What difference did $190 billion make for student success coming out of the COVID-19 health crisis?
Not as much as you might think.
An ESSER spending analysis by Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University found some puzzling instances where funneling more money into a pandemic-worsened problem didn’t help schools recover.
The data ultimately points to no “silver bullet” in spending aimed at improving students’ academic performance since the pandemic, says Marguerite Roza, director of Edunomics Lab.
Return on Investment
A crunch of the numbers found that states varied widely when it came to the return on investment of their ESSER dollars. Both reading and math scores increased in districts in states like Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee, where the rate of ESSER spending per student was relatively high (over $1,000) from 2022 to 2023.
States like Nevada, California and South Dakota were also high spenders, but they saw some of the lowest gains in reading and math during the same time period.
Analysts said the difference likely came down to leadership in some states being “simply more effective at steering districts to focus on student learning” in the face of vague spending guidelines from the federal government. Leaders in Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee focused on setting clear goals and checking progress for reading and math performance.
Each chart shows the ESSER funds each district spent per student during the 2022-23 school year compared to the average years of learning gains or losses in reading and math. Source: Edunomics Lab.
New federal survey data on the education workforce shows that a majority of schools had a tough time filling at least one fully certified teaching position this fall.
Parsing education data into snack-sized servings.
Public schools reported having six teacher vacancies on average in August, based on responses to the School Pulse Panel by the National Center for Education Statistics. About 20 percent of those positions remained unfilled when the school year started.
The two most common challenges schools said they faced in hiring were a lack of qualified candidates and too few applicants. Special education, physical science and English as a second language were some of the most difficult areas to fill.
NCES Commissioner Peggy Carr said in a news release that while the percentage of schools saying it was difficult to fill positions decreased — down 5 percentage points from 79 percent last year — “there’s still room for improvement.” Nearly 1,400 public K-12 schools from across the country responded to the survey.
While the comparison to previous years suggests that hiring is getting a bit easier, Megan Boren of the Southern Regional Education Board says the country is still mired in a teacher shortage.
Boren, who leads the organization’s teacher workforce data and policy work, says it would be a mistake to think of teacher shortages only in terms of positions filled versus vacant. Other factors to consider include the geographic regions of schools, academic subjects and student age groups where shortages are prevalent.
The organization also takes into account teacher demographics, the number of candidates graduating from teacher prep programs, alternative certification programs and their level of preparedness.
“When we think of it as merely a body count, we are not looking at the whole entire problem and to be honest, we're doing a disservice to our students and our educators themselves,” Boren says. “Of the utmost importance is the quality and the preparedness with which we are filling some of these vacancies, or that we have leading our classrooms, and the distribution of that talent.”
Boren expressed concern over schools turning to uncertified teachers to fill the staffing gaps, be they candidates with emergency certifications or long-term substitute teachers. Their inexperience can put strain on the more experienced teachers and administrators who support them, she explains, at a time when both administrators and traditional teacher prep graduates say even new fully certified teachers feel less prepared than those in years past.
Schools in high-poverty neighborhoods or with a student body that is mostly — 75 percent or more — students of color filled a lower percentage of their vacancies with fully certified teachers, according to the NCES data.
“It's a firestorm where folks are going, ‘What can we do to put out the fire and then rebuild?’” Boren says, “and unfortunately, we're seeing in some cases that the measures and strategies being taken to put out the fire are actually making it worse, and causing an exacerbation of the issues for our educators and leaders.”
She says there’s no single factor that has led to teacher shortages, but rather interplaying issues that include pandemic-related mental health strain, the pressure of filling in for vacant staff positions, and a lack of time for collaboration and planning.
Teacher shortages didn’t start with the pandemic, Boren explains, as her organization tracked a teacher turnover rate that hovered between 7 percent and 9 percent prior to 2020. But she says the pandemic did accelerate turnover, with some regions of the South now experiencing 18 percent turnover among teachers.
“Certain regions of states started to stem the tide, but by and large the turnover is increasing,” Boren says.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Lewis Ferebee, chancellor of District of Columbia Public Schools, stands at the top of a staircase at John Lewis Elementary when he’s approached by a couple of his constituents for handshakes. He has to reach down a bit — the third-grade boys only stand about waist-high to Ferebee.
The school got a face-lift three years ago. The renovations transformed the noisy, open-concept hallways — relics of the Open Education Movement from the ’60s and ’70s — into individual classrooms. Teachers can now talk to their students without the distracting din of chatter from other classrooms, but the garage doors that double as windows can be opened when teachers want to do activities that involve getting students from multiple classrooms working together.
The work that went into John Lewis Elementary highlights something unique about DC Public Schools. Since 2007, its Office of Public Education Facilities Modernization has kept and systematically worked through a schedule for upgrading schools. At the time, the district reportedly had a backlog of 20,000 work orders.
That level of overwhelm may sound familiar to educators at school districts nationwide who work in school buildings that are “in dire need of renovation,” as described in a recent brief from the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.
The average age of school buildings is 49 years — just shy of the end of their lifespan — according to the brief, and more than half have “never undergone any major renovations” since they were built around the time of the Vietnam War.
The Biden administration has pumped a uniquely large amount of money into school infrastructure, according to experts who spoke with EdSurge, perhaps most well-known through ESSER funds in response to the pandemic. The issue of crumbling and outdated school buildings has generally been “orphaned” at the federal level, as one expert put it.
A school district in Brighton, in the Denver metro area of Colorado, was having a hard time keeping teachers. The salaries in the district, 27J Schools, were low for the region. And in Colorado, voters have to approve higher property taxes to send additional dollars to schools, including for salary bumps, but by 2018 voters had refused six straight times.
So, strapped for cash, the district decided to switch to a four-day school week.
Chris Fiedler, then the superintendent of 27J Schools, had previously worked in a rural district on a shortened schedule, and he hoped it would help attract teachers in the absence of better pay. Frustrated and eager for solutions, everyone seemed ready to try a new approach, Fiedler says.
“You just get tired of being kind of the minor league team in the Denver metro area, in terms of teacher and adult talent, working with kids — and not just teachers, but administrators as well. So how do you find a way to encourage them to stay and encourage them to join you in the first place?” he says.
In his eyes, the experiment was a success. The district now punches above its weight in teacher retention and the policy has proven consistently popular with students and teachers in the years since it was introduced, he argues.
Fiedler isn’t solitary in his enthusiasm for this model of schooling, and the four-day school week has, in some ways, taken off. When many schools are suffering staffing shortages and tight budgets, districts like 27J Schools have turned to shorter school weeks to attract and retain teachers. As many as 900 districts have embraced these abridged weeks, according to a 2023 estimate from the Associated Press. (There are about 13,000 districts in the country.) Colorado, where 27J is located, has proven a particularly fertile ground for four-day school weeks, and more districts in the state have moved to a four-day school week than any other state except Missouri, according to one estimate.
But though educators like Fiedler trumpet these shortened weeks, others worry that they do little to attract teachers — and may even harm students and voters.
‘Slightly Negative’
Interest in four-day weeks usually stems from the need to recruit or retain teachers in the absence of funding. Supporters also value it for giving students and teachers time that enables a better school-life balance. But the evidence paints an ambiguous to slightly negative picture, according to researchers like Van Schoales, senior policy director for the nonprofit Keystone Policy Center, which published a recent report on the four-day school week in Colorado. In fact, the data from the state doesn’t give supporters or detractors a clear victory, according to the report.
Schoales says he became interested in four-day weeks after noting that his colleagues from within Colorado were talking about it more post-pandemic. While there was some national research, there wasn’t much within the state yet, he says.
Some national studies link four-day school weeks to slumping academic performance for students. For instance, one analysis from the Annenberg Institute found that the available data shows a “relatively small, negative average” in standardized test scores for reading and math in districts that adopt four-day policies. The Annenberg analysis also noted that the negative effects of four-day weeks are disproportionately larger in non-rural schools and may compound over time.
Still, the Colorado Department of Education was “rubber-stamping” all of the proposals from districts looking to change over to a four-day school week, even though some superintendents and school board members were “quietly raising concerns,” Schoales says.
What did the Keystone researchers learn? Universally, superintendents report that they are motivated to try this because they don't have enough money to pay teachers, Schoales says. But even if some districts were bullish on the policy, the Keystone study found that truncated school weeks were not effective for keeping teachers. It may have worked for some districts, Schoales says, but overall the districts that adopted these policies had higher turnover rates.
Previous studies show the effect of this policy ranges from neutral to negative on students, with most national studies showing it has a small but negative impact on learning, he says. If true, the differences could stack up over time academically, and many of the districts adopting these policies, at least within Colorado, are far from reaching state standards already, he adds.
So, he asks, why not figure out how to solve the pay issue rather than cut days of instruction?
What Are Students Doing?
Plus, there’s another possible problem. How are students spending that fifth day, if not in school?
By one estimate, more than 60 percent of districts in Colorado have a four-day schedule, though these tend to be small and rural districts, meaning they only account for around 14 percent of the state’s students. But four-day school weeks are spreading to larger and more urban areas. It’s not clear how well-attended after-school programs are in these regions, Schoales says, adding that it was difficult to perform a thorough analysis on attendance because these programs are being run outside of the district. But, he says, at least one person they interviewed for the report suggested they were having a hard time engaging lower-income families on the fifth day.
When asked, Schoales identified Brighton, which has more than 22,000 students and is comparatively large and urban, as the place with some of the most robust outside-of-school programming.
So what does it look like there?
Since adopting the four-day week, there are no classes on Mondays in the district, and the remaining days were lengthened to avoid lost instruction time. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t students at school even on Mondays, Fiedler, the former superintendent of 27J Schools, says: Extracurriculars such as athletics, students council meetings and choir practices still happen on Mondays. City and community programs including the Boys & Girls Club also pitched in when the district made the switch, beefing up staff to make programs more available on those days, he adds. An orchestra program started up as well.
