Each has implemented at least one of five strategies to boost student participation and success in the subject, according to in its recent report. 

Some, through these efforts, have reduced the need for remediation at the college level. This is particularly relevant for low-income students and those of color, who are more likely to be placed in these noncredit courses, which can derail their college trajectories. 

Concern over the issue has risen in recent years thanks to COVID: More than 900 students at the needed catch-up math classes in the fall of 2025 compared to just 32 five years earlier. And their lack of understanding wasn’t confined to high school: they were missing material they should have mastered in middle and Other universities reported similar problems.  

“Too often we spend a lot of energy discussing the challenges and constraints related to education or redesigning math,” said Shakiyya Bland, Just Equations’ director of educational partnerships. “This report highlights states that are doing the work, showing what’s possible — and showing results.” 

The report recognized efforts in other regions, too. The Virginia Community College System, for example, saw the need for remedial math plummet from 40% of incoming students to 4% between 2014 and 2021 after it changed how it judged college math readiness and how it teaches students who need additional help, Bland said. 

“Instead of a single placement test that pushed huge numbers into noncredit remedial tracks, colleges started using multiple measures like high school GPA and math coursework, expanding access for more students to go straight into college‑level math with added support,” she said. “That shift, from assuming students weren’t ready to assuming they could succeed with the right help, is what drove the big drop in ‘remedial’ placements.”

Just Equations cited five strategies states can implement to align mathematics from high school to college, including course co-design, where secondary and post-secondary instructors unite to craft high school math sequences.  

The organization said, too, universities should have transparent expectations for incoming freshmen so these students know what is expected of them for various college majors. 

Just Equations also touts the value of senior year transition or readiness courses for high school students: These classes, the organization observes, help ensure students can handle the challenge of college-level work. 

States might also offer dual enrollment courses which allow high school students to earn college credit, saving them time and money, Just Equations concluded. They can also work to ensure public universities recognize new high school mathematics offerings so students are properly credited for those classes. 

Georgia redesigned its math pathway through a partnership with K-12 and higher education math teachers to make sure new high school courses aligned with college entry requirements. The state also added several new courses for high school seniors, including Advanced Placement Statistics and Mathematics of Industry and Government. 

California had given students conflicting guidance about how many years of high school math they needed: State law demanded two while school districts often required three and some colleges recommended four. State universities are now more transparent about what is needed for college success in general and in specific majors.

Just Equations notes Tennessee’s efforts date back 18 years when its high school students were first required to complete four years of math, including Algebra II. The state’s mathematics offerings have been reworked numerous times since then and statistics has emerged as a valuable course for many.

Out West, Utah’s dual-enrollment program made college-level classes more accessible and affordable. The state also expanded the range of math pathways for high school students beyond college algebra, a course that relies heavily on algebraic procedures where students often struggle with the material and finding its relevancy.

Students may now opt for quantitative reasoning, focusing on practical numeracy skills such as personal finance and statistical reasoning or introductory statistics, geared toward life sciences, business and social sciences.

Mike Spencer, secondary mathematics specialist for the state board of education, said the change has been helpful to many students who might otherwise be kept out of college by their inability to pass a course that often had no bearing on their major or career aspiration. 

But, he said, students were reluctant to make the switch. 

“When it was first released, we saw a majority of our students were still taking college algebra, partly because of tradition,” Spencer said. “So, we made a significant effort to help inform students, families and counselors to understand why you would go into each of these.”

Just Equations noted, too, Utah’s university professors help craft high school syllabuses, screen high school teachers to teach college-level courses, and “verify grading consistency using common assessments.” It credits these and other changes for a massive increase in the rate of high school seniors completing four years of math, from 28% in 2012 to 87% in 2020. 

Bland of Just Equations said states should routinely bring together K–12, higher education, and workforce leaders to find the best math pathways for students. And, she said, they should invest in sustained professional development and K–16 longitudinal data to track students into the workforce to learn which math experiences best supported their success. 

Five years ago, Oregon adopted new mathematics standards intended to be “more modern and equitable,” moving away from the three-course sequence of Algebra I, geometry and Algebra II to a required two-year core curriculum focused on algebra, geometry and data/statistics. 

Students can now choose a course of study for a required third year — including mathematical modeling, data science and quantitative reasoning — and an optional fourth year. 

The changes required colleges to revisit their stated requirements. The University of Oregon, for example, mandated Algebra II for all incoming students, but now requires three or more years of high school math, which “could be satisfied by any math course with a primary focus on concepts in algebra, calculus, data science, discreet mathematics, geometry, mathematical analysis, probability or statistics.” 

In addition to the five core states at the heart of the study, Just Equations also lauded North Carolina’s automatic enrollment policy, adopted in 2018, which places students who score high on state assessments into advanced mathematics courses for the following year, eliminating subjective recommendations. More than 95% of the state’s eighth-grade students who scored at the highest level were placed in advanced math courses in 2022–23, up from 87% in 2017–18, before the policy was enacted. 

While these states have made noteworthy progress, critics note problems remain. 

A lack of longitudinal data in Tennessee makes it difficult to understand the impact of the changes that have taken shape there, state officials say. 

“One of the goals that I have over the next year or so is to better track the entire arc of the student journey,” said Juliette Biondi, who directs the state’s Seamless Alignment and Integrated Learning Support program, as documented in the report. “I want to understand how they do in their college math classes. Do they struggle? Does it influence graduation rates?”

Utah, too, can also improve: Rural areas find it hard to recruit and retain qualified teachers for college-level courses, leading them to rely on virtual instruction.

And Jo Boaler, the Stanford professor who helped California reshape its math program, said she regularly observes ineffective teaching practices that undermine K-12 learning.

“All I can see is that we have not built conceptual understanding or number sense well by the end of school,” Boaler told ����Ӱ��. “When I visit classrooms, I still see students going through uninspiring textbook math. Maybe there has been some improvement but I have not heard about it or seen it yet.”

Disclosure: The Gates Foundation provides financial support to Just Equations and ����Ӱ��.

Since 2022, when the Supreme Court allowed Maine private schools to receive public funds, at least five lawsuits have been filed by teachers unions, in Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Missouri and South Carolina. Additional legal challenges have been mounted by advocacy groups and parent organizations.

The Supreme Court’s Carson v. Makin ruling, combined with growing interest among parents in post-COVID, has fueled the rise of voucher programs and led to a tug-of-war in state courts between public educators and school choice advocates. 

Heading into the 2025 legislative session, at least 33 states had some form of private school choice, according to the Georgetown University think tank . Most union lawsuits have focused on , in which public dollars pay for children to attend private schools —  including religious schools — and cover other education-related expenses such as homeschooling.

In Wyoming and Utah, judges ruled in favor of the unions — at least for now. In South Carolina, the program was retooled after a court declared its previous version unconstitutional.

The Wyoming Education Association, which represents roughly 6,000 public school teachers, landed a win in July after District Court Judge Peter Froelicher granted against the state’s universal voucher program. The union and nine parents had sued the state in June on grounds that the is unconstitutional because it violates a state regulation that it must provide a “uniform system of public instruction.” 

The union decided to sue after lawmakers made the voucher program universal this spring. It was originally created with a family income cap of 250% of the federal poverty level.

“No income guidelines, in essence, means that you could be someone in Jackson who owns an $18 million property, and the state’s giving you money,” said union President Kim Amen. “Our constitution clearly says that we cannot give public money to private entities, so that’s why we challenged that.”

The injunction temporarily stops the distribution of — which are funded from a state appropriation of $30 million — until the court determines the program’s constitutionality. The state has since filed an appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court.

“I am disheartened at the court’s written order granting the WEA’s injunction. As one of nearly 4,000 Wyoming families, you have had your lives unnecessarily upended through no fault of your own,” Megan Degenfelder, state superintendent of public instruction, wrote in to parents. 

The case is similar to the one in Utah, where a judge ruled a $100 million voucher program unconstitutional in April, following a lawsuit by the state teachers union.

