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Robert Hale gives an envelope with cash to a graduating UMass Dartmouth student at last week's commencement. Each of the 1,200 graduates received $1,000 onstage, half to keep and half to donate. Karl Christoff Dominey/University of Massachusetts Dartmouth hide caption

A billionaire surprised graduates onstage with cash, but it's not all theirs to keep

May 23, 2024 • Billionaire philanthropist Rob Hale gave UMass Dartmouth graduates $1,000 each, and instructed them to donate half. He tells NPR the best cause students can support is one that matters to them.

From left: Alexis Jones (Cornell University), Mei Lamison (New York University), Anaka Srinivas (Northwestern University). Alexis Jones; Mei Lamison; Anaka Srinivas hide caption

Consider This from NPR

A concentrated dose of history: the class of 2024 looks back.

May 22, 2024 • Everyone says you live through history, but "I don't think anyone prepared us for this much history," say the students in the Class of 2024.

Student Podcast Challenge

May 22, 2024 • Student Podcast Challenge invites students from around the country to create a podcast and compete for a chance to have your work featured on NPR.

Starting Your Podcast: A Guide For Students

New to podcasting? Don't panic.

Pedestrians pass through The Ohio State University's student union. John Minchillo/AP hide caption

Ohio reviewing race-based scholarships after Supreme Court affirmative action ruling

May 18, 2024 • Higher education officials in Ohio are reviewing race-based scholarships after last year's Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action.

These teens were missing too much school. Here's what it took to get them back

May 18, 2024 • Since the pandemic, chronic absenteeism in the nation's K-12 schools has skyrocketed. These teens are working to get their attendance back on track.

Perspective

Code switch, in a debate over a school name, it's not just parents who are attached to the past.

May 18, 2024 • At the height of the racial reckoning, a school district in Virginia voted to rename two schools that had been previously named for Confederate generals. This month, that decision was reversed.

Basil Rodriguez was arrested linking arms outside Hamilton Hall, but said the arrest had strengthened their resolve to continue protesting. The trespassing charge Rodriguez faced was dismissed this week. Keren Carrión/NPR hide caption

Campus protests over the Gaza war

Arrested. injured. suspended. six nyc university students say they'll keep protesting.

May 18, 2024 • Students arrested at Columbia University and the City College of New York spoke with NPR about their choice to risk legal and academic consequences.

Des Moines Superintendent Ian Roberts races students on an Iowa track. Phil Roeder/Des Moines Public Schools hide caption

Iowa superintendent and former Olympian bested in footrace by 5th-grader

May 18, 2024 • Ian Roberts has competed in some of the most high-profile races in the world. But his biggest competition to date was a determined fifth-grader in jean shorts and Nike tennis shoes.

Earlier this month, President Biden spoke about protests that have roiled many U.S. college campuses. Among their demands is for the Israeli military to leave Gaza. Biden said students have a right to protest but not to be disruptive. He is set to speak at Morehouse College in Atlanta on Sunday. Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Biden is set for the Morehouse graduation. Students are divided

May 17, 2024 • Ahead of Biden's address at Morehouse, students share their frustrations

Applicants to Georgia State University received a welcome email for the 2024-25 school year. However, the email was sent in error to 1,500 applicants by the school's admissions office. Here, the campus celebrates its fall commencement exercises on Dec. 17, 2014, in Atlanta. Meg Buscema/Georgia State University hide caption

1,500 college applicants thought they were accepted. They soon learned it was an error

May 16, 2024 • Georgia State University says the students were not sent an official acceptance letter but "communication" from a department welcoming those who intend to major in a specific academic area.

Kansas City Chiefs player Harrison Butker, pictured at a press conference in February, is in hot water for his recent commencement speech at Benedictine College in Kansas. Chris Unger/Getty Images hide caption

The NFL responds after a player urges female college graduates to become homemakers

May 16, 2024 • Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs urged female graduates to embrace the title of "homemaker" in a controversial commencement speech. The NFL says he was speaking "in his personal capacity."

Announcing the 2023 College Podcast Challenge Honorable Mentions

May 15, 2024 • Here are the honorable mentions from the 2023 College Podcast Challenge. Congrats!

Why children with disabilities are missing school and losing skills

May 15, 2024 • A special education staffing crisis is raging through many U.S. school districts. It's taking a toll on students and families.

Illustration of a rally where "peaceful protesters" march alongside "violent looters." LA Johnson/NPR hide caption

Why the trope of the 'outside agitator' persists

May 15, 2024 • As protests continue to rock the campuses of colleges and universities, a familiar set of questions is being raised: Are these protests really being led by students? Or are the real drivers of the civil disobedience outsiders , seizing on an opportunity to wreak chaos and stir up trouble?

Students with disabilities are missing school because of staff shortages

May 14, 2024 • There's a special education staffing crisis in a northern California school district. It means some of the district's most vulnerable students have missed weeks and even months of school.

Public Health student Hanna Stutzman helps establish new native plantings at The College of New Jersey. Nathaniel Johnson/The College of New Jersey hide caption

Environment

Bringing the wild things back to campus.

May 14, 2024 • The College of New Jersey is making room for native plants, and students are digging it.

Dr. Thorsten Siess shows the Impella. Annegret Hilse/Reuters hide caption

Shots - Health News

He invented a successful medical device as a student. here's his advice for new grads.

May 14, 2024 • When Thorsten Siess was in graduate school, he came up with the idea for a heart device that's now been used in hundreds of thousands of patients around the world.

Deadline Extended: NPR Student Podcast Challenge entries are now due May 31

May 13, 2024 • Entries for our sixth annual contest for middle and high school students (and our first-ever fourth grade competition) are now due Friday, May 31 at midnight E.T.

