001 to allow corporations to make contributions to private school tuition, is the model for the new federal school voucher program, passed this summer as part of Republicans’ “one big, beautiful bill.” The program, which will go into effect in 2027, lets individuals in participating states contribute up to $1,700 per year to help qualifying families pay for private school in exchange for a 1:1 tax credit.

    “We are in that next phase of public education,” said Keith Jacobs of Step Up For Students, who recruits public school districts to offer up their services and classes on its educational marketplace. “Gone are the days when a government institution or your zoned neighborhood school had the authority to assign a child to that school.”

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    That’s a problem for Leon County Schools, which boasts a solid “B” rating from the state and five high schools in the top 20 percent of U.S. News’ national rankings. The district, located in the Florida panhandle, serves a population of around 30,000 students, 44 percent of whom are Black, 43 percent white and 6 percent Hispanic.

    “There’s just not enough money to fund two parallel programs, one for public schools and one for private schools,” said Rocky Hanna, the Leon County Schools superintendent. 

    Over the past few years, the Legislature has increased state and local funding for charter schools and created new rules to encourage more to open. (Charter schools are public schools that are independently operated; the Trump administration recently announced a $60 million increase in charter school funding this year, along with additional competitive grants.)

    But vouchers are the big disrupter. The nonprofit Florida Policy Institute projects annual voucher spending in Florida will hit $5 billion this year. In Leon County, money redirected from district school budgets to vouchers has ballooned from $3.2 million in 2020-21 to nearly $38 million this academic year, according to state and district figures. Enrollment in local charter schools has also ticked up, as has state per-pupil money directed to them, from $12 million to $15 million over that time.

    As a mark of how the landscape is shifting, Step Up For Students is now helping districts market in-person classes to homeschoolers on the group’s Amazon-like marketplace to fill seats and capture some money. Jacobs said Osceola County put its entire K-12 course catalog on the site. A year of math at a Miami elementary school? It’s $1,028.16. And just $514.08 for science, writing or P.E.

    “A student can come take a class for nine weeks, for a semester, for a year,” said Jacobs, adding that 30 districts have signed on. They are thinking, he said, “if we can’t have them full-time, we have them part-time.”

    Leon County is considering signing on, said Hanna, “to basically offer our courses à la carte.” It could be a recruitment tool, said Marcus Nicolas, vice chair of the county’s school board. “If we give them an opportunity to sniff the culture of the school and they like it, it could potentially bring that kid back full-time.”

    Related: Federal school vouchers: 10 things to know 

    Because of his shrinking budget, Hanna is looking at cuts to IT, athletics, arts, counselors, social workers and special tutors for struggling students, along with exploring school closings or consolidations. 

    Another challenge: With more school options, a growing number of students are leaving charters or private schools and enrolling in the district mid-year. Yet state allocations are based on October and February enrollment counts.

    Last year, 2,513 students — about 8 percent of Leon County’s district enrollment — entered after February. “Those are 2,500 students we don’t receive any money for,” Hanna said at an August school board meeting.

    Public schools do a lot well, but have been slow to share that, said Nicolas. “We got lazy, and we got complacent, and we took for granted that people would choose us because we’re the neighborhood school,” he said.

    Even as more parents choose private voucher schools, it’s not necessarily easy for them to determine if those schools are performing well. Although Florida State University evaluates the state’s Tax Credit Scholarship program, its report lags by about two years. It includes an appendix with voucher schools’ test scores, but there is no consequence for low performance. And scores cannot be compared, because even though schools must test students in grades 3 to 10, the schools pick which test to give.

    The result, said Carolyn Herrington, director of the Education Policy Center at Florida State University, who has written some of the evaluation reports, is that “the only real metric here is parent satisfaction,” which she said “is not sufficient.” 

    Yet many parents like the idea of school choice. According to a poll released last month by EdChoice, a school choice advocacy group, just over half of all Americans and 62 percent of parents broadly favor school vouchers.

    Related: Florida just expanded school vouchers — again. What does that really mean? 