The Utah Education Association last year, arguing the Utah Fits All Scholarship Program violates the state constitution by diverting tax money to private schools that aren’t free, open to all students and supervised by the state board of education. The Utah Supreme Court is set to later this year.

Lawsuits in other states are still working their way through the courts.

In July, the Montana Federation of Public Employees, which represents the state’s public school teachers, challenging the constitutionality of the statewide voucher program that funds private education expenses for special education students. 

“Even voucher programs like [this one] that are targeted to students with disabilities deprive them of crucial legal protections and educational resources,” the plaintiffs said in a .

In Missouri, the state teachers union is over the , which started as a tax credit scholarship in 2021. It currently relies on nonprofits to collect donations that are turned into scholarships. Donors can receive a tax credit amounting to 100% of their contribution, but it can’t exceed more than half of their state tax liability. 

This year, Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe dedicated $50 million in taxpayer dollars for the scholarships and $1 million for program marketing, according to the suit. The Missouri National Education Association, which has 28,000 members, sued in June in an effort to block the appropriation.

“The General Assembly has far overstepped its authority and violated five provisions of the Missouri Constitution by using an appropriations bill to construct out of whole cloth a scheme to divert general revenues to what are essentially vouchers for the payment of private school tuition for elementary and secondary school students,” wrote Loretta Haggard, the union’s attorney, in the suit.

On July 30, — part of a national nonprofit that advocates for school choice — filed a motion to join the suit as defendants. Thomas Fisher, litigation director, said in a that the program helps Missouri families afford an education that fits their children’s needs. 

“The recent expansion of the program is constitutional and will expand education freedom for low-income families and students with learning differences,” he said.

In South Carolina, the ruled in 2024 that its Education Trust Fund Scholarship Program was unconstitutional following a lawsuit from the state teachers union, parents and the NAACP. The program resumed this year after to funnel money from the lottery system instead of the general fund. 

Unions have also been involved in school choice lawsuits in and . In 2023, National Education Association Alaska over a state system that sent cash payments to the parents of homeschool students. That same year, Wisconsin’s largest teachers union asked the state Supreme Court to hear its case challenging the constitutionality of the statewide voucher program, but the .

Now Christian schools in Maine, where the case originated, want the courts to go even further. 

They object to a state law that requires them to accept all students, including those who don’t follow their religion, have disabilities or identify as LGBTQ. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit heard the case in January.

“This moral panic over letting religious schools be religious — even if they’re receiving tuition subsidies — needs to end,” said Adele Keim, senior counsel with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. The nonprofit law firm represents St. Dominic Academy in Auburn, Maine, which sued over the rule along with CrossPoint Church, which operates . 

The nondiscrimination law, schools say, prevents them from participating in “town tuitioning” — a program that picks up a student’s private school costs if there’s no public option in their community. 

The state argues that it’s only asking religious schools to comply with the same rules public and secular private schools follow.

“The schools are asking for special treatment,” said Alexandra Zaretsky, litigation counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The nonprofit advocacy group submitted a brief to the court in support of Maine’s position. “It should be the state’s prerogative to say ‘If you’re getting funding from the state, then you have to follow our generally applicable laws.’ ”

Most states with voucher programs already allow private and religious schools to deny admissions to whomever they want. Maine is an outlier — a blue state that would prefer to keep religious schools out of the tuitioning program. 

The debate reflects a heightened concern among advocates for public education that the nationwide push for private school choice will further isolate students.

“Religious schools getting the taxpayer-funded ability to pick their own kids is one real goal of this school voucher push — a feature, not a bug,” said Joshua Cowen, an education professor at Michigan State University. Last year, he released a book that delves into the way culture war battles have fueled private school choice.

In March, in opposition to Texas’ new ESA law, which passed in April with help from President Donald Trump. The president of the state House, urging them to vote yes. Earlier in that , which lasted nearly 24 hours, Laura Colangelo, executive director of the Texas Private School Association, said private schools could deny admission to a child whose mother wasn’t married when she got pregnant.

says the state can’t force a school to modify policies tied to their religious beliefs. If the Maine case goes the religious schools’ way, such rules would be “less necessary,” Cowen said.

“I’m a Christian man. I sing in a church choir. I can still say what these schools want to do is wrong,” he said. “These guys just want a blank check to do what they want, even if it’s leaving some kids and families out.”

A ‘source of balkanization’

The issue was also at the forefront of Oklahoma’s legal fight to open a religious charter school, a debate that both supporters and opponents of the idea expect to eventually wind up back in court.

In April, the U.S. Supreme Court tied 4-4 on the question of whether charter schools are private and can explicitly teach religion. The deadlock allowed the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision against St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School to stand. Though promising not to turn any students away, school leaders said they would only call students by their birth names and pronouns and would refer students with disabilities to their local district if accommodating their needs disrupted class.

Some experts see the prospect of sectarian charter schools as a threat to American values. 

“Public education, including public charter schools, is one of the few things that holds our society together,” said Richard Kahlenberg, who directs the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank. “It’s the common experience for 90% of American schoolchildren.” 

“If you suddenly have … Christian students going to their schools, Jewish students going to theirs, Muslim students going to theirs, that means fewer Christian students come to know Jewish and Muslim students as classmates and friends,” Kahlenberg said in a panel discussion prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Oklahoma case. “Our public schools are already highly segregated by race and class, and this would just layer on religion as a new source of balkanization.” 

‘Infinite number of options’

In Utah, the state’s teachers union sued last year over a new ESA program because they say it “diverts” education funds to schools that discriminate in admissions. In April, a state district court judge ruled the program unconstitutional.

“We firmly believe, and a judge agreed, that public money belongs in public schools,” said Hailey Higgins, communications director for the Utah Education Association.

To choice supporters — and the Trump administration — the more private schools that cater to families’ individual preferences, the better. That’s the argument that the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm, along with parents currently in the program, made in to the Utah Supreme Court.

When she learned about the lawsuit, Amanda Koldewyn, an Ogden mother of four, said she felt “anger, frustration and panic.” Her 12-year-old son, who has autism, was getting sick from anxiety in public school and was “bored out of his mind” in class. The Utah Fits All scholarship allowed her to find a curriculum where he can move at his own pace and pay a private math tutor for her daughter. She hopes to use the program for her 5-year-old twins this fall as well.

“I can actually get the resources that aren’t just passable, but are fine tuned to what my children need,” she said. “I get really, really angry at those few teachers who think public school is the only way.”

The debate over whether religious schools in choice programs can refuse to serve families who don’t share their values is also playing out with younger students in Colorado. The state’s universal preschool program requires participating schools to accept students from families regardless of parents’ housing status, income level, or religion, sexual orientation or gender identity. 

Two over the regulation, saying they couldn’t participate in the program because their faith prohibits them from accepting LGBTQ students or parents. That means the state doesn’t pick up the cost for students in those schools. The case is now before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. 

In other countries, it’s far more common for students to attend religious schools at the government’s expense. , fully funds Catholic school districts. In European countries like the Netherlands, attend government-funded religious schools.

Many countries place on those schools that choice advocates in the U.S. would resist, explains Sam Abrams, director of the International Partnership for the Study of Educational Privatization at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Religious schools often follow the same criteria for student admissions as public schools, teach to national standards and submit to monitoring visits.

“It’s all regulated, and you can’t screen kids out,” he said, noting that in recent school choice cases, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court never referenced how these systems work in other countries. “They’re not going to talk about the European system. It forces them to acknowledge that what [the U.S.] is doing is very different.”

Maine’s demands on religious schools depart from the way the tuitioning program used to operate. For decades, Catholic and other religious schools were “willing and active participants in this program,” Keim said. That ended in the 1980s — what she called the “shag carpet-era view of the Establishment Clause” — when the legislature passed a law excluding religious schools.

“For 25 years, Maine families have been knocking at the courthouse door and asking the federal courts to let them back in,” Keim said. 