But after the first year, the city stepped back from its expanded programs, in part because they were not being used, Fiedler says.
The district also expanded a preexisting program — where parents pay a fee for day care — to cover Mondays, he says. Initially, around 1,000 parents expressed interest in the program. But when it actually started, there were more like 300 to 400 students enrolled, he says. Fiedler suspects that many families who had expressed interest in the program didn’t end up using it because they figured out ways to “share caregiver duties” — relying on neighborhood members, or older siblings or family members to step in and watch younger students on Mondays.
Because of the lower-than-expected interest, the district had to pivot from its plan to run these care programs in all elementary schools, instead running them in regional "centers" around the city.
‘The Second-Best Option’
When compared to other methods of attracting teachers, policy analysts recommend districts weigh their options for shortened school weeks carefully.
Some have suggested the practice may even be counterproductive for taxpayers reluctant to increase school budgets. For instance, voters in Brighton had shot down additional funding for schools repeatedly. But by denying the school district enough funding to adequately compensate teachers, voters ended up lowering their own property values, says Frank James Perrone, an associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington’s School of Education. That’s because the district felt backed into a corner, as if it really didn't have a choice but to embrace four-day school weeks, he says. An analysis, coauthored by Perrone, found that the four-day school week policy actually lowered property values there by 2 to 4 percent, purportedly showing that homebuyers preferred to avoid the area.
But 27J Schools, the Brighton school district, is one of the largest districts in Colorado to adopt a four-day week. And Fiedler, the superintendent of the district who retired this year, isn’t swayed by the arguments against the four-day school week.
The district lost staff the first year it moved over to the four-day schedule. But in the years since, Fiedler says, it hasn’t had the turnover rate one would expect for one of the lowest-paying districts in the area. Data that Fiedler sent to EdSurge suggests that 27J had a 13.61 percent turnover rate in 2023 to 2024 with a $52,002 base teacher salary. That puts it in the lower third for teacher turnover in the area, despite offering the sixth-lowest base salary.
Plus, Fiedler adds, the graduation rates have lifted, including for disadvantaged students. Data from Fiedler shows a steady incline in graduation rates for the district between 2017 and 2022. That increase may not be because of the shortened weeks specifically, but he says that it happened at the same time, meaning that the policy didn’t prevent the district from improving academically.
Twice per month, the district also uses those free Mondays for teacher training, which has been good for morale, he adds.
But even if he isn’t convinced shortened weeks are a bad policy, Fiedler seems to agree that it’s not the ideal situation.
And he rejects the notion that four-day weeks save substantial money. It saved the district around $800,000 or so during the first year, Fiedler estimates, mostly in transportation costs but also in salaries for food service and electricity. In his view, that's such a small amount when compared to the overall budget that it's "not worth the heartache."
The “mill levy” override — that would provide additional money to boost teacher salaries — finally passed for 27J Schools in 2022. They still offer salaries at the lower end of the range, and the district likely won’t transition back. “Nobody called my office and said, ‘Now that you have money, you have to go back to a five-day school week,’” Fiedler says.
Even so, he says it feels “like the second-best option.” If the district had been able to find enough money to pay teachers what they are worth, it would have never tried the four-day school week, he says: “But absent that, you've got to try something new and different to be competitive.”
Now, when other districts ask about four-day school weeks, he tells them that he doesn’t want them to change over, because he doesn’t want the district to lose its “competitive edge.”
One of the lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic was that many families didn’t have reliable internet access at home. As schools closed and classes moved online, educators rushed to improvise solutions for families without robust connections, setting up mobile Wi-Fi access points in school buses, sending home portable hot spots to those who needed it and more.
And even before the pandemic, educators were working to close the “homework gap,” the divide between students who can easily log on at home to access critical school materials and those who lack reliable home internet.
Now that schools are back open and pandemic relief funds are expiring, there’s a risk this gap will quickly widen unless policymakers take a fresh look at the nation’s connectivity. And it’s one that disproportionately affects students of color and those in underserved communities.
“The truth is that most of these programs created during the pandemic relied on philanthropic and private sector support and continue to do so,” she writes of efforts to make sure students have online access for schoolwork. She calls for new federal legislation to “make these programs less vulnerable to political changes.”
The largest federal program offering support for school districts and libraries for internet connections, the E-rate, was created nearly 30 years ago. Back then much of today’s crucial technology for living and learning had not yet been invented — including smartphones, social media and AI chatbots. “It's been too long that we've kept these same policies in place,” Turner Lee told EdSurge. “We need ways we can guarantee support to schools for the type of infrastructure they need.”
EdSurge connected with Turner Lee for this week’s EdSurge Podcast. The sociologist shared her experiences traveling around the country — to stops including Marion, Alabama, West Phoenix, Arizona, and Hartford, Connecticut — asking people to share how they get connected and the challenges to digital access they face.
As efforts to expand the child tax credit and provide paid family leave have stalled at the federal level, states are increasingly incentivizing private employers to step in and fill one of the other most painful gaps for working parents: child care.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 17 states offer child care tax credits to “employers that operate or contract out child care services for their employees.” These states are Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
Eric Syverson, a senior policy specialist in the National Conference of State Legislatures’ fiscal affairs program, said the conversation about a child tax credit at the federal level is driving a bipartisan consensus around finding ways in the tax code to help parents and families in need of child care services.
“I think states have now realized, ‘Oh, the federal government temporarily and now is considering again another increase in these tax credits — child tax credit, child and dependent care tax credit, the EITC [Earned Income Tax Credit]. We could also benefit from that increase if we enact our own.’ And that’s what we’re seeing a lot of states now considering,” Syverson said.
He added that the biggest beneficiaries of state tax credits are large corporations that can afford child care costs. Even with the credit’s growing popularity, a relatively small percentage of companies take advantage of it. Syverson attributes that to the high costs of establishing a child care facility and a general lack of awareness among larger businesses about the tax credit. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 12 percent of all workers had access to child care benefits through their employer in 2023.
Jessica Chang is the co-founder and CEO of Upwards, a child care marketplace that connects families to child care providers, assists child care providers with business needs, and helps businesses and government entities create child care benefits programs for their employees. Chang said her company operates among the key stakeholders in child care: employers, government, families and child care providers.
Initially, Upwards may collaborate with employers by matching employees with nearby child care providers, a more feasible and cost-efficient option than building an on-site facility. The company can also use data from employees to help customize child care benefits. For example, if Upwards notices employees are calling off work to care for their children, they may recommend providing backup care credits to allow families to find providers at non-traditional hours.
“By partnering with Upwards, we have been able to help our [employees] find trusted providers who are able to accommodate the varying work schedules found at our properties,” Susan Loveday, the vice president of human resources at Dollywood Parks and Resorts, told The 19th. “Additionally, to help with the cost of child care, we provide a monthly stipend to those [employees] whose children are cared for by an Upwards provider.”
To Chang, child care as an employee benefit could resemble health insurance — or become even more important.
“That’s why you actually need to have participation between both employers and government in order to really normalize it and say, ‘This is not a social issue. This is actually an economic issue. This isn’t a mom issue. This is a family issue,’” Chang said. “We’re hearing from employers, for example, they’re not trying to say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna try this, and if it doesn’t work, we’re backing out.’ They’re actually saying, ‘How do we make this successful so there’s no longer an issue? How do we do this for two and three years because we want to make sure that it’s done correctly?’ And that is a significant shift from, say, just checking the box.”
Federal action on child care and other family policies has been slow to advance. Last month, the Senate voted against a bigger child tax credit. Also, federal law does not guarantee workers paid days off for parental, medical and family caregiving responsibilities.
But there have been efforts at the federal level to encourage companies to aid employees with child care, a move that has support from both Democrats and Republicans.
In 2022, Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act, legislation that allocated $50 billion to companies expanding semiconductor manufacturing and research and offering child care to their employees.
When President Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, in a debate with former President Donald Trump, he said, “We should significantly increase the child care tax credit. We should significantly increase the availability of women and men, or single parents, to be able to go back to work. And we should encourage businesses to hold, to have child care facilities,” as ways to deal with the child care crisis.
The Heritage Foundation, the conservative group that crafted Project 2025, a proposed blueprint for former President Donald Trump’s potential second term in office, calls for Congress to encourage on-site employee child care, saying it “puts the least stress on the parent-child bond.”
Some experts argue, however, that employer-sponsored child care is only a temporary solution to the child care crisis — and one that poses equity concerns.
For Elliot Haspel, a senior fellow at the family policy think tank Capita and the author of “Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It,” employer-sponsored health insurance and its “uneven results” being mirrored in child care is something people should scrutinize. Haspel writes, “The only real solution to America’s child care needs is a system of choice that is funded by a permanent stream of public dollars,” and employer-based taxes is a way to start collecting those funds.
“We have a lot of precedents now at the state and local level of fair ways to fund more affordable, accessible, high-quality child care,” Haspel said, “In Vermont, they are funding a major child care reform bill via a small payroll tax, 0.44 percent, 75 percent of which is borne by the employer, and business owner after business owners went to the legislature and essentially said, ‘Tax us. This is important, this is worth it.’ That’s the kind of employer activity we need.”
Similarly, he said, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., and Portland have all levied taxes on high-income households to help pay for child care.
“When we care about something and decide it has enough societal value — whether public schools or roads or parks — we find the money,” Haspel said.
Casey Peeks, the senior director of early childhood policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress (CAP), believes employers should be more active as child care funding advocates, citing from the Council for Strong America’s report that the child care crisis costs the United States $122 billion every year in lost earnings, productivity, and revenue. She sees child care as both an economic and social issue.
