The Hechinger Report

The Hechinger Report

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The national nonprofit newsroom reporting on innovation & inequality in education. 📨 Newsletters: http://hechingerreport.org/newsletters/

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One state closed more than half of its public two-year colleges, which had helped students access learning beyond job training 

hechingerreport.orgWhen community colleges close, rural students get shut out of the liberal arts Last May, just weeks before the end of the semester, students, staff and faculty at the University of Wisconsin—Platteville Baraboo Sauk County received the devastating news that the school was closing. Students scrambled to arrange transfers to other colleges, while employees tried to line up jobs elsewhere in the UW system. By the end of the month, “Boo U,” as it was affectionately named, a fixture in south-central Wisconsin for nearly 60 years, was no more. The Baraboo campus was just the latest UW school to close its doors. In the past three years, the University of Wisconsin has permanently shuttered eight of its 13 branch campuses.
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‘Anybody can sort of say that they have evidence for anything,’ a top scholar says

hechingerreport.org39 meta-analyses, 39 positive findings: An audit finds serious flaws in research on AI in education Does artificial intelligence help students learn? That’s a question many teachers and parents want answered, as the new educational technology is rapidly spreading in classrooms. Normally, meta-analyses would be the right place to look, since they’re supposed to gather a scattered body of research and make sense of it by pointing to where the preponderance of evidence lies. And indeed, there are 39 of them, all reporting substantial benefits for AI in education. But it appears that the studies synthesizing that evidence are themselves unreliable — and the peer-review process failed to catch the problems.
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We must help our libraries innovate, expand partnerships and publicize their many free educational offerings.

hechingerreport.orgOPINION: Americans are losing faith in shared institutions, but public libraries are one of the few we still trustAmerican adults read a book of any kind in 2022. Yet it’s important to point out that while visits to libraries have not yet rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, they are growing, in part because their program offerings are expanding. Adults and children in the U.S. made more than 800 million visits to a library in 2023, an average of 2.2 million visits per day and nearly double the number in 2021. There are over 17,000 public library locations in the United States — more than the number of hospitals or McDonald’s.
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Schools generate massive amounts of food waste. Here’s how to curb it Up to 40 percent of food served in schools goes to waste — about 530,000 tons. …...

hechingerreport.orgSchools generate massive amounts of food waste. Here’s how to curb itUp to 40 percent of food served in schools goes to waste — about 530,000 tons. All that food waste has serious consequences for the planet: It translates into some 1.9 million metric units of greenhouse gases per year, according to a new report from the nonprofit World Wildlife Fund. But there are solutions. Since 2018, World Wildlife Fund has worked with schools to educate students about food waste, train staff, help them adopt practices like using “share tables” and composting, and more. I recently spoke with Gerin Hennebaul, a STEM content specialist at Lovin Elementary in Gwinnett County, Georgia, about her school’s experience reducing food waste.
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Providers who care for children in a family home offer flexible options for parents, but their numbers are dropping.

hechingerreport.orgMost home-based child care is run by people over 50. Who is going to replace them?For over 20 years, Sylvia Crews has worked in early childhood education, spending the last decade running her own home-based center. After buying a home in Washington, D.C., in 2015, she launched LTH Infants and Toddlers Center — an abbreviation for “loving, tender home” — shortly after. She is licensed to care for up to nine children ranging from 6 weeks to 3 1/2 years old, overseeing four employees. Crews said she wants to work “as long as the Lord will allow me to,” but she does worry about the likelihood of younger workers entering the sector.
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Direct instruction' put to the test in one of the largest education experiments ever conducted

hechingerreport.orgSold a story: The forgotten experimentThis podcast, Sold a Story, was produced by APM Reports and reprinted with permission. Sold a Story is an investigative podcast about how kids learn — what works in the classroom, the science behind those insights and why that research often doesn’t make it into schools. Season 1 revealed why so many kids are struggling to learn how to read, and it sparked a wave of change across the country. In Season 2, we go beyond reading to look at teaching itself. Season 2, Episode 3: The Forgotten Experiment Zig Engelmann gets the chance of a lifetime: put "direct instruction" to the test in one of the largest education experiments ever conducted. The results could have changed the direction of American education. Instead, they’re contested — and ultimately cast aside. 
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An investigation highlights how hard it is to make sense of more than a million options for licenses, badges and certificates

