https://www.notus.org/education Education en-US Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:11:00 GMT https://www.notus.org/metro/wootton-high-school-montgomery-county-boundaries Jeff Barker Some residents are pursuing a legal challenge to the planned closure of the highly rated Wootton High School. Tue, 04 Aug 2026 09:11:00 GMT https://www.notus.org/metro/wootton-high-school-montgomery-county-boundaries A smattering of “Save Wootton” and “It’s Not Over!” yard signs dot neighborhoods surrounding the Rockville, Maryland, high school whose name and student body are due to be transferred in 2027-28 to a new building several miles away.

With the Montgomery County Board of Education having approved the shift last spring, the red, white and blue signs — matching the colors of Thomas S. Wootton High School — remain as a defiant statement by residents, some of whom are pursuing a legal challenge to plans they say would illegally close the highly rated, half-century-old school in the Washington suburbs.

“It’s such a necessity,” said Rockville Council member Adam Van Grack, whose son attends Wootton. “It’s not a question of if it’s going to be a permanent school again, the only question is when.”

A dozen miles away, similar yard signs remain in the neighborhood around the sprawling Silver Spring International Middle School, which area residents fear isn’t in the county’s future plans.

“The school gives us an opportunity to greet one another. It gives us a sense of community," said Angie Kronenberg, an attorney who, during the campaign's busiest periods, devoted as many as 30 to 40 hours a week organizing efforts to preserve the school, which is adjacent to Silver Spring’s downtown and home to sought-after Spanish and French immersion programs.

Montgomery County, home to Maryland’s largest public school system, completed sweeping boundary studies in March that upended the futures of Wootton and Silver Spring International, and redrew boundaries for other schools to account for enrollment shifts, school building conditions and other factors.

But the school assignment debates never quite seem over, and in the case of Wootton, parents and community members have lodged complaints over everything from deteriorating building conditions to property values.

Boundary shifts stir powerful protective instincts, said Sarah Asson, a senior researcher at the nonprofit research group Education Northwest, often turning parents into activists fighting for what they view as their children's best interests.

“These rezonings touch two of the most important things for parents -– their kids’ education and their communities,” Asson said.

While parents typically frame their objections around their children's education and their communities, issues regarding image and status are often at play as well, said Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, a professor in Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Education.

“There is a lot of anxiety — status anxiety — about securing their kids’ futures through education,” Siegel-Hawley said.
DC0A5520 copy.jpg (7772x5182, AR: 1.50)Real estate values can also be an important, if less openly acknowledged, subtext. Homes assigned to highly regarded schools often command a premium, and some residents worry boundary changes will diminish their property values.

Wootton, which has about 1,900 students, is one of the county’s prestigious, so-called “W” schools along with high-achieving Walt Whitman, Walter Johnson and Winston Churchill. It is not uncommon for families in the more diverse eastern portion of the county, including Silver Spring and Wheaton, to move to the western part so their kids can attend a “W” or the highly rated Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.

“For 20-some years if I had a property in the Wootton school district, I hardly had to say anything about the house. I just said ‘Wootton,’ and it had this magnetic attraction for buyers,” said Kevin Grolig, a real estate agent in the county.

If plans to move Wootton remain intact, Grolig estimates that values of homes within walking distance of the school’s current location could drop 15% or more.

Wootton remains open for now. An oversized “Wootton Strong” banner hangs from the back of the football field bleachers.

But the school, whose former students include actor Thomas Jane, NFL player Trevon Diggs and several members of the rock band O.A.R., was built in 1970 and has issues with leaking ceilings, heating and cooling units and mice.

On March 26, the county Board of Education voted 7-1 to approve moving Wootton to a new school in Gaithersburg for the 2027-28 school year. Thomas Taylor, the superintendent of Montgomery County Public schools, said a single school could efficiently handle current enrollment and that the old Wootton would be employed as a “holding school” for when other schools are undergoing construction.

At the meeting, parents held signs reading “Don’t Close Wootton” and “Vote No,” and some parents chanted “shame” when the vote was complete.

“This is not a closure of Thomas S. Wootton High School — this is a move of the school to a new building,” said a Montgomery County Public Schools announcement in February explaining the plan.

It said Wootton students “will transition to a state-of-the-art facility” and that the system was responding “to updated enrollment data showing needs can be met more efficiently with the current number of schools.”

But critics said importing the school’s name, colors and “Patriots” mascot to a new building won’t make it the real Wootton, but rather a weird facsimile.
DC0A5489 copy.jpg (8192x5464, AR: 1.50)
In April, a nonprofit group composed of Wootton parents, alumni and others filed an administrative appeal with the Maryland State Board of Education challenging the March decision.

“At the heart of the appeal is a straightforward question: Can a school board avoid Maryland’s statutory school closure requirements by characterizing a school closure as a ‘relocation?’” the group said in a prepared statement.