    Mother Carrie Gaudio, who attended the local charter school her parents helped to found, was surprised when her son Ross visited Hartsfield Elementary, a Title I school that serves a high percentage of low-income households — and loved it.

    Before enrolling him, however, she and her husband, Ben Boyter, studied the enrollment situation. The school was under capacity, but they noticed more students coming each year.

    “We felt like if they ended up having to close a school it wouldn’t be one that’s had continual increases in enrollment,” she said, and added, “it’s a real bummer that you have to consider that, that you can’t just consider, ‘Are these people kind? Is my kid comfortable here? Do we feel safe here?’”

    Indeed, a school that a parent chooses one year may close the next.

    That’s what happened last year to Kenia Martinez. Since fall 2022, her two sons had attended a charter school run by Charter Schools USA, among the largest for-profit charter operators in the state. Last spring, she learned from a teacher that the school, Renaissance Academy, was shutting down. 

    Previously named Governor’s Charter Academy, Renaissance recently received a “D” grade, and saw enrollment fall from 420 students in 2020-21 to 220 last year. It also ran deficits, with a negative net position of $1.9 million at the end of the 2023-24 school year, according to the most recent state audit report. It closed last May.

    The school building was to re-open as Tallahassee Preparatory Academy — a private school — which was advertised on its website as a STEM school for “advanced learners” that would charge a fee, ranging from $1,500 to $3,200, in addition to the money paid through a voucher. 

    The school was to be run not by Charter Schools USA but by Discovery Science Schools, which operates several STEM charter schools in the state. The deal revealed a possible exit strategy for faltering charters: conversion to a private voucher school that gets state money, but without the requirement of state tests, grades or certified teachers — in other words, without accountability. 

    Yet as this school year began, the building remained dark. The parking lot was vacant. There was no response to the doorbell, or to emails or phone calls made to the contact information on the new school’s website. Discovery Science Schools’ phone number and email were not in service, and emails to founder Yalcin Akin and board president David Fortna went unanswered. A Charter Schools USA spokesperson, Colleen Reynolds, wrote in an email that “CUSA is not involved with the building located where the former Renaissance Academy Building stands” and did not provide additional clarification on why state audit reports indicate otherwise. 

    The Leon County School Board fiercely debated whether to sue Charter Schools USA for access to the building and its contents, which had been funded with taxpayer dollars. But school board members dropped the idea after learning that the building had a large lien, the result of how financing was crafted through Red Apple Development, the real estate arm of Charter Schools USA. Hanna was frustrated that for-profit companies benefited from taxpayer dollars — but still owned the assets.

    Related: Inside Florida’s ‘underground lab’ for far-right education policies

    When Renaissance announced it was closing, a friend of Martinez’s suggested her family apply for vouchers, which covered the full cost of attendance for her two sons at the Avant Schools of Excellence, a private Christian school with campuses in Tallahassee and Florida City. 

    The school takes vouchers (along with a school scholarship) as full payment, although its website lists tuition and fees at $22,775 per year. Martinez liked that the school is Christian, and small. None of their friends from Renaissance Academy are there. Martinez drives them 30 minutes each way, every day.

    The Tallahassee building that houses Avant was previously home to at least two charter schools. (One lasted a month.) Since the campus opened three years ago, said Donald Ravenell, who co-founded Avant with his wife, enrollment has jumped from 55 to 175.

    Ravenell, who on a recent weekday wore a red and blue tie (school colors are red, white and blue), attributed the school’s success to a focus on faith (“We talk about God all the time”) and the aim of preparing each student to be “a successful citizen and person.” 

    Like Olson at Hartsfield, he well understands this is a competitive marketplace. He wants his school to be known for offering a quality product, which he underscored by drawing a comparison to fried chicken.

    “I have nothing against Chester’s Chicken,” said Ravenell, referring to the quick-service chain sold in gas stations and rest stops. But he expects Avant to reach for more: “We want to be Chick-fil-A.”

