Most-clicked story of the week:
The U.S. Department of Education is being sued by a coalition of unions — including the American Federation of Teachers — over its regulatory definition of a “professional degree,” which controversially excludes education graduate programs. Under that definition, students in advanced degree programs considered “professional” are able to take out up to $200,000 in federal student loans, while those seeking degrees in fields excluded from the designation have their borrowing capped at $100,000.
The collective number of additional school days per year students have been missing since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to an analysis released Aug. 11 by Bellwether. According to the education nonprofit’s data, about 1 in 4 students is chronically absent as of the 2023-24 school year.
Schools navigate safety issues — from weather to cyberspace
- Extreme weather such as wildfires, flooding and extreme heat impacted more than 9 million public school students across 10,000 schools nationwide during the 2024-25 school year, according to an analysis by UndauntedK12. Those impacts included school cancellations, early releases and delays.
- As schools continue to face unique cyber risks, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is aiming to help school and district leaders mitigate and respond to those challenges with a free set of K-12 cybersecurity resources released Aug. 12. The first of the two guides aims to equip school leaders with the basic foundations for developing and improving cybersecurity, while the other is designed to help K-12 cybersecurity leaders find strategies to sustain cyber defense approaches.
Education civil rights in the spotlight
- The number of written state complaints in special education jumped 46% during the 2025-26 school year compared to the year before, according to self-reported survey responses from 31 states collected by the Council for Exceptional Children and the National Association of State Directors of Special Education. The survey data showed there were 11,523 written state complaints during the 2025-26 school year, up from 7,907 in 2024-25.
- The Education Department’s rescission of disparate impact in July could lead to investigations against districts or states being narrowed or dropped, according to former federal civil rights enforcement staff. The disparate impact legal theory targets policies or practices that are intended to be neutral but harm Black or other historically marginalized student groups in practice. This differs from intentional discrimination cases, which the agency will still pursue, according to its July 23 announcement.