The case is pending. Montgomery County Public Schools said it could not comment on any litigation.

The school system declined to make Taylor available for an interview or answer NOTUS’ questions about possible scenarios for the futures of Wootton and Silver Spring International.

Rather, Montgomery County Public Schools emailed a statement about the new two-year, elementary and middle school boundary study. The statement said the study will address “system-wide facility capacity, optimize building utilization and evaluate potential school closures or consolidations" with community input.

Last year, the county Board of Education declined to pursue Taylor’s recommendation to convert Silver Spring International, whose buildings are in deteriorating condition, into a holding school. While the school wasn’t targeted for closure in the March vote, many parents say the board’s decision to reduce its number of feeder elementary schools has placed the school on an uncertain path because its enrollment will decline.

Proponents of maintaining Silver Spring International and Wootton often raise concerns that are difficult to quantify. Some speak nostalgically of the quiet ritual of children being close enough to walk to their neighborhood schools.

“That was the number one thing parents were saying to me: ‘Our kids can still walk to school, right?’” said Kronenberg, who helps lead a Silver Spring group called “Save Our Schools.”

“We believe our school is still at risk,” Kronenberg said. "We have to keep at it."]]> https://www.notus.org/defense/hegseth-dod-university-partners-dumping-ivy-league-schools Raymond Fernández UNC-Chapel Hill and Virginia Tech are the first universities selected after the Pentagon cut ties with several elite schools. Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:43:34 GMT https://www.notus.org/defense/hegseth-dod-university-partners-dumping-ivy-league-schools The Defense Department this week announced the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Virginia Tech as the newest hosts of a reworked educational program for service members, a decision that came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cut ties with several Ivy League institutions.

The two universities were the first to be selected by the department and will soon offer the Senior Service College Fellowship, a 10-month professional program for senior military officers.

“We are deeply honored to participate,” UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Lee H. Roberts said in a statement. “The program fits well within the context of our mission of service, and we take tremendous pride in our deep, longstanding relationship with the United States military.”

Earlier this year, Hegseth announced the Defense Department had canceled the fellowship program at several Ivy League schools, including Columbia University, Harvard University and Yale University — institutions that had historically offered the program for military members.

Under his leadership, Hegseth said the department had realigned its academic partnerships to better reflect the administration’s goals.

In a social media post in February, the secretary argued the elite schools had become the grounds for “woke indoctrination” and that the universities fomented “anti-American resentment and military disdain.” The Pentagon has canceled at least 93 fellowship programs and cut ties with 13 higher education institutions.

Hegseth's decision to end fellowships that sent senior military officers to select U.S. universities has sparked confusion within the armed services and concerns that officers will lose access to some of the nation's top academic institutions, NOTUS previously reported. 

More universities are expected to join the new cohort in the coming weeks. In a memo, the department suggested several conservative-leaning schools, such as Hillsdale College, Liberty University and the University of Florida, as likely partners.]]> https://www.notus.org/trump-white-house/federal-judge-halts-rule-limiting-student-loan-access Jenna Monnin The Education Department’s new borrowing caps for federal student loans were set to take effect on July 1. Thu, 25 Jun 2026 18:40:40 GMT https://www.notus.org/trump-white-house/federal-judge-halts-rule-limiting-student-loan-access A federal judge temporarily suspended a key provision of an Education Department rule on Thursday, potentially opening the door for students pursuing nursing and other medical graduate degrees to qualify for more federal student loans, less than a week before the Trump administration's sweeping borrowing limits were due to take effect July 1.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on their claims that the government’s definition of “‘professional degree’ is contrary to law” and supported their assertion that “they would suffer irreparable harm should the Rule go into effect.”

The American Association of Nurse Practitioners and the Physician Assistant Education Association filed lawsuits against Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the department, respectively. Howell ruled for both cases, acknowledging the plaintiffs’ “understandable angst” over the new federal student loan caps.

“By granting preliminary relief, the Court recognized that the harm caused by this rule is too significant to ignore and that PA students should not be forced to suffer its consequences while the case is being decided,” two physician assistant groups involved in the case wrote in a joint statement following the ruling.

The Education Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Education Department’s rule capped graduate student loans at $20,500 annually, with an aggregate cap of $100,000. The rule designated 11 graduate degrees as “professional” programs, offering students studying dentistry, law and medicine, among other fields, a higher annual loan cap of $50,000 and an aggregate cap of $200,000.

The new regulation ended the Grad PLUS loan program — created by Congress in 2005 to allow students to borrow up to their school’s full cost of tuition.

The medical groups primarily took issue with the Trump administration’s decision to omit students in advanced nursing and physician assistant programs from the “professional” category, making them ineligible for the higher loan cap.

The Education Department implemented the new rule as part of the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, which contained the provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill that Trump signed into law last year. The legislation included sweeping changes to tax policy and cuts to social programs like Medicaid, Medicare, federal food assistance and federal student loan borrowing.

