Research News
This week, the U.S. Department of Education announced it was terminating nearly 2,000 of its roughly 4,000 employees. Both Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and President Donald Trump have signaled that they ultimately want to close the department completely. Kevin Welner, education policy scholar in the School of Education sees many reasons to worry in the new cuts.
Recent cuts have targeted the Institute for Education Sciences, the main research arm of the Department of Education, which collects data and funds research on what works in education. Read on for insights from Derek Briggs, professor of education and director of CADRE at ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ Boulder.
Donald Trump stated during his comeback campaign that he’d dismantle the education department if elected. ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ Boulder education policy expert Kevin Welner weighs in on the past and potential future of the Department of Education in this piece in The Conversation.
As children across the U.S. head back to class, their educations will be shaped by the decisions of nearly 13,000 school boards. Anna Deese, a PhD student in Educational Foundations, Policy and Practice and former school board member from Montana, breaks down some of the biggest misconceptions.
A coalition of educators from 10 states and led by ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ Boulder has released a new series of free science curricula for high school students—touching on issues critical to the lives of young people, from wildfires to rising sea levels and cancer biology. The new curricula, called OpenSciEd High School, is a three-year high school science program designed by a consortium of developers led by the inquiryHub, a research-practice partnership.
In 2023, the American Library Association documented attempts to remove more than 4,000 books from schools and libraries across the U.S. In one of the first comprehensive analyses of book bans in the U.S., Katie Spoon, a PhD candidate in computer science and a master’s student in the School of Education, and collaborators revealed that these bans disproportionally target women authors of color and books that feature characters of color.
This year, schools across ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ experienced an influx of students, many of them migrants from Latin and South America. A small but dedicated group of scholars at the ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ Boulder School of Education are helping teachers meet the needs of these new arrivals.
In the heart of Cuba, New Mexico, an impactful collaboration aims to confront systemic inequities in education by centering student voices. Launched in the summer of 2021, the collaboration brings together ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ Boulder education researchers and Cuba Independent School District students, teachers and stakeholders during an annual six-week summer program focused on educational equity.
K-12 schools across the country are increasingly integrating artificial intelligence tools into the classroom. Alex Molnar, one of the directors of the National Education Policy Center in the ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ Boulder School of Education, gives his take on why these tools could pose risks for students, and what concerned parents and others can do about it.
An estimated 95% of U.S. cities provide economic development tax incentives to woo corporate investors, taking billions away from schools. A new three-month investigation by ÃÛÌÇÖ±²¥ Boulder's Kevin Welner and colleagues in The Conversation shows how that cash drain is not equally shared by schools in the same communities, often hurting the poorest students the most.