Category: News

How Medicaid Cuts will Harm Students (March 23, 2025)

A new report, How Medicaid Cuts Will Harm Students & Schools, presents the findings of a nationwide survey of over 1,400 school district leaders, including superintendents, school business officials and school health coordinators, on the impact Medicaid cuts would have on school health services, student resources and district funding. The executive summary and related graphics highlight key data points and respondents’ quotes.

The report was published by Healthy Schools Campaign (HSC) in partnership with The School Superintendents Association (AASA), Association of School Business Officials International (ASBO), National Alliance for Medicaid in Education (NAME) and Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE). 

A public dissemination toolkit is available to help share the report with your networks.

Cuts Essentially Eliminate Ed. Research at USDE (March 22, 2025)

Cuts by the Trump administration has all but eliminated the U.S. Department of Education’s (USDE)  statistical research arm, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which has conducted statistical research by collecting, analyzing, and reporting U.S. education data for over 150 years. The loss of almost all of the staff in the NCES, which traces its existence to an 1867 law establishing a federal statistical agency to conduct research, analyze everything from graduation rates and student outcomes to teacher and principal development, and provide the Nation’s Report Card.

For more from K-12 Dive, click here.

Leading Democrats Submit Written Request for USDE Layoff Details (March 22, 2025)

Leading Democrats on the congressional appropriations committees sent a 10-page letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon demanding information about the mass layoffs in the Department of Education (USDE). The March 11 layoffs cut the USDE’s workforce nearly in half and many want to know what the impact will be on the agency’s ability to perform a variety of required oversight functions.

Among major areas of concern identified in the letter are accountability under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, services for students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, federal student aid programs at colleges and universities, and students’ civil rights.

The letter requests details regarding the following:
-The number of staff terminated in each program office;
-Expected savings in salaries and benefits for fiscal 2025;
-How many remaining staff were assigned additional duties due to staff reductions since January 20, 2025;
-The average per-staff number of new duties assigned; and
-A complete list of office teams that were cut and the specific responsibilities transferred from those teams to other offices.

For more from K-12 Dive, click here.

PDE: Educator Workforce Shortage Trending in Right Direction (March 22, 2025

The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) recently reported that the educator workforce shortage in PA is trending in the right direction, with 97 more Instructional I certificates issued in the 2023-24 school year than the previous year. Also, since the 2021-22 school year PDE has seen a steady increase in the number of Instructional I certificates issued every year. Overall, PDE issued a total of 6,612 in-state and out-of-state Instructional 1 certificates in 2023-24.

The Act 82 Report compiled and published each year by PDE also showed an increase of 793 newly certified PK-4 educators, 85 more health and physical PK-12 educators, and 762 PK-12 special educators over the past two years.

These improvements are the result of efforts to recruit and retain teachers by working collaboratively with leaders in the education field to ensure there is a robust pipeline of educators in place to provide a high-quality education to learners of all ages across the Commonwealth. Some of those efforts include reducing teacher certification processing times by more than 10 weeks, making intern certificates free to aspiring educators, creating a new Career and Technical Education (CTE) program in Education for high school students, developing accelerated certification programming to prospective special educators, and creating and expanding the Student Teacher Support Grant Program to provide a stipend to student teachers.

Earlier this year, the Accelerated Special Education Teacher Certification Program recently produced the first cohort of 142 students completing the program, and announced that the second round of awards for the Accelerated Special Education Teacher Certification Program will provide more than $1 million in funding to 14 postsecondary institutions throughout the Commonwealth.

Additionally, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA) opened the second round of applications for the Student Teacher Support Grant Program last week, and more than 3,000 would-be teachers applied in the first 24 hours for stipends to assist with completion of their student teaching placements in the 2025-26 school year.

As of the 2023-2024 school year, Pennsylvania’s teacher workforce stands at 123,190, with the largest shortages in Grades 4-8, Special Education PK-12, Mathematics 7-12, Life & Physical Sciences 7-12, and Career and Technical Education 7-12. The United States Department of Education has designated these areas as critical shortages.

Trump Signs Executive Order to Close USDE (March 20, 2025)

On Thursday, March 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities calling on U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities.” At the signing ceremony, Trump stated that, “We’re going to be returning education, very simply, back to the states where it belongs. And this is a very popular thing to do, but much more importantly, it’s a common sense thing to do, and it’s going to work, absolutely.”

However, an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll taken in late February 2025 found that 63% of Americans surveyed said they would oppose getting rid of the U.S. Department of Education (USDE), compared with 37% who supported its closure.

Trump administration already laid off many USDE staff, reducing the a department that had 4,133 employees when Trump took office and has now 2,183 employees left. Nearly 600 workers resigned or retired and an additional 1,300 lost their jobs as part of a reduction in force.

Although the USDE was created by Congress and cannot legally be ended without congressional approval, it appears that the department may well be significantly crippled by the actions thus far taken against it.

To view the executive order, click here.

Source: NPR