High school history teacher Antoine Stroman says he wants his students to ask “the hard questions” — about slavery, Jim Crow, the murder of George Floyd and other painful episodes that have shaped the United States. Now, Stroman worries that President Donald Trump’s push for “patriotic education” could complicate the direct, factual way he teaches such events. Last month, the president announced a plan to present American history that emphasizes “a unifying and uplifting portrayal of the nation's founding ideals,” and inspires “a love of country.”  Stroman does not believe students at the…

LOS ANGELES — Oscar Mateo dreamed of being an artist, but after he got leukemia when he was 20, his life plans abruptly changed. The compassionate nursing care he received while hospitalized touched him so much that he decided he wanted to provide the same for others. That impulse led him to the registered nursing program at Mt. San Antonio College in the Los Angeles County suburb of Walnut. But getting there wasn’t easy, as he had to battle competition for limited seats in one of the highest-demand fields in higher education, a career offering purpose, plentiful jobs and potentially six-figure paychecks.

For the first time in more than a decade, confidence in the nation’s colleges and universities is rising. Forty-two percent of Americans now say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, up from 36 percent last year. It’s a welcome shift, but it’s certainly not time for institutions to take a victory lap. For years, persistent concerns about rising tuition, student debt and an uncertain job market have led many to question whether college was still worth the cost. Headlines have routinely spotlighted graduates who are underemployed, overwhelmed or unsure how to translate their degrees into careers.

Hello! This is Christina Samuels, the early education editor here at Hechinger. By now, I hope you’ve had a chance to read my colleague Jackie Mader’s story about the important role that Head Start plays in rural communities. While Jackie set her story in western Ohio, she also interviewed Head Start parents and leaders in other parts of the country and collected their views for a follow-up article. In a fortunate bit of timing, the advocacy group First Five Years Fund published the results of a survey it commissioned on rural Americans and their feelings on…

Ever since I first stepped onto the debate stage, I have been passionate about speech and debate. For the last three of my high school years, I have competed and placed nationally at major tournaments in Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta and Las Vegas, among many others. Debate demands an incredible amount of research, preparation and practice, but those aren’t the biggest challenges for me. I attend a public high school in California that lacks a formal debate program or coach, which has forced me to choose between quitting an activity I love and competing independently without any school support.

In his first two months in office, President Donald Trump ordered the closing of the Education Department and fired half of its staff. The department’s research and statistics division, called the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), was particularly hard hit. About 90 percent of its staff lost their jobs and more than 100 federal contracts to conduct its primary activities were canceled. But now there are signs that the Trump administration is partially reversing course and wants the federal government to retain a role in generating education statistics and evidence for what works in classrooms — at least to some extent.

As a teacher, I heard it all the time: “I’m not a math person.” I would be in line at the grocery store, wearing a math T-shirt one of my students got for me, and I’d hear it: “Algebra? Who needs it?” I would ask the person if they’d shopped with a coupon, bought a cheaper store brand, looked at the unit price on toilet paper or if they’d mentally calculated their total before heading to the checkout line. I’d smile and say — “All of that is algebraic thinking.” …

WATSONVILLE, Calif. — Gavin Abundis watched as firefighter Adrian Chairez demonstrated how he uses pulleys and harnesses to rappel down buildings. “You’ve probably seen it in the movies where they’re going down ‘Mission: Impossible’ style,” Chairez said with a laugh one day this past winter as he prepared to step off a tower. “We get to do that.” Abundis, a then-senior at Aptos High School in Santa Cruz County’s Pajaro Valley Unified School District, has a friend whose home burned down a few years ago in a fire sparked by lightning.

Remiah Ward’s shift at the SmartStyle salon inside Walmart was almost over, and she’d barely made $30 in tips from the haircuts she’d done that day. It wasn’t unusual — a year after her graduation from beauty school, tips plus minimum wage weren’t enough to cover her rent. She scarcely had time to eat and sleep before she had to drive back to the same Walmart in central Florida to stock shelves on the night shift. That job paid $14 an hour, but it meant she sometimes spent 18 hours a day in the same building.

Schools that train hairstylists, dental assistants and health aides will be able to keep getting federal student loan dollars even if the professionals they turn out don't end up earning any more than a high school graduate. That’s because programs like those, which don’t end in a college degree, were granted an exemption from new accountability measures under President Donald Trump’s ”big, beautiful bill.” A Hechinger Report analysis of federal data found at least 1,280 such certificate programs could have been at risk of their students losing access to federal student loans — but a successful lobbying effort excluded them from the accountability measures.

When Starr Dixon heard the Trump administration was floating a proposal last spring to eliminate Head Start, the 27-year-old parent in rural Michigan cried for a week. The free, federally funded early learning program has been life-changing for her and her young daughter, she said. It provided stability after Dixon, who lives about 100 miles north of Lansing, left a yearslong abusive relationship.  While her 3-year-old daughter has blossomed socially, emotionally and verbally in the program during the last year and a half, Dixon has taken on numerous volunteer positions with Head Start, gaining experience that she can put on her resume after a 7-year gap in employment.

TROY, Ohio — For almost as long as she’s been a mother, Sara Laughlin has known where she could turn for help in this western Ohio town 20 miles north of Dayton. For years, the local Head Start program provided stability and care for her oldest son, and it now does the same for her two younger children, twin boys. Head Start was there for Laughlin and her family through tough transitions, including the end of a long relationship. She credits the free federally funded program, housed in a blue building on the edge of this manufacturing hub of 27,000, for allowing her to keep her job as a massage therapist while raising three kids.