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

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

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  • Child care crisis deepens as funding slashed for poor families

    Child care crisis deepens as funding slashed for poor families

    by Jackie Mader, The Hechinger Report
    November 1, 2025

    The first hint of trouble for McKinley Hess came in August. 

    Hess, who runs an infant and toddler care program in Conway, Arkansas, heard that the teen moms she serves were having trouble getting their expected child care assistance payments. Funded by a mix of federal and state dollars, those subsidies are the only way many low-income parents nationwide can afford child care, by reimbursing providers for care and lowering the amount parents have to pay themselves.

    In Arkansas, teen parents have long been given priority to receive this aid. But now, Hess heard, they and many other families in need were sitting on a growing wait-list.

    Hess had just enrolled eight teen moms at her central Arkansas site, Conway Cradle Care, and was counting on state subsidies to pay for their children’s care. As the moms were stuck waiting for financial assistance, Hess had two options: kick them out, or care for their infants for free so their mothers wouldn’t have to drop out of school. She chose the latter. 

    Just a month later, another hit: Arkansas government officials announced they were going to cut the rates they pay providers on behalf of low-income families. Beginning Nov. 1, Hess will get $36 a day for each infant in her care and $35 a day for toddlers, down from $56 and $51 a day respectively. She’s already lost out on more than $20,000 by providing free care for 8 infants for the past two months.

    “Financially, it really is going to hurt our day care,” Hess said. But the stakes are also high for the parents who need child care assistance, she said: “For them to be able to continue school, these vouchers are essential.” 

    As states face having to cut spending while bracing for fewer federal dollars under the budget bill President Trump signed in July, some, including Arkansas, view early learning programs as a place to slash funding. They’re making these cuts even as experts and providers predict they will be disastrous for children, families and the economy if parents don’t have child care and can’t work. 

    The same families face other upheaval: The ongoing government shutdown means states may not receive their Nov. 1 shares of federal money for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, meaning families may not get that aid. Across the country, more than 100 Head Start centers, part of a federally funded preschool program that provides free child care, may have to close, at least temporarily, if the shutdown drags on as expected and they do not get expected federal cash by the start of next month. 

    Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues. 

    Elsewhere, Colorado, Maryland and New Jersey recently stopped accepting new families into their child care assistance programs. In June, Oregon’s Democratic-led legislature cut $20 million from the state’s preschool program for low-income families. In September, Indiana joined Arkansas in announcing reductions in reimbursement rates for providers who care for low-income children. This summer, the governor of Alaska vetoed part of the state’s budget that would have given more money to child care and early intervention services for young children with developmental disabilities. Washington state legislators cut $60 million last month from a program that provides early learning and family support to preschoolers. Additional cuts or delays in payments have cropped up in Ohio, Nevada and the District of Columbia.

    “Almost every state is facing a very, very, very significant pullback of federal dollars,” said Daniel Hains, chief policy officer at the D.C.-based National Association for the Education of Young Children. “It does not help families when you cut provider reimbursement rates, when you cut funds going to providers, because it makes it less likely that those families are going to access the high-quality child care that they need.”

    This trend could further devastate America’s fragile child care industry, which has been especially slow to recover since the pandemic due to a lack of funding. Child care programs are expensive to run and, with limited public support, providers rely heavily on tuition from parents to pay their bills.

    In many parts of the country, parents already pay the equivalent of college tuition or a second mortgage on child care and have little ability to pay more. Yet child care staff generally make abysmally low wages and have high turnover rates. There’s often little wiggle room in program budgets.

    One of the only sources of federal funding for child care centers comes from the federally funded Child Care and Development Fund. Each year, Congress sets the level of block grants to states, which add matching funds. Arkansas officials said recent cuts to their subsidy program are in response to an unexpected $8 million decrease in federal CCDF funding this year after post-pandemic changes to the way state payouts are calculated.

    In September, Arkansas Secretary of Education Jacob Oliva told lawmakers that without cutting rates to providers, the state would be unlikely to be able to sustain the program. “The last thing I want to do is set up a reimbursement rate that at Christmas we have to call everybody and say we’re done, we spent all our money,” he said during a hearing.

