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    North Carolina helps kids earn college degrees in high school. It’s a lifeline for immigrant families

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    Daniel is a high school senior in rural North Carolina. Soon, he will graduate with a high school diploma, an associate degree and a paralegal certification from a local community college. He’s just 17, but he’ll be able to apply for positions at law firms and begin earning an almost $50,000 salary straight out of high school.“The early college program really set me up for success because even though I’m young, I’ll be able to help financially support my family,” said Daniel, a first-generation Salvadorian American who is only using his first name to protect undocumented family members. “I’ve done all of this because of support from my mother and family. I owe everything I’ve accomplished to them and I want to give back.”It’s been a long road for Daniel, who was accepted into a competitive Cooperative Innovative high school while still in middle school. These small, public high schools are located on North Carolina community college campuses, and they enable teens to simultaneously work toward completion of a high school diploma and an associate degree. It’s one of three paths that eligible North Carolina high school students can take as part of Career and College Promise (CCP): a free, statewide dual enrollment program established by the North Carolina state legislature in 2011, and that also facilitates college transfer or further technical education. The program helped Daniel get ahead of the curve, and so far it’s paid off. The teenager was just accepted into Vanderbilt University.According to North Carolina educators who spoke to the Guardian, dual enrollment is one of the state’s best kept secrets – especially for first-generation Latino students like Daniel.And because CCP is open to all qualified high school students, the program offers an extraordinary benefit to undocumented young people. As college students, undocumented immigrants are ineligible for most financial aid and otherwise considered “non-residents”, requiring them to pay out-of-state tuition at more than double the cost to residents. However, undocumented high school students participating in dual enrollment can attend up to four years of community college free of charge.But thanks to Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant vision for the US, students from immigrant families are now afraid – and so too are North Carolina community college educators and administrators, who fear their schools will be targeted for their efforts to extend educational opportunities to Latino communities. For safety reasons, most of the students, educators and administrators who spoke to the Guardian chose to remain anonymous.Engines of equity and accessLatinos have been the fastest growing demographic in North Carolina since the 1990s, with young Latino citizens in particular accounting for much of the growth. Many of these young people are the US citizen children of immigrants or come from mixed-status families where only some family members have authorization to be in the US.But even with 30 years to adjust to shifting demographics, the education system in North Carolina was largely ill-equipped to serve Latino students – especially in rural communities where a large percentage of the state’s Latino population resides.One rural community college staff administrator responsible for Latino engagement has worked tirelessly over the last few years to reach students like Daniel, whom they helped usher through College and Career Promise. They see it as part of their job to spearhead efforts to bring bilingual programs and classes to their community college, hire members of the immigrant community to teach, and perform outreach at local Latino community events. They also work closely to problem-solve with individual students, whether that means referring an undocumented student to scholarship opportunities or walking a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) recipient through the process of obtaining employer-sponsored in-state tuition. Just a few short months ago, these were efforts the staff administrator would have trumpeted – but times have changed.“I am afraid it might call attention to us in a negative way,” they said. “I saw how parents were too scared to drive to schools in [North Carolina] … and how people knew which roads not to take due to the police presence. I don’t want to widely call attention to us as being immigrant-friendly when the goal of this administration is to quash that.”There are valid reasons to be fearful. The Trump administration’s targeting and defunding of institutions with DEI policies have led many to preemptively comply out of fear of losing federal funding, and now that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) rescinded a previous policy warning against carrying out immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations”, schools are fair game for immigration raids. In recent weeks, hundreds of foreign college students have also had their visas revoked by the Trump administration, though it changed course and restored some students’ status after widespread media attention and court challenges.It was because of “serious concerns for the safety of students and the entire campus community” that officials from another North Carolina community college located in a mid-sized city initially spoke on the record, but later decided to remain anonymous. An administrator responsible for Latino student engagement there told the Guardian that when community colleges are forced to hide their efforts to make education more accessible, it also means hiding services from students and community members who need them the most.Alice Dolbow, a senior adviser at the North Carolina non-profit LatinxEd, issued an important reminder to schools now afraid to make these efforts public: helping immigrant and first generation students access higher education is “not against the law”. Her organization focuses on developing Latino education leaders in higher education.“I think many districts found themselves unexpectedly transformed by the increase in immigration,” Dolbow said. “Interestingly, community colleges are catching up at a much faster rate than our K-12 schools and our four-year universities. Programs like CCP are great for all students; they are engines of equity and access for all North Carolinians, including undocumented students. I want to be clear that any programs that happen to also help undocumented students access higher education are not ‘loopholes’. We are not ‘taking advantage of the system’. We are operating within the system and under the laws we have, and we are doing what the laws and system allow.”Latino students in the state – many of whom come from mixed-status families – are also a lifeline for North Carolina community colleges. Before 2020, community college enrollment in the state was on a slow decline. Then, 69,000 CCP students participated in dual enrollment during the pandemic. While community colleges don’t track the immigration status of students in the CCP program, it’s clear that more targeted outreach to the state’s young, growing Latino population can transform community college enrollment and the trajectory of Latino and immigrant families in the state.In many ways, community colleges are primed to serve immigrant communities. They offer flexible schedules; English classes for adults; continuing education; and curriculum programs that can lead to certificates, diplomas and degrees. In recent years, North Carolina has made considerable leeway to recruit Latino students of all kinds, in part, by hiring Latino educators to oversee Latino student engagement and outreach.