GRESHAM, Ore. — When Ken Perez was 24, he quit his construction job and moved back in with his parents so he could give college another try. He chipped in on some bills, but it was otherwise free housing, allowing him to devote himself to the video production classes he was taking at Gresham’s Mt. Hood Community College. It was his second go-around at Mt. Hood — he went one term right after high school. This time, he was ready to take school more seriously. Then an electrical fire made his family home unlivable, forcing him, his parents and his older sister to move into a rental.

Every person deserves a place close to home where they can learn, grow and build a better future. In rural areas, that place is often a community college. But in today’s environment, community colleges are under threat. Enrollment has been declining for most of the past 15 years as increasing numbers of Americans question the value of higher education. Recent reductions in federal support for college programs and for low-income Americans will almost certainly create additional pressure on community colleges to deliver education more effectively and efficiently. But improving delivery alone will not be enough to regain trust, enrollment and government investment.

Many colleges are facing a steady surge in mental health crises, but their infrastructure hasn’t kept pace — even as the number of students reporting suicidal or self-injurious behavior has risen sharply over the past decade, along with the number of students reporting psychological distress and loneliness. While our understanding of crisis intervention and suicide prevention has deepened in recent years, the systems designed to protect students often lag behind. Despite research showing that early identification and broad community support are critical, many colleges still rely on traditional care models that place the full load of crisis response on counseling centers, contributing to staff burnout.

For many Americans, the specter of missing children evokes forlorn images on milk cartons or Amber alerts on cell phones. But a new report from the Brookings Institution suggests that the pandemic may have created a new generation of lost kids — this time, from classrooms. Lost but not found The number of students who are not in school exploded in 2020 after the Covid outbreak, and many still aren’t back. The missing kids are not in  private schools or being homeschooled. Many children are simply not enrolled anywhere, according to the Brookings’ analysis of federal data.

ASHE COUNTY, N.C. — In the time it took to read an email, the federal money vanished before Superintendent Eisa Cox’s eyes: dollars that supported the Ashe County school district’s after-school program, training for its teachers, salaries for some jobs. The email from the Department of Education arrived June 30, one day before the money — $1.1 million in total — was set to materialize for the rural western North Carolina district. Instead, the dollars had been frozen pending a review to make sure the money was spent “in accordance with the President’s priorities,” the email said.

What if improving children’s mental health — and life outcomes — could be done by teaching kids how their brains work? That’s a key idea behind the approach of teachers at Momentous School in Dallas, a private elementary school that serves 225 students, most of whom come from low-income families. Each day, educators present lessons on neuroscience and mindfulness, from the youngest learners all the way up to fifth graders. Preschoolers in the school’s 3-year-old classroom learn about the brain by singing “The Brain Song” to the tune of “Bingo” (“I have a brain in my head/And it’s for thinking”).

In April, the Trump administration announced drastic funding cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Those cuts are harming education groups that rely on NEH grants — and students like me. Among the organizations that lost funding was National History Day, a nonprofit that runs a half-century-old competition engaging some 500,000 students annually in original historical research. It also provides teachers with resources and training. For many schools, the annual event is cemented into the social studies curriculum. The cuts sliced $825,000 from National History Day’s budget over several years, the group said.

The first words I uttered after successfully defending my dissertation were, “Wow, what a ride. From Head Start to Ph.D.!” Saying them reminded me where it all began: sitting cross-legged with a picture book at the Westside Head Start Center, just a few blocks from my childhood home in Jackson, Mississippi. I don’t remember every detail from those early years, but I remember the feeling: I was happy at Head Start. I remember the books, the music, the joy. That five-minute bus ride from our house to the Westside Center turned out to be the shortest distance between potential and achievement.

The National Assessment for Educational Progress, called NAEP or the Nation’s Report Card, has long been considered the gold standard for understanding how American students are doing. So bad headlines were inevitable last week when the long-delayed 2024 results for 12th graders in math and reading and for eighth graders in science were finally released. It is tempting to blame the long tail of the pandemic for the dismal scores. But folks who keep a close eye on NAEP had some provocative analysis. Eric Hanushek: It’s not just the pandemic…

From Texas to Florida to Arizona, school voucher policies are reshaping the landscape of American education. The Trump administration champions federal support for voucher expansion, and many state-level leaders are advancing school choice programs. Billions of public dollars are now flowing to private schools, church networks and microeducation platforms. The push to expand school choice is not just reallocating public funds to private institutions. It is reorganizing the very purpose of schooling. And in that shift, something essential is being lost — the public mission of education as a foundation of democracy.

SALEM, Va. — On a hot and humid August morning in this southwestern Virginia town, football training camp is in full swing at Roanoke College. Players cheer as a receiver makes a leaping one-handed catch, and linemen sweat through blocking drills. Practice hums along like a well-oiled machine — yet this is the first day this team has practiced, ever. In fact, it’s the first day of practice for a Roanoke College varsity football team since 1942, when the college dropped football in the midst of World War II.  Roanoke is one of about a dozen schools that have added football programs in the last two years, with several more set to do so in 2026.

Tanish Doshi was in high school when he pushed the Tucson Unified School District to take on an ambitious plan to reduce its climate footprint. In Oct. 2024, the availability of federal tax credits encouraged the district to adopt the $900 million plan, which involves goals of achieving net-zero emissions and zero waste by 2040, along with adding a climate curriculum to schools. Now, access to those funds is disappearing, leaving Tucson and other school systems across the country scrambling to find ways to cover the costs of clean energy projects.

America’s future is not made in factories or innovation labs — it’s forged in classrooms. We can’t bring good jobs back to U.S. shores if we don’t first educate a workforce capable of doing them. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, known as the Nation’s Report Card, paints a grim picture, with test scores down since 2019 for eighth graders in science and 12th graders in math and reading. The lowest-performing learners lost the most ground, leaving large percentages of students unable to perform the strong academic work required for postsecondary life.