    In addition to cutting payments to providers, the state increased family co-payments, the amount parents must pay toward child care in addition to what their subsidy covers. It’s far from a perfect solution, Oliva told lawmakers. “But we have to do something.”

    Related: How early ed is affected by federal cuts

    During the pandemic, child care programs and states received a fresh infusion of public funds from the American Rescue Plan Act and the Child Care and Development Block Grant, helping to stabilize those businesses. Many states used the influx to bolster their subsidy programs, allowing more children to use them and increasing what providers were paid.

    As that aid expired over the last two years, some states found money to sustain that expansion, but others did not. Indiana was left with a $225 million gap between the cost of its child care subsidy program and the state money dedicated to filling it. In October, officials cut reimbursement rates by 10 to 35 percent, saying in a statement that “there is only one pot of money — we could either protect providers or kids, and we chose kids.”

    Experts and child care directors say, however, that in the child care business it’s impossible to decouple kids from providers. The decision to cut reimbursement rates will ultimately hurt both, they insist, especially as providers find it hard to keep their doors open. Already, some programs have shuttered or announced plans to close by the end of the year. At others, families have left in search of more affordable care.

    Cori Kerns, a senior staff consultant at Little Duckling Early Learning Schools in Indianapolis, said that now that schools are receiving less money from the state, parents must make up the difference. Since the changes were announced in September, Little Duckling has lost 26 children — nearly 18 percent of its enrollment — because parents cannot afford that increase. 

    “That could be a tank of gas to them, that could be some groceries, that could be school supplies or medical needs. Some of them have had to literally stop and stay home with their child in order to survive and also not pay for child care,” Kerns said. “Those kids are suffering” as they stay home with stressed parents who are worrying about lost income, she added.  

    As families pulled their children, Kerns merged two buildings of her program into one, creating larger class sizes and new teacher assignments. That’s led to challenging behavioral problems for children who must adjust to new environments. Kerns anticipates losing teachers now that the work environment has become more stressful.

    Experts warn this trend in some states of scaling back early childhood investments is widening an existing nationwide disparity in the availability of affordable, high-quality child care. While states like Arkansas and Indiana pull back, a handful of others are moving the opposite direction, putting more money toward early learning. In New Mexico, for example, the nation’s first free universal child care program will launch on Nov. 1, paid for by oil and gas revenue that is routed to the state’s Early Childhood Education and Care Fund. In 2023, Vermont passed a payroll tax to increase child care funding in the state, while Connecticut established an endowment this year to route surplus state funds into early learning programs. 

    States have already been diverging in their approach to the child care industry since the pandemic. Rather than invest in more qualified workers, some states have opted to deregulate child care and bring teenagers in to care for young children. At the same time, places like the District of Columbia have increased qualifications for child care providers.

    Related: Rural Americans rely on Head Start. Federal turmoil has them worried

    “This is what happens when you don’t have public federal dollars in the system,” said NAEYC’s Hains. In states that are clawing back child care funds, “it’s going to result in lower quality care for children, or it’s going to result in families pulling back from the workforce and facing greater economic insecurity,” Hains said. “We’re going to see a real harmful impact on children and families as these investments are pulled back.”

    In Mooresville, Indiana, Jen Palmer calculated that her program, The Growing Garden Learning Center, will lose about $260,000 from its annual budget because of cuts in state contributions to care for children from low-income families. 

    “If nothing changes as of today, I can sustain for a year,” Palmer said. “Past that, I’m going to start dipping into my retirement savings.” She’s hesitant to discuss closing the program, one of highest-quality centers in the area. “I believe in this place. What we do is amazing. We just have to make it through this.”

    The lower subsidy rate is just the latest of a series of changes that Palmer has endured. Last December, Indiana stopped accepting new applicants into the care aid program and instead launched a waiting list. Palmer stopped getting calls from parents who wanted to enroll their children, as they couldn’t pay for care on their own. 