“I describe it as a public good because I am not a parent, but I still benefit from child care. Every day I take the Metro to work, I benefit from the fact that my Metro driver, my bus driver, has their child in a safe, high-quality child care program so that they can go to work, and I can get to work,” Peeks said. “I definitely think there’s a role for businesses to play, and it’s in their best interest that we don’t have a child care crisis. … I think that whatever employers offer should, hopefully, be on top of whatever is provided through public investment.”
Another aspect of the child care crisis is supply. A June 2024 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago found that, despite the increasing cost of child care, child care workers earn an average of $14.60 per hour. The Chicago Fed attributes decreasing supply to the low pay and high responsibility of the job; child care employment in the fourth quarter of 2023 was 9 percent below pre-pandemic levels.
Anna Lovejoy, director of early childhood policy at CAP, acknowledges the effort being made by states to address the child care crisis, but isn’t convinced incentivizing businesses to provide care helps with the supply issue and may potentially create equity issues.
“When you do tie child care to employment, if someone loses their job or chooses to step away from their job, then they don’t have child care in the interim while they’re looking for work,” Lovejoy said. “And so that causes a disadvantage to families. I think, also, it just creates sort of an equity issue for those who have jobs versus don’t have jobs, have child care versus don’t have child care.”
HOUSTON — On a Saturday morning in August 2023, a crowd gathered outside the Houston Independent School District administration building with protest signs in hand. The brutal, sticky heat of Texas summer already had people wiping sweat from their brows and handing out bottled water from ice-filled coolers.
Teachers, parents and politicians took turns at the microphone, united in their criticism of the controversial state takeover of Texas’ largest school district. One fear expressed was about how the mostly Black and Latino students at 28 schools would fare under a plan created by new Superintendent Mike Miles that would require school libraries to cease, in essence, functioning as libraries.
Demonstrators gather in August 2023 in protest of Houston ISD's plan to close libraries in schools. Photo by Nadia Tamez-Robledo for EdSurge.
Instead, they would become “team centers,” where teachers would send disruptive students to work independently. The most high-achieving students would be funneled there, too, where they could do worksheets at their own pace and free up teachers to focus on everyone else.
Taylor Hill, a student at Wheatley High School, would experience the change firsthand. Her school is located in Houston’s Fifth Ward neighborhood and serves a student body that is nearly 100 percent classified as economically disadvantaged.
The Texas Education Agency awards letter grades to schools and districts based on test scores and other student performance metrics. When Wheatley High received a seventh “F” rating from the Texas Education Agency in 2019, it triggered the state takeover of the district. A Houston lawmaker championed the 2015 law that created the mandatory takeover process, something he saw as a way to hold the district accountable for continually low-performing schools.
At the protest, Hill stepped up to the podium and spoke into the microphone, talking over a crescendo of buzzing cicadas. The library at her school is a refuge, she said.
“I live in Fifth Ward. There's not a lot there, but what is there should not be turned into a detention center, especially when I am constantly there,” Hill told the crowd. “I read a lot, and I just feel like that is not what needs to happen.”
Unfortunately for Hill, the new state-appointed superintendent went through with his plan. A year later, the early consequences are becoming clear. School librarians have lost their jobs. Teachers have adopted a district-approved curriculum that some feel is rote and uninspiring. And children are receiving different educations depending on which part of the city they call home — a divide that maps onto Houston’s income and racial disparities.
Man With a Plan for ‘Differentiation’
Mike Miles was appointed superintendent in June 2023, brought in to lead the state takeover and improve academic performance in Houston.
In addition to districts, schools in Texas are individually given A through F grades based partially on standardized test scores. Miles quickly created big and controversial plans to improve scores. One strategy among his planned overhaul — called the New Education System, or NES — was to close libraries at 28 schools out of the district’s 274 total and turn them into “team centers.” It would accomplish two goals, he said: create a place to send “disruptive” students after removing them from class as well as an environment to send high-achieving students for enrichment.
School principals were also given the option to voluntarily adopt the new system, becoming what the district referred to as “NES-aligned.” After adding in those campuses, a total of 85 schools would start fall 2023 under the program.
The problem? Myriad parents and teachers alike hated the idea of closing down libraries and isolating students, especially considering these schools — and the entire school district — serves a student population that’s overwhelmingly Black and Latino.
The map below shows Houston schools that are part of the New Education System with each neighborhood color-coded based on median income. Click on the map to see more information about income in each neighborhood. Areas become more green as income increases and more blue as income decreases.
Map by Nadia Tamez-Robledo for EdSurge.
One was Melissa Yarborough, a teacher at Navarro Middle School in Houston’s East End, which is home to one of the city’s historically Latino neighborhoods. While not targeted as a failing school or assigned to the New Education System, her campus leaders adopted much of district's new curriculum, according to Yarborough. Navarro Middle officially became an NES school in 2024.
Her two children, however, were students at one of the targeted schools, Pugh Elementary in the city’s northeastern Denver Harbor neighborhood. Although, it wasn’t labeled as “failing” when Miles was appointed superintendent. It had an A rating from the state in 2022. Even by Houston ISD’s own calculations, the school is expected to earn a B rating when 2023 and 2024 school “report cards” are released. It was a tougher scoring formula released last year that makes earning high “grades” harder. A lawsuit by Texas school districts over the change has halted the release of 2023 ratings for now, and a second lawsuit is similarly blocking the state from releasing 2024 ratings.
As demonstrators hung back and talked after the protest, Yarborough said she was horrified by the way Miles described his plan to move disruptive students to the library-turned-team-center and tune into lessons via Zoom.
“He said, ‘Imagine. I'm walking in with 150 kids. All the children are working on their own little assignment or whatever, individually or in pairs,’” Yarborough recalled. “He said it to me like it's a beautiful thing.”
Screenshot of teacher and parent Melissa Yarborough speaking during the public comment portion of a board meeting in February. Video courtesy of Houston ISD.
She said Miles sold the idea as “differentiation,” a principle that all teachers learn during their undergraduate training. In essence, it’s the idea that teachers should adjust their lessons to each student’s needs, whether they’re struggling or grasping a concept quickly.
Yarborough said Miles’ plan isn’t effective differentiation, though. Disruptive students will receive a worse education, if the results of pandemic-era Zoom classes are any indicator, she said. And doing worksheets in the library isn’t a reward for high-achievers, she added.
Duncan Klussmann agreed with Yarborough’s assessment. A former superintendent of nearby Spring Branch Independent School District, he is now a professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Houston. Ultimately, Klussmann said, Miles’ model is designed to produce higher test scores. But Klussmann is more interested to know what the student experience is in these schools.
“Just because you have higher state test schools, do more students go off to higher ed?” he asked. “Are they successful when they go off to higher ed? Do more students get a technical certification? Do more students go into the military, you know? Do they have a better life after high school? We don't know. We won't know for four, six, 10 years what the effect is of NES schools on students.”
Officials from Houston ISD did not respond to interview or information requests from EdSurge.
Displaced Librarians
When Brandie Dowda was hired at Burrus Elementary, a campus home to mostly Black and Hispanic students, she was the first librarian employed by the school in a decade.
Her tenure wouldn’t last long.
During summer 2023 — the same one during which Houstonians like student Hill and parent Yarborough protested outside the district administration building — Dowda was on vacation when the principal at Burrus informed her that the librarian position was being eliminated. The campus was going to be part of the inaugural New Education System cohort of schools, and the library would be closed.
Dowda found another librarian position in the district at Almeda Elementary and said she was happy at her new school. The library had long been central to life at the campus, and Dowda said students were rarely seen without a book in hand.
But again, her tenure would be short-lived.
Librarian Brandie Dowda poses in front of knitted protest signs before speaking at a board of managers meeting in August 2024. Photo courtesy of Dowda.
Dowda was leaving for work one morning in January 2024 and quickly scrolled through the news feed on her phone before heading out the door when she saw it — a news article announcing that 26 more schools would join the New Education System in the fall of 2024.
Dowda’s school was on the list. “I went, ‘Oh, I get to do this again,’” she recalled. “I found out from the regular news, which if I remember correctly, is also how my principal found out. It's kind of how everybody found out.”
Dowda said that her former library at Burrus wasn’t turned into a team center — a classroom was used instead — but students still weren’t allowed to access the books. Then, in May 2024 at Almeda, she was in the middle of a lesson when movers arrived to begin disassembling the library, she said. As the school year ended, the carpet was left with bald spots where shelves had been removed and the concrete floor underneath showed through. Her students were upset to learn that their library would be closed when they returned in the fall.
The library at Almeda Elementary after bookshelves were removed. Photo courtesy of Brandie Dowda.
Dowda’s story mirrors that of Cheryl Hensley, the former librarian at Lockhart Elementary. Hensley had been retired from her 38-year career in Houston ISD when a friend coaxed her into applying for the librarian position at the campus, which is in the city’s historically Black neighborhood of Third Ward.
Like Dowda at Almeda Elementary, she was at Lockhart for one year before her job was eliminated. Her principal opted into the NES standards believing that, in doing so, decisions about the school would still ultimately be made at the campus level. Hensley found out she lost her job in summer 2023.
“The principal is a super supporter of libraries and books and literature and reading, all over, I mean 100 percent,” Hensley said, “and so she was thinking I would be OK. They told [the principal] they could keep everybody, that everything would be the same and nothing would change.”
Cheryl Hensley poses in the library at Lockhart Elementary, where she was formerly a librarian and where she now volunteers monthly. She says that while the books have not been removed, they are not checked out to students. Photo courtesy of Hensley.
But then Hensley heard from the principal: “She called me in and just said, ‘No, I can't keep you. They told me that I have to turn my library into a team center.’”
Beyond the professional upheaval, Hensley and Dowda worry about what the absence of a school library will mean for students’ success in elementary school and beyond. Third grade is widely noted as a critical time for children to achieve reading proficiency, otherwise putting them at risk of falling behind academically during each subsequent year.
