Administration news

• 30 ideas for fixing U.S. Schools, ranked by experts

  29-09-2026 13:46 via districtadministration.com
  
  U.S. schools are facing a daunting problem. Students simply can’t read or do math as well as they used to.
  Student test scores have declined over the last decade, in an academic slump that started before the pandemic and has continued since. Compared with 2015, reading scores are down in 83 percent of districts, and math declines are nearly as pervasive.
  But improving student achievement is notoriously difficult. Do schools need more money? Better teachers? More standardized testing? Less?
  
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• Education Department formally rescinds Title IX protections for LGBTQ students

  28-09-2026 16:57 via districtadministration.com
  
  The Education Department announced Monday it has formally rescinded the Biden-era Title IX interpretation that gave sex-based discrimination protections to students on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
  Schools now must go back to the Title IX code as held under the previous Trump administration in 2020, which the department says will protect women’s sports.
  “Thanks to today’s action, the published Title IX regulations faithfully reflect court orders and Congr
  
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• Welcome to the ‘Wild West’ of AI in schools: Research is scarce, but experiments abound

  28-09-2026 13:05 via districtadministration.com
  
  For a few weeks last school year, a small group of students in Dayton, Ohio, regularly sat in front of laptops in conversation with a social-emotional learning chatbot named Jordan.
  Unlike AI chatbots that are designed to be agreeable — and even sycophantic — Jordan presents as angsty: On the day NPR visited, the chatbot told students, “Lately, I’ve been feeling like what’s the point of any of this? I’m not failing. I just don’t care. You ever feel like
  
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• Trump proposes $810 million in education and health cuts, defying Congress

  28-09-2026 13:00 via districtadministration.com
  
  The White House on Friday night informed Congress that it intended to cancel about $810 million that lawmakers had approved for education and health-related programs, its latest attempt to use a legally untested power to unilaterally rescind spending without the approval of lawmakers.
  The 12-page notification, sent to lawmakers and viewed by The New York Times, builds on a $4.9 billion clawback of funds that lawmakers approved for foreign aid programs that the Trump administration set in motion
  
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• DOJ says it’s moving to end more than 50 decades-old school desegregation cases

  25-09-2026 14:34 via districtadministration.com
  
  The Justice Department said Thursday it was seeking to end more than 50 long-standing consent decrees dating back decades that sought to curb unlawful racial segregation that was prevalent during the Jim Crow era.
  Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said her office was “ending prolonged federal oversight of these school districts” because the effort “does not reflect the reality of those classrooms today.&rdq
  
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• [Download] AI and Analytics: 3 Steps to Smarter K–12 Audits

  24-09-2026 17:18 via districtadministration.com
  
  AI and advanced analytics are giving K–12 districts new ways to protect funding, strengthen oversight and demonstrate responsible stewardship of every dollar. For audit and finance teams, these technologies can help uncover anomalies sooner, automate time-consuming processes and produce clearer evidence of how effectively districts are managing risk and maintaining internal controls.  
  Download the guide, How AI and Analytics Are Transforming Public Education Audit, to explore these t
  
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• Houston ISD state takeover could end this school year, but elected trustees face a long road to full control

  24-09-2026 15:50 via districtadministration.com
  
  Houston ISD may begin to regain local control of the district by the end of this school year.
  In August, both Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath and state-appointed superintendent Mike Miles said Houston ISD could exit the intervention “relatively soon.” The state’s largest school district has been under state control since 2023, after Wheatley High School in the fifth ward earned more than five consecutive failing accountability ratings from the Texas Education Agency. T
  
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• The Education Dept. hasn’t been dismantled. It’s become more inefficient, staff say

  24-09-2026 15:48 via districtadministration.com
  
  The Trump administration says it wants to close the Education Department to cut bureaucracy and increase efficiency, but NPR found that changes over the last 18 months have cost an unknown amount of taxpayer dollars and made the agency’s work more complex and potentially inefficient.
  NPR spoke to five Education Department employees to understand how the administration’s publicly stated goals are unfolding inside the agency. They all asked not to be named because they are not authoriz
  
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• Indiana superintendents say they’re cutting jobs because of property tax reforms

  23-09-2026 14:37 via districtadministration.com
  
  Dozens of Indiana’s public school superintendents say their districts will cut teaching and support staff in the coming years to contend with the financial fallout of property tax reform, according to a new survey from the Indiana Coalition for Public Education.
  This is the second year the volunteer advocacy group surveyed superintendents about the financial outlook of their schools in the wake of Senate Enrolled Act 1, which set forth a series of major property tax reforms.
  The survey wen
  
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• ‘We’ve simplified it’: Education Department rolls out FAFSA form earlier than ever before

  23-09-2026 14:29 via districtadministration.com
  
  The Department of Education is launching the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) earlier than ever before — a change it says will help families navigate the rising cost of college amid affordability concerns.
  The department’s early rollout is welcome news for the millions of American families eager to receive financial aid for the 2027-2028 school year.
  The critical resource is used to help applicants achieve funding for higher education and department officials are tout
  