The regulation received significant bipartisan pushback when it was announced, with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Virginia) and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-Oregon) leading a group of 140 lawmakers in opposition to part of the Education Department’s rule that did not include nurses in the “professional” group with higher loan caps.

“The proposed definition threatens more debt for post-baccalaureate nursing students,” the lawmakers said in a December news release.

The coalition of lawmakers also raised concerns about the broader impacts of the rule on the medical workforce.

“At a time when our nation is facing a health care shortage, especially in primary care,” the lawmakers wrote, “now is not the time to cut off the student pipeline to these programs.”

This story was updated to include a statement from the plaintiffs.]]> https://www.notus.org/education/education-department-changes-civil-rights-health Adora Brown Senators say the agency’s outsourcing of special education roles to HHS is the wrong move. Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:17:58 GMT https://www.notus.org/education/education-department-changes-civil-rights-health Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said the Department of Health and Human Services is too large and too broad to handle the work of the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.

Because of changes by the Trump administration to dismantle the Department of Education earlier this week, HHS now jointly oversees OSERS with the Department of Education. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has a similar agreement to take on the responsibilities of the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights.

“I thought it was wrong to move OSERS,” said Cassidy, a physician and chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee. “A lot of these kids are going to need rehabilitative services to end up right in the workforce, and I just think that they get lost in there.”

Cassidy said if the administration insisted on moving the office, then the Department of Labor would be a better fit for it because of OSERS’ focus on workforce development.

The Trump administration has justified the moves by saying they will cut bureaucratic tape and improve outcomes. These are poised to be some of the most sweeping changes to scale back the role of the Department of Education by transferring the responsibilities, and even some funding, of entire offices to much broader federal agencies.

The administration continues to describe the moves as “partnerships,” and it now has a range of them across different agencies.

But other lawmakers — Democrats — had concerns similar to Cassidy’s, noting that they’d long feared that the administration would take these steps. OSERS is responsible for tracking legislation, implementing policy and supporting programs for people with disabilities of all ages.

“I’ve heard concerns from so many families with loved ones with disabilities,” Sen. Andy Kim (D-New Jersey), HELP committee member, told NOTUS. “I specifically pushed Secretary Kennedy on this in a previous hearing, because in HHS they’re gutting funding to so many different programs that are for people with disabilities. I don’t trust him. It’s not the right move at all.”

In a statement to NOTUS, the Department of Education defended the moves.

“HHS administers a broad portfolio of programs that support individuals with disabilities across multiple divisions,” Savannah Newhouse, a spokesperson for the department, said in the statement. “As with all ED partnerships, we have been clear that states, students, and families should expect to see no disruptions as ED's Office for Special Education and Rehabilitative Services continues to oversee its statutory functions.”

Trump had long floated the idea of moving special education and nutrition programs to HHS, under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy. In an unrelated news conference in the Oval Office last year, he said “those two elements will be taken out of the Department of Education.” HHS already oversees several programs related to nutrition in public schools and medical schools.

The Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, which enforces civil rights laws for any school or institution that receives federal funding, has already faced major changes throughout the second Trump administration. The office fired hundreds of employees last year, creating a major backlog of cases, and then recalled many of those employees in December.

A study by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) office concluded that of at least 23,000 pending civil rights cases, only 1% of them were resolved in 2025.

“We’ve already seen less cases being prosecuted, less advocacy for our children. And so we’re very concerned about this move, and we want to see the secretary come before our committee,” Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Delaware) told NOTUS.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has not appeared before the HELP committee since her confirmation hearing in February 2025, and several Democratic members of the committee have been calling on Cassidy to bring her to Congress. Newhouse said McMahon “routinely” updates congressional leadership.

“We’ve seen this Department of Justice is incapable, really. They are used, they’ve been weaponized by this administration. The administration has totally stripped the integrity of other people at that agency,” Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-Maryland) told NOTUS.

The moves this week to outsource more of the Education Department’s responsibilities bring the department to 14 interagency agreements since it started making such changes in November. Previous interagency agreements moved primary and secondary education, Native American education, workforce development, medical accreditation, child care and the federal student loan portfolio.

Education responsibilities are now spread across six different agencies: the departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, Justice, Interior, Treasury and State.

Unlike Cassidy, other Republican members of the HELP committee seemed less alarmed by the moves.

“Look at it this way: They’re moving them to preserve the programs. I suppose the administration could be calling to shut it down, and so, I don’t have any issue with relocating programs and agencies,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) told NOTUS.]]> https://www.notus.org/education/states-sue-education-department-loan-caps Adora Brown The suit claims that the department’s exclusion of certain degree programs, like nursing, will burden the health care system. Tue, 19 May 2026 19:44:34 GMT https://www.notus.org/education/states-sue-education-department-loan-caps Dozens of states sued the Education Department on Tuesday over the agency’s finalized loan caps that would limit the federal funds available to professional degree-seekers.