“It is our job as community colleges to respond to the economic needs of the region, and it’s our job to educate the workforce that responds to those local economic needs,” explained the administrator from the mid-sized city. “If you have this growing population, it’s your job to serve them and by doing that, you are better serving your state.”There’s data to support the assertion. In 2018, the statewide network of 58 public community colleges that make up the North Carolina community college system partnered with population scientists to examine demographic shifts in the state. Latino student outreach was identified as a primary tool to increase community college enrollment and thus, help North Carolina remain competitive in the changing economy.The state has only three “Hispanic-serving Institutions” (HSI), defined in federal legislation as accredited, degree-granting public or private nonprofit institutions of higher education with 25% or more total undergraduate Hispanic full-time equivalent student enrollment. But that’s enough to rank North Carolina among the top 10 states in emerging HSIs, and each of North Carolina’s three existing HSIs are community colleges.‘College is … starting to feel impossible’Still, gaps in community colleges’ outreach, engagement and investment in Latino students become starkly visible when considering the experiences of undocumented students.Olivia, who is also using a pseudonym, is a North Carolina 18-year-old who benefited from dual enrollment as a high school student. After graduation, she’s struggled to pay the exorbitant cost of community college tuition as an undocumented student. Well-meaning community college administrators instructed her to apply for federal student aid, not understanding that her immigration status bars her from receiving it. Others referred her to scholarships she spent hours applying for, only to later learn the scholarships were only available to US citizens.“I feel like every year, I’ve learned about something different that I can’t do,” said Olivia, who came to the US when she was six months old. “I can’t legally work. I can’t get a driver’s license. I can’t leave the country. College is starting to feel like another thing that’s impossible. I’m starting to really worry that I have to give up on school.”Olivia’s dream is to be a pediatrician, but currently she can only afford one community college class a semester. To her parents, it appears as if she’s not working hard enough on her education.“But I’m working myself to the bone,” Olivia insisted. “I just feel like I’m not getting anywhere, and there’s a lot of pain in wanting to be something greater than you’re allowed to be.”Gabriela (also using a pseudonym) understands how hard it is to plan for the future when options are limited. When she was 14, she moved from El Salvador to North Carolina, where she became the first in her family to graduate from high school.CCP would have gone a long way to help the now 21-year-old toward her ultimate goal of becoming an elementary school teacher, but no one ever informed her of the program.Community college administrators who spoke to the Guardian said there are many challenges to getting the word on CCP out. Many high schools don’t have bilingual staff to inform parents of these opportunities. High school counselors tend to focus on advanced learning and programs for students who are headed to traditional four-year colleges instead of CCP.“As an adult, I’ve heard about all of these opportunities that would have made such a difference in my life. I’m 21 and starting from scratch,” said Gabriela. She is legally able to work in the US and has a job as a teacher’s assistant at an elementary school. Like Olivia, Gabriela has encountered administrators who were confused about why she didn’t qualify for in-state tuition. She told another administrator she was undocumented and that person later asked for her social security number.Working at a school only reinforces exactly what she wants to do professionally – and how that career path seems increasingly out of reach. Gabriela works at a school with many undocumented and mixed-status families. Under the Trump administration, many parents are afraid of participating in school life, fearful that something as innocuous as going on a field trip will require government-issued identification that they can’t provide and thus, potentially getting them on Ice’s radar.“I want to comfort them, but at any moment I know that I can be the one who is deported,” Gabriela said. “My work permit can be taken away at any moment, and what happens if I’ve enrolled in school? There are no good options. I want to remain hopeful, but I also feel like: do I really want to go back to school now? Putting myself through school will be such a sacrifice. What if I can’t do anything with my education?”North Carolina organizations such as UndocuCarolina and Pupusas for Education work to fill information and financial gaps in the state for undocumented students, Daca recipients and young people with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). But according to Glenda Polanco, too many North Carolina students are forced to make “decisions about their future out of desperation”.Polanco is the program director of Pupusas for Education, which started in 2016 to provide scholarships to undocumented students through food sales and has since turned into a non-profit organization to support Latino students. Polanco, now 32, was able to take advantage of early college as a North Carolina high school student, but she didn’t understand at the time that college classes would no longer be free after she graduated high school. If not for an extraordinary act of kindness in the form of a North Carolina couple who paid Polanco’s way through university, college would have been out of the realm of possibility.Polanco acknowledges that she was “lucky”. but says she can still remember moments of sheer panic about the cost of school and her future as an immigrant with a temporary status.“With the young people we work with … there is this daunting, insanity-provoking question: why does it have to be this hard?” Polanco said. “I don’t really have a good answer for them, and the anxiety and depression that comes with that uncertainty takes a toll. There is a psychological impact on the immigrant community – including on our parents. They want to give us the world, but none of us can really say what’s going to happen tomorrow.” More