hechingerreport.orgCompanies invent credentials without proof they pay offDavid Young started his cybersecurity boot camp planning to earn an industry-recognized credential that he hoped would help land him a job. The program, run by a company called IronCircle through the University of Central Florida, had promised a roughly $400 voucher to take the CompTIA Security+ certification exam. During the eight months I spent reporting on IronCircle, most students I talked to mentioned the CompTIA exam, which tests basic skills to work in cybersecurity. They generally viewed it as one of the most important things to put on your resume when trying to break into the field.
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They face trauma, family separation and displacement, but we have to remember they are still kids.

hechingerreport.orgTEACHER VOICE: As a new school year begins, teachers are once again struggling to support children whose lives are upended by immigration policeEmma, a third grader, cries hot, angry tears when she doesn’t get her way. She is a bit too old to cry over losing in games like foursquare, but she has a “strong internal sense of justice,” as the other teachers and I like to put it. “Emma,” I say. “You’re out. You have to get back in line.” “But it’s not fair!” she wails. I tell her that her classmates are playing by the rules — and that rules matter. That’s what you’re supposed to tell children. But she and I both know that her family has been trying to play by the rules since arriving in this country even though the rules keep changing, and they’re being threatened with deportation.
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Writing workshops offer education for people effectively shut out of traditional college programs.

hechingerreport.orgOPINION: In a prison writing workshop, I found refuge and a road to understanding the “untold stories” inside usI remember the first time I walked into a prison writing workshop. The shadowed room contained little more than a dozen mismatched plastic chairs and a few warped tables. Before I signed up, I had struggled with a lingering melancholy after two years in county jail which ended in a life sentence. My depression threatened to pull me deeper into an abyss. During those dark times in the past, I had self-medicated with alcohol and drugs. But sitting among my peers, listening to their writings, I was strengthened. My day of illumination came when a woman in our writing class shared a story so raw and vulnerable that I had to dig my fingernails into my palms to keep tears from spilling down my face.
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Colleges are closing at a pace equivalent to about one every three weeks, with more projected.

hechingerreport.orgExperts say higher education is an industry in turmoil. The collateral damage is widespreadAMHERST, Mass. — The parking lots are mostly vacant. Locked and dark, many of the buildings are lifeless but for dying plants in dusty pots. One of the few people visible is a white-bearded man on a riding mower, tending to an empty lawn as if by habit. This is not a factory or office park abandoned by its tenants. It’s Hampshire College, a once-celebrated liberal arts school that will shut down in December. That makes it the latest in a steady stream of colleges that are closing or merging, at a rate that last year reached the equivalent of nearly…
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The second season of the Sold a Story podcast focuses on teaching itself 

hechingerreport.orgSold a story: It’s not just readingThis podcast, Sold a Story, was produced by APM Reports and reprinted with permission. Sold a Story is an investigative podcast about how kids learn — what works in the classroom, the science behind those insights and why that research often doesn't make it into schools. Season 1 revealed why so many kids are struggling to learn how to read, and it sparked a wave of change across the country. In Season 2, we go beyond reading to look at teaching itself. Season 2, Episode 1: It’s Not Just Reading…
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‘If the student hasn’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught’

hechingerreport.orgSold a story: The remedy is always teaching This podcast, Sold a Story, was produced by APM Reports and reprinted with permission. Sold a Story is an investigative podcast about how kids learn — what works in the classroom, the science behind those insights and why that research often doesn't make it into schools. Season 1 revealed why so many kids are struggling to learn how to read, and it sparked a wave of change across the country. In Season 2, we go beyond reading to look at teaching itself. Season 2, Episode 2: The Remedy Is Always Teaching…
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As student mental health care needs overwhelm college counseling departments, universities create programs that prescribe nature, arts and belonging

