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.

Earlier this year, the district brought the total number of NES schools to 130 — nearly half of schools in the district — when it added 45 campuses to the NES roster.

“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.”

© Photo courtesy of Brandie Dowda.

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.

The step from public teacher to public office holder is, for many, intuitive, says Kelly Siegel-Stechler, a senior researcher at Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.

“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.”

© Frame Stock Footage / Shutterstock

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.

© eamesBot / Shutterstock

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.

Depending on their population size, school districts and state and local governments have until April 2026 or April 2027 to ensure their web content and mobile apps comply with Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.

It will mean they have to act fast.

“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.”

© Photo By Reshetnikov_art/Shutterstock

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.’”

© Alphavector / Shutterstock

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.’”

© Roman Samborskyi / Shutterstock

This story was originally published by The 19th.

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.

In 2020, at the start of the pandemic, more women exited the labor force than men, a phenomenon that had never occurred in American history. Part of the reason was that child care options disappeared. Many women were forced to quit their jobs to care for their children.

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.”

© Oksana Kuzmina / Shutterstock

This story was originally published by The 19th.

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 child care 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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With digital education platforms generating data on how millions of students are learning, they are also sitting on veritable information gold mines for researchers who are trying to improve education.

An ethical and legal conundrum stands in the way: how to responsibly share that data without opening students up to the possibility of having their personal information exposed to outside parties.

Now a consortium of education researchers and learning platforms are developing what they hope is a solution — researchers will never see the actual data.

The project dubbed SafeInsights, helmed by OpenStax at Rice University, is supported by a $90 million grant from the National Science Foundation over five years.

The idea is for SafeInsights to serve as a bridge between its learning platform and research partners, alongside collaborators helping flesh out how the exchange will work to safeguard student privacy.

“In a normal situation, you end up taking data from learning websites and apps and giving it to researchers for them to study and for them to analyze it to learn from,” JP Slavinsky, SafeInsights executive director and OpenStax technical director, says. “Instead, we're taking the researchers’ questions to that data. This creates a safer environment for research that's easier for schools and platforms to participate in, because the data is staying where it is already.”

Deeper Insights on a Large Scale

Another way to think of SafeInsights is as a telescope, say Slavinsky and his colleague Richard Baraniuk, the founder and director of OpenStax, which publishes open access course materials. It will allow researchers to peer into the vast amount of data from learning platforms like the University of Pennsylvania’s Massive Online Open Courses and Quill.org for districts that opt-in to the platform.

Researchers would develop questions — then transform those questions into computer code that can sift through the data — to be delivered to learning platforms. After the results are generated, they would be returned to researchers without the data ever having to be directly shared.

“It is really a partnership where we have researchers coming together with schools and platforms, and we're jointly trying to solve some problems of interest,” Slavinsky says. “We are providing that telescope for others to bring their research agenda and the questions they want to answer. So we're less involved on what specifically is going to be asked and more on making as many questions as possible answerable.”

Part of why this model would be so powerful is how it would increase the scale at which education research is done, Baraniuk says. There are plenty of studies that have small sample sizes of about 50 college students, he explains, who participate as part of a psychology class.

“A lot of the studies are about freshman college kids, right? Well, that's not representative of the huge breadth of different students,” Baraniuk says. “The only way you're gonna be able to see that breadth is by doing large studies, so really the first key behind SafeInsights is partnering with these digital education websites and apps who host literally millions of students every day.”

Another aspect where he sees the project opening new doors for researchers is the diversity of the student populations represented by the learning platform partners, which include education apps for reading, writing and science along with learning management systems.

“By putting together all of these puzzle pieces, the idea is that we can — at a very large scale — get to see a more complete picture of these students,” Baraniuk says. “The big goal of ours is to try to remove as much friction as possible so that more useful research can happen, and then more research-backed pedagogies and teaching techniques can actually get applied. But while removing that friction, how do we keep everything really safeguarded?”

Creating Trust, Protecting Privacy

Before any research takes place, SafeInsights partners at the Future of Privacy Forum are helping develop the policies that will shape how the program guards students’ data.