In 2021, as the Carson case made its way to the Supreme Court, lawmakers amended the to prohibit discrimination against students in all private schools receiving public funds, including religious schools. The real “poison pill,” she said, is a provision that requires religious expression without discrimination. 

“If they’re going to allow a Catholic pro-life club,” she said, “they’re going to have to allow a Catholic pro-choice club.”

If the schools prevail in court, St. Dominic’s won’t be accepting any high school students. While the pre-K through eighth grade school will still operate, the this year due to low enrollment. 

“I’m sure the picture would be different,” Keim said, “if they had been allowed to receive these subsidies over the long term.”

The Utah Education Association , arguing the Utah Fits All Scholarship Program violated the constitution by diverting tax money to private schools that aren’t free, open to all students and supervised by the state board of education.

The $100 million voucher program was created in 2023 by the Utah Legislature. It provided up to $8,000 in state income tax funds to eligible students through scholarship accounts to pay for private schools. 

District Court Judge Laura Scott said that the program not only allows schools to deny students admission because of religion, politics and location, but it provides benefits to private and homeschooled children that might not be available to those in public school, like funds for computers, test prep courses and tutoring.

“Because the program is a legislatively created, publicly funded education program aimed at elementary and secondary education, it must satisfy the constitutional requirements applicable to the ‘public education system’ set forth in the Utah Constitution,” she said. “And because there is no genuine dispute that the program fails to meet these ‘open to all children’ and ‘free’ requirements, it is unconstitutional.”

The ruling comes amid a nationwide push for school choice expansion. On Thursday, the Texas House gave initial approval to a bill that would create a $1 billion private school voucher program. School voucher bills have also advanced this year in Wyoming and Tennessee. 

Utah officials previously argued that the program’s share of tax revenue was less than 1% of the amount allocated for the state’s public schools, according to court documents. Robyn Bagley, executive director of — one of the main organizations that advocated for the program — said in a statement Friday that Scott’s decision was a “temporary setback” and there will be an appeal.

“We knew such a judgment at this level was a possibility, and we remain extremely confident the program will ultimately be ruled constitutional by the Utah Supreme Court,” Bagley said. “Many families are eagerly awaiting the thousands of new scholarships that have just been funded by the Utah Legislature.”

The program paid for the vouchers of 10,000 students — 80% of them homeschooled, according to the . After a waitlist reached 17,000 names, the legislature reduced scholarship amounts for homeschooled students earlier this year.

The Utah Education Association, which represents 18,000 members, said in a statement Friday that lawmakers had overstepped their authority and the union held them accountable.

“This decision protects the integrity of public education, ensuring critical funding remains in schools that serve 90% of Utah’s children and prioritize equitable, inclusive opportunities for every student to succeed,” the union said.

The union has also been advocating against a bill, passed in February, that bans collective bargaining, which some opponents say was created to retaliate against the school voucher lawsuit. Utah union organizations for a referendum to overturn the bill.

Utah teachers unions are reeling after a bill that would bar them from bargaining collectively and conducting operations on school property was forwarded to the governor’s desk Feb. 6.

Lawmakers who favor the measure, , say it was introduced to ensure transparency in public-sector unions and protect taxpayer resources, but educators say it will only make a job that’s already full of challenges more difficult.

While it doesn’t prevent employees from joining a union, the bill prohibits public agencies — which employ teachers, firefighters, police officers and county workers, among others — from “recognizing a labor organization as a bargaining agent” and “entering into collective bargaining contracts.” 

The bill’s state Senate co-sponsor, Republican Kirk Cullimore, argued during a that “unions are negotiating against what could be seen as the taxpayer sometimes.” At that same meeting, Republican state Sen. John Johnson said collective bargaining can undermine the public interest.

“Public-sector unions, unlike their private counterparts, negotiate with government officials over taxpayer-funded resources,” he said. “This dynamic can lead to decisions that prioritize union interest over the needs and welfare of the general populace.”

Other lawmakers who support HB267 said it ensures that unions operate with transparency and fairness.

But some opponents of the bill, including educators and legislators, charge it was created to retaliate against the Utah Education Association, which is The association is the state’s largest teachers union, with 18,000 members.

In a Jan. 25 , Republican state Sen. Todd Weiler called the measure a “knee-jerk reaction” to the legislature’s frustration with the union. 

“Because we can’t constitutionally pass a bill that just punishes the UEA, we’re including firefighters and other unions that didn’t necessarily draw the ire of the legislature,” Weiler said. “I don’t think our best policy directives are achieved if we’re trying to be vindictive or reactive to something.”

Like most of Utah’s teachers unions, Canyons Education Association in Salt Lake County doesn’t engage in collective bargaining. But President Krista Pippin said the chapter regularly negotiates with the district for improved policies and working conditions. 

“The school board administration didn’t support [the bill]. The superintendents association did not support it, because they all know the importance of advocacy work that is so essential to the profession,” Pippin said.

Lawmakers who support HB267 unions could still advocate for their interests under the bill, but opposing senators and Utah’s largest teachers union disagree.

State Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla said the measure will have a lot of unintended consequences.

“Our first responders, our teachers, are doing probably the most difficult jobs that we have right now,” Escamilla said. “Their ability to feel protected and have representation in conversations … they are not going to be able to do it individually with their management. That is just impossible.”

The Utah Education Association said that HB267 will weaken advocacy because it cuts off access to schools, making it harder for unions to do their work. 

The bill would bar unions from using public property for free. Members would have to pay to use their school space or rent another public location for union activity.

Jenny Graviet, president of Weber Education Association, said she would no longer be able to visit schools during lunch to collect teacher opinions or meet with district administrators to discuss union priorities.

“I do a lot in the evening, but when I talk to members, then I have to catch them during their lunchtime. But I’m still using the building,” Graviet said. “Which means I’m not going to be listening to voices.”

Under the bill, collective bargaining contracts that are in place by May would remain in force until they expire. The union in Weber, located north of Salt Lake City, is one of the few in Utah that does engage in collective bargaining to secure teacher contracts.

Now, the chapter will have to act quickly to finalize a multi-year contract with the district and get it ratified by the school board by the May deadline.

“We’re going to have to just cut off the ideas that we were hoping to do,” Graviet said. “For example, special education teachers had reached out to me, begging for more time because they’ve got to get caught up on their caseloads.”

Graviet said she’s already losing members because educators are getting misinformation about the bill, thinking it will outlaw teachers unions.

“If we have reduced membership, we cannot pay for things … in the end, you get a very weakened union,” she said. “When you have weakened locals, you have a weakened state who can’t work on legislation, who can’t advocate on our behalf. It kind of makes me sad.”

A dozen state leaders, all from Republican-led states, wrote to Linda McMahon, President Donald Trump’s education secretary nominee, last week asking her to push for greater state control over federal education funds and to avoid issuing guidance they say is “not anchored in law.”

In the Jan. 28 letter, shared exclusively with ����Ӱ��, they also want McMahon, former head of World Wrestling Entertainment, to send large buckets of funding for schools, like Title I money for low-income students, as a block grant. But they stopped short of stating support for abolishing the U.S. Department of Education — President Donald Trump’s top education policy goal. 

“By prioritizing state leadership and flexibility, the Trump administration can unleash the full potential of America’s schools and students,” they wrote. “Please defer to state and local decision-making as much as possible.”

The letter outlines conservative chiefs’ priorities as Trump takes aggressive steps to reshape the federal role in education. He frequently to “send education back to the states” and is expected to issue an executive order before the end of the month that would call on Congress to close the department.

The memo offers specifics that have been lacking in many discussions over how the relationship between the federal government and the states might change. But some experts wonder if the freedom GOP leaders seek will leave high-need students without services currently provided under law. Madi Biedermann, a department spokeswoman, confirmed they’d received the letter, but said officials wouldn’t share it with McMahon until she’s confirmed. 

The 12 leaders who penned the letter, both elected and appointed, are from Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming. 