    Earlier this year, Indiana also announced cuts to reimbursement rates for its pre-K program, which is run in schools and child care programs throughout the state. Palmer now receives about $148 a week for each pre-K student she serves, down from more than $300 a week last year. Over the past three months, she’s had to lay off seven teachers and has taken over teaching in a pre-K classroom in the mornings. “We’re going to do our darndest that the kids don’t feel the impact,” she said. 

    She hasn’t been able to completely shield them. One toddler in her program recently shocked and delighted his teachers when he said his first word in English: a bold “no.” Concerned that the child had language delays, they were thrilled that he was starting to make progress. 

    Then the child’s family pulled him out of the program. His mother, who works as a delivery driver, had previously qualified for free child care paid for by state. With the state now paying less, her tuition jumped to $167 a month. 

    Instead of interacting with other children and teachers, playing and learning new skills, the toddler is now “sitting in mom’s car in a car seat driving around all over the county while she delivers for Uber,” said Palmer. “That just set that little guy years back. When he enters school, he’s no longer going to be on par with his classmates. That’s not fair. That can’t be the answer.”

    Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562 or [email protected] 

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

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  • ‘The clock is ticking’: Shutdown imperils food, child care for many

    ‘The clock is ticking’: Shutdown imperils food, child care for many

    For families in more than a hundred Head Start programs across the country, November could mark the beginning of some hard decisions.

    On Saturday, 134 Head Start centers serving 58,400 children would normally receive their annual federal funding, but the ongoing government shutdown has put that money in jeopardy. The federally funded Head Start provides free preschool and child care for low-income families, and is particularly important to rural communities with few other child care options. 

    At the same time, the federal government has said that because of the shutdown, it cannot distribute Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits that families also expect on the first of the month. Plus, a program that provides extra money for families to buy milk, baby formula, and fruit and vegetables is also running out of $300 million in emergency funding provided to it earlier this month.

    Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues. 

    All this means low-income families are facing upheaval on multiple fronts, said Christy Gleason, the vice president of policy, advocacy and campaigns for the nonprofit group Save the Children. Families in Head Start often receive other federal benefits, so they could simultaneously be facing a disruption in child care — and the meals provided there — and public food assistance.

    “You’re going to end up with parents and caregivers who are skipping meals themselves, because that’s the way they put food on the table for their kids,” Gleason said. Save the Children manages Head Start programs in rural Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee, but its programs are not among those affected by the Nov. 1 annual funding deadline. Head Start has 1,600 programs that receive their yearly funding throughout the calendar year.

    There are still a few days left to avert the crisis, Gleason said. More than two dozen states are suing the government to force it to use a pot of money that had been set aside for paying SNAP benefits in an emergency. President Donald Trump also said this week that the food aid situation would be fixed, but didn’t offer details. Federal lawmakers have also introduced different proposals to keep food assistance money flowing. A handful of states said they will continue to pay for the supplemental milk and formula program, known as WIC. Head Start programs may be able to tap local money, but that isn’t expected to last long. 

    “The clock is ticking,” Gleason said. “Every hour that goes by is an hour where the stress for these families grows, but it’s not too late for government action to change course and make sure children are not the ones to suffer the consequences of political decisions.”

    New data quantifies child care gaps

    Nearly 15 million ages 5 and under in the United States have “all available parents” — both adults in a two-parent household, or one if the child has one adult caregiver — in the workforce. The country has about 11 million licensed or registered child care slots.

    That leaves about 4 million children whose families may need child care — a hard-to-grasp number that obscures the fact that some parts of the country may have greater needs than other regions because child care providers are concentrated in some areas and sparse in others.

    The Buffett Early Childhood Institute, based at the University of Nebraska, is trying to address that problem. It has created a map that it says will give a more accurate view of where child care is needed the most, down to the congressional district. 

    The map captures the number of children with working parents and the number of available spots in licensed child care. What it cannot capture is demand — not every family needs child care, even families with parents in the workforce — but the map does allow policymakers a starting place for a more nuanced evaluation of their community’s needs.

    “We know the limitations of the data, but we also know in order to address the gap, this needs to be broken down into bite-sized pieces,” said Linda Smith, director of policy at the Buffett Institute.