“I teach them to love to read,” Hensley said. “If you're invested so much in reading and math, then you're missing a major component [by closing libraries]. Because if a kid loves to read, they will read more. If a kid loves to read, he will comprehend more. We are part of that solution.”
Hensley said she visited her former colleagues and students at Lockhart monthly during the 2023-24 school year, and students asked her if she was back to reopen the library each time. It has been turned into a team center with about 50 desks, she says, where students are sent if they finish their classwork early.
Hensley said the school’s library, even if it’s not operating as one, still has books thanks to the principal’s actions in 2023. A work crew arrived to remove the shelves — making way for the team center desks — when the principal was at an off-campus meeting, Hensley recalled. The principal returned just in time to tell the crew that nothing was to be taken.
“She said, ‘We'll work that out, because you're not taking the books,’” Hensley says. “She pushed back, and I appreciate her 100 percent because still the library itself at Lockhart is basically intact.”
Houston ISD told Houston Landing that some schools allow students to informally check out books on an “honor system.”
The NES approach might fix the problem of low test scores, she said, “but it's not going to give you a lifetime learner or lifetime reader that will read and comprehend and think for themselves.”
While the district is moving forward with bringing more schools in its New Education System — and closing more libraries in the process — Dowda said that there aren’t any parents or community members she’s heard from who see library closures as a smart move.
“Why are you closing the libraries when you want to improve literacy and reading scores? They have not yet explained to us how that makes sense,” Dowda said. “I'm not the only one who has pointed out that this is not happening in the schools in the west side of Houston, which are the affluent schools that are mostly white. It is happening in the Title I schools with high poverty rates that are populated mostly by African American and Hispanic students.”
Dowda won’t be looking for yet another librarian job within Houston ISD. Instead, she found one in a different school district nearby. She predicts other educators who work at NES schools will do the same.
“I'm going to go to another district that values libraries,” she said, “and where I can have stability in a library and go about my librarian business of helping children find books that they enjoy reading.”
‘It’s Segregation’
It was last November that Yarborough, the Houston teacher and parent, stepped outside the bounds of the new NES curriculum for the final time.
After the summer protest, Yarborough started the 2023-24 school year using the district’s mandated materials. But three months in, she had had enough of watching students in her English language arts class mentally check out from the monotony of the new structure: She read off district-created slides, and then students answered a multiple-choice question by holding up a markerboard where they scribbled an A, B, C or D. For short-answer questions, they wrote on an index card. Over and over, until it was time for a five-question quiz.
Would Miles or any of those board members send their child to an NES school? They would say, 'Oh, no. My kids need to be more challenged.'
— Melissa Yarborough
“By November I was like, ‘I'm done with this,’” Yarborough recalls. “They're not learning. I know they can. I'm going to go back to a great lesson.”
For Native American Heritage Month, Yarborough decided to introduce her sixth graders to stories, poems and songs that fit the theme, despite them not being approved for use. Each time she rebelled by using a story or activity in class, even if an observing school administrator had liked the lesson, her supervisor would remind Yarborough the next day not to stray from the slides that were sent over by the district.
Eventually, an assistant principal called Yarborough into her office. She reminded Yarborough that the district’s orders barred teachers at NES-aligned schools like Navarro Middle from giving students quizzes, tests or any assessment outside of what was part of district-provided slideshows.
“It sounded kind of like a threat where she said, ‘I'm telling you before the [executive director] comes and tells you herself,’” Yarborough recalls. “‘You're going to be in big trouble with the ED herself if you don't start doing this now.’”
Yarborough quit her teaching job in January. She now works as a teacher in a nearby district, outside of the NES program. She couldn’t be part of a system that was forcing her to, as Yarborough puts it, treat students like machines.
“I knew they weren't learning. I knew I wasn't preparing them for anything in life besides a STAAR test,” Yarborough says, referencing the state’s annual standardized test, “and I was having to deny their humanity while we did that. I was so stressed, and my stomach was always a knot. I was like, ‘This is horrible. I can't keep doing this.’”
The slideshow model didn’t give her time to help students understand concepts before moving on, or for students to practice a skill on their own. The timed, jam-packed schedule didn’t even leave most kids with time to go to the bathroom, she says.
“They've just been holding up the whiteboard on the multiple-choice question slides, so they haven't been able to read a story and think through it and make mistakes and get feedback on their own,” Yarborough says. “So you have kids who will give up, and they just write any letter on their whiteboard, and it doesn't matter to them. And Mike Miles calls this engagement, but that's just obedience — because when a student is really engaged, it's their mind that's engaged, not their hand with a marker.”
Despite educators’ concerns, district leaders are riding high on data showing that some campuses made huge improvements in their overall accountability ratings — rising by 30 or more points, in some cases — during Miles’ first year at the helm. The district called the increases “remarkable” in a news release, noting the changes made under the New Education System.
While the state has been blocked from releasing annual school accountability scores, Houston ISD crunched the numbers itself and released its campuses’ preliminary scores. Wheatley High School, the source of low scores that triggered the state takeover, will increase from a “D” rating in 2023 to a “B” at the end of the 2024 academic year. The number of schools rated “A” and “B” will more than double during the same period, according to the district, while “D” and “F” campuses will fall to 41 schools in 2024 compared to 121 the previous year.
“We are incredibly proud of what we’ve been able to achieve in one year,” Miles said in the news release. “Together with our dedicated teachers, principals, and everyone at HISD, we will continue to provide high-quality instruction that builds on this growth.”
The first year of NES was turbulent, with a seemingly constant stream of new reforms. Protesters spoke out against the overhaul at public meetings, with plans for massive layoffs angering parents. Employee turnover during Miles’ tenure was 33 percent higher than the previous year.
Miles has remained cool under the barrage of criticism — including from a panel of graduating seniors who had firsthand experience under his New Education System. He brushed off the idea that a 9,000-student drop in enrollment was worrisome, telling the Houston Chronicle that the “numbers are changing every day ... but we feel confident that we’re going to keep growing in our enrollment until September.”
In the same article, a parent said her children had “hollow zombie faces” due to the stressful environment at their Houston ISD school. She opted to have them do virtual schooling this year.
As a parent, Yarborough wasn’t only troubled by how the superintendent’s test-centered plan changed school for the students she taught. Both of her children attended Pugh Elementary, part of the original cohort of NES schools, during the 2023-24 school year. She said her daughter’s fourth-grade class operated much like Yarborough was expected to run her sixth-grade class. Her son’s first-grade class wasn’t much different.
“My younger one would say, ‘Today's the same as every day,’” she recalls. “He said there wasn't the best part or the worst part. It wasn't good and it wasn't bad. It was just a flat line, like blah, every day.”
Yarborough found another school for her children — her son has specifically asked not to go back to Pugh Elementary for second grade. But to ensure she chose a school that’s beyond the reach of the New Education System, it meant looking at areas of the city that are wealthier.
“Miles is not going to target the schools where the parents have wealth and power, and that's concentrated in the schools with higher white populations,” Yarborough says. “And that's due to a legacy of racism.”
She feels bad about searching for schools based on the income level of their students’ families. But she doesn’t feel like she has a choice.
“Would Miles or any of those board members send their child to an NES school? They would say, ‘Oh, no. My kids need to be more challenged. My kids need a better social environment. My kids,’” Yarborough said. “They're giving our kids less. They're treating our kids differently. It's segregation.”
When Tim Walz was announced as Kamala Harris’ running mate earlier this month, his ascendancy helped to elevate the idea of educators serving in public office.
Walz, who served several terms in Congress before becoming the governor of Minnesota in 2018, is a former high school social studies teacher and football coach who, to this day, holds those identities close. Come January 2025, depending on the outcome of the election, he could be moving to Washington, D.C., to serve as vice president of the United States.
Though Walz is squarely in the spotlight during this election, a number of other educators are seeking public office this year, many for the first time.
In many ways, politics is an obvious and natural progression for educators, teacher-candidates and political scientists say.
This summer, EdSurge spoke with five individuals running for election — three classroom teachers, one superintendent and an early childhood advocate — about their motivations and the skills and experiences that would set them up for success in office, if elected in November.
Once a Public Servant, Always a Public Servant
Plenty of former educators hold public office today, including at the federal level, such as Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, a former preschool teacher, and Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut, a former high school history and government teacher.
“They’re already public servants,” Siegel-Stechler points out. “They have a lot of insight and experience in how to navigate some of the challenges that go along with large public institutions and the processes that make government happen.”
Jonathan Collins, an assistant professor of political science and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, adds that individuals who prioritize public service and volunteerism are more likely to engage with civic and political organizations.
Arguably the highest form of service is to teach every day.
— Jonathan Collins
“It’s the involvement in those networks that tends to catapult people into the process of running for office,” Collins says. “Think about teachers and teachers’ unions, about what a teacher does on an everyday basis. Arguably the highest form of service is to teach every day.”
Chad King Wilson Sr. is a high school alternative education and social studies teacher in Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. He’s running for a seat on the Frederick County Board of Education this November.
Teachers, Wilson says, understand that their role — with students, with families, in a community — has a certain power and, with it, demands a certain responsibility.
“In politics today, the decisions our elected officials make affect our lives — sometimes in small ways, sometimes big,” he says. “Educators have a service mindset and a duty of care in everything they do. That serves you well in any elected position, because you’re already serving. You’re a public servant, [asking], ‘How can I uplift you? How can I get you where you need to be?’”
Education Is Inherently Political — Even More So Today
Between the pandemic, which led to divisive and prolonged school closures, and the increasing politicization of education — from book bans to discussions of gender identity and legislation about what can be taught or said in a classroom — many teachers feel vilified.
“Teachers have found themselves under intense scrutiny in recent years, and that has really made them staunch advocates,” says Siegel-Stechler of Tufts. “When you feel like you are asked to justify and asked to uphold your values, that can lead you to want to make big changes.”