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      Trump administration to cancel $1bn in Biden-era school mental health grants

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      The Trump administration is moving to cancel $1bn in school mental health grants, saying they reflect the priorities of the previous administration.Grant recipients were notified on Tuesday that the funding will not be continued after this year. A gun violence bill signed by Joe Biden in 2022 sent $1bn to the grant programs to help schools hire more psychologists, counselors and other mental health workers.A new notice said an education department review of the programs found they violated the purpose of civil rights law, conflicted with the department’s policy of prioritizing merit and fairness, and amounted to an inappropriate use of federal money.The cuts were made public in a social media post from the conservative strategist Christopher Rufo, who claimed the money was used to advance “left-wing racialism and discrimination”. He posted excerpts from several grant documents setting goals to hire certain numbers of nonwhite counselors or pursue other diversity, equity and inclusion policies.“No more slush fund for activists under the guise of mental health,” Rufo wrote.The education department confirmed the cuts. In an update to members of Congress that was obtained by the Associated Press, department officials said the Republican administration would find other ways to support mental health.“The Department plans to re-envision and re-compete its mental health program funds to more effectively support students’ behavioral health needs,” according to the notice.Donald Trump’s administration has cut billions of dollars in federal grants deemed to be related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and has threatened to cut billions more from schools and colleges over diversity practices. The administration says any policy that treats people differently because of their race amounts to discrimination, and it argues that DEI has often been used to discriminate against white and Asian American students. More

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      US supreme court seems open to religious public charter schools

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      The US supreme court’s conservative majority seemed open to establishing the country’s first public religious charter school as they weighed a case Wednesday that could have significant ramifications on the separation of church and state.The Oklahoma state charter school board approved the application for St Isidore, a Catholic virtual charter school. The ACLU and other groups filed suit, as did Republican attorney general Gentner Drummond. The state supreme court sided with Drummond, ruling that the US and Oklahoma constitutions “prohibit the state from using public money for the establishment of a religious institution”.The case is part of a broader push to erode the separation of church and state, a concept established through the US constitution via the “free exercise” clause of the first amendment. Oklahoma is at the forefront of this debate.The eventual ruling is seen as a test of the role of religion in the government and in schools. It comes as school choice programs like vouchers that allow students to use public monies to attend private schools grow nationwide and amid a sustained campaign against public schools.Charter schools are taxpayer-funded and free for students, but operate independently and with more autonomy than traditional public schools. Drummond’s attorney warned the case could upend charter school systems throughout the states, said Gregory Garre, who is representing Drummond in the case. Some states may respond by ramping up religious charter schools and others could halt their charter programs to avoid approving religious schools, he said.“This is going to create uncertainty, confusion and disruption for potentially millions of school children and families across the country,” Garre told the high court.The school’s proponents argue the school is not a government entity, so the state is not endorsing or funding a single religion. They also contend that denying the school from becoming a public charter effectively discriminates against religious organizations and people of faith, and that blocking the school would deprive Oklahoma students of an educational option.Jim Campbell, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the state charter board, said there are hundreds of families signed up for the school already, despite it not being open. “They’re part of Oklahoma’s community too. They should not be treated as second class,” he said.The conservatives on the court asked questions along similar lines, contending that the school simply wanted to be treated as non-religious entities. Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the school was asking not to be excluded on the basis of religion. He also questioned whether religious-affiliated programs for foster care or food banks could be negatively affected by a ruling against the charter school.“Our cases have made very clear, and I think those are some of the most important cases we’ve had, of saying you can’t treat religious people and religious institutions and religious speech as second class in the United States,” he said on Wednesday. “And when you have a program that’s open to all comers, except religion … that seems like rank discrimination against religion.”Siding with the school would fit with recent court rulings that have eroded the separation between church and state. Rulings in 2022 determined that state governments were in some cases required to fund private religious education and that a Christian football coach at a public school could lead his athletes in prayer.The liberal justices asked how the school intended to include religious beliefs and practices in its curriculum and whether creating a religious charter school crossed the line into the state endorsing a religion.At one point, the liberal Justice Elena Kagan questioned whether other religious communities might teach different curriculum based on their faith, and a lawyer for St Isidore pushed back, saying these hypotheticals shouldn’t justify religious discrimination.“Religious communities are really different in this country, and are often extremely different from secular communities in terms of the education that they think is important for their young people and is critically important to their faith,” Kagan said.The Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, has supported St Isidore, calling the lawsuit “the biggest religious and education freedom case in our nation’s history”. Ryan Walters, the Republican superintendent of public schools in Oklahoma, has frequently spoken in favor of St Isidore and has claimed there should be no separation of church and state. He wrote in a Fox News op-ed this week that denying the school would be “religious bigotry”.“Instead of fighting against parents and telling them that government officials know what is best for their children, we should instead listen to them,” Walters wrote. “There is hope that the supreme court will give us this chance, a chance to take power away from government bureaucrats and give it back to the people.”The Trump administration supported St Isidore in an amicus brief and solicitor general D John Sauer argued in court on Wednesday that denying the school to be a public charter would violate the free exercise of religion.Justice Amy Coney Barrett has recused herself from the case, so it is possible the court could split evenly, which would keep the Oklahoma supreme court’s ruling in place and prevent the school from being a public charter. Barrett has not given a reason why she recused herself, but she is close friends with Nicole Stelle Garnett, who is a faculty fellow at the Notre Dame religious liberty clinic that has represented the school. Barrett also taught at Notre Dame’s law school before joining the court.A decision in the case is likely later this summer. More

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      Immigration agents turned away after trying to enter LA elementary schools