Graduate students and demonstrators at the University of Texas at Austin protest the war in Gaza after walking out of commencement at the DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium on May 11, 2024 in Austin. Brandon Bell/Getty Images hide caption

Student protests caused mostly minor disruptions at several graduation ceremonies

May 12, 2024 • From California to North Carolina, students staged chants and walkouts over the weekend in protest of Israel's ongoing military offensive in Gaza.

Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

May 11, 2024 • Researchers are learning that handwriting engages the brain in ways typing can't match, raising questions about the costs of ditching this age-old practice, especially for kids.

Students and protesters raise peace signs in the air while listening to speakers at the encampment for Palestine on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, at the University of Washington Quad in Seattle. Large crowds amassed ahead of a speech by Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk at the HUB on UW's campus. Megan Farmer/KUOW hide caption

The Picture Show

Photos: campus protests continue, police make arrests and clear encampments.

May 10, 2024 • Photojournalists at NPR member stations documented protests at college and university campuses nationwide this week.

Student protesters demanding university divestment from Israel have set up encampments over the past month at dozens of campuses across the nation, including at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. Steven Senne/AP hide caption

From pandemic to protests, the Class of 2024 has been through a lot

May 10, 2024 • Pomp and circumstance again fall victim to circumstance for some students in the graduating class of 2024, as protests over the war in Gaza threaten to disrupt commencement ceremonies.

Mountain View High School will soon be known by its former name: Stonewall Jackson High School. The Shenandoah County School Board voted 5-1 to once again honor the Confederate general, whose name was originally attached to the school during the battle over racial segregation. Google Maps/Screenshot by NPR hide caption

A Virginia county board votes to restore Confederates' names to schools

May 10, 2024 • The school board meeting stretched into early Friday. During the debate, a Black student athlete told the board, "I would have to represent a man that fought for my ancestors to be slaves."

How one school is trying to improve attendance of chronically absent students

May 9, 2024 • In 2023, about one in four students was chronically absent. Schools are going above and beyond to turn those numbers around. That often means having difficult conversations with students and families.

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Image credit: Claire Scully

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

5 Big Challenges Facing K-12 Education Today—And Ideas for Tackling Them

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Big Ideas is Education Week’s annual special report that brings the expertise of our newsroom to bear on the challenges educators are facing in classrooms, schools, and districts.

In the report , EdWeek reporters ask hard questions about K-12 education’s biggest issues and offer insights based on their extensive coverage and expertise.

The goal is to question the status quo and explore opportunities to help build a better, more just learning environment for all students.

In the 2023 edition , our newsroom sought to dig deeper into new and persistent challenges. Our reporters consider some of the big questions facing the field: Why is teacher pay so stubbornly stalled? What should reading instruction look like? How do we integrate—or even think about—AI? What does it mean for parents to be involved in the decisionmaking around classroom curriculum? And, perhaps the most existential, what does it mean for schools to be “public”?

The reported essays below tackle these vexing and pressing questions. We hope they offer fodder for robust discussions.

To see how your fellow educator peers are feeling about a number of these issues, we invite you to explore the EdWeek Research Center’s survey of more than 1,000 teachers and school and district leaders .

Please connect with us on social media by using #K12BigIdeas or by emailing [email protected].

1. What Does It Actually Mean for Schools to Be Public?

Over years of covering school finance, Mark Lieberman keep running up against one nagging question: Does the way we pay for public schools inherently contradict what we understand the goal of public education to be? Read more →

2. Public Schools Rely on Underpaid Female Labor. It’s Not Sustainable

School districts are still operating largely as if the labor market for women hasn’t changed in the last half century, writes Alyson Klein. Read more →

3. Parents’ Rights Groups Have Mobilized. What Does It Mean for Students?

Libby Stanford has been covering the parents’ rights groups that have led the charge to limit teaching about race, sexuality, and gender. In her essay, she explores what happens to students who miss out on that instruction. Read more→

4. To Move Past the Reading Wars, We Must Understand Where They Started

When it comes to reading instruction, we keep having the same fights over and over again, writes Sarah Schwartz. That’s because, she says, we have a fundamental divide about what reading is and how to study it. Read more→

5. No, AI Won’t Destroy Education. But We Should Be Skeptical

Lauraine Langreo makes the case for using AI to benefit teaching and learning while being aware of its potential downsides. Read more→

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How covid taught america about inequity in education.

Harvard Correspondent

Remote learning turned spotlight on gaps in resources, funding, and tech — but also offered hints on reform

“Unequal” is a multipart series highlighting the work of Harvard faculty, staff, students, alumni, and researchers on issues of race and inequality across the U.S. This part looks at how the pandemic called attention to issues surrounding the racial achievement gap in America.

The pandemic has disrupted education nationwide, turning a spotlight on existing racial and economic disparities, and creating the potential for a lost generation. Even before the outbreak, students in vulnerable communities — particularly predominately Black, Indigenous, and other majority-minority areas — were already facing inequality in everything from resources (ranging from books to counselors) to student-teacher ratios and extracurriculars.

The additional stressors of systemic racism and the trauma induced by poverty and violence, both cited as aggravating health and wellness as at a Weatherhead Institute panel , pose serious obstacles to learning as well. “Before the pandemic, children and families who are marginalized were living under such challenging conditions that it made it difficult for them to get a high-quality education,” said Paul Reville, founder and director of the Education Redesign Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (GSE).

Educators hope that the may triggers a broader conversation about reform and renewed efforts to narrow the longstanding racial achievement gap. They say that research shows virtually all of the nation’s schoolchildren have fallen behind, with students of color having lost the most ground, particularly in math. They also note that the full-time reopening of schools presents opportunities to introduce changes and that some of the lessons from remote learning, particularly in the area of technology, can be put to use to help students catch up from the pandemic as well as to begin to level the playing field.