hechingerreport.org‘This is the first time I’ve touched grass’: Inside the U.S. colleges pioneering social prescriptions This story is being published in partnership with MindSite News, a national news organization that reports on mental health and sends out a daily newsletter available here. In 1984, while studying at Cornell University as a graduate student and going through a “difficult” time, Don Rakow remembers escaping to the campus gardens. “They were my sanctuaries—those gardens were essential for me to maintain balance and to survive,” he says. Thirty years later, that moment came back to the English-major-turned-plant-science professor, when he began teaching at Cornell. As Rakow and fellow faculty members discussed what it would take to respond to the growing mental health crisis among students today, he suggested an unlikely candidate: their campus, and all of the natural wonders on it.
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An investigation found what Texas disciplinary programs look like at their worst. This is what they can look like when someone decides to do it differently.

hechingerreport.orgTEACHER VOICE: How I rethought disciplinary school in TexasI did not wait for my start date. My official first day as director of the Del Valle Independent School District’s Disciplinary Alternative Education Program was July 22, 2015. I walked onto campus weeks before then. I knew that if I waited, we would never be ready for the first day of school. In Texas, a DAEP is where students go when a school decides they cannot stay. Under Chapter 37 of the Texas Education Code, there are two types of offenses that can result in placement: discretionary and mandatory. A fight that lasts 90 seconds can become a discretionary placement of 45 school days.
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Respected colleges supported a controversial cybersecurity training program that abruptly shut down

hechingerreport.orgA university-branded boot camp promised tech jobs. It delivered only debtLooking back, there were a lot of warning signs. Christopher Collins fielded several calls a day from recruiters with IronCircle, a cybersecurity boot camp provider, urging him to enroll in its online courses. Once he did, they often didn’t function properly and the help desk was slow to fix issues, he said. He recalled seeing posts on the program’s message boards from graduates saying they couldn’t find work. But Collins had agreed to a roughly $5,500 payment plan that he would be on the hook for even if he dropped the class.
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After years of growing, new data suggests ‘administrative bloat’ may be reversing.

hechingerreport.orgColleges are cutting administrative jobs — and critics say that’s a good thingIt was in the quiet of the summer when a new president at Louisiana State University said the school would lay off 25 administrators, including several who were high in the campus hierarchy, and shift the savings to faculty hiring and research. “Transformational change,” the president, Wade Rousse, called it. He was “streamlining operations and finding efficiencies so the university can focus on” its faculty. The move got limited attention outside Baton Rouge. But similar layoffs have been happening at universities and colleges nationwide in what may be a little-noticed tipping point in U.S.
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The Hechinger Report wants to hear from students, employers and teachers on preparing for an AI era.

hechingerreport.orgCOLUMN: As careers, college and the workforce change rapidly, should high schools evolve? Help us find out Evan Perez could be the face of a new movement. He’s a first-year student attending Babson College on a full scholarship, majoring in business with a concentration in entrepreneurship. He won awards for building an AI-related business at his career-focused public high school and cares deeply about what and how students learn. “We had an amazing model; we called it ‘real world learning,’ Perez said of his program at The Met High School’s campus in Providence, Rhode Island, part of a small network of learning communities in the state that combine academics with career exploration.
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If we surrender to threats, we will all learn less about ourselves, our history, our health and our people

hechingerreport.orgOPINION: No college president, provost or board should retreat from diversity initiatives without considering what the law actually requiresThe Trump administration is making universities afraid to support diversity — and counting on them to retreat. Last month, the Treasury Department and IRS proposed rules that threaten to strip private colleges of their tax-exempt status if they have race-conscious policies in admissions, scholarships and programs. But a threat is not the same as a legal requirement. Universities should stop treating guidance or warnings from Washington as orders. Before any college president, provost or board dismantles a program, changes hiring practices or abandons research, they should ask: What, exactly, does the law require us to do?
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The total number of enrolled students rose from 2022 to 2024

hechingerreport.orgAmericans may have soured on college, but the data show they’re still goingAmericans are turning against higher education. At least, that’s what many of them say. Only 31 percent of Americans now consider a college education “very important,” according to a Gallup poll conducted in August and released this month. That’s a record low and a stunning decline from 70 percent in 2013. Source: Gallup, Record-Low 31% Say College Education Is 'Very Important', Oct 1, 2026. The shift isn’t confined to groups that have historically been skeptical of higher education. Even women, Democrats, Black and Hispanic Americans and college graduates themselves — people who traditionally placed a greater importance on college — have also registered double-digit declines in their approval of higher education in recent years.
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Colleges and universities should offer fair financial aid packages and provide transparency about the true cost.