The limits officially go into effect on July 1. For borrowers going to medical school, law school, dentistry school, pharmacy school or other programs that the Education Department categorizes as “professional,” students would face a $200,000 aggregate limit for their time in that program and a lifetime limit of $257,000 for any federal student loan.

The complaint from 25 states and the District of Columbia argues that the Education Department is not acknowledging or including all programs and professional degrees. The lawsuit cites several degrees, including nursing, speech language pathology, physician assistant and physical therapy as programs the agency is overlooking.

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that these gaps in particular could weaken the health care industry even further. By excluding certain degrees from the “professional” category, those students would face a tighter $100,000 limit intended for graduate students. Someone pursuing an advanced practice nursing degree, for example, would be limited to $20,500 annually.

A bipartisan pair of senators, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Mississippi’s Roger Wicker introduced a bill on Tuesday to overturn the Education Department’s removal of nursing from the list of professional degrees.

“This legislation would make nursing a more achievable profession by expanding the loan limits for nursing students. Classifying post-baccalaureate nursing degrees as professional degrees would give these students more financial freedom after graduation,” Wicker said in a press release.

A study by Philadelphia’s Federal Reserve Bank found that 28% of students in graduate or professional programs borrow more than the limits the agency is implementing.

The lawsuit called the agency’s distinction of professional degrees “arbitrary and capricious.” The states also questioned the blanket loan cap for all degrees in just two categories, rather than creating caps based on the price of the program.

But the Education Department previously said its goal with capping loans was to cut the price of these degree programs by forcing the hand of institutions. What remains unclear is whether institutions will large-scale lower costs as a response, or if the loan limits will create a greater burden for borrowers who may need to lean into the private loan system instead.

“For years, Democrats parroted illegal student loan forgiveness to ‘end the debt crisis’ and buy votes, and now the same people are fighting against the Trump Administration’s legal efforts to drive down the cost of college,” Nicholas Kent, the under secretary of education, told NOTUS in a statement. “After decades of unchecked student loan borrowing that gave schools no reason to control costs, these commonsense loan caps – created by Congress – are already incentivizing colleges and universities to lower tuition.”

A spokesperson for the Education Department also cited a few examples of institutions lowering costs after the loan caps were made public. The University of California at Irvine cut its tuition by 20% and the University of Santa Clara Law School created a $16,000 scholarship designed to “cover the cost of tuition for Santa Clara Law within new federal loan limits.”

The loan limits are a part of the “Working Families Tax Cuts” that President Donald Trump signed into law in July 2025. It’s been a long-stated goal of the administration to cut the bureaucracy within the Education Department, and Education Secretary Linda McMahon has furthered that agenda by reassigning programs and grants to other agencies instead of dissolving the department, which would require congressional approval.

The agency remained steadfastly behind the policy in its response to the lawsuit.

“Clearly, these Democratic governors and attorneys general are more concerned about institutions’ bottom-line rather than American students and families’ ability to access affordable postsecondary education,” Kent said.

The lawsuit primarily includes states with Democratic leadership, but Vermont, Nevada, Kentucky and Pennsylvania have a Republican governor or attorney general.]]> https://www.notus.org/education/plyler-precedent-conservatives-schools-trump-administration Adora Brown Undocumented children have long been guaranteed the right to a public education. Some conservatives want to change that. Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:13:00 GMT https://www.notus.org/education/plyler-precedent-conservatives-schools-trump-administration A growing number of conservatives want to harness the momentum around President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda to end the 44-year-old precedent guaranteeing undocumented children the right to an education.

Conservative lawmakers at the state and federal levels are voicing their concerns about the education of undocumented K-12 students as they try to cut back on the resources spent on undocumented immigrants and encourage stronger efforts to challenge the precedent.

“The taxpayers shouldn’t have to fund illegal alien children by federal mandate,” Rep. Chip Roy, a Texan running to become the state’s attorney general in November, told NOTUS. “If people want to be educated, then they can go home. Or we can certainly have some debate about what to do, but it’s a wrong opinion and we’re having to pay the bill.”

The Supreme Court ruled in 1982 in Plyler v. Doe that children could not be denied an education based on their immigration status. The majority of the justices agreed that having a generation of immigrant children, and later adults, who were uneducated would be a greater burden on the country than the price of having them in school.

Roy held a hearing in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government last month to revisit what he described as a harmful decision for schools and taxpayers. Roy referred to the court’s decision as “legislating from the bench” and said the issue should be left up to lawmakers.

Other Republican members of the committee agreed with Roy’s position that undocumented students should not be publicly educated at the expense of American taxpayers.

“That was the ruling back in ’82 but things have changed a little bit since then, haven’t they?” Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, asked a witness at the hearing, framing an increase in immigrants encountered at the border under President Joe Biden as part of the reason. “There’s certainly a cost associated with that.”

