Even with the government shut down, lots of people are thinking about how to reimagine federal education research. Public comments on how to reform the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the Education Department’s research and statistics arm, were due on Oct. 15. A total of 434 suggestions were submitted, but no one can read them because the department isn’t allowed to post them publicly until the government reopens. (We know the number because the comment entry page has an automatic counter.) A complex numbers game There’s broad agreement across the political spectrum that federal education statistics are essential.

This story was produced in partnership with Teen Vogue and reprinted with permission. Christopher Cade wants to be president someday. His inspiration largely comes from family members, who have been involved in local politics and activism since long before he was born. But policies from the Trump administration and the Ohio Legislature are complicating his college experience — and his plans to become a politician. Cade is a student at Ohio State University double-majoring in public policy analysis and political science with a focus on American political theory. He recalls his maternal grandmother, Maude Hill — who had a large hand in raising him — talking to him about her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.

This fall, some 19 million undergraduates returned to U.S. campuses with a long-held expectation: Graduate, land an entry-level job, climb the career ladder. That formula is breaking down. Once reliable gateway jobs for college graduates in industries like finance, consulting and journalism have tightened requirements. Many entry-level job postings that previously provided initial working experience for college graduates now require two to three years of prior experience, while AI, a recent analysis concluded, “snaps up good entry-level tasks,” especially routine work like drafting memos, preparing spreadsheets and summarizing research. Without these proving grounds, new hires lose chances to build skills by doing.

HALIFAX COUNTY, N.C. — When Ivy McFarland first traveled from her native Honduras to teach elementary Spanish in North Carolina, she spent a week in Chapel Hill for orientation. By the end of that week, McFarland realized the college town on the outskirts of Raleigh was nowhere near where she’d actually be teaching. On the car ride to her school district, the city faded into the suburbs. Those suburbs turned into farmland. The farmland stretched into more farmland, until, two hours later, she made it to her new home in rural Halifax County.

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.

After he graduates from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Drew Wesson hopes to begin a career in strategic communication, a field with higher-than-average job growth and earnings. One year into his time at the university, Wesson became more strategic about this goal. Like nearly 1 in 3 of his classmates, he declared a second major to better stand out in an unpredictable labor market. It’s part of a trend that’s spreading nationwide, according to a Hechinger Report analysis of federal data, as students fret about getting jobs in an economy that some fear is shifting faster than a traditional college education can keep up.

The year I co-taught world history and English language arts with two colleagues, we were tasked with telling the story of the world in 180 days to about 120 ninth graders. We invited students to consider how texts and histories speak to one another: “The Analects” as imperial governance, “Sundiata” as Mali’s political memory, “Julius Caesar” as a window into the unraveling of a republic. By winter, our students had given us nicknames. Some days, we were a triumvirate. Some days, we were Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hades. It was a joke, but it held a deeper meaning.

New York City, where I live, will elect a new mayor Tuesday, Nov. 4. The two front runners — state lawmaker Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent — have largely ignored the city’s biggest single budget item: education.  One exception has been gifted education, which has generated a sharp debate between the two candidates. The controversy is over a tiny fraction of the student population. Only 18,000 students are in the city’s gifted and talented program out of more than 900,000 public school students.

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…

When I was a kindergartner in the 1980s, the “gifted” programming for my class could be found inside of a chest. I don’t know what toys and learning materials lived there, since I wasn’t one of the handful of presumably more academically advanced kiddos that my kindergarten teacher invited to open the chest. My distinct impression at the time was that my teacher didn’t think I was worthy of the enrichment because I frequently spilled my chocolate milk at lunch and I had also once forgotten to hang a sheet of paper on the class easel — instead painting an elaborate and detailed picture on the stand itself.

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.

Young men in America today are feeling lonely and socially isolated. They are not going to college, entering the workplace or going on dates as often as young men did in prior generations. In my years teaching literacy, I’ve watched the lines on two graphs move in opposite directions: male loneliness climbs as male reading and writing scores drop. Are these trends correlated, and if so, can reading help address loneliness? Diminished friendships, reduced economic opportunities and the substitution of online interactions for face-to-face connections seem to particularly impact young men.

Timothy Shanahan, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has spent his career evaluating education research and helping teachers figure out what works best in the classroom. A leader of the National Reading Panel, whose 2000 report helped shape what’s now known as the “science of reading,” Shanahan has long influenced literacy instruction in the United States. He also served on the National Institute for Literacy’s advisory board in both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. Shanahan is a scholar whom I regularly consult when I come across a reading study, and so I was eager to interview him about…

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…

DALLAS — Adrian Torres’ obsession with race cars began when he was 11 years old. He got hooked watching a YouTube video of someone playing a Formula One game and quickly grew fascinated with the race cars themselves. In high school, he joined the robotics club. “I’ve always wanted to learn how things work,” Torres said, and the robotics club taught him “that’s what mechanical engineering is.” Going to college to pursue a degree in that field seemed like a good next step, but he had a lot to figure out.