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      Immigration officials attempted to enter two Los Angeles elementary schools this week, but were turned away by school administrators. The incident appears to be the Trump administration’s first attempt to enter the city’s public schools since amending regulations to allow immigration agents to enter “sensitive areas” such as schools.At a Thursday press conference, the Los Angeles unified school district superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, confirmed that agents from the Department of Homeland Security were seeking five students in first through sixth grades.Officials attempted to enter two south Los Angeles schools, Lillian Street elementary and Russell elementary, but were turned away after the schools’ principals asked to see their identification. Los Angeles Unified is a sanctuary district and does not cooperate with federal immigration agencies.The news comes as the Trump administration has escalated its attacks against international students and ramped up efforts to deport undocumented and documented immigrants alike. In January, homeland security rescinded Biden administration guidelines preventing its agents from entering “sensitive areas” including schools and churches.“Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest,” former acting homeland security secretary Benjamine Huffman said in a statement announcing the new policy. “The Trump administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”In response, LA Unified began distributing “Know Your Rights” cards to students and the school police department issued a statement saying it would not “assist or engage in immigration compliance checks, immigration enforcement activity, or ICE-related task force operations”.“I’m still mystified as to how a first-, second-, third-, fourth- or sixth-grader would pose any type of risk to the national security of our nation,” Carvalho said. “Schools are places for learning. Schools are places for understanding. Schools are places for instruction. Schools are not places of fear.”The superintendent told reporters that the immigration agents who arrived at the Los Angeles elementary schools said they wanted to see the “students to determine their well-being” as unaccompanied minors, and that they had received authorization to speak with students from their caretakers. He added that the district later spoke with the students’ caretakers and learned that was untrue.“DHS is leading efforts to conduct welfare checks on these children to ensure that they are safe and not being exploited, abused, and sex trafficked,” the homeland security department said in a statement to Fox 11 Los Angeles.“Unlike the previous administration, President Trump and Secretary Noem take the responsibility to protect children seriously and will continue to work with federal law enforcement to reunite children with their families. In less than 70 days, Secretary Noem and Secretary Kennedy have already reunited nearly 5,000 unaccompanied children with a relative or safe guardian.”Carvalho contested that, and said as an educator who entered the United States without authorization at the age of 17 himself, he felt “beyond my professional responsibility, a moral responsibility to protect these students”.The incident has drawn attention from congressional lawmakers, including Pasadena Democrat Judy Chu.“I’m absolutely incensed that DHS agents would try to enter elementary schools this week, and I’m so grateful to the brave LAUSD administrators who denied them entry. These are children who should be learning to read and write, not cowering in fear of being ripped away from their homes,” she said.“I’m concerned parents may keep their children home rather than risk sending them to school. As Angelenos, we must lock arms together in moments like these to protect kids from deportation squads and protect schools from Trump’s campaign of terror.” More

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      US supreme court allows Trump administration to freeze teacher-training grants

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      The US supreme court is letting the Trump administration temporarily freeze $65m in teacher-training grants that would promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in a 5-4 decision.The decision came down on Friday afternoon, with five of the court’s conservatives – Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh – in the majority. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson all dissented.In the unsigned opinion, the court said that the states made it clear “that they have the financial wherewithal to keep their programs running”, but the Trump administration had a strong case that it would not be able to reclaim any of the funds spent while the lower court’s order remained in place.The cuts to more than 100 programs had been temporarily blocked by a federal judge in Boston, who found that they were already affecting training programs aimed at addressing a nationwide teacher shortage. The federal appeals court in Boston turned away an appeal from the administration to allow them to resume.The emergency appeal is among several the high court is considering in which the justice department argues that lower-court judges have improperly obstructed Donald Trump’s agenda.Friday’s order was the first time in three attempts that the nation’s highest court gave the administration what it wanted on an emergency basis.US district judge Myong Joun issued a temporary restraining order sought by eight Democratic-led states that argued the cuts were probably driven by efforts from Trump’s administration to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs.The Republican president also has signed an executive order calling for the dismantling of the education department, and his administration has already started overhauling much of its work, including cutting dozens of contracts it dismissed as “woke” and wasteful.The two programs at issue – the Teacher Quality Partnership and Supporting Effective Educator Development – provide more than $600m in grants for teacher preparation programs, often in subject areas such as math, science and special education, the states have argued. They said data has shown the programs had led to increased teacher retention rates and ensured that educators remain in the profession beyond five years.Despite Joun’s finding that the programs already were being affected, the high court’s conservative majority wrote that the states can keep the programs running with their own money for now. By contrast, the majority said in an unsigned opinion, the federal government probably wouldn’t be able to recover the cash if it ultimately wins the lawsuit.
      Kagan wrote in dissent that there was no reason for the court’s emergency intervention.“Nowhere in its papers does the Government defend the legality of canceling the education grants at issue here,” Kagan wrote.In a separate opinion, Brown Jackson wrote: “It is beyond puzzling that a majority of Justices conceive of the government’s application as an emergency.”
      The administration halted the programs without notice in February. Joun, an appointee of Democratic president Joe Biden, found that the cancellations probably violated a federal law that requires a clear explanation.The appellate panel that rejected the administration’s request for a stay also was made up of judges appointed by Democrats.California is leading the ongoing lawsuit, joined by Massachusetts, New Jersey, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, New York and Wisconsin.Boston public schools have already had to fire several full-time employees due to the loss of grant funding, and the College of New Jersey has also canceled the rest of its teacher-residency program. California State University has ended support for two dozen students in a similar program, and eliminated financial assistance for 50 incoming students. More

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      What is the US Department of Education and what does it do?