Despite the ideological support on the Hill, much of the battle to overturn Plyler is playing out at the state and local level. The Texas legislature tried to pass bills in 2024 and 2025 that would have prevented undocumented students from attending public schools, and Gov. Greg Abbott has repeatedly called for overturning Plyler.

The strongest outcry against Plyler in the state now comes from Roy, who told NOTUS he would “sue and fight for that down in Texas” if he’s elected attorney general.

Other states have attempted to challenge the 1982 Supreme Court decision as well. Tennessee has introduced multiple bills, including one that would charge undocumented students tuition and another that would require all schools in the state to verify the immigration status of every student.

In Oklahoma, the school board led by former state superintendent Ryan Walters approved a plan in 2025 that required proof of citizenship from families, though that stalled in the state legislature with little support.

The second Trump administration has escalated in its immigration enforcement tactics, including major operations in cities such as Portland, Los Angeles and Chicago. In its Minneapolis operation, the administration came under fire for its tactics toward children, such as establishing immigration enforcement operations near schools and the detainment of children including Liam Ramos.

While Trump has not been vocal about challenging Plyler, The New York Times reported that White House adviser Stephen Miller “raised the idea” to Texas state lawmakers of revoking public education funding for undocumented students.

“The characterization of Stephen pushing them is not accurate. They were providing a legislative update to [White House] staff and this issue came up over the course of their discussion,” a White House official told NOTUS in a statement. The official did not comment further on the idea of overturning Plyler.

Even in highly conservative states, however, not all Republicans are convinced that targeting children’s immigration status is the path forward in immigration enforcement. That’s made clear by Republicans’ inability to pass a law challenging Plyler so far at either the state or federal level.

There’s also broader public resistance to the idea of tying immigration enforcement to education. More than a third of parents say they’ve noticed an adverse effect on children from immigration enforcement in the second Trump administration, according to Stanford University’s Rapid Polling Project. These effects include fear and anxiety, family separation, declining school attendance and a reduced sense of safety.

“The idea that we should be telling teachers, and principals, and school administrators, guidance counselors that they need to be becoming immigration agents, and handing over lists of students, inviting [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] into classrooms — this is like an 80-20, 90-10 issue here,” Todd Schulte, president of the immigration advocacy organization FWD.us, told NOTUS about the lack of substantive support behind the bills challenging Plyler in different states. “Very conservative education leaders, people who disagree on a lot of things, realize how bad the educational outcomes would be here.”

Many of the bills at the state level are aimed at trying to calculate the cost of educating undocumented students. That’s information that the lawmakers behind them want collected, published and addressed by charging students tuition or denying enrollment altogether.

Because schools cannot currently ask about the immigration status of their students, many challenges to Plyler hinge around getting that information.

“Step one is data, and what are states paying for to educate and all the associated services that go with it in K-12 public education for illegal alien students,” said Lori Ries, director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. Taxpayers “have a right to know how their money is being spent and on whom and for how much.”

Some studies show that immigrant families pay the local, state and federal taxes that fund public schools, and that by educating all students equally, there is a delayed, significant economic boost when those students reach adulthood.

According to the American Immigration Council, an immigration advocacy nonprofit, undocumented families paid more than $75 billion in taxes in 2022. FWD.us reports that since Plyler, people who were undocumented children have paid around $633 billion more in state and local taxes than what it cost to educate them. The education of undocumented students has benefits such as improving public health, decreasing childhood poverty and boosting the workforce and economy, FWD.us contends. 

Whether efforts to overturn Plyler ever succeed, the attempts to do so cause fear and confusion, immigrant advocates say.

“The collective impact of all these anti-immigration narratives and efforts have been clear in immigrant communities – documented, undocumented, of all sorts – that have led to decreased enrollment. And so the real impact of that is that students are missing out on their civil right to an education,” Leslie Villegas, policy analyst for the liberal think tank New America, told NOTUS.

For now, organizations and legal experts are preparing themselves for more challenges to Plyler at the state and local level. If it is overturned, they say, it would have serious consequences for how the country perceives education policy as a whole.

“The Plyler court cites the Brown v. Board of Education decision, saying for the premise, specifically today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments,” Michael Pillera, director of the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told NOTUS. “Brown said it's doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he or she is denied an opportunity to education. That's what's at stake if this were successful.”
]]> https://www.notus.org/education/treasurys-student-debt-collection-education-department Adora Brown Education experts are concerned about what a new interagency agreement that would give Treasury some of the Department of Education’s responsibilities would mean for borrowers. Wed, 15 Apr 2026 16:39:29 GMT https://www.notus.org/education/treasurys-student-debt-collection-education-department As the Treasury Department gradually takes on much of the student loan collection typically done by the Department of Education, a major change will be the knowledge of education policy that agency staff have.

The Trump administration announced last month that the Treasury would take on the Department of Education’s student loan debt portfolio of nearly $1.7 trillion. Financial aid experts say that move risks losing the expertise that Education Department staff bring to the collection process.