The disparities laid bare by the COVID-19 outbreak became apparent from the first shutdowns. “The good news, of course, is that many schools were very fast in finding all kinds of ways to try to reach kids,” said Fernando M. Reimers , Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice in International Education and director of GSE’s Global Education Innovation Initiative and International Education Policy Program. He cautioned, however, that “those arrangements don’t begin to compare with what we’re able to do when kids could come to school, and they are particularly deficient at reaching the most vulnerable kids.” In addition, it turned out that many students simply lacked access.

“We’re beginning to understand that technology is a basic right. You cannot participate in society in the 21st century without access to it,” says Fernando Reimers of the Graduate School of Education.

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard file photo

The rate of limited digital access for households was at 42 percent during last spring’s shutdowns, before drifting down to about 31 percent this fall, suggesting that school districts improved their adaptation to remote learning, according to an analysis by the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge of U.S. Census data. (Indeed, Education Week and other sources reported that school districts around the nation rushed to hand out millions of laptops, tablets, and Chromebooks in the months after going remote.)

The report also makes clear the degree of racial and economic digital inequality. Black and Hispanic households with school-aged children were 1.3 to 1.4 times as likely as white ones to face limited access to computers and the internet, and more than two in five low-income households had only limited access. It’s a problem that could have far-reaching consequences given that young students of color are much more likely to live in remote-only districts.

“We’re beginning to understand that technology is a basic right,” said Reimers. “You cannot participate in society in the 21st century without access to it.” Too many students, he said, “have no connectivity. They have no devices, or they have no home circumstances that provide them support.”

The issues extend beyond the technology. “There is something wonderful in being in contact with other humans, having a human who tells you, ‘It’s great to see you. How are things going at home?’” Reimers said. “I’ve done 35 case studies of innovative practices around the world. They all prioritize social, emotional well-being. Checking in with the kids. Making sure there is a touchpoint every day between a teacher and a student.”

The difference, said Reville, is apparent when comparing students from different economic circumstances. Students whose parents “could afford to hire a tutor … can compensate,” he said. “Those kids are going to do pretty well at keeping up. Whereas, if you’re in a single-parent family and mom is working two or three jobs to put food on the table, she can’t be home. It’s impossible for her to keep up and keep her kids connected.

“If you lose the connection, you lose the kid.”

“COVID just revealed how serious those inequities are,” said GSE Dean Bridget Long , the Saris Professor of Education and Economics. “It has disproportionately hurt low-income students, students with special needs, and school systems that are under-resourced.”

This disruption carries throughout the education process, from elementary school students (some of whom have simply stopped logging on to their online classes) through declining participation in higher education. Community colleges, for example, have “traditionally been a gateway for low-income students” into the professional classes, said Long, whose research focuses on issues of affordability and access. “COVID has just made all of those issues 10 times worse,” she said. “That’s where enrollment has fallen the most.”

In addition to highlighting such disparities, these losses underline a structural issue in public education. Many schools are under-resourced, and the major reason involves sources of school funding. A 2019 study found that predominantly white districts got $23 billion more than their non-white counterparts serving about the same number of students. The discrepancy is because property taxes are the primary source of funding for schools, and white districts tend to be wealthier than those of color.

The problem of resources extends beyond teachers, aides, equipment, and supplies, as schools have been tasked with an increasing number of responsibilities, from the basics of education to feeding and caring for the mental health of both students and their families.

“You think about schools and academics, but what COVID really made clear was that schools do so much more than that,” said Long. A child’s school, she stressed “is social, emotional support. It’s safety. It’s the food system. It is health care.”

“You think about schools and academics” … but a child’s school “is social, emotional support. It’s safety. It’s the food system. It is health care,” stressed GSE Dean Bridget Long.

Rose Lincoln/Harvard file photo

This safety net has been shredded just as more students need it. “We have 400,000 deaths and those are disproportionately affecting communities of color,” said Long. “So you can imagine the kids that are in those households. Are they able to come to school and learn when they’re dealing with this trauma?”

The damage is felt by the whole families. In an upcoming paper, focusing on parents of children ages 5 to 7, Cindy H. Liu, director of Harvard Medical School’s Developmental Risk and Cultural Disparities Laboratory , looks at the effects of COVID-related stress on parent’ mental health. This stress — from both health risks and grief — “likely has ramifications for those groups who are disadvantaged, particularly in getting support, as it exacerbates existing disparities in obtaining resources,” she said via email. “The unfortunate reality is that the pandemic is limiting the tangible supports [like childcare] that parents might actually need.”

Educators are overwhelmed as well. “Teachers are doing a phenomenal job connecting with students,” Long said about their performance online. “But they’ve lost the whole system — access to counselors, access to additional staff members and support. They’ve lost access to information. One clue is that the reporting of child abuse going down. It’s not that we think that child abuse is actually going down, but because you don’t have a set of adults watching and being with kids, it’s not being reported.”

The repercussions are chilling. “As we resume in-person education on a normal basis, we’re dealing with enormous gaps,” said Reville. “Some kids will come back with such educational deficits that unless their schools have a very well thought-out and effective program to help them catch up, they will never catch up. They may actually drop out of school. The immediate consequences of learning loss and disengagement are going to be a generation of people who will be less educated.”

There is hope, however. Just as the lockdown forced teachers to improvise, accelerating forms of online learning, so too may the recovery offer options for educational reform.

The solutions, say Reville, “are going to come from our community. This is a civic problem.” He applauded one example, the Somerville, Mass., public library program of outdoor Wi-Fi “pop ups,” which allow 24/7 access either through their own or library Chromebooks. “That’s the kind of imagination we need,” he said.

On a national level, he points to the creation of so-called “Children’s Cabinets.” Already in place in 30 states, these nonpartisan groups bring together leaders at the city, town, and state levels to address children’s needs through schools, libraries, and health centers. A July 2019 “ Children’s Cabinet Toolkit ” on the Education Redesign Lab site offers guidance for communities looking to form their own, with sample mission statements from Denver, Minneapolis, and Fairfax, Va.