Oklahoma state Superintendent Ryan Walters was not among them, despite the fact that he has been the most vocal about and at one point, threatened to . 

The proposals should provide additional talking points for committee members during McMahon’s confirmation hearing Feb. 13. While it would require congressional approval, the chiefs want to see the of funding under the Every Student Succeeds Act — like Title I and Title III for English learners — consolidated into a single block grant for “maximum flexibility.” 

They want to design their own formulas for distributing the money to districts so they can address the needs of rural areas, for example, and state-specific learning initiatives. In the meantime, they want the new secretary to grant as many waivers as possible from the accountability requirements of the law so they can “present new ideas” for how to spend the money.

‘Dilute the protections’

Rebecca Sibilia, executive director of EdFund, a research and policy organization, said she wasn’t surprised that the chiefs didn’t advocate eliminating the education department outright. Many of their states on federal funds and spend less state money on schools. The department, she said, is doing those states “a great service.”

While some state leaders might view the federal requirements as “overly burdensome,” she said their push for more control could come at the expense of students who require extra help, like those in poverty, English learners and homeless students. 

“Once you start blending all of those titles together you start to really dilute the protections that are going to individual students,” she said. 

The letter doesn’t mention the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which under , would move to the Department of Health and Human Services.

“IDEA oversight is giving some people pause,” she said. “That piece of legislation is very specific to education.”

Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, say they have “serious concerns” about any attempts to shutter the department. On Thursday, they to Acting Education Secretary Denise Carter asking for more transparency on how the department plans to continue running programs it oversees, like financial aid and afterschool programs.

“We will not stand by and allow the impact that dismantling the Department of Education would have on the nation’s students, parents, borrowers, educators and communities,” they wrote.

In their letter, the state chiefs pushed back on the department’s practice of using “dear colleague” letters to enforce its priorities, which they said have often been “treated as legally binding policy.” Guidance from the department, they said, should merely be a suggestion “so as not to force behavior change.”  

During the Obama administration, for example, Republicans fought guidance that said students should be able to use bathrooms that match their and another that said districts could risk civil rights investigations if Black and Hispanic students were . 

On Wednesday, the Education Department issued stating that it would no longer enforce the Biden administration’s Title IX rule, which extended protections to LGBTQ students, and that any investigations based on the 2024 rule would be “reevaluated.” 

Nat Malkus, deputy director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said he hopes Trump honors the chiefs’ request, but noted the “chaos” that has marked Trump’s first few weeks in office. Trump’s efforts to freeze federal funding have been . And even some have questioned Elon Musk’s authority to gain access to government payment systems and disable an agency that provides foreign aid.

“The ‘pen and phone’ approach, to quote Obama, whipsaws state leaders across administrations and is lousy federal governance,” he said. “My worry is less about the secretary nominee and more about the ‘move fast and break things’ approach we’ve seen so far in many other dimensions of this young administration.”

What’s on Utah educators’ minds just before the state Legislature convenes for its general session next Tuesday? A survey of more than 1,400 teachers across the state points to a clear direction — prioritizing funding for long-term solutions that may mitigate their stress and burnout.

With a big focus on needed resources to tend to their classes, about 93% of members of the Utah Education Association (UEA) who responded to the survey oppose a potential expansion of controversial scholarship programs sponsored by the state, also known as private school vouchers.

Programs such as Utah Fits All “divert essential resources from public schools,” Renée Pinkney, UEA president, said at a news conference on Monday. Last year, the union to the constitutionality of the “school choice” program. That case is still pending, and the teachers are expecting to keep advocating against it.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

“It’s very disingenuous to say that you can have a voucher program simultaneously running at the same time that you’re funding public education,” Pinkney said, “because we know that our students in public schools have needs that aren’t being met.”

To offer “school choice” options, the 2023 Utah Legislature set up the fund that can provide eligible K-12 students up to $8,000 for education expenses including private school tuition and fees, homeschooling, tutoring services, testing fees, materials and other expenses. In total, the program uses about $82.5 million in taxpayer funding a year.

This year, lobbyists from UEA will be advocating for at least a 3% increase of the weighted pupil unit (WPU) — the per-student unit used to determine costs and distribute funding to schools — above the required adjustments for inflation and enrollment growth. The union estimates that would cost the state about $135 million in ongoing funding.

UEA also wants to see money allocated for increased paid professional hours for all licensed educators, in addition to maintaining the Stipends for Future Educators program and allowing more families to access free school meals.

Students have greater needs

Apart from the funding priorities, teachers are also focusing on the quality of the instruction they can provide and other student equity efforts.

There are large classes and long, exhausting hours grading papers, all while juggling extra tasks such as making plans for students who need remediation.

“Our students are also coming with greater needs in every aspect of their lives, in their own mental health, in their own capabilities,” said Becky Bissegger, a teacher at Salt Lake City’s Meadowlark Elementary.

Ideally, she said, each classroom should have two adults at all times to help with behaviors, to support children as they learn how to work out problems, and to have an adult presence while the other teacher has to be away.

Janet Sanders, a teacher at Herriman’s Mountain Ridge High School, said that one factor that has increased stress levels among her colleagues is how behaviors in the classroom have “really gotten to be a much more serious issue.”

After the Legislature passed a law programs, Sanders, who’s a social studies teacher, said she has also felt pressure to be careful of what she says in class in an effort to remain neutral.

“I teach government, and it is very challenging, but it’s a challenge I’m happy to take on, to stay neutral. But, I think there’s a feeling of like we’re being persecuted,” Sanders said. “I think there’s a little bit of that feeling among teachers, that there’s just an anti-public-ed sentiment out there. There’s a movement where it’s privatization and we just feel threatened and we feel for our students, because we know that our students will not be well served.”

It’s likely that the Legislature will explore many education bills this year since Republican lawmakers have made . That’s something that awakens some concerns in Pinkney.

“There many times are solutions to problems that don’t really exist,” she said. “And we really have a request that those education bills are decreased, because it seems as though our legislators pass bills and then (…) maybe a few sessions after, they’re trying to fix the bills that they passed because it was so fast.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com.

Each of these states offers students access to education savings accounts, which give families education dollars so they can customize and personalize children’s learning experiences, from school tuition and tutoring to educational products or services. 

Now school districts in these states are enabling families to use their funds to purchase individual public school classes.

Early examples have emerged in Utah’s Canyons School District, Arizona’s Vail and Pima school districts and Florida’s Glades County School District. 

In Canyons School District, families can use ESA funds to enroll in public school programs, including , through the Utah Fits All Scholarship. Vail School District developed a that outlines costs for homeschool families who want to purchase individual school courses, enroll in clubs, access sports or engage in other extracurricular programs using Arizona’s ESA program. And Pima School District lets students use their ESAs to pay for .

In Florida, the Personalized Education Program allows homeschool families to access the nation’s largest universal school choice program — and this year, districts are starting to respond by allowing families to purchase one-off courses. In one recent example, let a student use education savings account funds to buy honors biology and American history classes. And students using Florida’s education choice scholarship program . This shift mirrors a change that began in 1996, when Florida passed the nation’s first law making available to homeschool families.

These initiatives demonstrate a profound shift in how public schools can serve students. Traditionally, ESA funding has been spent on providers such as private schools and tutors. By embracing the customization ESAs offer, public school districts no longer treat student funding as all-or-none. Rather, these districts are demonstrating a future where public schools compete in the education marketplace to better serve individual students and families.

This evolution in education mirrors the transformation I saw while working at Uber. When Uber first emerged, it was viewed as a threat to the taxi industry. to to Uber and other ridesharing companies. And when customers kept coming, lobbying efforts got them banned from airports and . But today, 13 years since Uber first rolled out its app in major cities, you can in  nearly every city, from Miami to Helena, Montana. And at nearly every major airport, travelers will find signs directing them to rideshare pickup locations as well as traditional transportation options — a result of the industry as a whole embracing the apps.