“A large-scale disassembling of the department which, this is part of that larger context, right, makes that a lot harder, and it makes it harder to serve students. It makes it harder to give them a streamlined service, and it makes the system more piecemeal and confusing when it is spread out across all different agencies,” said Sarah Sattelmeyer, a project director for the public policy think tank New America.

The move to transfer the student loan portfolio would be the most sizable interagency agreement announced by the Department of Education under the second Trump administration. And the Treasury will take on a system that is already struggling, with almost 25% of borrowers — around 9 million people — in default on their loans.

“You can have a student loan program that, in essence, is growing and is being administered by a group of people whose only goal is money in, money out, rather than a larger goal of improving higher education,” Julie Margetta Morgan, the president of The Century Foundation and former deputy under secretary at the Department of Education in the Biden administration, told NOTUS.

For borrowers in default, Morgan said this change could be particularly difficult because this group already faces the most severe financial consequences.

“[The Treasury is] truly about collecting money for federal coffers, not about what kind of world do we want to build, what kind of economy do we want to have?” Margetta Morgan continued. “And so I think it's just a real loss to make this change.”

Many experts are confused about how the two departments will carry out this interagency agreement. Several uncertainties still remain regarding when or how the student loan portfolio will begin to shift.

“I would say it immediately raises lots of questions about how exactly this will happen. You know, the devil is always in the details, and there are lots of moving pieces to this,” Karen McCarthy, the vice president of public policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, told NOTUS.

The change is expected to happen in three phases, according to the interagency agreement. The first will push borrowers in default on their loans and the accompanying default resolution group, which works to track defaulted borrowers and enforce repayment, to the Treasury for collections. The Treasury already handles some aspects of the default portfolio when borrowers get to the point of involuntary collections such as wage garnishment.

The second and third phases would be far more wide-reaching. The second would give Treasury oversight over non-defaulted debt, while the third would move the administration of major programs including the Pell Grant, federal work study and the Free Application for Federal Student Aid to the Treasury.

These final two phases could face significant backlash, a higher education expert told NOTUS.

In Congress, Democratic senators are calling this arrangement illegal. The Department of Education is required by law to maintain its statutory responsibilities, and many Democrats see these agreements as a way to sidestep the process of getting congressional approval to dismantle the agency.

“This latest illegal scheme from the Trump Administration threatens to trap student loan borrowers, students, and families in chaos and bureaucracy, all while American taxpayers are left to foot the bill for Treasury to administer programs that ED can and should administer itself,” Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Ron Wyden, Patty Murray and Tammy Baldwin wrote in a joint statement following the announcement by the Department of Education and the Treasury.

A Department of Education spokesperson argued to NOTUS in a statement that the partnership would lower costs.

“With the student loan portfolio approaching $1.7 trillion and defaults nearing 25 percent, now is the time for a hard reset in how the federal government provides and services student loans,” Ellen Keast, press secretary for higher education at the agency, said in the statement. “We are confident that our partnership with the Treasury, an experienced and proven fiduciary, will strengthen program administration and better serve American students, borrowers, and taxpayers.”

Functionally, many opponents of the agreement between the Education Department and Treasury are focused on a lack of clarity on how this shuffling would help meet the administration’s goals of getting rid of bureaucracy.

“I do think that by separating out the implementation function from the policy-making function, that decreases coordination and alignment,” Sattelmeyer told NOTUS.

Some experts said they’re confident that the administration of the loans will remain the same, as agreements between borrowers and vendors are legally defined.

“I actually don't expect things to change from a borrower-perspective very much,” said Betsy Mayotte, the president of the Institute of Student Loan Advisors, a nonprofit that advises borrowers. “The terms and conditions of federal student loans are largely written into federal law, and Treasury doesn't have the authority to change that. But where there may be some gray areas, I don't know if they would adopt the same policies that they have for IRS debt that they would for student loan debt.”
]]> https://www.notus.org/education/doj-admissions-practices-three-medical-schools-ohio-state-stanford-san-diego Christa Dutton The White House is expanding its pressure campaign on institutions of higher education. Thu, 26 Mar 2026 22:20:30 GMT https://www.notus.org/education/doj-admissions-practices-three-medical-schools-ohio-state-stanford-san-diego The Justice Department on Thursday opened investigations into admissions policies at three of the country’s top medical schools, a move that effectively expands the Trump administration’s pressure campaign on institutions of higher education.

The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division demanded that Stanford University, Ohio State University, and the University of California, San Diego, turn over extensive data about applicants by April 24 or risk federal funding, The New York Times reported.

“At this time, our investigation will focus on possible race discrimination in medical school admissions,” Harmeet K. Dhillon, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, wrote in each of the letters.

All three medical schools are top recipients of National Institutes of Health money, a major funding stream for universities that has been used as leverage by the second Trump administration.