This story first appeared in Hechinger’s climate and education newsletter. Sign up here. In Illinois, the Chicago Teachers Union won a contract with the city’s schools to add solar panels on some buildings and clean energy career pathways for students, among other actions. In Minnesota, the Minneapolis Federation of Educators demanded that the district create a task force on environmental issues and provide free metro passes for students. And in California, the Los Angeles teachers union’s demands include electrifying the district’s bus fleet and providing electric vehicle charging stations at all schools.

After decades serving in the Marine Corps and in education, I know firsthand that servant leadership and diplomacy can and should be taught. That’s why I hoped to bring 32 high school seniors from Texas to Washington, D.C., this fall for a week of engagement and learning with top U.S. government and international leaders. Instead of open doors, we faced a government shutdown and had to cancel our trip. The shutdown impacts government employees, members of the military and their families who are serving overseas and all Americans who depend on government being open to serve us — in businesses, schools and national parks, and through air travel and the postal service.

KISSIMMEE, Fla. — It’s not a rebrand. But the Moms for Liberty group that introduced itself three years ago as a band of female “joyful warriors” shedding domestic modesty to make raucous public challenges to masks, books and curriculum, is trying to glow up. The group’s national summit this past weekend at a convention center outside Orlando leaned into family (read: parental rights), faith — and youth. The latter appeared to be a bid to join the cool kids who are the new face of conservatism in America (hint: young, Christian, very male), as well as a recognition of the group’s “diversity,” which includes grandparents, men and kids.

Thirty states now limit or ban cellphone use in classrooms, and teachers are noticing children paying attention to their lessons again. But it’s not clear whether this policy — unpopular with students and a headache for teachers to enforce — makes an academic difference. If student achievement goes up after a cellphone ban, it’s tough to know if the ban was the reason. Some other change in math or reading instruction might have caused the improvement. Or maybe the state assessment became easier to pass. Imagine if politicians required all students to wear striped shirts and test scores rose.

Washington lawmakers and the Trump administration passed a major legislative package this summer that will cut funding for programs that help students from low-income backgrounds — making it far harder for these students to afford and complete college. The leaders behind these cuts claim that they’re necessary to curb wasteful spending and keep higher education accountable. But that line of thinking is woefully misguided — and destructive — for our entire nation. These changes will make higher education even more exclusive. And House Republicans just released a budget proposal that would further…

Two months after Education Secretary Linda McMahon was confirmed, she and a small team from the department met with leadership from the National Center for Learning Disabilities, an advocacy group that works on behalf of millions of students with dyslexia and other disorders. Jacqueline Rodriguez, NCLD’s chief executive officer, recalled pressing McMahon on a question raised during her confirmation hearing: Was the Trump administration planning to move control and oversight of special education law from the Education Department to Health and Human Services? Rodriguez was alarmed at the prospect of uprooting the 50-year-old Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA), which spells out the responsibility of schools to provide a “free, appropriate public education” to students with disabilities.

Every year, tens of thousands of infants are born prematurely, at a low birthweight, or with other conditions that would make them automatically eligible for therapeutic services that could help them thrive. When everything goes smoothly, early intervention provides those services, required by federal law, for children ages birth to 3. Depending on the community, the program is paid for by federal, state or local dollars, or private insurance. But far too few of the youngest children actually receive that help. (It’s an issue I wrote about earlier this year.) One particular gap is in services provided to infants from birth to 1.

This story was produced by the Associated Press and reprinted with permission. WASHINGTON – For a generation of young Americans, choosing where to go to college — or whether to go at all — has become a complex calculation of costs and benefits that often revolves around a single question: Is the degree worth its price? Public confidence in higher education has plummeted in recent years amid high tuition prices, skyrocketing student loans and a dismal job market — plus ideological concerns from conservatives. Now, colleges are scrambling to prove their value to students.

Last January, Diego Sandoval’s high school in San Diego County closed abruptly one Friday because of wildfires menacing the Southern California area. Classmates evacuated their homes as the fire spread. Frida Vergara, whose school was among the few in the area that didn’t close, recalls that friends with asthma were coughing and wheezing from the smoke. It wasn’t the first time the students — both 17-year-old seniors in the Sweetwater Union High School District — saw how extreme weather disrupted learning. A year earlier, floods swamped parts of the county, …

In New Jersey, fewer than half of 6- and 7-year-olds in special education spend the vast majority of their day with their classmates without disabilities. That might change, though, because a state special education advisory group has pledged to examine the issue. Earlier this year, a Hechinger Report investigation revealed New Jersey is the worst in the nation when it comes to what’s known as inclusion — measured by how often students of all abilities are learning alongside one another in the classroom for at least 80 percent of the day.