hechingerreport.orgSTUDENT VOICE: I turned down my dream college for a far more affordable state school. It still hurtsI fell in love with Tufts University as soon as I stepped on the campus right outside of Boston. I knew that financial aid was a huge concern, but I decided to take the chance and apply, hoping that the finances would work themselves out. On the day decisions were due, I refreshed my inbox on my phone all day, nerves building as the hours went by. Finally, at 7 p.m., I saw the email I’d been waiting for. After a deep breath, I opened the link. I started screaming. I got in!
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Reductions in administrative costs were offset by higher transportation and staffing costs

hechingerreport.orgMerging school districts was supposed to save taxpayers money. It didn’t, a 20-year study in Arkansas foundWhen Mike Huckabee was the Arkansas governor in 2004, he wanted government to be more efficient. He signed a law to shut down tiny school districts with fewer than 350 students. Over the next decade, 85 school districts merged with others, triggering the closure of 105 schools, most of them high schools. Families and teachers protested. Some students had bus rides so long that they couldn't participate in sports and other after-school activities. A 2022 study found that the mergers had accelerated depopulation in rural communities and depressed property values; that same year another study found almost no…
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Promises made during admissions should hold up after tuition is paid and continue past graduation.

hechingerreport.orgOPINION: Higher education has a trust problem, and families are right to demand transparency and candorThis opinion piece is the first in a series on trust and transparency in higher education.  Higher education runs on trust. A family commits four years and a significant sum of money on faith that the credential earned will hold value, that the institution has their student’s interests at heart and that the promises made during admissions will hold up long after enrollment. That foundation of trust is getting harder to maintain. A college can no longer count on being the only voice explaining its value. Prospective students can find firsthand student perspectives and check…
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Putting needed housing on empty campuses uses one problem to solve another — but is harder than it seems.

hechingerreport.orgAs more colleges close, advocates are calling for them to be turned into housingQUINCY, Mass. — Waist-high weeds climb through cracks in the tennis courts. Ivy snakes across the locked-shut entrance of a redbrick former women’s dormitory. Canada geese graze on the baseball field. Wild turkeys scratch in the underbrush. Nature is reclaiming what remains of Eastern Nazarene College, which closed last year after its enrollment plummeted and its liabilities ballooned to an unsustainable $18 million. It’s one among a growing number of closed colleges sitting empty, some for years stretching into decades, as communities fight over what they should become and trustees struggle to pay off creditors.
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More than 1,200 Colorado students have graduated with a seal demonstrating their climate awareness. The idea is spreading to other states

hechingerreport.orgIn an age of climate disaster, more states offer students a way to show they are ‘climate literate’As a student at a high school not far from Denver’s main airport, Anthony Muñoz wondered whether the jet fuel from airplanes flying above his campus was harming living things. An avid gardener, Muñoz partnered with a local university to create a garden on the campus of his charter school, Vista Academy, filling it with native plants that could detect ground-level ozone pollution. He also worked with climate scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a federal office in nearby Boulder, who directed Muñoz on what data to collect, what the condition of leaves reveals about air quality and why milkweed matters for monarch butterfly migration.
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Early educators who buy their own supplies can now use the educator expense deduction

hechingerreport.orgThe tax change that could help the child care workforceEach year, the early childhood educators at Bluff’s Little Thinkers in western Iowa spend hundreds of dollars of their own money on classroom supplies and materials, including rugs for “cozy corners” where children can spend a quiet moment, special lights to create a calming environment and sensory items that help kids focus. Kelsey Andersen, the center director, would like to provide everything her teachers need, but money is tight at Little Thinkers, which serves 72 children in five classrooms. When Andersen inevitably runs out of money for supplies, the center’s teachers have nowhere else to turn to buy books, decorations and other needs that come up throughout the year.
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Utah’s outreach uses simple games to help families build a strong foundation in early arithmetic for their children.