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      Donald Trump has taken the overwhelming step of undoing the Department of Education on Thursday by signing an executive order to dismantle the agency in charge of the country’s national education policy.With the stroke of a pen, Trump fulfills a campaign promise he made all the way back in 2016.What is the Department of Education?The Department of Education is a cabinet-level agency created by Jimmy Carter in 1979 to oversee national education policy and administer federal assistance programs for schools across the country.The department manages a budget of approximately $268bn and employs about 4,400 staff members. Its core responsibilities have included distributing federal financial aid for education, collecting data on the US’s schools, identifying major educational issues and enforcing federal education laws prohibiting discrimination and implementing congressional education legislation.Among its most significant functions is administering federal student aid programs, providing billions in grants, work-study funds and loans to more than 13 million students. The agency also oversees programs addressing special education, English-language acquisition and education for disadvantaged students.Critics have long questioned the need for the department, arguing education should remain entirely under state and local control, while its supporters maintain it plays a crucial role in protecting educational equity and providing much-needed federal backing to schools serving vulnerable populations.Can Trump legally eliminate a government agency?Scrapping an entire department would require congressional approval – something that conservatives seeking to get rid of the education department have failed to do for decades.No president has ever successfully closed a cabinet-level agency enshrined in law before. And the constitutional separation of powers means the president’s executive authority alone isn’t sufficient to close the agency by the stroke of his pen.The White House has acknowledged this limitation, with administration officials confirming they don’t have the necessary votes in Congress to eliminate the department completely.So instead, Trump’s executive order would essentially direct the education secretary, Linda McMahon, to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure”, according to administration officials, while working within existing executive branch powers. This could include reorganizing certain functions, appointing leadership aligned with the aggressive drawing-down goal and potentially returning specific authorities to states where federal law permits.What does the executive order mean for American students?The mass weakening of the agency will undoubtedly create significant uncertainty for America’s 50 million public school students and their families, with impacts varying widely depending on how the directive is implemented.In the immediate term, most students will probably see little change to their daily educational experience, as schools primarily operate under state and local control and budgets for the year are already set. However, the long-term implications could be substantial if federal education programs are modified or reduced.Shuttering the department puts marginalized students most at risk, experts say. Since federal programs support special education, English-language learners and disadvantaged students, they face the brunt of the impact. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (Idea), which provides protections for students with disabilities, is federally enforced through the department.What happens to student loans?There is significant uncertainty for the federal student loan system, which currently manages approximately $1.69tn in outstanding debt for more than 43 million Americans.While the White House has indicated functions such as student loans will continue, any disruption to the department’s distribution of grants, work-study funds and loans could affect the more than 19 million college students in the United States.There are questions about which department might oversee these operations, but earlier this month, Trump suggested transferring loan management to either the treasury department, commerce department or the small business administration next. The treasury department may be the most likely choice.Borrowers currently in repayment are unlikely to see immediate changes to their payment requirements or loan terms, but may face uncertainty about where to direct questions and how to navigate repayment options if administrative responsibilities shift. But the executive order’s impact on new student loans and financial aid processing for incoming college students remains unclear. More

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      Trump signs executive order to dismantle US Department of Education

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      Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that instructs the US education secretary, Linda McMahon, to start dismantling the Department of Education, seemingly attempting to circumvent the need to obtain congressional approval to formally close a federal department.The administration may eventually pursue an effort to get Congress to shut down the agency, Trump said at a signing ceremony at the White House on Thursday, because its budget had more than doubled in size in recent years but national test scores had not improved.The federal government does not mandate curriculum in schools; that has been the responsibility of state and local governments, which provide 90% of the funding to schools. Nevertheless, at the White House, Trump repeated his campaign promise to “send education back to the states”.The executive order targeting the education department, which has been expected for weeks, directed McMahon to take all necessary steps to shut down key functionalities. Trump added at the signing ceremony that he hoped McMahon would be the last education secretary.“My administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department. We’re going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible. It’s doing us no good,” Trump said.McMahon appeared to smile in acknowledgment as she sat in the front row at the signing event in the East Room. Trump spoke from a stage in front of a row of state flags, and flanked on each side by a group of schoolchildren sitting at small desks.The bulk of the education department’s budget is made up of federal grant and loan programs, including the $18.4bn Title I program that provides funding to high-poverty K-12 schools and the $15.5bn Idea program that helps cover the education costs for students with disabilities.The White House said those programs, as well as the $1.6tn federal student loan program, would not be affected by the order. It was not immediately clear what spending cuts the administration would be able to achieve without cutting those initiatives.The move comes after the administration has already taken steps to undercut the department’s authority by instituting a round of layoffs that has reduced its workforce by nearly half and cancelled dozens of grants and contracts.The idea of shutting down the education department dates back to efforts by Republicans in the 1980s. But the push has become increasingly mainstream in recent years as pro-Trump grassroots activists took aim at agendas that promoted education standards and more inclusive policies.Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, has separately introduced a one-sentence bill on Friday that would terminate the education department at the end of 2026. Similar efforts have failed to get enough votes to pass in previous years.The Trump administration’s efforts to shutter the education department have largely followed the playbook in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s rightwing manifesto to remake the federal government, which envisions the department as a “statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states”.Democrats on Capitol Hill denounced the executive order and warned it could leave in jeopardy millions of low-income families, who rely on federal funding in schools.“Shutting down the Department of Education will harm millions of children in our nation’s public schools, their families and hardworking teachers. Class sizes will soar, educators will be fired, special education programs will be cut and college will get even more expensive,” Hakeem Jeffries, the US House minority leader, said in a statement.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe progressive wing of the House Democratic caucus also denounced Trump’s order as an unconstitutional attempt to evade seeking congressional approval to implement his political agenda.“The reality is that the Trump administration does not have the constitutional power to eliminate the Department of Education without the approval of Congress – however, what they will do is defund and destabilize the agency to manufacture chaos and push their extremist agenda,” said the Democratic congressman Maxwell Frost.But without cutting out the department itself, the incoming Trump administration, buoyed by a rightwing backlash to public schools that intensified after the Covid-19 pandemic, could alter key parts of the department’s budget and policies in ways that would be felt in schools nationwide.Some Republicans support the idea of sending block grants to states that aren’t earmarked for specific programs, letting states decide whether to fund low-income students or students with disabilities instead of requiring them to fund the programs for those students. Programs that don’t affect students directly, such as those that go toward teacher training, could also be on the chopping block. Expanding the use and promotion of school vouchers and installing “parents’ rights” policies are also likely.In late January, Trump signed executive orders to promote school choice, or the use of public dollars for private education, and to remove funding from schools accused of “radical indoctrination”. Trump also revived a “1776 commission” to “promote patriotic education”.The education department boasted that in the first week of the Trump administration it had “dismantled” diversity, equity and inclusion programs.Soon after Trump took over, the department was loaded with key staffers tied to a rightwing thinktank, the America First Policy Institute, often referred to as a “White House in waiting”. The thinktank has supported driving out diversity programs and banning books, which the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism documented in a report on the institute’s ties to the education department. The policy institute has promoted installing Christianity in government, including in schools.The department ended investigations into book banning and got rid of a book-ban coordinator position last month in a move announced by Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights, who previously held a role at the thinktank. More