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• The latest plans that could shake up education funding

  22-09-2026 16:08 via districtadministration.com
  
  WHAT GRANT PLANS MEAN FOR SCHOOLS: Schools and colleges could face more funding uncertainty under a new proposal from the Education Department.
  The department’s proposed rule on federal grants, known as the Education Department General Administrative Regulations, closes for public comment this Wednesday. The plan would give the agency broad authority to terminate certain federal funds.
  The proposed rule would allow the agency to terminate competitive grants to K-12 schools and colleges &ld
  
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• School districts, slowly, build guidance around AI learning in classrooms

  22-09-2026 16:05 via districtadministration.com
  
  Boston Public Schools allows students to use artificial intelligence to translate text. Lexington school officials say AI can help students write persuasively. And Medfield allows students to cautiously summarize complex material with it.
  Though their approaches may differ, the districts all share one thing in common: they’ve developed AI policies to control how the technology is used in the classroom. That puts them ahead of many other Massachusetts districts that haven’t developed
  
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• High costs, dwindling enrollment: Is Houston ISD’s playbook under takeover sustainable?

  21-09-2026 14:25 via districtadministration.com
  
  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
  
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• No more book bans: How Florida students are pushing rightwingers out of school boards

  18-09-2026 15:17 via districtadministration.com
  
  Jimmy Glover’s youngest children were in high school when he noticed their Florida school district taking an unsettling turn. Beloved books were being pulled from shelves. Teachers were scared of being targeted.
  “There was this culture of fear that was permeating throughout the district,” Glover said of Sarasota county.
  By channeling anger against mask mandates in schools, the right-wing group Moms for Liberty, founded in Florida, built an outsized influence on school boards ac
  
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• US judge strikes down Education Department’s anti-DEI grant policy

  18-09-2026 15:15 via districtadministration.com
  
  A federal judge on Thursday struck down a policy that was adopted early in US President Donald Trump’s administration that required the US Department of Education ​to terminate millions of dollars in grants funding diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
  US ‌District Judge Angel Kelley in Boston ruled, opens new tab in favor of eight Democratic-led states that had continued to challenge the Education Department policy even after the US Supreme Court in April 2025 allowed t
  
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• After a tornado, he rebuilt schools at lightning speed. Then came the hard work.

  17-09-2026 14:42 via districtadministration.com
  
  The weather on May 22, 2011, was bright and cloudless in Joplin, Mo., ideal for a high school graduation. C.J. Huff, the superintendent of schools, had gotten to his office at 5:30 in the morning to put the finishing touches on his speech. That afternoon, the ceremony proceeded on a disciplined schedule, the way Huff liked it. He recalls walking out into the sunlight afterward, feeling relieved that graduation had gone smoothly.
  In the parking lot, he heard a storm siren wailing. As he drove hom
  
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• Minneapolis Public Schools proposes closing schools amid budget challenges

  17-09-2026 14:36 via districtadministration.com
  
  The Minneapolis school district this week revealed a proposal to address its longstanding budget issues by consolidating programs, redrawing attendance boundaries and moving thousands of students to different schools.
  As many as 16 buildings could lose their current academic programming under the proposals, although the district stopped short of describing the buildings as closed schools. District officials said the buildings could potentially be used for other purposes in the future but did not
  
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• I’ve visited school districts from Tennessee to NYC. American kids are not ready for the AI revolution.

  16-09-2026 14:32 via districtadministration.com
  
  The first instinct of any school meeting a new technology is often to block it. Calculators, phones, YouTube, and now AI. It isn’t necessarily a poor instinct. When you’re responsible for other people’s children, and something arrives that nobody yet understands, a block buys time.
  I saw this first hand when I visited Hamilton County, Tennessee; a district that takes STEM seriously, and had invited me out to observe its computer science and maker program. I tried to access Chat
  
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• Mike Morath wanted Texas to reach No. 1 in education. Test scores show there’s more work to do.

  16-09-2026 14:29 via districtadministration.com
  
  Mike Morath set a goal 10 years ago to make Texas No. 1 in education, declaring then that “the future of the state is delivering great results for brown and Black kids while ensuring great results for everybody.”
  A decade later, national test scores indicate he still has a steep road to travel before the pizza party. While Texas’ fourth grade math students jumped from 18th to 8th over his tenure, the state otherwise lingers in the bottom third of the country.
  However, no one ca
  
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• The AI education paradox: Preparing students for an AI workforce

  15-09-2026 14:42 via districtadministration.com
  
  Schools face an unprecedented question as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in how people learn, work and think. At what age should students begin working with technology capable of writing, analyzing, explaining, creating and increasingly reasoning alongside them?
  The answer could influence far more than what happens inside classrooms. Decisions schools make today may help determine how an entire generation learns to think, solve problems, exercise judgment and eventually pa
  
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• US schools and police warn about viral ‘Cat in the Hat’ trend after teens’ arrests

  14-09-2026 17:38 via districtadministration.com
  
  Schools and law enforcement authorities in the U.S. are issuing warnings against a viral “Cat in the Hat” social media trend in which disturbing or AI-generated versions of the Dr Seuss character are used to threaten students, schools and communities.
  The latest warnings come as safety concerns increase and several teenagers have been arrested or charged over posts connected to the trend.
  The Cat in the Hat trend originated on Snapchat as images or short videos showing a disturbing v
  
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• Vouchers promise students with disabilities a path to private school. Parents say that’s not the reality.