hechingerreport.orgOne state bets on parents to boost preschool math skillsTAYLORSVILLE, Utah — In an elementary school classroom just outside Salt Lake City, Clarence Ames warmed up an audience of 15 parents, their young children sitting beside them. “Has anybody here ever heard or said, ‘I’m not a math person?’” asked Ames, who leads research and implementation for the Utah STEM Action Center, a state agency tasked with advancing science and math education. Most hands went up. Ames talks to a lot of Utah parents of preschoolers, he told the group at Plymouth Elementary School. And when he mentions the importance of parents doing math with their kids, he said, he is often met with deer-in-the-headlights looks.
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Some people are abandoning office jobs for teaching, health care and the trades. But the new paths can come with trade-offs

hechingerreport.orgFearing AI, young workers retrain for hands-on jobs ChatGPT hit the internet in November 2022 during Keon Davis’ junior year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He used it and grew overreliant, but it also worried him. Davis, who was studying marketing, soon watched it automate tasks he handled in a summer internship, like crafting outreach emails and doing consumer research. Seeing how easily he might be replaced was one reason he changed direction a few months before graduating in May 2024. Instead of pursuing marketing jobs, he signed up for Teach for America. He’s in his third year in front of a third grade classroom at a charter school in New York City.
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Three years after Texas took over the Houston school district, some are questioning whether the academic improvements are worth the hefty price tag and the high number of students leaving the district.

hechingerreport.orgHigh costs, dwindling enrollment: What happened to one school district after a state takeoverThis story was produced by The Texas Tribune and republished with permission. HOUSTON — Fonville Middle School hired learning coaches to help students falling behind in the classroom. It bought new state-of-the-art technology, such as webcams and smart boards. The school days are longer. All that aggressive change earned the north Houston school its first ever A rating, a coveted stamp of approval from the state. It has been a dramatic climb since the state seized control of the district three years ago, when students were so behind in math and reading that the campus received the scarlet F.
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State data show thousands of elementary school students receive this punishment a year

hechingerreport.orgFrom kindergarten to disciplinary school: Texas sends kids as young as 6 to harsh alternative campuses The most notable thing about Melissa’s son’s 6th birthday should have been the vacation the family took. Instead, it was the letter waiting for them when they returned home. Her child was assigned to the disciplinary campus in their school district in McKinney, Texas, for 30 days, the April 2024 letter told them, over allegations that the kindergartner had assaulted a teacher about a week prior. Melissa, whose last name is being withheld to protect her son’s privacy, said the incident occurred when the boy had struggled against a restraint, kicking a teacher.
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After six years in the Navy and an undiagnosed medical condition, I finally found a way to graduate.

hechingerreport.orgSTUDENT VOICE: Higher education was never built for nontraditional students like me. Here’s why it can and should beWhen I graduated from college in December 2025, I crossed a stage I once worried I would never see. In the months since, I have spent a lot of time thinking about how many students start but never finish. Just six in 10 students earn a degree within six years. While that number is bad enough, the figure is even worse for students like me. It took me nearly 10 years and three universities to finally complete my bachelor’s degree. This global challenge is called a “completion crisis” — language that makes it sound as if the problem is with the students who struggle to graduate.
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New Mexico is providing a blueprint and a path forward for solving the nation’s severe shortages.