This week’s investigations are the latest in the White House’s yearlong effort to reshape higher education by cracking down on alleged antisemitism, quelling campus protests and pulling federal funds for research into topics the administration doesn’t support.

All three medical schools confirmed that they had been notified of the government’s investigation.

“Ohio State is fully compliant with all state and federal regulations and legal rulings regarding admissions. We've received the letter and will respond appropriately,” spokesperson Ben Johnson said.

UC San Diego said it was notified yesterday and that it was reviewing the notice.

“UC San Diego is committed to fair processes in all of our programs and activities, including admissions, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws,” a spokesperson said.

A Stanford spokesperson said the school was also reviewing the notice and would respond appropriately.

“Stanford School of Medicine prohibits unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law,” they added.

The requested data include seven years’ worth of test scores, home ZIP codes and applicants’ ties to alumni or donors. The DOJ also requested copies of internal communications at the colleges about diversity, equity and inclusion and messages shared between school officials and pharmaceutical companies about their admissions policies.

The Supreme Court in 2023 barred colleges from considering race in admissions, and the Trump administration has taken a keen interest in whether colleges are following the law.

The White House announced in August that colleges must report data on the race, gender, test scores and grade averages of applicants. More than a dozen states sued the Department of Education and the Office of Management and Budget, arguing that the requirement targets diversity efforts and burdens colleges.]]> https://www.notus.org/defense/hegseths-elite-universities-fellowship-canceled-service-members Adora Brown The Department of Defense canceled fellowships with institutions it deemed “woke indoctrination.” Fellowships with those schools were once considered a point of pride. Tue, 17 Mar 2026 21:49:45 GMT https://www.notus.org/defense/hegseths-elite-universities-fellowship-canceled-service-members Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to cancel fellowships for senior military officers to attend select American universities has caused confusion among members of the armed services and has raised concerns that the military will no longer have access to the country’s most elite institutions.

These fellowships were often a point of pride in the military — and used as a stepping stool for promotions. Without them, service members say they are left wondering whether attending the very schools that educated officials like Hegseth himself will now be seen as a disadvantage.

“My whole career, it's been seen as a mark of pride to be able to go to a prestigious school and attend one of these,” an active duty military officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity told NOTUS. “I think the bigger fear is that it could grow in the next couple of years to include more programs that people are sort of counting on attending or planning their whole family life around.”

In late February, Hegseth canceled fellowship programs with five Ivy League schools: Brown University, Columbia University, Harvard University, Princeton University and Yale University. He also ended programs with other major institutions like Carnegie Mellon University, Georgetown University, George Washington University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Hegseth said the programs — which allowed service members to conduct research and take graduate-level classes — amounted to “woke indoctrination.” He himself attended Harvard and Princeton.

In a memo announcing the end of the programs, the Defense Department suggested “potential new partner institutions” with more conservative-leaning schools like Hillsdale College, Liberty University, the University of Florida and Baylor University.

Currently, 93 senior service members at 22 institutions are impacted by this policy change, a small number compared to the entirety of the military’s Professional Military Education institutions. But experts and the people who rely on these programs are growing concerned that the department will continue to make cuts based on politics.

“We have a lot of concern that the department is effectively limiting choices available to senior military officers and potentially other civilian leaders at the Pentagon,” said Lindsey Tepe, the director of government relations at the American Council on Education, which represents more than a thousand colleges and universities. “I think our members are increasingly worried about how politicizing military education and the training of our officers is going to have negative downstream effects.”

Ending the fellowships will create a gap between the military and institutions conducting research on the topics the military says it is prioritizing, like artificial intelligence and new technologies, experts and researchers said.

Hegseth also canceled fellowships with some think tanks and nonprofits including The Brookings Institution, the New America Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations.

“The Department of Defense is cutting itself off from a major engine of research in the United States, just as it's seeking to transform the industrial base, and as it's leaning into artificial intelligence, and it's leaning into new technologies where universities are, you know, along with folks in Silicon Valley, are leading,” Carrie Lee, a former senior service education professor, told NOTUS.

Another veteran, Maggie Seymour, who served in the Marine Corps, said the change will “exacerbate” divides between “academia, thinker strategy, and the people who actually execute foreign policy.”

Those currently enrolled in one of the now-canceled fellowships can finish out the year, according to the Defense Department’s memo. Those who have already been accepted into the 2026-2027 class of fellows will find their options limited.

“We will no longer invest in institutions that fail to sharpen our leaders' warfighting capabilities or that undermine the very values they are sworn to defend,” the memo reads.

Many elite institutions have had longstanding partnerships with some, if not all, of the branches of the military, and have educated many policymakers and senior administration officials alike.