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      Local food for schools helps farmers and kids. So why is Trump cutting funding?

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      “If you happened to smell hickory smoke in the city this week, we were probably to blame,” the North Little Rock school district’s child nutrition program shared in a 30 January Facebook post featuring a picture of the day’s lunch.The locally sourced menu included school-smoked chopped beef, pulled pork, fresh apples and coleslaw. This isn’t standard cafeteria fare, but funds from the US government helped kids in this Arkansas town get fresh, nourishing foods produced by farmers and ranchers in their own community.Menus like this might be a thing of the past come next school year. On 7 March, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) notified states of the withdrawal of $1bn in taxpayer dollars that states used to contract with local producers, effectively ending these and other innovative programs. School districts like that of North Little Rock were counting on these funds to plan menus for the next school year. Now, with just five months to go, the funding has been abruptly rescinded.As someone who has spent my entire career working in school food and now serves as the senior director of programs and policy for the National Farm to School Network, I know the best way to ensure that American children receive a nourishing school lunch every day is to expand federal support for community-based food producers.I know first-hand the impact of investing in local food for schools. Living in Arkansas with my two little girls – who attend public school and participate in the school meal program – I see how vital these programs are for the health and wellbeing of our kids, economy and communities. Thanks to the growth of the farm-to-school movement, the North Little Rock lunch-tray experience is becoming more and more common across the country.While I faced empty shelves at my local Kroger early in the pandemic, supply-chain shortages affected school cafeterias in unimaginable ways. Meeting nutrition regulations became nearly impossible as basic staples like fresh produce and milk suddenly became unavailable, leaving school nutrition professionals scrambling to provide balanced meals. Food insecurity surged as communities relied more heavily on school meals, yet the systems in place to meet that need were breaking down. In response to these unprecedented challenges, schools across the country began to turn to local sources for food like never before – partnering directly with farmers to keep meals coming and meet community needs.The food supply chain has still not fully recovered from the disruptive effects of the pandemic, and growing challenges such as bird flu and labor uncertainties exacerbate the problem. Schools and the communities they serve want to serve good, locally grown and prepared food, but taking the programs from activities like an occasional taste-test of apples from a nearby orchard to a full transformation of menus away from ultra-processed foods and big food manufacturers is going to require more support. It’s going to require investments like the Local Food for Schools Program.In 2021, an incredibly effective solution arose to both feed schoolchildren well and support (mostly rural) American farmers: the Commodity Credit Corporation’s Local Food for Schools Program. That initial $200m investment went directly through states and into local farms across the country specifically for school meals. The next round of $660m was intended to expand to include early childcare programs.The program was successful, an investment of our tax dollars right back into our communities. US farmers typically earn 15.9 cents for every dollar spent on food. But when schools purchase directly from farmers, 100% of every dollar goes to farmers. And now a program that provided critical support has been canceled in the name of government efficiency.John Wahrmund, a friend of mine and third-generation beef farmer in rural Arkansas, benefited from the Local Food for Schools Program. Selling to schools became a new and vital market for his farm. To meet demand, Wahrmund invested tens of thousands of dollars in processing and refrigeration equipment to ensure his high-quality, grass-fed beef fit the strict regulations for selling to schools.View image in fullscreenNow those sales will end. Without the kickstart these funds provide, cash-strapped schools are forced to go back to the cheapest products because local farmers are easily undercut by multinational food companies. When I called Wahrmund to ask how he was holding up, he told me: “[The Local Food for Schools Program] is everything for my sales. Without this, it will literally shut me down. I have focused solely on schools.”He has been driving across Arkansas, not just the North Little Rock school district but from Fayetteville to Hope, to get his beef into school cafeterias. “It will be over – not just with me, but with all the farmers trying to serve the school lunch program. Not just beef [producers], rice, vegetables, all of it.”The National School Lunch Program has always been tied to the fate of farmers in our country. Of the National School Lunch Act of 1946, which created the program, then president Harry Truman said: “In the long view, no nation is any healthier than its children or more prosperous than its farmers; and in the National School Lunch Act, the Congress has contributed immeasurably both to the welfare of our farmers and the health of our children.”At a 23 January nomination hearing to Congress, Brooke Rollins, who is now the secretary of the Department of Agriculture, stated that she aimed to support rural communities, bolster domestic markets and ensure that nutrition programs are efficient. Just last week, she and the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, moved forward with “Make America healthy again” (Maha) commitments to “create and implement policies that promote healthy choices, healthy families and healthy outcomes”.The Local Food for Schools program was exactly that kind of policy. It was more than just fresh thinking. It was a proven, common-sense investment that gave farmers and school nutrition programs a vital boost.March is when farmers plan their next growing season, and when school food professionals set their menus. Now, without this funding, farmers like Wahrmund may go out of business, and school food programs – already operating on razor-thin margins of an average of $1.40 per tray – will struggle to provide nourishing meals to students who rely on them every day. Arkansas, the most food-insecure state in the nation, stood to receive over $8m of the funds. With working families already struggling with rising food costs, eliminating this support is not just shortsighted – it’s harmful.This funding wasn’t government inefficiency or a liberal scheme; it was an investment in our children’s health, our farmers’ livelihoods and the resilience of our communities. Rolling back this support isn’t just a mistake; it betrays every principle of public health and supporting farmers, America’s first entrepreneurs and essential workers. As Rollins said to Fox News this week: “If we are making mistakes, we will own those mistakes and we will reconfigure.” Rollins herself has identified “creat[ing] new opportunities to connect America’s farmers to nutrition assistance programs” in her vision for the agriculture department.The USDA continues to assess its programs and funding. It must correct course and reinstate this vital funding, but it must do so immediately. Speaking on behalf of 20,000-plus National Farm to School Network members from across the US, I ask Rollins to restore this robust local foods market program and transform school food so that meals like that North Little Rock lunch can become the norm. More