Already the Education Redesign Lab is working on even more wide-reaching approaches. In Tennessee, for example, the Metro Nashville Public Schools has launched an innovative program, designed to provide each student with a personalized education plan. By pairing these students with school “navigators” — including teachers, librarians, and instructional coaches — the program aims to address each student’s particular needs.

“This is a chance to change the system,” said Reville. “By and large, our school systems are organized around a factory model, a one-size-fits-all approach. That wasn’t working very well before, and it’s working less well now.”

“Students have different needs,” agreed Long. “We just have to get a better understanding of what we need to prioritize and where students are” in all aspects of their home and school lives.

“By and large, our school systems are organized around a factory model, a one-size-fits-all approach. That wasn’t working very well before, and it’s working less well now,” says Paul Reville of the GSE.

Already, educators are discussing possible responses. Long and GSE helped create The Principals’ Network as one forum for sharing ideas, for example. With about 1,000 members, and multiple subgroups to address shared community issues, some viable answers have begun to emerge.

“We are going to need to expand learning time,” said Long. Some school systems, notably Texas’, already have begun discussing extending the school year, she said. In addition, Long, an internationally recognized economist who is a member of the  National Academy of Education and the  MDRC board, noted that educators are exploring innovative ways to utilize new tools like Zoom, even when classrooms reopen.

“This is an area where technology can help supplement what students are learning, giving them extra time — learning time, even tutoring time,” Long said.

Reimers, who serves on the UNESCO Commission on the Future of Education, has been brainstorming solutions that can be applied both here and abroad. These include urging wealthier countries to forgive loans, so that poorer countries do not have to cut back on basics such as education, and urging all countries to keep education a priority. The commission and its members are also helping to identify good practices and share them — globally.

Innovative uses of existing technology can also reach beyond traditional schooling. Reimers cites the work of a few former students who, working with Harvard Global Education Innovation Initiative,   HundrED , the  OECD Directorate for Education and Skills , and the  World Bank Group Education Global Practice, focused on podcasts to reach poor students in Colombia.

They began airing their math and Spanish lessons via the WhatsApp app, which was widely accessible. “They were so humorous that within a week, everyone was listening,” said Reimers. Soon, radio stations and other platforms began airing the 10-minute lessons, reaching not only children who were not in school, but also their adult relatives.

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Biden says landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling on school desegregation was about more than education

Continuing his appeal to Black voters Friday, President Joe Biden commemorated the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education - the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that desegregated American schools.

Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, left, greets President Joe Biden at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, Friday, May 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

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President Joe Biden speaks at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, Friday, May 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling that desegregated schools was about more than just race in education, President Joe Biden said Friday as he commemorated the 70th anniversary of the decision. It was about the promise of America, he said — that it is “big enough for everyone to succeed.”

“The work of building a democracy ... worthy of our dreams starts with opening the doors of opportunity for everyone, without exception,” Biden told Black leaders at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington. “Education is linked to freedom.”

The Topeka, Kansas, case, Brown v. Board of Education , determined that separating children in schools by race was unconstitutional. While progress has been made, much more needs to be done, Biden said. And he contended that Donald Trump and his allies are seeking to roll back that progress.

Biden’s speech was part of a stepped-up effort to highlight his administration’s commitment to racial equity and to Black voters more generally in the midst of the 2024 election campaign. Later Friday, he was to host leaders of the “Divine Nine” historically Black sororities and fraternities.

He met with plaintiffs from the Brown court case in the Oval Office on Thursday and courted voters in Atlanta and Milwaukee this week with a pair of Black radio interviews. On Sunday, he’ll give the commencement speech at Morehouse College in Atlanta , one of the historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs.

The president, facing sagging poll numbers, is seeking to shore up his support within a critical bloc that helped deliver his 2020 victory. Fifty-five percent of Black adults approved of the way he was handling his job as president, according to an AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in March, a figure well below those from earlier in his presidency.

Biden told the museum crowd to cheers that his administration has invested $16 billion in HBCUs, that he’s forgiven $160 billion in student loan debt , and that the Department of Education has spent $50 million on teacher diversity. He said he knew there was more to do, but that Trump and his allies wanted to gut his administration’s progress and go further by “taking away other fundamental freedoms, from the freedom to vote and the freedom to choose.”

“It’s a really important thing to continue,” Biden said. “We have a whole group of people out of there trying to rewrite history, trying to erase history.”

In the decades since the Brown decision , American schools have been re-segregating. The country is more diverse than it ever has been. Still, around 4 out of 10 Black and Hispanic students attend schools where almost every one of their classmates is another student of color.

Who Gets Paid? How Much? What to Know About the Landmark NCAA Settlement

The nearly $2.8 billion settlement that has been approved by the NCAA and the nation’s five largest conferences is a historic step toward a more professional model for college sports

Associated Press May 23, 2024

NCAA, Leagues Back $2.8 Billion Settlement, Setting Stage for Dramatic Change Across College Sports

The NCAA and five major college sports conferences have agreed to settle antitrust allegations for nearly $2.8 billion over the next 10 years

Lawsuit Seeks to Block Washington Parental Rights Law That Critics Call a 'Forced Outing' Measure

Youth services and civil rights groups are suing to block a new Washington state parental rights law that is set to take effect next month

Holocaust Museum Will Host Free Field Trips for Eighth Graders in New York City Public Schools

A Holocaust museum in New York City will offer free educational field trips to eighth grade public school students in a program aimed at combating antisemitism

Fate of Lawsuit Filed by Black Texas Student Punished Over Hairstyle in Hands of Federal Judge

A federal judge has not issued an immediate ruling after hearing legal arguments over whether to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a Black high school student in Texas over his hairstyle

18-Year-Old Student Shot Near Suburban New Orleans High School

Louisiana authorities say an 18-year-old high school student was shot and wounded in a parking lot across the street from his school in a New Orleans suburb

The Colonial-Era Inequalities That Fuelled the New Caledonia Crisis

Reuters May 23, 2024

Factbox-US, Kenya Deals and Investments Announced as Ruto Meets Biden

Oxford University Students Arrested at Pro-Palestinian Sit-In

Trade School Trend

Opting for an occupation in the trades can be a money-smart decision as you're learning – and for the future.