“Officers in these fellowships are the future leaders of our military. These fellowships benefit both the students that attend and the military, that is why they have been so successful in the past. Cutting them will only worsen our readiness,” Rep. Gil Cisneros, a former Navy officer who attended both Brown University and George Washington University, told NOTUS in a statement.]]> https://www.notus.org/education/native-american-leaders-education-department-tribal-education Adora Brown They also want answers about how efforts to delegate several tribal education projects to other agencies would work. Thu, 26 Feb 2026 10:13:00 GMT https://www.notus.org/education/native-american-leaders-education-department-tribal-education The Trump administration’s recent moves to dismantle the Department of Education have left Native American leaders feeling frustrated and unheard as several tribal education projects are caught in limbo between federal agencies.

Tribal leaders say they are seeking solutions to the lack of direction from the Department of Education as it tries to delegate some of its responsibilities through new interagency agreements. They say they are unsure about the logistics of some existing projects, from the movement of personnel to their financing under new agencies.

“In reality, we also need to be thinking about if this is going to happen, and it looks like it's happening, then how can we step in to make sure that the transition goes the way that we would have recommended had we been consulted in the first place?” Jake Keyes, chair of the Iowa Tribe of Oklahoma, told NOTUS.

Tribes are also wondering where they stand under the MAGA-led Department of Education that wants states to have more power over education — particularly the many tribal nations that are in red states.

The agency announced in November that it would move several projects related to tribal education to the Department of the Interior and the Department of Labor. These projects span a wide range of tribal education matters, from professional development of teachers to grants for colleges run by tribes.

Under the Trump administration, the Department of Education has made clear its intention to dismantle the agency. Now that tribal education programs are caught up in the first wave of interagency agreements from the Department of Education, Native American leaders say they are increasingly concerned that the agency is willing to violate its trust and treaty responsibilities to tribes to achieve its goals.

“We have a preeminent right to education because of the treaties,” Aaron Payment, a board member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians in Michigan, told NOTUS. “The treaties exchanged two billion acres of land in exchange for the promise of health, education and social welfare. My tribe ceded 14 million acres of land for the promise of health, education and social welfare. That's a federal responsibility, and that's a federal constitutional right for American Indians.”

The Department of Education directed NOTUS to a statement from Secretary of Education Linda McMahon made on Feb. 11.

“This partnership is not just a policy: it is a promise rooted in trust, treaty obligations, and our shared responsibility to ensure that every Native American student has access to high-quality education and the opportunities that follow,” McMahon wrote in a press release.

A high concentration of tribal land is within Republican-controlled states, and some tribal leaders are concerned that if it is left up to states to decide how federal funds should be allocated to tribes, there could be issues.

One tribal leader gave the example of an education official in their state who is “pushing an English-only initiative.”

“We were able to talk to him, and he does understand that there was a guidance issued from U.S. ED, and that tribal languages and history is not [diversity, equity and inclusion],” said Derrick W. Leslie, the education director of the White Mountain Apache Tribe of Arizona. “And a lot of states, especially red states, tend to have this anti-DEI [sentiment], which is worrisome.”

Tribal leaders in Oklahoma echoed a similar sentiment. The state is often ranked 50th in education in the country. Before its MAGA-aligned state superintendent resigned in September, he threatened to withhold federal funding from schools that did not follow a Department of Education mandate to end DEI. In a state that is often the site of culture wars over DEI in education, the tribal leaders said their education seems particularly vulnerable.

“If the state had been in charge of Indian education throughout these past several years, that would have been devastating for us. On top of that, our state seems to have an issue with being able to actually even manage education,” Keyes said.

This month, the agencies began the formal process of consulting with tribes about facilitating the transfer of education programs, part of a formal process where agencies meet with tribal leaders about any policy change or action that has tribal implications. Tribal leaders traveled to Washington this month to meet with Department of Education officials, but many left the meeting frustrated and disappointed in a process they said seemed intended to placate leaders rather than solve issues.

Hundreds of people showed up online and in person to the consultation, and leaders were only given a few minutes each to speak.

The resounding sentiment at the consultation was: It’s too late to consult with tribes about a decision that has already been made.

“I feel like they were just checking a box to say that they met with tribes and they listened to tribes, but that the plan is already in motion,” Leslie told NOTUS.

Several tribal education leaders who were present at the consultation told NOTUS that leadership from the Departments of Education, Interior and Labor left no room for reconsideration and spoke about the interagency agreements as though they were already implemented.

These leaders — which included McMahon, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer — appeared only briefly during the nearly three-hour consultation.

In her statement, which is from the day after the consultation, McMahon said that the consultation was meant to help tribes “focus on serving students instead of complying with burdensome bureaucratic regulations.”

Tribal leadership only spoke directly with Julian Guerrero Jr., the director of the Office of Indian Education.

“I feel like the people that needed to hear those statements weren't there,” Carrie F. Whitlow, the executive director of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Department of Education of Oklahoma, told NOTUS about the agency officials. “So by the time they got up there, the tone was that this is happening, and it's been signed, and basically we are doing you all a favor.”
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