John Verdi, the Future of Privacy Forum’s senior vice president for policy, says the goal is to have privacy protections baked into how everything operates. Part of that is helping to develop what he calls the “data enclave,” or the process by which researchers can query a learning platform’s data without having direct access. Other aspects include helping develop the review process for how research projects are selected, training researchers on privacy and publishing lessons learned about operating with privacy at the forefront.

“Even if you have great technical safeguards in place, even if you do great ethical vetting,” he says about the training aspect, “at the end of the day, researchers themselves have decisions to make about how to responsibly use the system. They need to understand how the system works.”

The protection of student data privacy in education is generally “woefully under-funded,” he says, but it’s safeguarding that information that allows students to trust learning platforms — and ultimately create research opportunities like SafeInsights.

“Tasking students and parents to protect data is the wrong place to put that responsibility,” Verdi says. “Instead, what we need to do is build digital infrastructure that is privacy respectful by default, and [that] provides assurances that information will be kept confidential and used ethically.”

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Nikita Dutt, a second-year student at the University of California, Davis, didn’t come to college to work with young children.

But since September, she’s spent a couple of hours per day as a tutor through the California Volunteers College Corps, a state-funded partnership program that places college students into paid internships.

She earns $700 per month, provided she tutors elementary students for at least 20 hours per two weeks. She works on math with students in Los Angeles and San Francisco, beamed in through a host program that uses virtual-first tutoring.

Sometimes, Dutt says, it can be hard to keep the students engaged, especially when they are receiving the tutoring from a busy classroom, which often happens. But she recalls one student, a sixth grader with a learning disability. He was struggling to grasp multiplication. She worked with him, diligently, for about five weeks. One day, it just clicked. It was a big deal for the family and the student, and his teacher later told her that whatever she was doing was working.

“And I realized, like, how much difference I made in the student’s learning, and so I really want to help other students as well,” Dutt says.

Dutt is one of the college students being conscripted as high-dose tutors for struggling schools. Pandemic relief funds allowed many schools to set up these programs. But with ESSER funding nearly lapsed, schools have to find other sources to keep the programs going.

Finding a steady pool of affordable tutors has proven tough, and that’s where these college students come in: Leaders of some organizations say that college students and community members help swell the number of tutors available to K-12 classrooms and may also allow schools to more sustainably fund them.

Dutt is also the beneficiary of a new high-dose tutoring training program that hopes to boost the quality of tutors, something researchers have flagged as a challenge for schools.

A Closing Window

Much of the pandemic relief funding made available to schools went to tutoring. The Biden Administration identified high-dose tutoring — usually defined as regular, intensive, small-group tutoring — as a plausible way to give a jolt to student learning after the pandemic.

But now, with federal funds dwindling, schools have to rely on states or other sources to keep tutoring programs going.

Funding is the biggest barrier to tutoring in schools, says Alvin Makori, a doctoral student at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education. Makori co-authored a research paper about the challenges to schools offering tutor services at scale. The paper — based on surveys of teachers at charter and public schools in California — also noted concerns about tutor quality and trouble finding the space and time to work tutoring into the school day as problem areas for the schools it inspected. (The study did not look at virtual high-dose tutoring, of the kind provided by some of the organizations discussed here.)

The report also recommends that schools partner with outside organizations to provide tutoring services.

That’s where a coalition behind a new tutor training program thinks it can help.

A couple of high-dose tutoring-specific collections of “nanocourses,” bite-sized lessons under 15 minutes each meant to train tutors, were recently released on Arizona State University’s Community Educator Learning Hub platform. The collections were the result of a collaboration between Annenberg Learner, Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and Step Up Tutoring, aimed at providing tutors to beleaguered schools. Starting in the fall, the partnership will also offer a microcredential in high-dose tutoring competency.

These tutoring resources have the opportunity to build a corps of tutors across the country, because training is a big hurdle to getting willing volunteers and college students in place and to be effective, says Korbi Adams, a senior program manager affiliated with ASU.