A few conditions must be in place for someone to run for office, adds Collins of Columbia. Once you account for access to resources and connections, the most important factor is being energized.
“You could argue no professional has had reasons to be as fired up over the last few years as teachers,” he says. “Teachers have been showing that they are fed up for quite a while. It’s the people who get fed up who tend to see politics as that next step as well.”
Especially when teachers feel that the conversations being had and decisions being made about them and their students don’t reflect reality, that can inspire some to run.
Numerous candidates noted that their school boards and state legislatures lack representation from people who have knowledge and understanding about schools today.
“You don’t have a lot of people [in office] who are still in front of students, working inside of schools, who know this because they live it every day,” says Wilson. “That gave me the nudge to go over the line: ‘I’ve gotta step up.’”
Sarah Marzilli is an elementary school art teacher who was running for a seat on the school board in Volusia County, Florida, but recently lost her primary. She feels that, with the pace of change in schools today — from social media and cellphone use to the growing challenges around mental health — school boards need representation from current educators.
“We need to make sure we have someone who’s in the trenches, so to speak,” Marzilli says, “not an outsider looking in on it.”
Sara-Elizabeth Cottrell, a longtime Spanish teacher and current substitute teacher who is running for a seat in the Kentucky state legislature, notes that because a lot of legislators are lawyers, they can have unrealistic expectations about how quickly change happens in education.
“When they talk about education, they talk as if you can snap your fingers and have something done,” Cottrell says. “As teachers, we know the amount of time it takes. We know more about the initiatives that look good on paper but won’t actually move the needle. … We’re results-driven.”
While tuning in to a recent public committee hearing about the growing population of English language learners in Kentucky schools, Cottrell was appalled by committee members’ ignorance about basic education codes. “I wanted to jump through the screen,” she recalls. “No one knows what they’re talking about. … They’re not even asking the right questions.”
Susie Hedalen is currently the superintendent of Montana’s Townsend Public School District and running to be Montana’s next superintendent of public instruction. Hedalen has worked as a teacher, a principal and a superintendent at districts of varying sizes in Montana.
“I’m living it every day,” Hedalen says. “I know what our challenges are. I know what school leaders feel like they need and how the state could support leaders as well as teachers. I get to work with students and families every day and really have a pulse on what’s happening in education in Montana right now.”
A Bevy of Transferable Skills
Educators tend to possess a set of skills that lend themselves well to public office, many people pointed out.
For one, teachers are often effective communicators to different audiences, be it students, families or administrators. They can communicate well one-on-one but also to large groups.
Teachers are practiced decision-makers, too.
“They make a lot of hard decisions every single day,” Siegel-Stechler says. “Alone in a class with 20 to 30 kids, they have to be able to make good decisions on the fly.”
Educators are often good listeners. They are trusted members in their communities. They get along well with people who have a range of personalities and opinions. They have a certain comfort level with public speaking. And they tend to be disciplined. Those are all qualities that came up during interviews.
Educators are usually empathetic too, Collins says, noting that empathy is a quality missing from our politics today.
“In order to be an effective teacher, you have to be able to empathize with students — not judge them based on preconceived ideas, understand the humanity and dignity of each child and how to maximize their potential,” he says.
Educators Take a Seat at the Table
The two candidates who are running for seats in their state legislatures — Cottrell from Kentucky and Safiyah Jackson from North Carolina — both noted that the electoral system is stacked against people like them.
“If you’re an educator with educator friends, or a Black woman with Black friends, it makes fundraising very difficult,” says Jackson, an early childhood advocate and chief strategy officer at the North Carolina Partnership for Children. “If you’re a lawyer with lawyer friends, bam. It’s a system designed to deliver exactly as it’s delivering.”
It takes a lot of time and money and social connections to run and win a campaign, Cottrell says. That’s not very practical if you’re a full-time employee earning regular wages.
“I would love to see more teachers run for office and be empowered to do that,” Cottrell says, “but that’s really, really difficult under the work burden they have.” (Cottrell is not teaching full-time right now.)
The result, she says, is a body of legislators that does not include many people with “boots on the ground, who are getting their hands dirty in the work.”
Cottrell understands that not every educator can or wants to run for office. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be involved in the process of politics in some way. They might consider alternatives like asking to testify before a committee or offering to work with their representatives on legislation pertaining to education.
“The more teachers are involved in the process, the better relationship there will be between the statehouse and schools,” Cottrell says. “That can only benefit the kids.”
There are plenty of changes teachers say could help them do their jobs better, such as adequate planning time and support for their well-being.
Louisiana’s Department of Education decided to tackle some of these challenges by bringing together a group of teachers to recommend solutions — and they’re seeing change take shape.
The Let Teachers Teach workgroup released its list of recommendations in May, and their ideas span improvements for dealing with issues including professional development, student discipline and what one of the state’s top education leaders calls “the art of teaching.”
“To me, teaching is a pedagogical science, but it requires an artistic delivery,” Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley says. “Unfortunately, many teachers — due to bureaucracies or inadequacies of leadership — feel as if they're more of a robot than a professional.”
The 18 recommendations don’t mince words when describing the problems teachers face. Its section on training eschews “redundant professional learning sessions” in favor of strategies like individually tailored teacher growth plans and more time for better collaboration and planning.
One of the recommendations on discipline is titled “Trust us — don’t blame us,” calling for “excessively disruptive” students to be removed from the classroom and for “ungovernable students” to be assigned to attend alternative schools. This kind of “exclusionary discipline” practice has its critics, who argue it can be counterproductive and that it unfairly targets students who are racial minorities. However, post-pandemic, some teachers are looking for new solutions as they’ve struggled to manage what they call worsened student behaviors.
Brumley says that four recommendations became laws during the state’s spring legislative session. They include a law requiring disruptive students to be removed from class at a teacher’s request and prohibiting retaliation against the teacher.
Others will ban cellphone use in schools starting in the fall and require extra pay for teachers’ “non-academic” work, which Brumley says might include activities like working the concession stand at a school football game.
The legislature also tasked the Louisiana Department of Education and State Board of Education with devising a more effective plan for state-mandated training, Brumley explains. The Let Teachers Teach recommendations described these trainings as something teachers do “outside of the normal school day and without compensation.”
Brumley says he wanted the working group to come up with “real-world solutions to make the profession stronger while keeping in mind that student outcomes have to be paramount.” The concept was to address problems that teachers consistently told him hindered their ability to do their job.
“A very clear example is I will hear teachers say, ‘My school forces me to read a script,’” Brumley says. “We were very clear around that particular concept in the recommendations: Unless it is explicit, direct instructions or it's a novice teacher or a struggling teacher, effective teachers need the autonomy to deliver the content through the art of the profession and not simply reading from a script.”
While Brumley and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry have come out in strong support of the recommendations — they led a news conference announcing the document’s release — that’s not to say the education landscape there is without conflict.
Low earning potential has some Louisiana teachers wondering how much longer they can stay in the field, and the governor declined to back permanent pay raises. It’s also a place where culture wars are playing out, which teachers say are a mental strain — the governor is suing the federal government over expanded Title IX guidelines that protect transgender students from discrimination.
When Jacob, a 10th grader with vision impairment, signed up for an AP class, it made him feel like a castaway.
His ambitions to learn were thwarted because his teacher had assigned handouts and a three-week-long lesson plan that relied on a website that wasn’t easy for him to navigate. So he felt frustrated, isolated: “I am stranded on this desert island because that site doesn't work [with my screen reader],” Jacob later told a researcher, also adding, “You can't just re-change your whole teaching plan, especially when you've distributed it.”
Like Jacob, many students with disabilities are forced to work extra, advocates argue. They have to learn just like other students, but they can also have to deal with assignments they can’t access and other digital hurdles. That’s particularly the case in K-12 classes, where teaching materials may be hard to parse, according to the preprint of a research article that argues that many of these students have to figure out how to access basic documents on their own, outside of school. (The article cites Jacob’s story, though the author declined to provide further details to EdSurge, citing ethical concerns.)
But there’s a push to change that.
In April, the U.S. Department of Justice published its final rule for web and mobile accessibility. It updated Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the law that requires state and local governments to supply equal opportunity — including in services like public schools, community colleges and public universities — for people with disabilities. The update is meant to expand access by spelling out specific technical standards government entities must follow.
This latest update was crucial because it set a clock for when schools' digital materials have to be accessible and specifies standards for how to measure whether they are, according to some observers.
Ticking Clock
Under the new guidelines, digital text, images, audio, videos, documents, controls and animations must meet a series of “success criteria.” Per reporting from Community College Daily, these include:
“Content should not be limited to a single display orientation, such as portrait or landscape.
Captions are provided for all live audio content in synchronized media.
Captions are provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronized media.
Audio description is provided for all prerecorded video content in synchronized media.
Non-text content should have an equivalent text alternative.
Colors used are bold enough to be seen on the screen.”
It’s historic that the law now clearly signals the way for public institutions to measure digital accessibility, says Glenda Sims, the chief information accessibility officer for Deque Systems, a company focused on digital accessibility. These sort of requirements have been known about for years, she adds, but now there’s a “ruler” in law for measuring if they’ve been met.
Some disability advocates say they appreciate that the Justice Department shifted the burden away from students. Until now, students — and sometimes teachers — have had to work to make digital content accessible, says Natalie Shaheen, an assistant professor of blind education at Illinois State University’s College of Education.
But under the rule, educational institutions are responsible for the websites and materials they use for education. So now, schools have to worry about purchasing inaccessible materials, according to Elizabeth Barker, a senior technical assistant and project director for CAST, a nonprofit that created the Universal Design for Learning framework.
While not new, the obligations in the rule have become pressing.
“Most public colleges and universities are facing a two-year compliance clock that started ticking a few months ago,” wrote Jarret Cummings, a senior advisor for policy and government relations at Educause, in an email to EdSurge. It’s vital that they “quickly engage their corporate providers” to figure out how they will meet these standards in time, Cummings wrote.