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      The making of Elon Musk: how did his childhood in apartheid South Africa shape him?

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      With an imposing double-winged redbrick main building, and school songs lifted directly from Harrow’s songbook, Pretoria boys high school is every inch the South African mirror of the English private schools it was founded in 1901 to imitate.Elon Musk, who has rapidly become one of the most powerful people in US politics, spent his final school years in the 1980s as a day pupil on the lush, tree-filled campus in South Africa’s capital, close to his father’s large detached home in Waterkloof, a wealthy Pretoria suburb shaded by purple jacaranda blossoms in spring.View image in fullscreenSouth Africa was rocked by uprisings as apartheid entered its dying years. In 1984, black townships across the country revolted. By 1986, the white minority government had imposed a state of emergency. But in the segregated white enclaves, life was affluent and peaceful.“While the country as a whole was very much in flames and in turmoil, we were blissfully very safe in our little leafy suburbs, going about our very normal life,” said Jonathan Stewart, who was a year above Musk at Pretoria boys, which also counts the Labour politician Peter Hain, the Booker prize-winning novelist Damon Galgut and the murderer and Paralympian Oscar Pistorius among its former pupils.“You had this wealthy set, in relative terms, and everybody else was excluded.”View image in fullscreenMusk, who was born in Pretoria in 1971, railed on his social media platform X last month against the “openly racist laws” of the country of his birth and responded “yes” to the statement: “White South Africans are being persecuted for their race in their home country.”After the posts by the man now at the helm of Donald Trump’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), a special group Trump has created, the US president signed an executive order accusing South Africa’s government of “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners, citing a law allowing land to be expropriated in certain circumstances. The order cut aid to South Africa, which receives 17% of its HIV/Aids budget from the US, and offered asylum to Afrikaners.It was not clear the extent to which Musk, who left South Africa in 1989 for his mother’s country, Canada, and then went to the US, had a direct hand in encouraging Trump to issue the order.Trump has taken an interest in the alleged persecution of white South Africans since his first presidency, when an Afrikaner rights group travelled to the US to claim, falsely, that white farmers were being murdered for their land with the complicity of the government. Trump saw one of the group’s leaders interviewed on Fox News and tweeted his support.Trump has also been influenced by other interests, including US groups critical of South Africa’s case against Israel at the international court of justice (ICJ) over the war in Gaza, which he referred to in his executive order.View image in fullscreenBut with Musk now among Trump’s closest advisers, it is unlikely he has not made his views known to the president, given they are also tied up with his business interests in South Africa.Musk has claimed that land reform laws, in a country where the white minority, who make up just 7% of South Africa’s population, still own more than 70% of agricultural land, are racist and amount to theft. He has endorsed claims that the killings of white farmers amount to genocide; research suggests the crimes are financially motivated.Musk’s attacks have ratcheted up at a time when he is in a dispute with the South African government about affirmative action laws, as he tries to sell his Starlink satellite network in the country. The world’s richest man objects to a law requiring that foreign investors in the telecoms sector provide 30% of the equity in the South African part of the enterprise to Black-owned businesses.Trump’s executive order will add to the pressure on South Africa’s government to exempt Musk from the Black empowerment laws.X’s press team and Musk’s lawyer did not respond to interview requests or emailed questions.To what extent Musk’s years growing up under the collapsing apartheid regime influenced his positions today, from making what looked like a Nazi salute – a characterisation he rejects – at Trump’s inauguration celebrations last month to his embrace of far-right political parties such as Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, remains an open debate.View image in fullscreenWhite, English-speaking South Africans such as Musk’s family benefited from apartheid’s racial hierarchy but lived mostly separate lives from the ruling Afrikaners.Musk spent the first two years of South Africa’s five high school years at the all-white Bryanston high school in Johannesburg’s leafy northern suburbs. Founded in 1968, it is a mixed-sex, English-language, fee-paying state school, made up of rectangular mid-century buildings.Like South Africa then and now, Bryanston high was sports mad. “It was a little bit like when you think of American society,” said Lesley Burns, who finished at the school in 1984, Musk’s first year. “There were all the jocks and the popular guys in the football team.”Musk, who was on the school’s chess team in 1985, was viciously bullied. The hounding culminated with him being thrown down a set of stairs, beaten so badly that he was hospitalised. The school declined an interview.View image in fullscreenMusk’s father moved him and his brother, Kimbal, to Pretoria boys, where he was well liked, according to Gideon Fourie, who had computer science classes with Musk.