Step Up Tutoring has had about 170 tutors go through the program to pick up instructional skills.

During the pandemic, investment into broadband and internet in low-income areas in places like Los Angeles made it possible to connect volunteers to work one-on-one with students, says Sam Olivieri, CEO of Step Up Tutoring.

The need for high-dose tutoring is still really significant, Olivieri says. But there are questions around sustainability.

College students are a promising source of tutors, she argues. They come with relationship- building skills, she says, and tend to have an easier time connecting with younger students who often want to know what it’s like to be in college.

There’s another reason schools might be eager to embrace the model of harnessing the power of college student-tutors, Olivieri says: Step Up is an approved federal work-study provider on 16 college campuses, meaning that the students’ pay comes from a sustainable source. They also work with California’s College Corps program. From those two sources, they’ve gotten about 350 tutors, she says, making it the main pool from which they draw tutors these days.

For the schools that work with Step Up, that provides the benefits of mentorship, with their children connecting to college students, and financial stability, Olivieri says. Not all of those students are education majors. But a lot of them show potential interest in or a proclivity for exploring the education field, Olivieri says.

Dutt, the UC Davis student, is glad for the opportunity.

She’s worked with six students, all between third and sixth grade. Right now, she tutors two students who take lessons from home and two who take them from school. She is also a substitute tutor, filling in when others can’t make it in the mornings.

A computer science major, she says she previously had no interest in education as a profession. “But then when I started tutoring, I realized how much I liked it, and how rewarding it felt to help students grow academically and instill confidence in them,” she says. “And so I think it kind of found like a newfound passion in teaching and tutoring and the education field.”

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Texas is turning over some of the scoring process of its high-stakes standardized tests to robots.

News outlets have detailed the rollout by the Texas Education Agency of a natural language processing program, a form of artificial intelligence, to score the written portion of standardized tests administered to students in third grade and up.

Like many AI-related projects, the idea started as a way to cut the cost of hiring humans.

Texas found itself in need of a way to score exponentially more written responses on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, after a new law mandated that at least 25 percent of questions be open-ended — rather than multiple choice — starting in the 2022-23 school year.

Officials have said that the auto-scoring system will save the state millions of dollars that otherwise would have been spent on contractors hired to read and score written responses — with only 2,000 scorers needed this spring compared to 6,000 at the same time last year.

Using technology to score essays is nothing new. Written responses for the GRE, for example, have long been scored by computers. A 2019 investigation by Vice found that at least 21 states use natural language processing to grade students’ written responses on standardized tests.

Still, some educators and parents alike felt blindsided by the news about auto-grading essays for K-12 students. Clay Robison, a Texas State Teachers Association spokesperson, says that many teachers learned of the change through media coverage.

“I know the Texas Education Agency didn’t involve any of our members to ask what they thought about it,” he says, “and apparently they didn’t ask many parents either.”

Because of the consequences low test scores can have for students, schools and districts, the shift to use technology to grade standardized test responses raises concerns about equity and accuracy.

Officials have been eager to stress that the system does not use generative artificial intelligence like the widely-known ChatGPT. Rather, the natural language processing program was trained using 3,000 written responses submitted during past tests and has parameters it will use to assign scores. A quarter of the scores awarded will be reviewed by human scorers.

“The whole concept of formulaic writing being the only thing this engine can score for is not true,” Chris Rozunick, director of the assessment development division at the TEA, told the Houston Chronicle.

The Texas Education Agency did not respond to EdSurge’s request for comment.

Equity and Accuracy

One question is whether the new system will fairly grade the writing of children who are bilingual or who are learning English. About 20 percent of Texas public school students are English learners, according to federal data, although not all of them are yet old enough to sit for the standardized test.

Rocio Raña is the CEO and co-founder of LangInnov, a company that uses automated scoring for its language and literacy assessments for bilingual students and is working on another one for writing. She’s spent much of her career thinking about how education technology and assessments can be improved for bilingual children.