Erica Sandberg , Barri Segal and Tanza Loudenback May 23, 2024

America 2024

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Article Africa Week 2024 16 May 2024

70 years later, 1 in 3 Black people say integration didn’t help Black students

Landmark Brown. v. Board Supreme Court decision is revered, but Post-Ipsos poll shows mixed feelings about how to address today’s school segregation

Key takeaways

Summary is AI-generated, newsroom-reviewed.

• Brown v. Board revered, but Americans support more school integration.
• Skepticism exists on integration’s success, mixed views on implementation methods.
• Legal strategies shift toward state courts for education equality battles.

Did our AI help? Share your thoughts.

Seventy years after the Supreme Court delivered its landmark decision outlawing school segregation, Brown v. Board of Education ranks as perhaps the court’s most venerated decision. A Washington Post-Ipsos survey shows it is overwhelmingly popular.

That’s the simple part. Most everything else related to the decision — and to school segregation itself — is complex.

Nearly 7 in 10 Americans say more should be done to integrate schools across the nation — a figure that has steadily climbed from 30 percent in 1973 and is now at its apex. But a deeper look into the views of both Black and White people shows skepticism about the success of Brown and mixed messages about how to move forward.

In its unanimous decision in Brown , the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools were unconstitutional and “inherently unequal,” combining five cases in which Black students and their schools had far fewer resources than their White peers — longer commutes, lower-quality classes, overcrowding, fewer opportunities and less money. Yet 1 in 3 Black Americans now say integration has failed to improve the education of Black students, a companion Post-Ipsos survey of Black Americans finds.

Today, about half of Black adults favor letting children attend neighborhood schools, even if it means most students would be of the same race — which, given housing patterns, is often the case.

White Americans also sometimes hold conflicting views. Nine in 10 Whites say they support the Brown decision, and nearly 2 in 3 say more needs to be done to integrate schools throughout the nation. Nonetheless, large segments of the White population oppose strategies that would help make that a reality. Nearly 8 in 10 White adults say it is better for children to go to neighborhood schools over diverse ones.

“The Brown decision speaks to our highest ideals as a nation. It’s who we say we want to be as a country,” said Stefan Lallinger, senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes school integration, whose grandfather was part of the team of civil rights attorneys who appeared before the Supreme Court in the Brown case. “Where the rubber meets the road is where people’s personal decisions about where to send their kids to school clash with those ideals.”

The decision, which was issued 70 years ago Friday, continues to hold a special place in American history. On Thursday, President Biden marked the anniversary by meeting with some of the surviving plaintiffs and their families from the five lawsuits that were consolidated into the Brown decision. On Friday, he addressed an NAACP event at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington marking the milestone.

“The Brown decision proves a simple idea. We learn better when we learn together,” Biden said.

The Brown decision focused on the value of mixing children of different races. But for many integration activists — then and now — the case is about a path to fair and equitable educational resources. Those legal battles continue.

Today’s complex views about schools and integration come amid persistent segregation that has risen in recent decades, changes in the legal landscape and the complicated dynamics of education and race in America today.

Because of Brown , school officials may no longer deliberately separate students by race — but under more recent Supreme Court orders, they aren’t allowed to deliberately mix them by race either. Integration advocates today have stopped looking to the federal courts for help and are pursuing state lawsuits instead. And some Black leaders have concluded that the answer is not integration at all but more money and more opportunity for high-poverty schools serving students of color.

“It never worked the way it was supposed to,” said Candace Northern, 43, of Sacramento, who is Black. She had a mixed experience with integration as a child growing up in the area. Now, as mother to four children who went to or will attend public schools, she sees how the system keeps most poor students of color concentrated in certain schools and wealthy, mostly White students in others.

“The intention behind [ Brown ] was good, but it really didn’t make sense to integrate the schools if you were still going to have separate neighborhoods and then only give the resources to the rich people,” she said. “It was more of an appeasement — ‘Let’s give these Black people something so they’ll shut up.’”

The evolution of a landmark ruling

The Brown decision was deeply polarizing, with massive resistance in the segregated South, where federal troops were at times required to escort Black students into what had been all-White schools, and violence in the North, too, as some White parents angrily protested busing orders that federal courts began issuing in the 1970s. Shortly after the 1954 ruling, a Gallup poll found 55 percent of Americans approved of Brown , while 40 percent disapproved.

But it succeeded in diversifying schools, with segregation rates falling through the 1970s and ’80s . Integration peaked around 1988; then courts began lifting their orders, and segregation began to rise again. A majority of Americans wrongly believe that schools are less racially segregated today than 30 years ago, The Post-Ipsos poll finds; in fact, by multiple measures, they are more segregated.

Jackie Beckley was raised in a small town in Kentucky and saw it all up close. Her father had to walk for miles and then travel by train to reach the nearest Black high school because the closer, White schools would not let Black children attend. Born in 1961, Beckley was among the first Black children to be admitted to White schools.

It wasn’t easy for her.

“You’re very much aware of the fact that you’re not like everybody else. You’re different,” she said. She remembered not being chosen as a cheerleader in elementary school despite her excellent gymnastic skills. She knew the reason and if there was any doubt, a White classmate said it out loud: “They didn’t pick her because she’s colored,” he told the class. Students were usually nice to her, she recalled, but if there was an argument, someone might hurl the n-word.