hechingerreport.orgOPINION: Home-based child care is the backbone of America’s infant-toddler care system. We need more of it When the state of New Mexico announced it would provide no-cost universal child care last September, Yaneidy Gomez, a nurse, started thinking about starting her own program. New Mexico made it easy: She applied for a child care license in March and by April had passed inspection and welcomed her first family, proving that a motivated provider can move quickly when states streamline the confusing maze of bureaucracy and paperwork. Two things made the decision to swiftly open a home-based child care business possible: New Mexico’s newly expanded child care assistance program and her confidence that state support for home-based child care was here to stay.
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New federal loan limits restrict borrowing for graduate degrees in many fields, and prospects for private loans are also grim

hechingerreport.orgNowhere to turn: Many grad students in health care fields can’t get loans for their degreesWith her senior year of college now underway, Mitzie Westgate has begun planning what she’ll do after graduation next spring. An exercise science major, she hopes to go straight to graduate school and pursue a doctorate in occupational therapy so she can open a nonprofit to help children with disabilities like her cousin, who has cerebral palsy. But thanks to unprecedented confusion around federal student loans, she can’t firm up plans or even decide where to apply until she sees how the chaos shakes out. “It’s kind of up in the air whether I’ll be able to pay for college” after this year, said Westgate, a 21-year-old senior at the College of Charleston in South Carolina.
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Why stripping tax-exempt status targets the wrong actors and would be catastrophic for many schools and students.

hechingerreport.orgOPINION: Colleges should not be punished for trying to give every student a fair shotThe Treasury Department wants to strip tax-exempt status from private schools that factor race into admissions, scholarships, financial aid or athletics. That announcement this month may sound like a straightforward enforcement measure, one that targets colleges engaged in overt discrimination. If finalized, though, the proposal would unfairly punish institutions that welcome students from every background but have a history — and a mission — of expanding access and opportunity for students from communities that higher education has too often excluded. As many as 18,000 private schools and colleges nationwide would be subject to the rule, putting those already operating on thin financial margins in peril.
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Workforce programs try to ride out the legal, administrative and economic headwinds of the Trump administration.

hechingerreport.orgOffshore wind job training built for a boom is facing down a bustBRENTWOOD, N.Y. — A former Navy sailor and union laborer from Local 1298 on Long Island, William “Billy” Bishop jumped at the chance to work on the water again when he learned two years ago about job opportunities on offshore wind construction projects. After earning a safety certification from the National Offshore Wind Training Center — a collaboration between Long Island’s Suffolk County Community College, the Long Island Federation of Labor and multinational wind farm developer Orsted — Bishop worked on a wind farm near Rhode Island. Now he’s doing structural inspections and maintenance on Sunrise Wind, which is under construction off the coast of Long Island.
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A large study of Khan Academy’s math program found no extra benefits from AI

hechingerreport.orgStudents didn’t get answers from Khanmigo. They didn’t want its questions, eitherSoon after the introduction of ChatGPT in November 2022, students figured out how to use the chatbot as an answer machine, getting it to do their school work for them. Not surprisingly, that shortcut harmed student learning and led to lower test scores. AI enthusiasts sought a solution. The chatbots could easily be instructed to act more like a human tutor, withholding answers, providing hints and guiding students with questions. Khan Academy created one of these “Socratic-method” chatbots, christened it “Khanmigo,” and released it in 2023. But a new study that came out last month suggests that creating an AI tutor is only one hurdle among many in helping children improve their math skills.
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South Carolina bans minimum grade policies as scrutiny around grades grows.

hechingerreport.orgThe emerging fight against grade inflation in K-12 classroomsEach spring, Patrick Kelly hears the same complaint from teachers in his state of South Carolina: Too many students, particularly in high school, stop doing any schoolwork. Students know they can pass their classes anyway because of school policies known as “grade floors.” Schools adopted grade floors — which require teachers to give students minimum grades, commonly a 40 or 50, instead of zeroes — to keep GPAs from being dragged down by a few missed assignments. But in practice, they’ve allowed students to scrape by all year and still end up with a passing grade, said Kelly, director of governmental affairs with the Palmetto State Teachers Association and a high school government and politics teacher.
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Starting as early as elementary school and following up can be key

hechingerreport.orgOPINION: We need more Black professionals in STEM fieldsOnly 3 percent of Black professionals hold executive roles in the tech C-suite. That statistic is not just a number. It is a mirror reflecting opportunity lost, decisions never made and innovations the world will never see. It also highlights a dynamic that we believe can be changed. The three of us — a nonprofit CEO, a founder and principal of a college prep high school and a summit president — met last year over breakfast at an education summit in San Diego and have committed to driving that change.
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The vice president is pushing to change a program now targeted at low-income working families