That applies to K-12 as well: Districts should be vetting accessibility as part of their procurement process, says Barker, of CAST.
For private edtech companies, it’s slightly more complicated. Vendors are “indirectly responsible” for these rules, according to experts. The weight of the rule falls on public institutions themselves — K-12 schools, colleges and universities — but if vendors want to keep working with these educational institutions, they also need to become compliant, according to Sims, of Deque Systems.
Right now, it seems like families can’t sue the vendors directly, she says. But that doesn’t mean they can ignore this. In fact, she adds, contracts with schools can mean there could be “legal pressure” on vendors if they don’t also follow the guidelines. Eventually, they could even face lawsuits from families. For example, in California, there’s a proposal for a law that would allow people to directly sue companies whose websites aren’t accessible. Sims says she is closely watching the bill.
There’s also a “business case” for considering accessibility during the design of products, Sims says. As it dawns on schools that they are responsible for the digital accessibility of the companies they purchase from, companies that can prove accessibility will benefit. What’s more, the cost of fixing accessibility issues is significantly higher once a product is released rather than in the design phase, argues Sims, stressing the need to carefully consider these issues early on. Cost can climb quickly, she says, especially when some reviews have detected multiple accessibility problems across home pages.
On the Hook
Accessibility has become a major focus area in education policy. The revised national edtech plan from the U.S. Department of Education flagged “access” as one of three major technological divides — access, design and use — that can prevent students from fully engaging with education. At the time it was released, experts said they hoped the revision would move the national conversation beyond mere access to edtech and into how effective tech is for learning. But funding lapses this year have threatened to reduce access, including the end of the Federal Communications Commission’s “Affordable Connectivity Program,” which was key in connecting many families to the internet.
Will all this translate to greater access for disabled students? Advocates are optimistic, especially in the wider context of pro-accessibility legislation.
“This is certainly the most we’ve seen — ever,” says Shaheen, of Illinois State. There may be more to come. The Education Department is planning an update to its IT accessibility regulations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, for which these latest changes provide a template, according to Cummings, of Educause. That rule would apply to private institutions, he wrote, adding: “So, private colleges and universities should consider getting a head start on the accessibility requirements most likely heading their way.”
To Shaheen, removing barriers for disabled students in reality relies on schools grabbing for the obvious. Schools aren’t taking full advantage of what's known about building digital interfaces that are easier for disabled students to use, she says. But, she adds, the most common barriers to disabled K-12 students are the easiest to fix. For example: One common hurdle is that images don’t have “alternative text,” she adds. This is an alternative representation of the image for blind and low-vision people, and it can usually be added without special expertise in programming because many content creation platforms already have the capability as a built-in feature, she says. So whoever is creating the content simply would need to right-click on the image and add the alternative text.
Still, to really help disabled students, schools need to be more “proactive,” Shaheen argues. That involves devoting resources and people to delivering greater accessibility, she says.
Yet resources may be hard to come by, since the K-12 and college sectors are under enormous pressure right now. They are facing a number of stark challenges that include slumping student academic scores coming back from the pandemic, declining enrollments and the end of ESSER funding.
Another wrinkle: Unless they’ve been following it, K-12 schools might not even know that they are on the hook for their vendors, says Barker, of CAST. It hasn’t received enough attention, she adds.
Still, for advocates like Shaheen, there are many teachers and families around the country dedicated to increasing accessibility, and the formal rule gives them extra muscle, she says: “Sometimes it’s hard to make social justice things happen. But it's pretty amazing what some teachers can get done.”
It’s no secret that high school students are looking at the prospect of college more skeptically, and a large part of their hesitation comes from worry about taking on thousands of dollars in student loans.
Parsing education data into snack-sized servings.
It’s only natural that they would experience sticker shock after researching the annual cost of attendance at universities that have caught their eye — which might be equivalent to a parent’s annual salary.
But should students count on having to scrape together that full amount?
Not likely, based on EdSurge’s number crunching.
Students generally don’t pay the full cost of attendance at public universities, according to federal data from College Scorecard. While the data only tracks students who receive federal financial aid — be it grants or loans — it shows that students typically get some level of discount even at the priciest public institutions and regardless of income level.
Across 1,800 public colleges and universities, the average full-price cost of attendance clocked in about $17,300 per year. Factoring in students’ grants and scholarships, it fell to a net average cost $10,200.
Yet seeing the gross cost of attendance can be intimidating for college-minded high schoolers and their families, particularly for those who are low-income or who aspire to be the first in their families to graduate with an advanced degree.
Before dismissing a college or university based on sticker price, students should use an institution’s net price calculator to see what they might be paying after financial aid, says Jill Desjean, director of policy analysis at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.
“Like with all things in postsecondary education, there's no one size fits all. Some schools would have lots of students that don't pay full price, and some schools would have most that do,” she explains. But the full cost of attendance is “not what most students pay. So don't be turned off by the sticker price. Odds are good that what you'll pay will be discounted to some degree.”
How Family Income Affects Tuition Prices
There were extremes on either side of the net price spectrum, with a handful of colleges reporting that students got money back on average thanks to receiving financial aid, while at others, students saw little difference between the pre- and post-financial aid price tags.
The University of California, Berkeley, is one of the country’s most expensive public universities, with an annual average cost of attendance slightly more than $41,000, according to federal data. That includes tuition, fees, books, other supplies and living expenses.
After grants and scholarships are applied, however, that figure falls to an average net price of about $17,400. Students in the lowest income bracket — with a family income of $30,000 or less — are left with an average net price of $9,200. While not exactly cheap, it’s roughly one-fifth of the original price tag. Students in the data’s highest financial bracket — with a family income of more than $110,000 — saw an average net price of $36,200.
This tracks with an analysis for the Brookings Institution, which found that family income is a better indicator than the full sticker price of what a student can expect to pay for tuition. Nonresident senior fellow Phillip Levine found that, between the 1995 and 2019 academic years, the share of college students who pay the full cost of attendance fell from 53 percent to 26 percent for those enrolled in state at public colleges. It fell from 29 percent to 16 percent for those enrolled at private, nonprofit colleges.
“The typical net price increases with income,” he states in the report. “Every additional dollar of income translates to around a 16-cent increase in net price.”
The net cost of a higher education has gone up for students at all income levels, he writes.
Given all of the variables that go into calculating how much need-based financial aid a student will get — not just how much parents earn, but factors like family size and the cost of the university — Desjean says price can be a barrier to students of any income level. However, lower-income families are typically looking at tougher choices when it comes to covering college expenses.
“I think low-income students are maybe disproportionately impacted, even with financial aid, just with having less discretionary income,” Desjean says. “A higher-income family might say, ‘We can't take a vacation this year.’ Whereas a low-income family may never take a vacation, so the things they’d be looking at giving up would be cutting their already tight grocery budget.”
First-generation or low-income students may also be less aware of financial aid that’s available to them, she says, while other students may have people in their lives who can give advice on and encourage them to explore all the aid options available.
Even families with similar incomes can have widely different expenses making demands on their budgets, Desjean adds, or have different mindsets about whether they can cut back to pay for college.
Organizations like the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators
are trying to dispel myths about financial aid, namely that it’s too difficult to apply for or that students shouldn’t apply if they assume they’re ineligible.
The U.S. Department of Education did itself no favors when its chaotic rollout of the new FAFSA system during the 2023-2024 school year hit technical snags that caused some students to miss out on money.
That’s a shame, Desjean says, because the new system did deliver on its promise to make applying for federal aid faster and easier — if students could use it.
“This year should have been the year we could really celebrate those changes and say, ‘Look, everyone, it's easy to apply for financial aid. Go ahead and do it,’” she says. “Unfortunately it kept with the old narrative, or it may have even amplified the old narrative. So I think the work we all need to be doing in the college access space is trying to remind students, ‘This year was not great, but there have been improvements to the FAFSA. Next year is going to be even better. Don't be intimidated.’”
There’s a new battle raging in the long-running war over costly college textbooks, one that may strike a serious blow to the textbook subscription programs promoted by publishers and criticized by student advocates.
The U.S. Department of Education recently started reevaluating financial aid regulations from 2016 that effectively allow colleges to automatically bill students for books and supplies as long as those materials meet criteria that include being sold at below competitive market rates.
This practice has enabled the growth of a digital subscription business model for textbooks, where publishers sign deals with colleges and bookstores to charge students fees in exchange for access to mostly online versions of the course materials assigned for their classes. Known in the publishing industry as “inclusive access” or “equitable access” programs, proponents say they benefit students by saving them money and ensuring they have all the materials they need at the start of the semester.
Current regulations require that these arrangements permit students to opt out of participating — therefore allowing them to hunt on their own for better prices on textbook rentals or secondhand copies. But opponents of this bundling model have long claimed that it’s very difficult for students to truly opt out, due to the labyrinthine processes required or because that option is often poorly publicized on campus. Additionally, since some subscription programs include courseware systems that professors use to grade homework and administer tests, sometimes students who opt out effectively can’t participate in their classes.
Now the federal government is considering changing the rules in ways that would essentially make it harder for colleges to automatically bill students for books as long as they allow students to opt out. Instead, institutions would have to invite students to opt in to paying for textbook subscription programs by authorizing these kinds of charges.
Such a shift would not necessarily doom “inclusive access” programs, both supporters and detractors say. But it could undermine the business model, which depends on colleges delivering student customers at scale to publishers in exchange for volume discounts.
“The efficiencies in the opt-out model would be lost,” says Richard Hershman, vice president of government relations for the National Association of College Stores.
The White House signaled support for the possible rule change. The next step in the process would be for the Department of Education to formally propose the change in the Federal Register and to open a public comment period. In order for a rule change to take effect in mid-2025, regulations would need to be finalized by Nov. 1. Otherwise, any changes would take effect in mid-2026.