Over time, the Brown decision took on a revered status, one both liberals and conservatives cite as among the Supreme Court’s finest moments. By 1994, 87 percent of Americans approved of the ruling, and the new Post-Ipsos poll finds it just as popular today. But support is lower among Black people — about 8 in 10 say they approve of the decision. Asked if integration had improved the lives of Black students, 75 percent of White people say yes, but a smaller share — 63 percent — of Black people say the same — down from 70 percent in 1994.

Beckley understands why. Her own son attended an integrated school in suburban Columbus, Ohio, where she now lives, but she thinks more funding for schools serving students of color — “so they are educating the kids to the same standard” — is more important than creating diverse schools.

Isaac Heard, 74, is also skeptical after seeing the entire history of school integration unfold before him in Charlotte.

When Heard was growing up in Charlotte, his segregated neighborhood elementary school was so overcrowded that students attended in shifts — either morning or afternoon. “They had decided basically they weren’t going to build any more schools in the Black neighborhoods,” he recalled. His parents sent him to a private Catholic school instead.

Heard returned to public school in ninth grade and the experience was better, though still segregated. His school was economically if not racially diverse, and he recalls the teaching as excellent; in his senior year, four of his teachers had PhDs. He credited the talented Black women who had few career options other than teaching.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg, N.C., school district did not fully desegregate until 1970, three years after Heard graduated and went off to Dartmouth College. But once it did, the district gained a reputation for running a successful busing program. In the 1990s, Heard’s own children attended the same district, and he said they received an excellent education.

“The biggest thing is they had role models, and resources were available,” he said. “If they were curious about something, they had access to it.”

Later, working in city planning in Charlotte, Heard saw things change again after the federal court order mandating desegregation was lifted in 1999 and the schools began to resegregate. While some wealthier Black families (including his own) now lived in diverse neighborhoods and attended racially diverse schools, lower-income Black and Hispanic families were concentrated in urban areas and their schools became segregated again .

Heard believes one answer is to spread affordable housing to wealthier neighborhoods, so the neediest students are spread out, but he said these proposals “raised the hackles in this community like you wouldn’t believe.”

Heard’s experience — segregation, integration, and partial segregation again — leaves him with mixed feelings about the impact of Brown . “There’s a generation of kids who really benefited from it, but it’s slowly receding in terms of its positive impact, particularly among lower-income populations,” he said.

A tangle of contradictions

The views of White Americans are also wrapped in contradictions. A wide majority says they support the Brown decision, but many oppose leading ideas for integration today.

Those include adding low-income housing in the suburbs and other high-income areas (43 percent opposed), redrawing boundaries to create more racially diverse districts (45 percent opposed) and requiring schools to bus some students to neighboring districts (70 percent opposed). Only one strategy enjoys support from a large majority (71 percent) — more regional magnet schools with specialized courses (24 percent of Whites are opposed).

Among Black Americans, there is majority support for all four strategies — with at least 7 in 10 backing the proposals for mixed-income housing, redrawing boundaries and magnet schools.

At the same time, nearly 8 in 10 White people say they support “letting students go to the local school in their community, even if it means that most of the students would be of the same race,” while 17 percent favor “transferring students to other schools to create more integration, even if it means that some students would have to travel out of their communities to go to school.”

Elaine Burkholder, 44, who is raising five children in a rural community in central Pennsylvania, did not hesitate when asked her views on Brown . “It was a good decision,” she said. “It’s definitely good to have integration, open the children up to different viewpoints and that sort of thing.”

She said she is not concerned about any segregation that persists today because the law is no longer barring children from going to school together.

“As long as you have the ability to move and stuff you can probably get your children into a decent school district,” she said. “It’s pretty well a personal choice at this point, where your children go to school.”

Burkholder, whose children attend a private Christian school, was not particularly concerned that some families cannot afford to move to another school district. “I’m a little more of a pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” Burkholder said. “I like to see people working to get where they want to go.”

The way forward

The contradictions inherent in public opinion have given rise to conflicting strategies about what should come next.

David Banks, the chancellor of the New York City schools, the nation’s largest school system, who is Black, attended integrated schools in Queens as a child but does not see integration as the answer for children in New York City today. Today, 24 percent of the students in the city schools are Black, and 41 percent are Hispanic. Just 15 percent of students are White. He said the path to a better education for a student of color cannot be sitting next to a White student; there aren’t enough White students to go around.

“I do not believe Black kids need to go to school with White kids to get a good education. I fundamentally reject that,” he said in an interview.

Instead of integration, Banks favors directing more money and adding programs to high-poverty schools serving students of color and providing more opportunities for advanced coursework in low-income areas.

But others say students of color will never get what they need if so many are isolated in high-poverty school districts. A new generation of legal advocates is now targeting the boundary lines that separate school districts, which drive most of the racial and economic segregation today.

They’ve also shifted legal strategy. Supreme Court rulings issued in the years since Brown make success in federal courts unlikely, they say, so unlike their counterparts from past decades, they are focused on state courts.

A lawsuit in New Jersey is challenging district boundary lines based on a provision in the state constitution. The parties have been negotiating for months in hopes of reaching a settlement. Another case challenging segregation in the Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., schools has been working its way through the Minnesota courts for nearly a decade. A lawsuit in New York City relies on the state constitution to challenge admissions policies that place students into gifted and advanced programs, creating a two-tiered education system that hurts Black and Hispanic students.

A new organization called Brown’s Promise is looking for other potential lawsuits, possibly based on state constitutions that guarantee a “thorough and efficient” public education.

“Any meaningful definition of a ‘ thorough education’ has to mean learning to live, work and thrive in a multiracial community,” said Ary Amerikaner, co-founder of Brown’s Promise.