Just as transportation companies have adapted to offer better overall service to riders, public schools are making a similar shift in education to meet the demands of today’s families, improving their offerings and attracting more students.

More than 80% of families surveyed by want a customizable education experience for their child, yet only 38% say they can currently achieve this. The lesson is clear: Rather than resisting ESAs, public schools should see them as a tool for innovation. By providing services families want — whether it’s advanced academic courses, specialized arts programs or extracurriculars — public schools can thrive in this new, competitive marketplace.

The future of education in America is not about pitting public and private schools against one another. It’s about giving families the power to choose what’s best for their children — and public schools have every opportunity to be part of that solution. Just as Uber transformed transportation by focusing on what customers wanted, public schools can revolutionize education by listening to families and providing the services they need. ESAs are the tool that can make this vision a reality.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Before Bailey McQueeny-Rose attended law school at the University of Oregon, she worked in reproductive health care, first as a medical assistant and then as a trainer, teaching others to do the same job. The work opened her eyes to how access to health care differed based on the laws in the six states where she oversaw training, and she began to consider becoming a civil rights lawyer.

She’d planned to take the bar exam after law school, but in late 2023, Oregon began offering graduates an alternative pathway to practicing law. Instead of sitting for the multiday bar exam, which most states offer twice a year, new graduates can be admitted to practice in Oregon through on-the-job training.

The graduates are required to work 675 hours under the supervision of a licensed attorney as well as submit a work portfolio for approval to Oregon’s Board of Bar Examiners. And just like anyone who takes the traditional bar exam, those approved under what’s known as a , or SPPE, are required to pass an ethics test.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

“The bar exam is not going to teach me how to be a civil rights lawyer,” McQueeny-Rose said. “But the SPPE pathway, working with civil rights employers, learning what the day-to-day duties and what the day-to-day job looks like, it’s a hands-on way. That’s what’s going to teach me how to be a civil rights lawyer.”

Oregon Supreme Court Chief Justice Meagan Flynn said in an interview that she’s been astounded at the various approaches emerging in other states since Oregon’s move. She serves on a national committee of lawyers and court officials who will recommend practical changes to help diversify the bar admissions process through the National Center for State Courts, an administrative organization.

“And really, no two look alike,” Flynn said. “Every state looking at this is coming up with very, very state-specific approaches.”

States administer their own bar exams and determine passing scores. Most states use the Uniform Bar Exam, and some states have their own specific tests. Critics of the bar exam say that in most states, it doesn’t assess minimum competency to practice the law, especially when it comes to skills that involve working directly with clients, such as handling negotiations or counseling people facing incarceration, divorce, bankruptcy or other stressful matters.

Multiple-choice tests fail to assess whether someone has the necessary skills to be a good lawyer, said Catherine Bramble, an associate professor at Brigham Young University Law School in Utah. And research has found that new lawyers perform better if they’ve had practice and supervision.

“We all know this intuitively,” said Bramble, who has been pushing for change in Utah. “Some things are not best assessed through a multiple-choice test. For example, the ability to fly an airplane. We would really hope a pilot has time in the cockpit under observation of an experienced flight instructor before we allow them to fly a plane.”

Real-world skills

In Utah, the state Supreme Court, which oversees licensure, is considering a supervised practice proposal that would require applicants to take a core curriculum during law school. They would be required to complete 240 hours of supervised practice, which could be paid or unpaid. Twenty of those hours would have to be client-facing work, and 50 pro bono, meaning the services are provided to clients free of charge.

Utah encourages lawyers in the state to commit to 50 hours of pro bono work each year, Bramble said, and they’ve found that those who are exposed to such service early in their careers tend to continue it. The proposal would require that prospective licensees take a six-hour well-being online module that teaches lawyers how to manage the stress of a legal career. Finally, there would be a three-hour test, which would require test-takers to write a basic legal motion using a sample law and case materials.

For Nevada, its proposed rules emphasize “the necessity of representing clients well,” said Joan Howarth, a professor at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. There, the proposal in front of the state Supreme Court would allow law students to complete most of the requirements for licensure during law school.

The Oregon Supreme Court is considering approving a similar, third licensure path — in addition to the traditional bar exam and SPPE — that would allow students to take coursework and complete supervised practice requirements during school so that they are licensed when they graduate.

Even the national bar exam is changing: The National Conference of Bar Examiners will begin rolling out a NextGen test in select states in 2026, with a focus on more foundational lawyering skills such as client counseling and advising, dispute resolution, and client relationship and management.

Law schools for several decades have been incorporating more real-world skills into their curriculum, said Deborah Jones Merritt, professor emerita at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, who has studied the bar exam’s deficiencies in producing good lawyers. Merritt’s research has determined that the exam is far more challenging to pass for people of color, those with caretaking responsibilities, or those who come from low-income households.

Beginnings of change

Many states began rethinking the necessity of the bar exam in 2020 during the pandemic, when gathering hundreds of people together in a big room for an exam was a potential superspreader event for COVID-19.

In place of the test, several states and the District of Columbia issued what’s known as diploma privilege, the ability to practice without passing the bar. Utah, for example, required their graduates to fulfill a pro bono requirement first. It was an eye-opening experiment, said Bramble, in part because “nothing crazy happened.”

Then in 2021, the American Bar Association for the first time released statistics breaking down bar exam passage rates by race. White test takers were far likelier to pass the exams in 2020 than those of other races or ethnicities, according to the group. Although there are other barriers to a legal career, including law school entrance exams and the time, expense and quality of the schooling, the numbers made it clear that the bar exam itself had flaws that kept many candidates of color from becoming lawyers.

One of the biggest flaws of the bar is that it’s an expensive and time-consuming exam, said Brian Gallini, the former dean of the Willamette University College of Law in Oregon and one of the architects of the licensure push in the state. Law school graduates often pay for a law review class, which often can cost more than $1,000, to study for the test in the months following their graduation, as well as put off earning a living in their degree field until they’re licensed and can begin working as lawyers.

Those who work a job while they study are more likely to fail, but many students cannot afford not to work — they carry an average of $160,000 in student loan debt when they exit school.

Gallini, now the dean of the Quinnipiac University School of Law in Connecticut, fielded a lot of angry emails when he first introduced the idea to the Willamette law school’s alumni in 2022. Many objections were reflexive: Critics of the proposal said they had suffered through the bar exam, so aspiring lawyers who followed them should face a similar rite of passage.

So far, only a handful of 2024 graduates from the state’s three law schools have chosen the new pathway; McQueeny-Rose said many of her peers haven’t been able to find supervising attorneys who are familiar enough with the program to oversee their work.

That’s also expected to change quickly. The state’s law schools are beginning to establish prestigious post-graduate fellowships aimed at placing SPPE participants in communities of need, including immigration law, public defense and rural law practices. Judicial clerkships also are eligible to fulfill many of the program’s requirements.

McQueeny-Rose will be joining the team at Levi Merrithew Horst, a Portland, Oregon, firm, where she’ll work on police misconduct cases, class-action suits on behalf of incarcerated people and other civil rights work. Instead of studying for the bar, she’s taking the summer off to devote time to her artwork and to move to Portland for her new job. She anticipates she’ll fulfill the requirements of the SPPE program in early 2025.

“For me, it was a pretty easy decision,” McQueeny-Rose said. “I knew I wanted to stay in Oregon. I’m committed to practice here, I love it here. I have a lot of ideas how to make Oregon better, and I want to stay and do my part.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on and .

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed six bills the Legislature passed during this week’s special session — including a resolution that bans government officers from complying with a Title IX update that prohibits discrimination based on gender identity.

Wednesday to approve two resolutions — and — declaring they wouldn’t follow the federal directive that extends Title IX protections to transgender students and would allow them to participate on sports teams and use bathrooms and facilities of the gender they identify with.

With the signature, Utah is putting into action the recently enacted , which allows the state to not comply with federal policies in cases lawmakers consider “overreach.”