Raña is not against the idea of using natural language processing on student assessments. She recalls one of her own graduate school entrance exams was graded by a computer when she came to the U.S. 20 years ago as a student.

What raised a red flag for Raña is that, based on publicly available information, it doesn’t appear that Texas developed the program over what she would consider a reasonable timeline of two to five years — which she says would be ample time to test and fine-tune a program’s accuracy.

She also says that natural language processing and other AI programs tend to be trained with writing from people who are monolingual, white and middle-class — certainly not the profile of many students in Texas. More than half of students are Latino, according to state data, and 62 percent are considered economically disadvantaged.

“As an initiative, it’s a good thing, but maybe they went about it in the wrong way,” she says. “‘We want to save money’ — that should never be done with high-stakes assessments.”

Raña says the process should involve not just developing an automated grading system over time, but deploying it slowly to ensure it works for a diverse student population.

“[That] is challenging for an automated system,” she says. “What always happens is it's very discriminatory for populations that don't conform to the norm, which in Texas are probably the majority.”

Kevin Brown, executive director of the Texas Association of School Administrators, says a concern he’s heard from administrators is about the rubric the automated system will use for grading.

“If you have a human grader, it used to be in the rubric that was used in the writing assessment that originality in the voice benefitted the student,” he says. “Any writing that can be graded by a machine might incentivize machine-like writing.”

Rozunick of the TEA told the Texas Tribune that the system “does not penalize students who answer differently, who are really giving unique answers.”

In theory, any bilingual or English learner students who use Spanish could have their written responses flagged for human review, which would assuage fears that the system would give them lower scores.

Raña says that would be a form of discrimination, with bilingual children’s essays graded differently than those who write only in English.

It also struck Raña as odd that after adding more open-ended questions to the test, something that creates more room for creativity from students, Texas will have most of their responses read by a computer rather than a person.

The autograding program was first used to score essays from a smaller group of students who took the STAAR standardized test in December. Brown says that he’s heard from school administrators who told him they saw a spike in the number of students who were scored zero on their written responses.

“Some individual districts have been alarmed at the number of zeros that students are getting,” Brown says. “Whether it’s attributable to the machine grading, I think that’s too early to determine. The larger question is about how to accurately communicate to the families, where a child might have written an essay and gotten a zero on it, how to explain it. It's a difficult thing to try to explain to somebody.”

A TEA spokesperson confirmed to the Dallas Morning News that previous versions of the STAAR test only gave zeros to responses that were blank or nonsensical, and the new rubric allows for zeros based on content.

High Stakes

Concerns about the possible consequences of using AI to grade standardized tests in Texas can’t be understood without also understanding the state’s school accountability system, says Brown.

The Texas Education Agency distills a wide swath of data — including results from the STAAR test — into a single letter grade of A through F for each district and school. It’s a system that feels out of touch to many, Brown says, and the stakes are high. The exam and annual preparation for it was described by one writer as “an anxiety-ridden circus for kids.”

The TEA can take over any school district that has five consecutive Fs, as it did in the fall with the massive Houston Independent School District. The takeover was triggered by the failing letter grades of just one out of its 274 schools, and both the superintendent and elected board of directors were replaced with state appointees. Since the takeover, there’s been seemingly nonstop news of protests over controversial changes at the “low-performing” schools.

“The accountability system is a source of consternation for school districts and parents because it just doesn’t feel like it connects sometimes to what’s actually happening in the classroom,” Brown says. “So any time I think you make a change in the assessment, because accountability [system] is a blunt force, it makes people overly concerned about the change. Especially in the absence of clear communication about what it is.”

Robison says that his organization, which represents teachers and school staff, advocates abolishing the STAAR test altogether. The addition of an opaque, automated scoring system isn’t helping state education officials build trust.

“There’s already a lot of mistrust over the STAAR and what it purports to represent and accomplish,” Robison says. “It doesn't accurately measure student achievement, and there’s lots of suspicion that this will deepen the mistrust because of the way most of us were surprised by this.”

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