June 20, 2025
What Kids Need—and Adults Need to Know—to Combat the Youth Mental Health Crisis
Starting this fall students in New York will join those in other states like California in not being able to access cellphones during the day. These bans are the culmination of years of education and activism by parents, teachers and researchers concerned about the effect of technology not only on academic performance but also on…
May 15, 2025
The Pandemic Is Over. It’s Time for Schools to Get the Message.
More than five years after the covid-19 pandemic began, the havoc it wreaked on American students and schools is alarmingly clear by nearly every measure. But there is one glaring exception: high school graduation rates. Even as test scores cratered, public school enrollments plummeted, and chronic absenteeism — the percentage of students missing at least one-tenth of the school…
May 7, 2025
Republicans Unveil Plan to Rein in Student Debt and Waste in Higher Education
In a significant development for higher education policy, House Republicans have unveiled a sweeping proposal to reform student loans and financial aid through the federal budget reconciliation process. This effort, which complements President Trump’s recent executive order on accreditation reform, signals a renewed push to rethink how the federal government supports students and holds institutions accountable for…
May 5, 2025
What’s in House Republicans’ Student Loan Overhaul
House Republicans have introduced a comprehensive student loan overhaul as part of the broader budget reconciliation process. Known as the “Student Success and Taxpayer Savings Plan,” the package of reforms aims to save hundreds of billions of dollars through new student loan limits, changes to the repayment system, and policies to hold colleges accountable for their outcomes. If enacted,…
April 30, 2025
The Student Loan Bubble Is about to Pop
At the outset of the covid-19 pandemic, federal student-loan borrowers won what appeared to be a reprieve. That five-year pause on payments and interest accumulation is now shaping up to be a curse in disguise. Last week, the Trump administration drew criticism for announcing that the Education Department would resume involuntary collections next month. But the squeeze…
April 25, 2025
Trump Administration Announces Plan to Get Borrowers Paying Student Loans Again
The U.S. Department of Education announced on Monday that it would resume involuntary collections of defaulted federal student loans on May 5. The announcement means that borrowers who have loans in default could see their tax refunds seized or wages garnished. While many borrowers and advocacy organizations will oppose the move, resuming collections is necessary to incentivize loan repayment….
April 24, 2025
It’s About Time: Bring Back Those Student Loan Collections
This week, the Department of Education announced that on May 5 it will begin collecting on defaulted student loans. This will be the first time since March 2020 that borrowers who have either chosen not to or been unable to make their student loan payments will once again face significant financial consequences for their delinquency. Borrowers…
April 4, 2025
How One State Improved Its NAEP Scores
The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress results had a lot of bad news, but there were some scattered bright spots. Louisiana was one of them. In fact, the Pelican State was the only state in the nation that outperformed its pre-pandemic 4th grade reading scores on the 2024 NAEP. Over the past two…
March 28, 2025
Cracking the Code Behind Dismal 8th Grade Reading Scores
The most recent round of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results delivered a familiar gut punch: Just 30 percent of eighth graders in the United States read at or above the proficient level, a number that’s barely budged in decades. Even in states like Mississippi and Louisiana, which have earned national attention thanks to literacy reforms that have…
March 24, 2025
The Student Loan Payment Pause Was a Catastrophic Mistake
In March 2020, as America shut down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress passed a law suspending federal student loan payments for six months. The payment pause ended up lasting, in effect, for four and a half years. Though well-intentioned, the pause and its repeated extensions may go down as one of the worst mistakes in…