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

During the debate, lawmakers said the new Title IX rules, set to become effective in August, are in conflict with state laws that restrict transgender people from using bathrooms and locker rooms of the gender they identify with. Also with , which bans transgender students from joining sports teams of their gender identity, among other harassment and abortion policies.

Back in 2022, Cox had vetoed HB11, citing “fundamental flaws” and criticizing a last-hour change that allowed a complete ban of transgender high school and middle school students in the sports teams of the gender they align with.

“I must admit, I am not an expert on transgenderism. I struggle to understand so much of it and the science is conflicting. When in doubt however, I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion,” Cox said in a to the Legislature’s leadership. “I also try to get proximate and I am learning so much from our transgender community. They are great kids who face enormous struggles.”

However, the Legislature that veto.

Cox didn’t immediately comment on why he signed the resolutions Friday.

This January, Cox HB257, which restricts transgender people from accessing bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity in government-owned facilities, and issued a one-line statement saying “we want public facilities that are safe and accommodating for everyone and this bill increases privacy protections for all.”

Rep. Kera Birkland, R-Morgan, who sponsored HCR301, the resolution to disregard the new Title IX policies — apart from HB11 and HB257 — that she hopes the signature leads other states to take similar measures.

“Hopefully this all gets us one step closer to congressional action that protects and preserves women’s sports,” Birkeland wrote.

Because of the resolution and the Utah Constitutional Sovereignty Act, the order to not comply with the federal law extends to K-12 schools and higher education, she explained.

“Utah will follow state law and not an unconstitutional rule from unelected bureaucrats under the Biden Administration,” she added in her post.

HJR301, a joint resolution with the same goal as HCR301, didn’t need Cox’s signature.

Apart from those items, Cox signed easing the terms of a controversial bill that would keep the Intermountain Power Plant’s coal generators running past its planned retirement date, an agreement that the Intermountain Power Agency said it wouldn’t oppose.

The governor also signed amendments to the Utah code related to the participation of exchange students in the statewide online education program and other actions “countering federal overreach on public lands,” according to the session’s , among other changes.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com. Follow Utah News Dispatch on and .

SALT LAKE CITY — Shortly after taking office in 2023, Republican state Rep. Katy Hall heard from constituents complaining about how their adult children were required to write diversity, equity and inclusion statements while applying for medical and dental schools and other graduate programs in Utah.

“It doesn’t seem right,” Hall said. “It doesn’t seem like it belongs in an application.”

It took two legislative sessions, but Hall successfully sponsored a new law that not only prohibits the use of such DEI statements but also bars state institutions from relying on specific individual characteristics in employment and education decisions. Additionally, it eliminates central offices dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

In Utah and beyond, lawmakers are enjoying growing success in their pushback against DEI programs at public universities, many of which have hired administrators and established departments dedicated to creating more diverse faculties and student bodies. Some schools’ requirement that job and student applicants explain in writing how they’d bring DEI initiatives to their work or schooling has aroused especially strong opposition. Some states have dismantled DEI departments and programs, as well as ended race- and gender-based programs and scholarships.

Many in Utah describe their approach as more measured than that of other states. The law, which goes into effect July 1, includes a carve-out that allows DEI to be discussed in classroom instruction as well as in research and for accreditation purposes.

Republican Gov. Spencer Cox, who signed Hall’s in January, said it “offers a balanced solution” even as it prohibits the type of training sessions he required of his staff in 2021.

The intent of the legislation, Hall said, is to shift higher education away from a focus on identity.

“This is what we felt was a more nuanced way to say: ‘We want diversity, we want equality of opportunity, we want inclusion, but we want diversity of opinion and a diversity of thought and diversity of religion and diversity of everything.’ Not just external, personal identity characteristics,” Hall said.

“We used to be able to have discussions about politics without it coming to a judgment of someone’s moral character,” she added. “My hope is that there will be a little more political neutrality where you can have discussions and feel safe to have those discussions without it being so divisive.”

But the bill passed along party lines, pointed out state Rep. Angela Romero, a Democrat who serves as the House minority leader in Utah. She described what’s happening in her state as part of a broader culture war aimed at painting higher education as elite and out of touch.

“This is a national agenda,” Romero said in an interview. “It’s a machine and it’s been going for a while and it’s picking up momentum.”

Utah’s rollback is among dozens of simultaneous efforts to scale back DEI programs — to varying degrees — in state capitals and on higher education oversight boards in other Republican-led states. In at least 22 states, the legislature has enacted legislation, or public universities have set policies prohibiting or modifying DEI measures at state university systems, according to a running tally in .

Among the earliest passed was in North Dakota asking students and prospective university employees about their commitment to DEI. Florida followed last year with a that does away with diversity statements and DEI offices. Alabama in 2024 enacted a restricting public employees from being forced to agree with so-called divisive concepts, including the idea that “by virtue of an individual’s race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin, the individual is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously.”

In South Dakota, the Board of Regents recently enacted a policy that bars employees at its six public universities from putting their preferred gender pronouns or tribal affiliations in email signatures, according to . Most recently, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees last month to shift $2.3 million of DEI spending toward public safety and policing on campus. Then, the entire UNC System Board of Governors to abolish DEI policies in place since 2019 at all 17 of its campuses.

A chilling effect

Many of the efforts to roll back DEI initiatives in states have the same roots as a campaign against critical race theory spearheaded by Seattle documentary filmmaker Christopher Rufo, who in 2020 elevated a once-obscure theory about the pervasiveness of racism in American law and institutions to a household term.

Often, efforts to undo DEI initiatives argue that students — especially white students — are harmed by learning about the history of racism in the United States because it may leave them feeling guilty or ashamed of their identity. Multiple states, including , have adopted near-identical language in anti-DEI legislation that bans instruction that might prompt a person to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.

In April, polling by found that 77% of Republicans say they believe that “discrimination against white people is as problematic as discrimination against Black Americans.”

Anti-DEI laws have had a chilling effect on higher education wherever they’ve been enacted, said Irene Mulvey, the president of the American Association of University Professors, a nonprofit membership association of faculty and other academic professionals.

“The laws are deliberately vague so that professors have to be constantly thinking, ‘If I say this, will I be breaking the law? Will I lose my job or be arrested by the government if I say this in my classroom?’“ Mulvey said. “I mean, that’s where we are in America in 2024. These are the worries faculty have in an authoritarian society, and they have no place in a democracy.”

At the University of Texas, anti-DEI legislation led the system to eliminate 300 positions and to cut diversity training programs at multiple campuses.

The situation is similar in Florida, said Paul Ortiz, a professor of history and a union leader at the University of Florida. He’s leaving the school after 15 years for a position at Cornell University in New York. The fallout from the state’s DEI policies wasn’t the only reason he’s leaving — he got a great job offer — but it contributed to his decision, Ortiz said.

“To pretend that it’s not having an effect on the cultural and intellectual life of the state is the worst thing of all,” Ortiz said. “I’m hoping the pendulum is going to swing back.”

Students are the real losers, Mulvey said. At the University of Oklahoma, for example, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt’s executive order ending DEI programs in state offices and agencies the National Education for Women’s Leadership program. The program encourages undergraduate women to engage in politics and public policy. Since its founding in 2002, more than 650 students have attended.

Stitt told the that his executive order was about race, not the women’s leadership program, and called the backlash against his policy “political criticism.”

“What we’re seeing now is nobody’s helped when these offices are closed or programs are shut down, no one’s better off,” Mulvey said. “We’re having watered-down discussions and anodyne classes because faculty without tenure are afraid of losing their job if they say the wrong thing or if someone takes it out of context or tapes them and puts it online.”

DEI statements

DEI statements in university hiring have been one of the easiest targets nationwide, in part because there’s less support for them even among more progressive educators who support wider DEI initiatives.