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

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

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  • Student-parents belong on college campuses. So do their children

    Student-parents belong on college campuses. So do their children

    Too many student-parents never make it to graduation, in no small part because their campuses don’t adequately help them fit college into their lives — or even just fit in.

    Yet over 3 million student-parents across the nation, myself included, are pursuing higher education, seeking the intergenerational benefits that come with earning a degree. To reap them, we must overcome many obstacles, as colleges aren’t designed for students like us.

    For me, the last hurdle I had to clear was graduation itself. After years of sacrifice — not just my own, but my whole family’s — walking the stage with my four children at my graduation from the University of California, Santa Cruz was deeply important.

    The university, however, didn’t understand that or account for us. When I asked to accept my diploma with my kids, I was met with resistance, a particularly tough reminder of the work institutions have left to do to meet the needs and priorities of student-parents.

    Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

    Earning my college degree in my late 30s was undoubtedly a major achievement, but so was going back for my bachelor’s in the first place — I didn’t even finish high school the first time around.

    After I became a mom at 20, I earned my GED, hoping it would help me support my family. Continuing my education only got harder. I started and stopped community college more times than I can count, juggling bills, jobs, custody battles and parenting.

    Finally, I transferred to UCSC, proud that I was taking this step two decades in the making and changing the trajectory of my and my family’s lives.

    However, I didn’t fully realize what my education would cost my children. Used to our tight-knit Tongan community, they felt like cultural outsiders when we moved to Santa Cruz, no longer surrounded by family, our native language or familiar foods and music.

    My children sacrificed their home and sense of belonging so that I could pursue this dream. As graduation approached, I knew I wanted to walk the stage with them. They had earned it just as much as I had.

    Yet the administration denied my request, citing the added logistical difficulties. They suggested I bring my kids to a separate, informal celebration for those of us living in family student housing instead. The offer sounded like “be invisible or settle for less.”

    I immediately started mobilizing UCSC’s Student Parent Organization, where I was president. Working with the student government, I drafted a resolution permitting student-parents to walk with their children. I reached out to alumni, administrators, fellow parents and friends for support.

    Thanks to our collective voice, the dean of students changed his mind, offered an apology and committed to changing the policy going forward for all graduating student-parents. Though my kids and I were placed at the end of the ceremony, we crossed the stage together as a family.

    That seed of inclusion will grow in them, just like it will for all the children of student-parents who walk that path in the future.

    The next year, my mentee and friend walked with her son at the UCSC commencement, this time without pushback. The university invited them to rehearsal, and on graduation day, they had VIP seats. She was one of the first to walk, not the last.

    That is the power of advocacy. It turns exclusion into inclusion. It rewrites the rules not just for one person, but for those who come after. I am proud to continue my advocacy work as a graduate student at the University of San Francisco and a member of The California Alliance for Student Parent Success.

    I have since seen institutions across California make good progress on their efforts to support student-parents, but colleges and universities nationwide must still do more. At the University at Buffalo, university police chased a graduating student across the stage when he attempted to bring his infant son with him.

    Related: A federal program helped student-parents thrive. Now it’s on life support

    These stories and the momentum building in the wake of September’s National Student Parent Month should serve as a call to higher education leaders across the country to cultivate campus climates that build trust and belonging among student-parents.

    This work should start before we even step foot on campus and continue until we graduate.

    Institutions that truly wish to serve families will ensure that the value we bring to higher education is visible. They will account for student-parents when planning campus events and weave together support networks of faculty, staff and peers who can respond to our needs.

    When we ask institutions for policies and practices to better accommodate our families, they will listen and act. They will hold themselves accountable to all of their students, parents included.

    Walking the stage with my kids was a step in the right direction, albeit an uphill climb. Let’s keep going and do better by student-parents and their families.

    Krystle Pale is a UC Santa Cruz graduate, a mother of five and a recent Advisory Committee member of The California Alliance for Student Parent Success.

    Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].

    This story about student-parents was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.

    Join us today.

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