hechingerreport.orgTrump proposal could shift child care subsidies to stay-at-home parentsBonnie Albrecht’s path to accessing a government child care assistance program was long (the Texas mother spent nearly two years on a waitlist) and bureaucratic (involving seven pay stubs and countless phone calls). Edythe Smith, who lives in Syracuse, New York, juggled full time work with full time caregiving for her infant daughter from her home while she waited for the aid. Barbara Aranda had to call out from her job in Austin so often that she lost crucial income and had to turn to food pantries to feed her three kids.
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People are tired of hearing that higher costs are unavoidable and want more information about measurable value

hechingerreport.orgOPINION: I’m a college president, and I think higher education has to do a better job of controlling costsEvery fall, millions of American parents and caregivers make extraordinary sacrifices to send a child to college. They work overtime, postpone retirement, take on debt or set aside other priorities because they believe higher education can create opportunities they never had. Students make sacrifices too. Many work nights and weekends, juggle family responsibilities or borrow against their future because they believe a college degree is worth it. Those sacrifices deserve accountability. And it’s time for colleges to provide it. For too long, colleges and universities have responded to growing public skepticism by defending the value of higher education.
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Now a Trump administration proposal could make the problem worse.

hechingerreport.orgRecord high waitlists for child care assistance have shut women out of work, promotionsThe morning after Edythe Smith gave birth to her daughter, she got some bad news. State funding for a government program that helps low- and moderate-income families pay for child care had just been frozen in Syracuse, New York, where she lives. Smith is a single parent who works full time from home as an auto claims insurance adjuster. When her maternity leave ended last fall, she had no choice but to return to work while continuing to care full time for an increasingly mobile — sometimes perilously curious — baby.
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Federal protections for students in special education don’t apply to private schools, but parents aren’t always informed.

hechingerreport.orgParents of students with disabilities find private school vouchers come with a catchCINCINNATI — The meeting with staff members of Cincinnati Christian Schools began with a prayer. Then they told Mike Grimmer and Linda Kelly that their granddaughter could no longer attend the private school. Annabelle Kelly had enrolled there three months earlier, in August 2025, in a program specifically for students who struggle in mainstream classrooms. Annabelle, 15, has Rett syndrome, a genetic condition accompanied by significant cognitive and developmental delays. Her grandparents, who took legal custody of Annabelle when she was 5, believed that the small, faith-based setting of CCS would be a better fit than the local public school.
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Tracking students for 14 years after they participated in an intensive support program to graduate from community college

hechingerreport.orgMore degrees but not higher earnings: Puzzling data from CUNY’s famed ASAP programEvery community college reformer wants to help more students earn degrees and get through college faster. A much-admired City University of New York support program has done that, some say brilliantly — but a recent 14-year study finds that those additional degrees haven't translated into higher earnings. That's a puzzle. College graduates generally earn more than people without degrees. In New York, even completing a two-year degree is associated with $10,000 to $14,000 more earnings a year. So why didn't the extra degrees generated by CUNY’s ASAP program produce bigger paychecks?
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Instead, let’s focus on better pathways to existing jobs that need to be filled.

hechingerreport.orgOPINION: We’ve been treating college as a career plan, but it’s failing too many studentsIn one of Denver’s wealthiest suburbs, where median family income tops $150,000 and nearly every kid is expected to go to college, students are now lining up for trade certifications. Their parents aren’t worried; in fact, most of them are championing the move. For decades, Americans have been treating college as a career plan, spurred by the “college for all” movement — a decades-long educational and political push that aimed to make a four-year college degree the standard expectation and primary goal for all high school students. The data show that it doesn’t work.
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In rural communities, economic success often hinges on the availability of affordable child care solutions.