Editorial boards and columnists at outlets as varied as , and the have railed against diversity statements, saying they too often result in “self-censorship and ideological policing” on college campuses. Many elite universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, have DEI statements as a requirement of employment applications. At best, critics argue, they’re boilerplate that echoes what employers want to hear, rendering them useless. At their worst, they serve as ideological litmus tests.

“We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said in a statement to in May, confirming the university’s new approach.

But DEI statements have their defenders. Suzanne Penuel, an associate professor who teaches first-year literature and writing at the University of South Carolina Lancaster, said she witnessed how high-quality DEI statements set job candidates apart when she served on the hiring committee for a position teaching American history. Nearly all academic applicants have polished curriculum vitae, impeccable recommendations and pitch-perfect cover letters, she wrote in an op-ed in .

Their DEI statements gave them personality, Penuel said in an interview. It was easier to tell which applicants would take a student-centered approach to their work; one applicant wrote that the textbooks used in the school’s history courses ought to be free, an interpretation that the hiring committee viewed as an inclusive approach to education.

She worries that the assault on already slim DEI initiatives in South Carolina is a continuation of a trend that began with a 2021 legislative requirement that all college students be taught , and a proposed in elementary schools.

“I hope I never see the day when there is this prescribed list of texts from a narrow list of publishers, and only some topics can be discussed,” Penuel said.

In Utah, where Democrats hold just 14 of the 75 seats in the state House of Representatives, Romero fought unsuccessfully to keep the anti-DEI legislation from passing.

Her reasons for opposing the legislation were partly personal. As a first-generation college student at the University of Utah, she took advantage of what was then called the Center for Ethnic Student Affairs, an academic advising that could now be considered a DEI initiative. It was a safe place in a state where the dominant religion and culture often excludes people of color, Romero said.

Because of her association with the center, Romero landed an internship at the state legislature in 1994, leading to a career working in municipal government in Salt Lake City. And now, she serves as president of the .

“Because of that, I’m here now,” Romero said when the bill was up for debate. “What it did is it addressed the disparities. … There’s unintentional consequences when we just try to sweep things and say we’re all the same, because we’re not. There’s still a lot of things that have to change in this country for us all to be on a level playing field.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on and .

Come July 1, school districts in Florida could authorize volunteer chaplains — those who are religious or not and with no training — to provide support and services for students in public schools, though GOP-controlled legislatures across the country are rejecting similar proposals.

Last year, passed a first-of-its-kind law authorizing schools to pay for religious figures to work in mental health roles, and lawmakers in 15 states followed suit by pitching similar legislation.

Since then, Florida is the only state where the legislature passed the measure and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill (), though Louisiana, Oklahoma and Ohio could still pass their versions this year.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

The proposals from lawmakers to bring chaplains into public schools have varied, with states taking different paths regarding the requirements for people to serve as school chaplains and their purpose.

The school chaplain measures have fallen short this year in Alabama, Nebraska, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Mississippi, Utah, Missouri and Pennsylvania, according to a Florida Phoenix analysis of the chaplain bills.

Florida’s Legislature is controlled by Republicans, but some Democrats supported the move. So beginning July 1, public school districts can decide whether they’ll adopt a volunteer chaplain program, and parents must provide written consent before their children participate. But there is nothing in the legislation that requires the chaplains to have any specific degrees. Those requirements are up to the school districts.

With college costs rising and some students and families questioning the return on investment of a four-year degree, a few pioneering state universities are exploring programs that would grant certain bachelor’s degrees in three years.

The programs, which also are being tried at some private schools, would require 90 credits instead of the traditional 120 for a bachelor’s degree, and wouldn’t require summer classes or studying over breaks. In some cases, the degrees would be designed to fit industry needs.

Indiana recently enacted legislation calling for all state universities there to offer by next year at least one bachelor’s degree program that could be completed in three years, and to look into whether more could be implemented. The Utah System of Higher Education has tasked state universities with developing three-year programs under a new Bachelor of Applied Studies degree, which would still need approval by accreditation boards.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

More than a dozen public and private universities are participating in a pilot collaboration called the College-in-3 Exchange, to begin considering how they could offer three-year programs. The public universities include the College of New Jersey, Portland State University, Southern Utah University, the Universities of Minnesota at Rochester and at Morris, the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and Utah Tech University.

Proponents of the three-year degree programs say they save students money and set them on a faster track to their working life. But detractors, including some faculty, say they shortchange students, particularly if they later change their minds on what career path they want to follow.

The Utah Board of Higher Education in March approved the new three-year degree category. Various areas of study would be tied to specific industry needs, with fewer electives required. These degrees are broader than two-year associate degrees, but narrower than a full four-year bachelor’s.

“We told the institutions to start working on them now and developing the curriculum,” Geoff Landward, commissioner of the Utah System of Higher Education, said in an interview. “Also, we want them to find industry partners that would be willing to hire people with bachelor’s degrees of this type.”

He added: “We created a sandbox for our institutions to play in.”

Once created, individual programs would need both national accreditation and state Board of Higher Education approval.

Landward said he has taken note of criticism that the three-year programs might “cheapen” the bachelor’s degree by shortchanging students who wouldn’t receive a broad college education. But he said students could save on tuition, get a head start in the workforce and meet the needs of industries that are looking for certain skilled workers to address shortages in the state.

That includes nursing, he said, where requiring a four-year degree means taking lots of electives that have nothing to do with the career.

Utah State University’s current , for example, suggests several electives along with the required anatomy, math and biology courses as prerequisites during freshman and sophomore years.

“We think if we are partnering with industry and they help us develop it, I don’t think it cheapens the degree,” Landward said. “I think it creates a very specific degree.”

Robert Zemsky, a University of Pennsylvania professor and founding director of the university’s Institute for Research on Higher Education, began proselytizing for the three-year college movement about a dozen years ago.

He said the idea has gotten traction recently because “we are wading in the deep waters of righteous anger” at colleges and universities because of the perception that four-year degrees are not worth their high costs.

A Pew Research Center released last week found only 1 in 4 American adults said it is extremely or very important to have a four-year college degree as a means to getting a good-paying job. Only 22% of the respondents said the cost is worth getting a four-year degree even if the student or their family has to take out loans.

Zemsky suggested that a shorter time span also would lead to higher college completion rates. More than a third of students who began seeking a bachelor’s degree in fall 2014 at a four-year school failed to complete their education at the same institution in six years, the National Center for Education Statistics.

Zemsky said 27 colleges and universities have embarked on creating three-year pilot programs and predicted 100 would be doing so in another year.

Over the past 10 years, Zemsky said, schools have been ignoring the desires of students and instead creating their curricula around the preferences of faculty — which is where most of the opposition is coming from.

Last year, at a conference of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties, a bargaining unit for professors, President Kenneth Mash said the overwhelming number of college faculty nationwide “have a visceral disdain for the idea.”

In an interview with Stateline, he said three-year programs would hurt students too, creating a “two-tiered” system under which wealthy students would get a full four-year education and lower-income students a cheapened three-year degree.

“If it’s not going to be a four-year degree, they should name it something that indicates it’s not a B.A.,” said Mash, who also is a political science at East Stroudsburg University. “We don’t know that employers will treat them the same.

“I’m on board, as most faculty are, with the notion that people want to increase their job opportunities. But that’s not all there is to a college degree,” he said. “Degrees prepare you to be a better citizen, a better parent, and on and on.”

And he said a broad education is what makes it possible for students to change jobs and careers many times during their working lives. “It’s really that baking in liberal arts … that makes it possible for people to do different things in their lifetimes.”

Indiana’s new law

Indiana enacted a in March that requires each public institution that offers bachelor’s degrees to review all the four-year degrees with an eye toward making some of them three years. And the law requires that by July 1, 2025, each state university offer at least one bachelor’s degree that can be completed in three years.

Indiana state Sen. Jean Leising, a Republican who sponsored the measure, pointed out that every extra year of college costs the students, their parents and the state.

But she noted that not all degrees lend themselves to compressed curricula. “If you’ve got a kid in pharmacy [studies], they are not going to be able to get through it in three years. Engineers aren’t going to be able to do it in three years. But some of the other kids will.”