“He was a very average personality,” Fourie said. “He wasn’t in any way like a super jock, or a super nerd, or a super punk … He had a group of friends.”South African media were subjected to strict government censorship. Newspapers would appear with censored sections blacked out, particularly reports of the growing unrest in the townships and mass arrests, until those were also banned.In contrast, the fee-paying Pretoria boys was liberal, for its time. In 1981 it became the first government school to admit a Black pupil. The then headteacher, Malcolm Armstrong, used a loophole that allowed it to let in the sons of diplomats from the “homelands” within South Africa that the apartheid system claimed were independent states.“Armstrong even defied the authorities by meeting with the ANC [African National Congress] in Dakar while it was still banned,” said Patrick Conroy, who was in Kimbal’s year, two years below Musk. “He frequently addressed our school assemblies, emphasising the importance of democracy, human rights and social justice.”The school’s current headteacher, Gregary Hassenkamp, was also in Kimbal’s year and has similar memories of his predecessor, although he noted that not all teachers shared Armstrong’s liberal views.View image in fullscreen“I remember him forcing boys to think about the country in which we lived and the attitudes we had,” Hassenkamp said in an interview in his wood-panelled office, wearing a flowing black gown and a tie and socks in the school’s red, white and green colours.Musk has previously described himself as “not a conservative” and backed the Democratic candidate in every presidential election going back to Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, until he moved to the right. But Musk is clearly suspicious of democracy and the leaders it produces.In the 1930s, his grandfather headed an anti-democratic fringe political movement in Canada with fascist overtones, which campaigned for government by elite technocrats. He then moved to apartheid South Africa because the racist system appealed to him.Musk now appears happy to embrace the US version of the “strongman” ruler by backing Trump’s claim that the will of the president is paramount.Some of Musk’s school peers speculated that his current views of South Africa may be influenced by his missing out on the ups and downs of the negotiations to end apartheid and the “miracle” of Nelson Mandela becoming the country’s first Black president in 1994.Since then, the governments led by Mandela’s ANC party have failed to address the world’s worst economic inequality. While its Black economic empowerment policies offer tax breaks and state contracts to Black-owned companies, Black people are five times likelier than white people to be unemployed. South Africa also has one of the world’s highest murder rates.It is not uncommon to hear white South Africans say they are being discriminated against, often citing affirmative action laws. In mid-February, hundreds gathered outside the US embassy in Pretoria carrying signs with slogans such as “Thank God for President Trump” and “Make South Africa Great Again”.View image in fullscreenWhile it is rare to hear white South Africans say they want a return to apartheid, it is also not uncommon to hear older people express nostalgia for that time.“It was a good time, because we had no crime. There were no problems. People, Blacks and whites, got on very well with each other,” Errol Musk said in a video interview from his spacious Cape Town home, when asked about his son Elon’s childhood. “Everything worked. That’s the reality. Of course people don’t want to hear that, but that’s the truth.”Musk and his two younger full siblings, Kimbal and Tosca, have had a tumultuous relationship with their father. Kimbal told Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson that their father would scream at them for two to three hours, calling them worthless and pathetic. Their mother, Maye, has accused him of physical abuse.“It’s rubbish,” Errol said when asked about the allegations, which he has repeatedly denied.The brothers became estranged from their father in 2017, not for the first time, when he had a child with his 30-year-old stepdaughter, Jana Bezuidenhout, according to Isaacson. In Errol’s telling, they got angry with him when he expressed his support for Trump in 2016, at a party in Cape Town they threw for his 70th and Musk’s 45th birthdays.“Things changed when Biden came in and Elon realised they’re trying to destroy America,” Errol said. “Now we exchange messages about every day. Of course, he’s not always able to answer, so his PA will answer me.”Additional reporting by Chris McGreal More