She pointed to research that shows the post- Brown integration years succeeded in raising achievement levels of Black students.

“We cannot keep concentrating poverty in a small number of districts and expecting the adults to work miracles,” she said. She said it’s worth fighting for more money for these schools — adding that a little more money probably won’t help, but a lot more would.

“But even that cannot create the sort of social capital that we know comes from access to communities that are historically more privileged.”

The Washington Post-Ipsos poll of 1,029 U.S. adults was conducted April 9-16 and included a partially overlapping sample of 1,331 non-Hispanic Black adults. The margin of sampling error among Americans overall and Black Americans is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points; among the 703 White Americans the margin of error is 3.9 points.

As conservatives put religion in schools, Satanists want in, too

When conservative lawmakers in Florida and Texas won the fight to allow religious chaplains in public schools, they swung open the door to ministers from other faiths — including the Satanic Temple. 

The demonic-sounding group, which describes itself as “nontheistic,” is using this debate and others like it to make a point about the growing encroachment of religion on public life. 

It would prefer no chaplains in schools, it says, but would settle for equal representation, intentionally goading conservatives, some of whom are explicit about wanting Christianity, rather than just religion, in public education. 

“If they pass these bills, they’re going to have to contend with ministers of Satan acting as chaplains within their school districts,” said Lucien Greaves, a co-founder of the Satanic Temple, who uses a pseudonym to protect him against threats. “We think the public should know in advance that that’s what the outcome of these bills can be.”The Satanic Temple, founded in 2013 and recognized as a religion by the IRS, is known for trolling the religious right by taking advantage of Christian campaigns. When Arkansas installed a statue of the Ten Commandments outside the State Capitol, the Temple unveiled its own statue of Baphomet , a goat-headed figure, there, too. It offered the Hellions Academy as an alternative to Christian studies during school hours and named a telehealth abortion clinic after Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s mom.

The Temple believes in reason, empathy and the pursuit of knowledge, its website FAQ helpfully explains. And it doesn’t worship Satan. “Satan is a symbol of the Eternal Rebel in opposition to arbitrary authority,” it states. But it’s not just a joke, supporters say. And opponents seem to agree.

One man was charged in January with a hate crime for vandalizing the temple’s altar at the Iowa State Capitol. Another was arrested and accused of throwing a pipe bomb at the group’s headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts, leaving a note that urged the group to “REPENT” and “TURN FROM SIN.” And a third was arrested this month and accused of plotting to blow up the headquarters.

“It definitely started with a kind of humorous or satirical element to it, but this is a movement with hundreds of people that’s been going for 10 years now — they’re quite serious about it,” said Joseph Laycock, a religious studies professor at Texas State University who wrote a book-length study about the group. “They’re willing to put up with death threats. They’re willing to wear bulletproof vests because Neo-Nazis have threatened to kill them if they give a public speech. People don’t normally take those kinds of risks for a joke.”

Interest in joining the Satanic Temple shot up in recent years, Greaves said, and the number of congregations more than doubled since 2021. That coincides with a decrease in the number of self-identified Christians in the U.S. and a growing movement among right-wing activists to insert conservative Christian doctrines into public policy and schools .

“The real fear of Christian nationalism is driving people into the arms of groups like the Satanic Temple,” Laycock said. “And then the fact that there are now Satanists taking to the streets of America is causing the Christian nationalists to double down, too, and making them even more determined to cling to power for as long as they can.”

The laws in Florida and Texas require school boards to vote on whether to appoint chaplains in their districts. Similar bills have been proposed in 13 other states this year. The proposals, which vary slightly, would have chaplains of various denominations serve in similar capacities as school counselors, in some cases with on-campus offices or salaries paid for by the districts.

“They are able to help the child work through their issues, work through their feelings, and also encourage them to work with their parents, in accordance with their family’s underlying religious foundations,” said Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, a conservative advocacy group that testified in favor of the Texas bill.

Proponents of chaplains in schools have gone on the offensive, vowing that the Satanic Temple won’t infiltrate their schools. “There will be no Satanists in Oklahoma Schools. Period,” Ryan Walters, the state’s right-wing superintendent of public instruction, recently tweeted . Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared at a bill signing for the new law last month that the Temple wouldn’t qualify to provide chaplains. “That is not a religion,” he said. 

But legal experts warn that conservatives disregard the Satanic Temple at their own peril, because the group’s strategy of stepping into spaces intended for other religions is often effective. In 2016, the Temple began running After School Satan Clubs, seeking to start them in schools that already had Christian-based groups on campus. A federal court sided with the Temple in a legal challenge last year, and there are currently seven clubs nationwide, where children make arts and crafts, learn about animals and do science experiments.

“The Constitution is unambiguous about this,” Greaves said. “You just cannot take a religious identity and cut it out from a public accommodation. It’s against the law, the school districts will lose, they’ll have to pay the attorneys fees, and frankly, they shouldn’t be pulling their budget into this culture war grandstanding B.S.”

One of the Temple’s first actions was to perform a “pink mass” in which gay couples made out over the grave of the mother of Fred Phelps, founder of the homophobic Westboro Baptist Church, and declared her a lesbian. The Temple has protested corporal punishment of children and sued states to argue that abortion restrictions violate their religious rights.“It is a poignant way of pushing the idea of what these governments really care about,” said Jay Wexler, a Boston University law professor who studies church-and-state issues. “Do they really care about opening up their spaces for religious pluralism, or do they actually care about just promoting one view of God and Christianity in the public space?”

People often ask why the Satanic Temple, with its lofty principles, uses such divisive names.

“If we were to name it the ‘fluffy bunnies and rainbows science club,’ or anything else, and people were to find out it is run by the Satanic Temple, we feel that that would actually cause more harm than good,” said June Everett, a Satanic Temple minister and the campaign director of the After School Satan Club. “Also, we are proud to be Satanists. So anyone that has a problem with the name or what we’re trying to do is free to just not send their kids.”

