Department of Education

Nearly a year since DeVos rescinded the controversial campus rape regulation, nothing’s changed.

It’s mean and unreasonable, but maybe the base likes it

It’s not often that the head of a federal agency asks Congress for less money than the agency received the year before. So infrequent is it that one might reasonably assume the circumstance would generate some hint of intellectual curiosity on the part of reporters and politicos. If an agency head…

Earlier this month, the Department of Education released the latest figures on high school graduation: After rising every year for five years, the national rate hit an all-time high of 84 percent in 2016. Good news, surely.

"Here, you can be the policeman." Jenna (not her real name), a 4-year-old, hands me one of the dozen small figures spread in front of her, a black woman in a police uniform. “I’m going to be the doctor,” she says as she picks up another black woman dressed in a doctor’s coat. For the next few…

There’s a lot riding on a Title IX summit that’s happening at the Department of Education today. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will meet privately with sexual assault victims and advocates who want her to maintain the campus sexual assault provisions decreed by the Obama administration (and plan…

The bathroom wars wage on. Repealing the Obama-era edict that hardened the conflict, as President Trump did Wednesday, changes little in practice.

The Trump administration is set to undo federal guidance issued by their predecessors last year that threatened public schools with the loss of federal funding if they didn't allow transgender students to use the school facilities matching their gender identity, according to a report.

Freshly-confirmed Education Secretary Betsy DeVos greeted an anxious-seeming assembly of her staff at the Education Department headquarters with reassuring remarks Wednesday afternoon. On an unseasonably warm day in Washington, the assembly hall was hot and stuffy, only more uncomfortable as…

Not a one Democratic Senator will vote to confirm Education Secretary-designate Betsy DeVos. Or so Minnesota senator Al Franken told Rachel Maddow Thursday night.

At a heated three-and-half-hour confirmation hearing Tuesday evening, Senate Democrats predictably pressed the president-elect's Education Secretary-designate. Betsy DeVos, a major Republican donor and school choice advocate, has proven one of his more controversial appointees: Her decades of…

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush was quick to praise the president-elect's choice of Betsy DeVos for Education secretary when the transition team announced her nomination in November. And on Tuesday, the day of her confirmation hearing, he expounded his support for DeVos in USA Today, praising her…

Democrats critical of Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump's choice for education secretary, find plenty of reasons to pillory the school-choice advocate and Republican donor. Plans to improve equal opportunity in public education—growing public charter schools and voucher programs, and testing district…

The largest accrediting agency of for-profit educational institutions—some of which, like ITT and Corinthian Colleges have shut down, displacing thousands of students—now faces its own undoing by a vengeful administration. The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools had its federal…

The Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights may not last long in Trump's America, its employees and advocates fear. The transition's stated intention to "streamline the department," coupled with a stated goal to overturn Obama-era executive overreaches, spells trouble for the department's…

Amid aftershocks of the Trump victory, education policy experts are picking through his campaign promises and proposals looking for ideas they can work with, and wondering what they can expect. Streamlining the Department of Education? Likely. Hacking off the tentacles of its undue influence?…

The Department of Education's proposal to broaden the existing borrower defense to repayment rule will give college students new grounds to sue their schools for loan forgiveness. Underemployed grads and downtrodden dropouts can claim they were misled and never got their federally loaned money's…

Wesley College has been practicing Queen of Hearts justice: “Sentence first—verdict afterwards."Such is the finding of the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which announced this week that the Dover, Delaware, school has been rather jumping the gun when it comes to punishing those…

Wesley College has been practicing Queen of Hearts justice: “Sentence first—verdict afterwards."Such is the finding of the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, which announced this week that the Dover, Delaware, school has been rather jumping the gun when it comes to punishing those…

In December of 2015, Congress did something rare: It passed a law, with bipartisan support, that President Obama signed and conservatives are championing. The Every Students Succeeds Act, known as ESSA, rolls back federal authority in local schools and limits the reach of the secretary of…

A lawyer for the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights said it best. At last week's National Sexual Assault Conference, OCR's Rachel Gettler called inconsistent sexual violence data collection by government agencies "a never-ending issue." She added with a chuckle, "We'll see if the…

Cracking down on fraudulent recruiting materials put out by for-profit colleges—what could go wrong? A proposed rule from the Department of Education will expand "borrower defenses" and lengthen the list of who's eligible for debt-repayment under the Higher Education Act of 1965. But most of the…

In his weekly address on September 12, President Obama touted the Department of Education’s new “College Scorecard,” the latest, greatest tool to help high school students and their families make informed (dare we say educated?) decisions when picking a college. The website offers students a means…

A raft of new Education Department regulations has been bobbing among the roiling waters of American higher education for nearly a month now, and perhaps the most sensible reaction to the controversy comes from Sen. Lamar Alexander—a former governor, college president, and secretary of education.…

It's a well-known fact that on most college campuses, supposedly havens of academic freedom, you really have to watch what you say.

The story is so depressingly familiar that you just read it and shrug it off.  According to a CBS report:

Last week, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate forged an unlikely alliance when they agreed in committee on a rewrite of the federal education authorization law. Both liberal Democrat Tom Harkin and conservative Republican Mike Enzi crafted the bill, which promises to limit the federal mandates…

A coalition of right-leaning education reformers have recently and sharply broken with the growing federal influence Republicans and Democrats have broadly supported in recent decades. This edusphere tussle connects education to the wider debate Americans (evinced most loudly by Tea Party…

With government looking to cut spending, many are turning a watchful eye to the Department of Defense. The problem is, as Michael Goldfarb explains to Reuters, it's hard to make the argument, especially after the military's successful killing of Osama bin Laden, that there's a more effective…

“No continuing resolution to fund the government that fails to reduce spending will pass,” Alabama senator Jeff Sessions said yesterday at an education spending hearing. “It won’t pass the House or the Senate. We are going to fight for spending cuts this week, next week, next month, and next year.”

The state of California, a major player in the American textbook market, introduces its students to Islam in the seventh grade. For this purpose, the California State Board of Education has recommended the use of, among others, a world history textbook entitled History Alive! The Medieval World and…