Searching for Savings
The business of textbooks elicits strong opinions from nearly everyone in higher education. And the question of whether subscription services help or hurt students is a contentious one.
Sydney Greenway, a rising senior at the University of Pittsburgh, advocates for course material affordability through Student Public Interest Research Groups, or PIRGs. She had her first encounter with the “inclusive access” model during her freshman year at Wayne State University, when she saw a charge for course materials on her tuition bill that she didn’t recognize.
“I didn’t know what it was, I couldn’t click on it, I couldn’t opt out,” she says. “I had to wait for the first day of class to have it explained to me.”
Her professor told the class that the fee was part of a program designed to save students money by delivering them a digital textbook. That explanation made sense to Greenway — until she did some searching and found the same textbook on a different website for a lower price. When she started to use the assigned digital book, she realized she didn’t like that she was unable to print out her readings and that she couldn’t highlight or annotate the online text.
“If I’m reading it just on my laptop, it’s not going to be retained,” she says.
Since learning more about textbook options, Greenway has prioritized finding low-cost options that she can interact with the way she prefers. Her first choice, she says, is for a professor to assign a free, open educational resource that she can print as a PDF at the library. Her second choice is to look on eBay or another online retailer for a physical copy of a used textbook. As a last resort, she’ll go to her university bookstore and rent a used version. She estimates that shopping around has saved her hundreds of dollars on course materials each semester.
“If I’m not paying for $500 of textbooks, that’s a month of rent. I can get groceries that aren’t ramen,” she explains. “It really helps financially.”
Yet proponents of textbook subscription services argue that they, too, are saving students money. They point to data showing that the cost of course materials has lately leveled off, and that student spending on textbooks is falling after years of upticks.
“The savings are real,” Hershman says. “If the material is not below competitive market rates,” he adds, “it can’t be a part of the program.”
But a new report from Student PIRGs calls into question whether textbook bundling programs can really take credit for those financial trends. The research, which analyzed 171 textbook subscription contracts at 92 colleges and higher ed consortiums, was "not able to find clear evidence that these contracts provide savings for students," says report co-author Dan Xie, political director at Student PIRGs. “If the savings are actually tied to automatic billing programs, it should be obvious from reading these contracts that there would be savings. It’s highly problematic that we can’t find the receipts of these savings” — especially considering federal rules require programs to charge below-market rates.
Of course, publishers, bookstores and colleges themselves have other vested interests in the success of subscription programs. Hershman says that bookstores save a lot of labor and time when they don’t have to manage used textbooks, and that it’s a “huge cost savings for publishers and stores” when they don’t have to process textbook returns. Digital subscription programs also help combat textbook piracy, Hershman adds, where students illegally download resources rather than pay for them.
And the Student PIRGs report found that in many cases, colleges benefit directly from “inclusive access” deals by taking a cut of the profits.
“It can in some ways explain why there are some colleges arguing against an opt-in policy,” says Nicole Allen, director of open education for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, or SPARC, which advocates for open access resources.
“When we’re talking about charges students have been forced to make by their institution, who then gives money to the bookstore, and then gives a cut to colleges,” she argues, it might create “potential backwards incentives” on textbook affordability for students.
SPARC supports the possible proposed rule change that would require colleges to let students opt in, rather than opt out, to automatic billing for textbooks. That would put pressure on publishers, bookstores and colleges to prove to students that subscription programs really are an affordable option, Allen says.
“If the program is offering a really good deal for students, there is no reason the program won’t continue. If it’s not a good deal for students, the program may not operate — and it shouldn’t if it’s not a good deal for students,” she says. “Make it easy for them to say ‘yes.’”
During her nearly eight years in business, Dawn Kelly watched again and again as staff left their jobs at The Nourish Spot, the smoothie joints she owns in Queens and Brooklyn, because they couldn’t find good child care.
Sometimes it was because the care was too expensive, or parents thought there were no quality options for their kids. Whatever the reason, it created retention issues for the small business — issues that Kelly has had to ponder as she considers expanding.
“We’ve not necessarily been able to hire all of the people that we want to hire, because their [child care] hours don’t allow them to work when we need them to work,” Kelly said.
Most of her staff of 10 are single parents who are managing the chaos of a child care system in disrepair, where costs are too high for most. Kelly empathizes: Years ago she was a single mom in corporate America, grateful for an employer that provided care on-site. But as a small business owner, it’s not something she has the capital to afford.
“I feel for them. I try to work around their schedules because I’ve been in their shoes before,” Kelly said. “It’s important that our legislators understand that and make it easier for us to do business and make it easier for us to hire community residents, no matter what their station is.”
In a new survey published Thursday, more than a third of small business owners say that the lack of child care in their communities is preventing them from operating or expanding their business. The survey was produced by Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses Voices program, which advocates for small business owners. The data was first shared exclusively with The 19th.
Goldman Sachs polled 1,259 business owners in 47 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. in mid-April about their thoughts on child care and its effect on their companies. Nearly 60 percent said there aren’t sufficient high-quality and affordable options in their communities, which is affecting their workforce. About 35 percent of those owners said that a lack of day care slots, as well as their high cost, is forcing employees to cut hours or forgo work entirely.
Another poll earlier this year by the Small Business Majority, an advocacy organization with 85,000 members, had similar findings: A third have lost revenue and earnings because of employees’ child care challenges. About half have seen lower productivity. A quarter of owners said they had to shut down their business because of their own child care challenges.
Particularly since the start of the pandemic, there has been a “groundswell” of employees talking more openly about their struggles with child care, and of employers being more actively engaged on the issue, said Sarah Rittling, the executive director of the First Five Years Fund, an early childhood education advocacy group.
The cost of child care has been rising for years — typically outpacing inflation annually. In 2023, child care cost families $11,582 on average, according to Child Care Aware, a national advocacy organization. That is roughly 10 percent of a married couple’s median income and 32 percent of the median income of a single parent.
Small business owners told Goldman Sachs they’d like to see government support for improving their options. As many as 77 percent would support an increase in federal funding for child care. Past polling has led to similar findings, with small business owners across the political spectrum calling for more federal funding.
Many day cares and home-based child cares are also small businesses that typically operate on microscopic profit margins. Federal funding that could improve their sustainability would support other businesses, said Jen Legere, founder and owner of A Place to Grow, a child care center with three locations in New Hampshire and one in North Carolina. Legere has been working with the Department of Labor to establish the first child care director apprenticeship program.
“Child care is the workforce behind the workforce,” Legere said. “Until we really start to support that child care workforce and increase the level of professionalism across our workforce and create career pathways for them, we are not going to be able to grow more child care centers and to increase capacity across the United States — and then support our businesses.”
Some small business owners are willing to be part of the solution. According to the survey, 62 percent said that if they were able to provide a child care benefit at work, it would have a positive effect on talent recruitment and retention. To help do that, 70 percent said they would support legislation to increase the business tax credit designed to help small businesses that provide care.
Currently, the federal government allows businesses to get up to $150,000 back on their taxes for providing child care for their employees. But owners surveyed said they’d support increasing that amount to $500,000 — a proposal currently on the table in Congress. That bipartisan bill, known as the Child Care Investment Act, would expand the tax credit for the first time since 2001.
The way the credit currently works, a business has to spend $1 million to get the maximum $150,000 tax credit. Under the new bill, the refund would rise as high as $500,000. A small business would get back even more — up to $600,000. Businesses that spend less than $1 million would get more money back as well, a refund of up to 60 percent instead of 25 percent.
Rep. Salud Carbajal, the California Democrat who co-sponsored the legislation with Oregon Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, said the idea came out of roundtables with small business owners conducted in 2022. When asked what the top issue affecting the future of their business was, many said child care.
“I came back with my team and we scoured the child care tax policy area and it became abundantly clear early on that the child care [business] tax credit framework that already exists is a good one, it just needs to be modernized and updated,” Carbajal said.
The bill will also allow small business owners to jointly create child care centers — and still benefit from the credit, a provision not in the current law.
Setting up a new provider could take hundreds of thousands of dollars, something difficult for a single mom-and-pop business. But if all the shops in an area — like a strip mall or a business development district — worked together, that could be a community solution, Carbajal said.
Legere has already benefited from partnering with businesses to provide care. For the past three years, A Place To Grow has partnered with Harmony Home, an assisted-living facility for senior citizens in New Hampshire. Legere’s company manages a small child care center on the property. Harmony Home’s employees can put their children in care on site, and it’s also open to members of the community.
That has solved some of the big challenges she faced with establishing new day care centers. Each time, it has taken her about two years to amass the capital and find the real estate. The promise of business partnerships is that they could increase the overall supply of day cares, instead of trying to find more room in an overcrowded system. Day care closures in the past four years have limited the number of slots available to kids across the country. Waitlists are often years long. Businesses that have tried to offer child care benefits have typically either created an in-house provider or contracted with a local day care. But because there are not enough spots to begin with, other members of the community may lose out. Creating new options helps both groups.
“We need to build partnerships that bring us all together to solve this problem collaboratively,” Legere said. “Businesses keep pointing at child care and [saying], ‘You need to grow.’ We can’t grow without you. You have to help us and support us.”
The Child Care Investment Act has more than three dozen co-sponsors — 31 Democrats and six Republicans — and the endorsement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The bill was introduced last July and likely won’t pass this year, but Carbajal said it has been picking up support and could be included in a tax package expected to go before Congress in 2025.
“It’s an economic issue for our economy, for businesses to be able to thrive. They can’t hire. They can’t retain. They can’t expand,” he said. “I think what this does is really provide some really important tools to be able to succeed more and address a major challenge that now everybody recognizes.”
For years, child care was treated as a fringe topic that was rarely part of the national economic discourse. But its impact on the ability of parents, especially mothers, to participate in the labor force has finally received more attention.