  11-09-2026 15:23 via districtadministration.com
  
  It’s after 6 p.m. by the time Angela Johnson hurries home from work. Her 12-year-old daughter, Amelia, is at their house outside of Pensacola, Florida, with a nurse trained to care for medically fragile children. Amelia, who was born with a rare genetic anomaly, has endured many surgeries and requires a brain shunt and a feeding tube.
  The nurse starts caring for Amelia as soon as a bus from the public school drops her off. Johnson loves much about the school. But as a physical therapist, s
  
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• Boulder school district settles civil rights complaint over antisemitic harassment

  11-09-2026 15:14 via districtadministration.com
  
  The Boulder Valley School District settled a federal civil rights complaint this week with the Anti-Defamation League and the family of a Jewish Southern Hills Middle School student over antisemitic harassment and bullying allegations.
  “The details of the abuse inflicted on the middle schooler here in BVSD were incredibly hard to hear,” said BVSD superintendent Rob Anderson, in a written statement. “I have not only offered my sincerest apologies for what this student endured, b
  
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• Can students embrace tech innovation without losing critical thinking skills?

  10-09-2026 14:47 via districtadministration.com
  
  We’ve written about how A.I. threatens jobs. About how it’s fomenting a political backlash. And, most recently, about how some in Silicon Valley now put the risk of a “total A.I. takeover” at more than 50 percent.
  As a parent, one of the scariest things about A.I. is how pervasive it has already become in my children’s lives. Kids are not only using A.I. to answer questions. They’re using it to identify which questions to ask. (Although I was intrigued to hear
  
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• Special education head at Education Department abruptly resigns

  10-09-2026 14:41 via districtadministration.com
  
  Kelly Rogers told employees Wednesday that she is resigning from her post overseeing special education at the U.S. Education Department as the agency is in the midst of upheaval and downsizing.
  Rogers, who has been overseeing the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) since May, announced her departure less than a day before much of her staff were scheduled to move to the Department of Health and Human Services building in Washington D.C., according to internal emails re
  
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• Schools remain closed as Springfield works to resolve cyber attack

  09-09-2026 14:22 via districtadministration.com
  
  Springfield, Massachusetts, city leaders said Tuesday afternoon they are still working on resolving a major cyber incident that shut down school Tuesday, Wednesday and possibly longer.
  At a press conference, Mayor Dominic Sarno said the attack was classified as “level 4” which means “severe.” He would not explain exactly what happened because he said the investigation is ongoing.
  School officials said they first detected “malicious traffic” Tuesday, Sept. 1, b
  
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• Why this small Dutch town is teaching ‘Adolescence’ in school

  09-09-2026 14:18 via districtadministration.com
  
  “What makes a man a man?”
  Gijs Korenblik, a social studies teacher in Warnsveld, a small town in the eastern Netherlands, posed the question one day this spring to his high school students. “It’s a difficult question, even for adults,” the teacher conceded.
  Mr. Korenblik’s class focused on online bullying and influencers in the so-called manosphere, and was built around the Netflix series “Adolescence.” Using clips from the show, he prompted studen
  
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• One school district’s fight against trump’s anti-transgender push

  08-09-2026 15:34 via districtadministration.com
  
  Rob Stein had been interim school superintendent in Jefferson County, Colo., for 22 days when he sued the Trump administration this summer over demands to change their transgender-inclusive policies.
  Dr. Stein and other district officials say they had no choice. The cash-strapped district, Jeffco Public Schools, risked losing all $50 million of its federal funding for school meals and special education if they refused. But if they acquiesced, they concluded, they would violate state laws that pr
  
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• How an L.A. charter school has all but eliminated chronic absenteeism among homeless students

  08-09-2026 15:32 via districtadministration.com
  
  Scholarship Prep South Bay, a Wilmington charter school, touts a rare benchmark of success. Last year, none of the substantial number of homeless students it educates were chronically absent, school officials said, a goal they hope to maintain as school opens.
  The school, which offers transitional kindergarten through eighth grade, enrolled 421 students last year, and 54 experienced homelessness. Addressing their basic needs by offering a host of services to all students and families — nea
  
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• New Miami-Dade superintendent pauses look at closing 27 schools

  04-09-2026 13:12 via districtadministration.com
  
  Miami-Dade district Superintendent Rafael Villalobos put a temporary pause on a process that could have shut down operations at 27 schools.
  The school board voted to close nine schools last year, and 27 were recently being evaluated to determine whether they should “remain operational,” according to the Attendance Boundary Committee. The committee released a list of schools broken into two categories — those that are “reassessed,” and those that are “under rev
  
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