Rocky Malloy, a born-again Christian and founder of the National School Chaplain Association, said his group organized a phone bank and letter writing campaign to lobby for the Texas chaplains bill, according to video of his remarks at a fundraiser in November. Malloy called it an effort to “bring the boldness of Christ Jesus to public education” and a “legal way to bring God and prayer in school.” Malloy didn’t respond to an interview request.

The National School Chaplain Association offers certification provided by Oral Roberts University, a Christian school in Oklahoma that suspends students for being gay . 

“Who is against it? Alphabet people,” Malloy said, referring to members of the LGBTQ community. “It messes up their whole agenda,” he said at the fundraiser after having declared that school counselors are “confirming gender confusion.”

The Satanic Temple isn’t the only religious group opposed to chaplains in schools. In Florida, the Florida Council of Churches, Pastors for Florida Children and the National Council of Jewish Women opposed the bill. Over 100 Texas pastors signed an open letter asking school districts not to hire chaplains, and most school boards appeared to follow their advice. Only one district had hired a chaplain by last month, according to the San Antonio Express-News .

Greaves said the Temple is waiting to learn the details of how the chaplain programs will be implemented. But the Temple plans to start with placing its first ministers in Florida and Oklahoma.

Everett, the minister, is optimistic that they’ll be welcomed into some districts. “A lot more people are now aware of the Satanic Temple and what we’re doing,” she said. “Basically fighting fire with fire.”

Tyler Kingkade is a national reporter for NBC News, based in Los Angeles.

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By Zach Montague

Reporting from Washington

Long before the Education Department’s overhaul of the federal student aid application fell apart this year, officials who now lead the department were warned of a complex and time-consuming effort and its potential pitfalls in 2020, according to internal emails and documents obtained by The New York Times.

The documents anticipated a demanding timetable that would require the department to closely manage its priorities over several years to revamp the application form in time for students’ fall 2022 applications. The documents were prepared by the department’s staff and circulated among soon-to-be top officials after the 2020 election but before President Biden took office, including James Kvaal, the under secretary of education, and Benjamin Miller, a deputy under secretary.

The revelation that the officials were advised to prepare for an arduous process yet still failed to deliver a working form three years later is likely to add to the intense scrutiny the department has faced over the handling of the project, which threw the college application season into chaos earlier this year.

The documents were all distributed in December 2020, as Congress was about to pass a law requiring the department to overhaul the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, known as FAFSA. The law, which mandated changes that included whittling the unwieldy 108-question form down to a more manageable 36, originally envisioned the new form being ready for students by the fall of 2022.

In the weeks before Mr. Biden was inaugurated, officials overseeing the presidential transition approached the Education Department to take stock of pending challenges as they began to sketch out the new administration’s priorities among federal agencies.

In several instances, members of the transition team were told by the staff at the department’s Federal Student Aid office that the 2022 deadline mandated by Congress was too aggressive. They also warned that overhauling the form and the system used to calculate student aid offers would be a major undertaking that required collaboration with other agencies and deft project management.

“Do you have any issues around the proposals for FAFSA reform that have been floating around the hill that you think are worth flagging in case the permanent team needs it on its radar?” the transition team asked the office in one questionnaire.

“This bill would rebuild the FAFSA and the need analysis formula from the ground up,” the office replied in its written answers, adding, “FSA believes that a more realistic implementation time frame would be the 2024-2025 cycle.”

In another instance, the office advised that even a routine launch of the form incorporating “typical, annual changes” could require at least 15 months, and that getting the form ready by the 2022 deadline would be “next to impossible.”

In light of those warnings, the department sought a one-year extension, which Congress granted in March 2022 to move the deadline to Oct. 1, 2023.

Even with the extra time, however, the Education Department repeatedly fell behind.

A string of errors and last-minute tweaks forced officials to push the release of the simplified form from Oct. 1 to Dec. 31. And even once the new form had launched, a maddening array of bugs affected both applicants and college administrators waiting to receive student aid data.

Current and former officials who worked on the FAFSA simplification once the scale of the problems became clear have said that the department’s leaders often failed to check in on the project along the way, and were overly focused on other priorities such as the Biden administration’s flagship student loan forgiveness plans.

A spokesman for the Education Department said that including the FAFSA form, the agency was forced to work through three major initiatives as mandated by Congress within six months of one another — also endeavoring to restart student loan repayments after the pandemic and approving new student loan servicing contracts. Despite the tight deadlines, the spokesman said, Congress provided the department no new funding.

The documents indicate that although top officials were alerted early on that the law would require substantial action, they were still unable to stave off the troubled rollout this year.

The Government Accountability Office documented concerns about the department’s progress in a report in June , which highlighted questions about management of contractors on the project and called on the department to stay on schedule. The office is also pursuing an investigation of the department’s overall management of the project.

After an agencywide scramble to fix the form this spring , the department has since shifted its attention to reaching out to students who may have been derailed or failed to apply for aid. Since February, the department has allocated $100 million to support students and colleges and bolster applications — nearly 30 percent of the total $336 million it spent on the simplification project.

Since problems with the form came into public view in 2023, Education Secretary Miguel A. Cardona has repeatedly said that the agency’s hands were tied by the congressional deadline, and that the department has done everything in its power to meet its deadlines despite limited resources.

Mr. Cardona has said that the department expects the form to work normally for students applying to college this fall, and that the changes will benefit future applicants.

“FAFSA has been a priority since Day 1 when we got into these positions, and it will continue to be a priority until we deliver for these students,” Mr. Cardona told lawmakers in April.

Zach Montague is based in Washington. He covers breaking news and developments around the district. More about Zach Montague

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