hechingerreport.orgWhen this small Alaska town was given $1 million, child care was the top prioritySEWARD, Alaska — It was 2018 when Casie Warner first realized there was a major problem in this popular cruise port, nestled on an inlet about a two-hour drive south of Anchorage. At the time, Warner worked as a home visitor, providing advice, support and resources to low-income parents with young children. Time and time again, Warner would hear the same story from parents: “‘I wasn’t able to make my medical appointments. I didn’t have child care,’” said Warner. “‘I couldn’t pick up an extra shift at work because of child care.’” …
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We can create more guardrails to put their interests first.

hechingerreport.orgOPINION: Our children need more protection from the AI that is teaching themFor 15 years, we let children carry cellphones into most of our classrooms. By the time states began ordering the phones out, a generation had spent its childhood inundated by screens. We had protected everything about the arrangement except for the children. Similarly, during the rise of the commercial internet, we wrote rules to protect the privacy of platforms and the people profiting from them. The protections we later built for children, like the rule that a website must get a parent’s permission before collecting a child’s data, would never have been able to make up for the ground we had already ceded.
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More than half of four-year colleges are facing financial stress. Many will resort to laying off faculty, cutting services and increasing prices.

hechingerreport.orgMore than half of colleges show signs of money problems. Students will suffer the consequencesChoosing a college? Check out our tracker to make sure your favorite schools dont have shaky finances. LYNCHBURG, Va. — Nalia Mutz started her freshman year at the University of Lynchburg in 2022 knowing exactly where she wanted to be four years later: right on track toward her dream of becoming a doctor. When the university eliminated a dozen majors in 2024, the resulting layoffs left fewer professors to teach the science courses she needed to graduate. She began to fear earning her biomedicine degree the way she’d planned could take two extra years.
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Teaching artists convert classrooms into studios, animate school hallways with art and bring families into schools to celebrate.

hechingerreport.orgOPINION: Arts education can change lives, but we must invest in people who make it possibleI was supposed to be dancing, but instead I had been chatting incessantly. The teacher sat me under the piano so I could focus. From that tucked-away spot, I could see nothing but feet. Sneakers and socks sliding across the floor, heels lifting and landing in time with the music. “Focus on their feet,” he told me. “Rejoin your friends when you’re ready.” I watched. I listened. And slowly, something shifted. The rhythm pulled me in. The movement entranced me. I quieted. When I stepped back in, I was fully engrossed in a way I had not previously experienced.
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Following a confusing rollout of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s loan changes, students are stuck with bills they can’t pay

hechingerreport.orgColleges are scrambling to figure out new student loan rules. Students are paying the price Mikiah Roberson expected to receive her federal $6,700 student loan disbursement sometime between May 27 and June 3, just in time to make her rent and car payments. Instead, June 3 came and went. Days, weeks and finally over a month passed. Roberson, a graduate student in University of Maryland Global Campus’s digital forensics and cyber investigation program, said the stress only compounded as her eight-week summer semester continued without any of her expected financial aid. As a disabled veteran, Roberson’s tuition is covered, but she relies on federal student loans to pay for living expenses while in school.
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The Trump administration’s proposal would end long-standing practice of promoting bilingualism

hechingerreport.orgEnglish-only proposal for Head Start would set kids back, say parents and program leadersOver the past few years, Ginger Williams has watched the number of children learning English inch up at the six Head Start sites she runs across Snohomish County, Washington, just north of Seattle. The federally funded preschool program has long been required to provide special support for what it calls “dual language learners.” If a majority of children in a program speak a language other than English, that program must have at least one staff member who also speaks that language — a regulation in place since the 1970s. Teachers are also required to focus both on teaching students English and helping their development in their home language.
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The plastics industry is offering schools curricula that cast plastics as safe, recyclable, and a source of good jobs. Critics say it’s propaganda

hechingerreport.orgWhen plastic companies write the lesson plans This story was originally published by Grist and is reprinted with permission. This fall, 54 million K-12 students are headed back to the classroom for another year of lessons in all the classic subjects: math, English, history, biology. But there’s another subject that’s been sneaking into school curricula: plastics. A new report from the nonprofit Plastic Pollution Coalition documents the many ways the plastics industry has been inserting its agenda into classrooms across the U.S. — including through lesson plans and worksheets, hands-on science experiments, and a program called “PlastiVan” that travels from city to city teaching students about “