Today, lost work, productivity and tax revenue due to child care challenges costs the U.S. economy an estimated $122 billion a year, according to the Council for a Stronger America, a bipartisan nonprofit of law enforcement and business leaders focused on family policy. Businesses lose $23 billion annually because of lost revenue or hiring costs caused by losing working parents over insufficient care. The U.S. government loses about $21 billion in income and sales tax because parents without child care access typically earn less — and spend less.
It’s an issue small business owners want candidates to discuss this election year. About 55 percent of those surveyed by Goldman Sachs said it has not been sufficiently addressed on the campaign trail. A May poll by the First Five Years Fund found that a whopping 89 percent of voters want candidates to have a plan for helping parents afford high-quality child care, including 80 percent of Republicans, 88 percent of Independents and 99 percent of Democrats.
A presidential debate next week will offer a first test as to whether candidates are listening.
Moms First, an advocacy organization that pushes for child care and other family policies, is circulating a petition asking CNN to ask President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump about child care at the June 27 debate. “It’s time for our leaders to make bold commitments to moms across the country, and fixing the broken child care system is just the beginning,” the organization wrote.
Kelly, however, is skeptical. “I really haven’t heard any candidates talking about child care at all,” she said. “Child care is inherently important to the fabric of our nation, and it’s not just for small businesses. We should want our families to be protected and covered and placed in environments where they will excel — and that starts with our babies.”
Last year, the Department of Commerce announced a historic first: Companies applying for a federal grant program had to provide a plan for offering child care to their workers. The grant money comes from the CHIPS and Science Act, which passed in 2022 and includes $50 billion to expand semiconductor manufacturing and research in the United States.
Also known as microchips, semiconductors are small wafers of circuitry used in computers and smartphones, as well as clean energy technologies like solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars. The United States is racing to develop its chip manufacturing capabilities in a bid to create jobs, reduce dependency on imports and prevent the supply chain issues that were laid bare during the COVID-19 pandemic.
But the government’s push to quickly build out semiconductor production can work only if there are enough people to fill those jobs. The semiconductor industry is projecting a shortage of around 90,000 workers, and the construction industry is already having trouble filling over 400,000 positions.
One way to do that is increase the number of women trained in these jobs. Around 4 percent of the construction workforce and 29 percent of the manufacturing workforce in the United States is made up of women. It’s why Department of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has focused on addressing barriers they have historically faced in these industries — and the most obvious barrier is child care.
“This issue is not a social issue, it’s an economic issue and frankly, it’s a simple question of math,” Raimondo wrote in an emailed statement to The 19th. “If we are going to meet the national and economic security imperatives of the CHIPS for America Program, we are going to have to figure out how to fill the hundreds of thousands of jobs we are creating and we know that reliable and affordable child care is critical to getting more women into the workforce.”
A year later, the promise of child care is beginning to bear fruit. So far seven companies have been announced as grant winners, with five receiving over $150 million — which triggers the need for a child care plan. Each announcement has come with new details about how the companies will meet the child care requirement.
In April, the White House announced that Micron would receive $6.1 billion in funding and that it had already started building a new center that could accommodate 124 children directly across from the company’s Idaho headquarters and the site of a soon-to-be constructed fabrication facility. Micron also plans to build a new child care facility in New York as part of an expansion there.
“We recognize that there are systemic barriers to workforce entry and re-entry, including childcare services, which is why we are focused on providing childcare options that support and expand the workforce, and benefits the broader community,” Micron senior vice president April Arnzen said in a news release.
Intel, which was named a grant recipient in March for over $8 billion, already offers a discount at local child care centers and priority enrollment for employees and has committed to increasing discounted access to more providers. The company also plans to pilot a reimbursement program for hourly workers.
“As part of its commitment to fostering diversity and attracting top talent, Intel has doubled its primary and backup childcare programs, providing affordable, accessible, high-quality childcare for its workers across sites,” a company spokesperson told The 19th in an email. “We believe people should not have to choose between advancing their careers and managing the high cost of child care.”
Other companies, including Samsung, have provided fewer details in their funding announcements, stating that they are exploring options with the Department of Commerce as these contracts are finalized.
An official for the Department of Commerce told The 19th that while she expects companies to reveal more details in the coming months, this requirement is tricky for employers that don’t have an existing child care infrastructure to tap into. “Companies are actually quite willing to offer support for their employees when it comes to child care. … They are generally aware of it as a hindrance to maximum labor participation,” she said. But, she continued, “employers are kind of on their own.”
Child care advocates say that it’s important to get these initiatives right. Without thoughtful implementation, companies risk exacerbating the childcare crisis. Some states plan to bring thousands of workers into communities that are already struggling to meet the needs of residents, where parents already have to wait months and even years for day cares.
“We are tentatively optimistic just because we see areas where things could be moving in the right direction,” Woods said. But, she continued, “a number of companies are really unsure about next steps because child care isn’t necessarily their number one priority.”
And child care is rarely a one-size-fits-all system, experts told the 19th. For some parents, having care at a job site is a convenient benefit, but for others it might make more sense to keep their kids at their current child care centers or to use a home-based provider. And different programs can be better fits for different kids, like for those with special needs or who don’t speak English as a first language.
But states can help employers meet these requirements in a way that is tailored to local communities. Oregon and New York, for example, are taking their own actions to address the impact manufacturing jobs will have on the child care crisis — and to position their states for CHIPS funding.
New York in 2022 passed the Green CHIPS Act, which provides tax incentives for companies to expand semiconductor manufacturing there. Like the federal law, it has a child care requirement. As a result, the state has been working with Micron to create child care options that meet the needs of the local community, in addition to Micron’s employees. It’s investing in a program that trains in-home care providers, as well as supplying a half-million dollars to the YMCA for expanding regional child care offerings. The company has also announced that it plans to partner with local child care centers to subsidize costs for employees who need an option outside of work-based care.
In Oregon, legislators took a different approach when they passed the CHIPS Child Care Fund in March. Companies that receive CHIPS money can contribute to the fund to fulfill their child care requirement, instead of having to come up with solutions themselves.Regan Gray, child care policy adviser with Family Forward Oregon, an advocacy group that helped work on the law, said it gives control to community partners who already know local child care needs best. It’s a way to say: “Let the child care experts take this, and you be the experts on building semiconductors,” she said.
Oregon’s fund does two things: It builds on an existing program that uses federal highway assistance funds to offer child care assistance for workers in trade apprenticeship programs, and extends the payments for up to five years after an apprenticeship. The funds can also be used to help child care providers expand their facilities, train staff, create additional slots and extend hours to meet the needs of construction workers who will be building semiconductor facilities.
Advocates are now planning to move forward on other legislation to expand the fund to meet the needs of parents who will be working in those fabrication plants.
This model solves a couple of problems, says Gray: It takes the burden off of employers, and it moves federal dollars into the public sphere, where they have a better chance of having a long-term effect on child care.
“The concern I have with giving the money to the semiconductor businesses to open up child care is: They’re not in the business of child care. They’re not in the business of sustaining this beyond their grant from the federal government,” she said. “This could be a huge loss of millions and millions of dollars, where we’re investing into these companies that in a couple years realize this is a real headache, rather than giving it to the child care providers that are in the business of doing child care.”
For experts like Gray, the elephant in the room is that the CHIPS fund is trying to compensate for failures at the federal level to pass comprehensive child care legislation.“How do we get more money into child care since Build Back Better didn’t pass?” Gray asks. For the Department of Commerce, she says, it was like: “Let’s stick it in here.”
For that reason, Gray wishes more states would follow Oregon’s lead in addressing the broader need for care. “I do feel like the intent of this requirement in CHIPS was to build out the child care marketplace, not to build out employer-sponsored child care,” Gray said.
But child care is not the only barrier that women face, either at the fabrication plants or in their construction, said Ariane Hegewisch, program director of employment and earnings at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. “If you talk to tradeswomen [about these initiatives] there are kind of two reactions. One is that everybody thinks it’s great that there is this emphasis on child care.” But there are others who say child care is not the biggest problem women in the trades face, she continued: “They say yes, child care matters, but nondiscrimination matters, non-harassment matters, proper outreach matters.”
If companies solely focus on subsidizing child care or providing priority enrollment, their employees could be taking slots from the existing child care pool. “We’ve been pretty adamant that any sort of demand-side solution — so making child care more affordable for families — has to be partnered with a plan to build supply,” said Lea Woods, a senior policy associate at The Century Foundation, a left-of-center think tank that works on public policy issues like child care.
For that reason, the department also recently announced a voluntary “women in construction framework” that companies receiving these grants can commit to in order to achieve Raimondo’s goal of doubling the number of women in construction by the year 2030. The framework is basically a series of best practices that tradeswomen have said are needed to boost their workforce numbers, said Hegewisch.
It includes setting goals on CHIPS-funded projects to increase the number of women on site, building partnerships with community organizations that already work to recruit and train women, investing in career pathways for women in the trades, and making sure that workplaces are free of discrimination.
Hegewisch, who has been researching women in construction and workforce development for nearly two decades, said there is something exciting about the present moment. Other federal agencies, including the departments of Transportation and Energy, which have billions in funding to dole out for infrastructure and clean energy projects, are also finding ways to bring more women into the workforce. And the staff making it happen, she said, “are mostly women who really want to make a difference.”
But being able to hold companies accountable will be essential for progress. Hegewisch is feeling hopeful that another federal development could help: The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs plans to reinstate a requirement for construction companies to report employee demographic data each month. Federal contractors are supposed to ensure that women perform 6.9 percent of construction project hours for any given project — but without tracking it’s impossible to hold them accountable. Creating this rule is one way to give the government more oversight, she said.
“What is new now is there is so much money around,” said Hegewisch. “It’s public money and that money really comes with expectations.”
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