On Jan. 29, 2025, President Donald Trump signed the “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” executive order (EO) and the “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families” EO, directing federal agencies to...more
Last week, the US Supreme Court ruled that the Biden Administration’s efforts to cancel $430 billion in student loan balances was legally unsupportable. Forty-three million Americans will remember Biden v. Nebraska when...more
School districts often have gender-based dress codes, outlining specific requirements for students such as mandating a particular skirt length for female students or prohibiting muscle shirts for male students. In late 2022,...more
The Mississippi Supreme Court recently rejected federal preemption arguments relating to federally owned student loans. This follows other preemption rulings, as we’ve discussed here and here. Mississippi’s attorney...more
On January 20, 2021, Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States. Whether you celebrated this ceremony or not, it is undeniable that the Biden administration means big changes for the future of...more
Actions undertaken by Congress and the White House have underscored a renewed federal focus on education. Passage of the American Rescue Plan Act will provide additional federal support to educational institutions hard hit by...more
Since the beginning of 2021, North Carolina educational institutions have been subject to a variety of studies, orders, and directives related to school reopening from Governor Roy Cooper; the State School Superintendent,...more
On International Women’s Day, March 8, 2021, President Joseph Biden signed two executive orders to promote gender equity and equality through the creation of a Gender Policy Council and through a policy that guarantees an...more
There is no doubt that President Biden has signaled strong interest in schools and educational reform as a priority for his administration. Obviously, however, battling COVID-19 remains the top priority. Although the...more
On Wednesday, January 20, 2021, President Biden was sworn into office. As one of his first official acts as President, Biden signed 17 executive actions, one of which was asking the Acting Secretary of Education to extend the...more
Those in the education field should be focused on protecting students. Students should feel safe attending school and college. If they are being physically or sexually assaulted by teachers or coaches, they should be able to...more
In Washington: The White House moved forward with officially withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization (WHO). The withdrawal would not go into effect until July 6, 2021. Sen. Foreign Affairs Committee...more
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, no formal flexibility has been granted to schools to deviate from State and federal special education requirements. ...more
The U.S. Department of Education is just now starting to pay attention to a reporting requirement in the Higher Education Act (HEA) that harkens back to the 1980s. Penalties for failure to properly report can be stark,...more
In July, the U.S. Department of Education Notices of Investigation to four U.S. universities seeking information on the “Confucius Institutes” operating on their campuses. The investigations center on provisions of the Higher...more
The May 2019 issue of Insights provided high-level background information about the recent trend of state legislation targeting student loan servicers. In the June 2019 issue of Insights, we took a deeper dive into New York's...more
Two Democratic Senators have sent a letter to CFPB Director Kraninger and Education Secretary DeVos asking the regulators to explain what roadblocks are preventing the CFPB and ED from entering into a new memorandum of...more
Colleges and universities are squeezed between a rock and a hard place when it comes to complying with Title IX’s requirements for responding to student-on-student allegations of harassment, discrimination, assault, and...more
Each year, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) receives tens of thousands of discrimination complaints, of which disability discrimination is by far the largest category. For example, complaints can allege that students...more
Amid the Trump Administration's plan to reduce China's access to U.S. intellectual property, the federal government is imposing tighter scrutiny over U.S. universities' research partnerships with Chinese entities. The move is...more
The rise of the #MeToo movement is raising the question of whether sensitivity to sexual harassment of university employees will result in new policies and procedures similar to increased protections students received over...more
• An equal rights group and three individual plaintiffs have filed a civil suit in U.S. District Court in Boston against the Department of Education (ED) and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. The complaint alleges that the...more
• The U.S. Department of Education rescinded two major Office for Civil Rights guidance documents interpreting the application of Title IX to reports of sexual misconduct. • Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos stated that...more
In a long-anticipated move, the United States Department of Education Office for Civil Rights withdrew the Obama Administration’s 2011 Dear Colleague Letter on Sexual Violence this morning, as well as its Questions and...more
When Education Secretary Betsy DeVos delivered her Title IX address last Thursday at George Mason University, many expected the Department of Education was about to revoke the agency’s guidance set forth in the 2011 Dear...more