Chris Lowery, Indiana’s commissioner for higher education, said the law will encourage schools to think about how to create 90-credit-hour bachelor’s degrees: “How feasible is this, would you still have the quality, would you still have the agency?”

Three-year degrees allow for choice, he added. His daughter, for example, had enough AP credits after high school to make a college degree feasible in three years, but opted to go to school for four, because she wanted to have enough time to study so that she could get “straight As” as well as to have time for extracurricular activities.

“But for a lot of students, the finances are tighter,” he acknowledged.

Credentialing requirements

At both public and private universities, the new three-year degree programs that require fewer credits would need national accreditation.

The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, a regional credentialing agency, several three-year bachelor’s degrees at two private schools, Brigham Young University-Idaho and Ensign College, last year. The degrees are in applied business management, family and human services, software development, applied health and professional studies.

Sonny Ramaswamy, the commission’s president, said in an interview that the three-year programs underwent two years of evaluation before being awarded accreditation.

He said the evaluation showed that competency in many professions could be attained in three years instead of four, and that graduate schools were willing to accept three-year bachelor’s as a credential for the pursuit of higher degrees. He noted that European college degrees often are completed in three years.

“We said, ‘We will approve you, but this is a pilot,’” Ramaswamy said. The schools will provide data to show their students have earned a good education, he added.

“My intuition is that it will head in the right direction,” he said. “The public is calling for innovation.”

Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a nonprofit organization that says its mission is promoting academic freedom, excellence and accountability at colleges and universities, said “fluff” courses strengthen the case against a 120-credit hour bachelor’s degree.

“Let people get a good foundation with a strong general education core, strong skills and some electives,” Poliakoff said in an interview. “That’s what a responsible university should be doing.”

The council does an annual of higher education institutions and grades them A through F on what the group calls “core curricula” — the proportion of courses dedicated to mathematics, literature, composition, economics, laboratory science, American history and government, and foreign languages.

Poliakoff said the amount of debt students are accumulating over four years is “sinful” and unnecessary. Colleges and universities must meet the concerns of students and their families, he said.

“A 90-credit baccalaureate degree is a pretty good way to tighten up the bolts,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on and .

The mother of Alyssa Alhadeff, a student who was killed in her English class during the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, stood before a room full of lawmakers and state officials on Wednesday. 

Lori Alhadeff held a portrait of her daughter in her arms as she applauded Utah for becoming the sixth state to pass “Alyssa’s Law,” legislation mandating silent panic alarms in classrooms that are directly linked to law enforcement.

“We are taking momentous steps forward in safeguarding our children’s well-being,” Alhadeff said, adding the bill represents “our collective commitment to providing a secure learning environment for every child in Utah.”

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

Anti-school shooting bill

The 2024 Utah Legislature last month passed , and Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed it into law on March 12. The sweeping school safety and security bill includes not only “Alyssa’s Law,” but also creates a set of uniform, minimum safety standards all Utah schools must adhere to. It designates armed school employees as guardians, requires threat reporting if employees are aware of a particular safety concern, and links the state’s SafeUT Crisis Line to Utah’s intelligence database.

To enact HB84, the Utah Legislature approved $100 million one-time money and $2.1 million in ongoing funding.

To highlight HB84 — along with seven other bills packaged together as legislation that will benefit Utah’s future generations — Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson ceremoniously signed the bills on Wednesday at the University of Utah’s Bennion Center.

HB84’s sponsor, Rep. Ryan Wilcox, R-Ogden, said his bill is meant to address a reality in the U.S. that “isn’t going away for us.” School shootings, he said, are not a tragedy that “we can pretend isn’t happening.”

He thanked the parents of the Parkland, Florida shooting victims for helping craft Utah’s legislation and ensuring “when our kids go to school, all they’re worried about is learning rather than catastrophic violence.”

“That isn’t something that they should have to worry about. But it is something that we do,” Wilcox said. “It is a responsibility of parents, the schools, of the adults who can do a lot more to prepare and make sure that they don’t have to worry about it.”

Henderson stood in for Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, who originally was expected to attend the signing but was unable to due to a family emergency. His wife, first lady on Wednesday to remove degenerative discs in her neck after “weeks of debilitating pain,” according to the governor’s office.

Henderson applauded HB84 and other bills aimed at improving opportunities for Utah’s youth and parents.

“We are a family friendly state,” Henderson said. “We care about our children, our educators, our education system. We care about the future. And this is an opportunity that we put our money where our mouth is.”

The full list of bills Henderson ceremoniously signed included:

• provides $1.5 million to provide instruction on child sexual abuse and human trafficking. It was supported by the nonprofit , which hopes it will help reduce sexual abuse.
• allows a state employee to use parental leave for a variety of reasons, including time for a child or an incapacitated adult with whom the employee is assuming a parental role, including foster care. It also allows a state employee to use postpartum recovery leave to recover from a childbirth that occurs at 20 weeks or greater and provides flexibility so they don’t have to use the leave in a single continuous period of time.
• uses $8.4 million in one-time state money to increase the amount of funding available to teachers for classroom supplies. It provides $500 to go to elementary school classroom teachers and $250 to go to middle and high school teachers specifically for classroom supplies.
• mandates school districts to develop paid leave policies for parental and postpartum recovery. It requires a minimum of three weeks off for someone adopting, becoming a foster parent, a grandparent taking custody, or a spouse of someone giving birth, as well as requiring six weeks of paid postpartum leave for Utahns who give birth.
• uses $8.4 million to give stipends of $6,000 to support educators while they’re full-time student teachers.
• raises legal standards in child custody cases with the intention of protecting kids from abusive parents. It was named “” after Leah Moses’ 16-year-old son, Om Moses Gandhi, who was murdered by Moses’ ex-husband.
• uses over $100 million in one-time money and $2.1 million in ongoing funding to increase .  uses $3.3 million to create a pilot project called the , which provides stipends and scholarships to young adults who participate in a year of community service, according to the University of Utah. Participants would receive an hourly stipend and a $7,400 scholarship in exchange for 1,700 hours of service with an approved partner organization.

Moved by his cousin’s plight, Juarez designed a tool to help the deaf community — a device that uses a camera to translate sign language into a written and spoken form.

Through the first-ever this Saturday, April 13, Juarez will be one of to present their inventions and research projects that address solutions to critical global issues.

The festival will showcase student innovators from numerous nationwide competitions, including EXPLR’s where more than 2,500 students in grades 6-12 conceived and submitted STEM projects across six categories: Environmental Stewardship, Future Foods, Health & Medicine, Powering the Planet, Tech for Good and Space Innovation.

“All of these kids are so cool and have such incredible projects that it’s going to be bananas,” Kari Byron, co-founder of and director of the festival, told ����Ӱ��.

Byron said the festival idea grew out of a conversation she had with the U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

Byron, who previously hosted the Obama administration’s , pitched a plan to design a larger version of the former event.

“I looked at him and said ‘What if we built it for you? What if we make it bigger and better than it has ever been before,’” Byron said. “So it’s not a continuation of the White House Science Fair — it’s a completely new festival that’s going to be so much bigger because we want a national conversation about STEM 365 days a year.”

Jenny Buccos, co-founder and chief executive officer of EXPLR, said the festival is a great way for school leaders and decision makers to learn more about “what kids are interested in and what we might not be teaching in schools.”

“How are they learning to make patent pending medical devices? How are they learning about protecting their IP? Where is this happening, and if it’s not in the traditional classroom, how do we bridge that gap,” Buccos told ����Ӱ��.

Students like Juarez, 17, are excited to have the platform to present projects centered around what they are passionate about.

“This opportunity is confirmation that people care about the hearing impaired and deaf…and is a great way for me to continue to educate more people,” Juarez told ����Ӱ��.

Buccos said the public has the opportunity to meet the students and see their inventions through more than 100 and events in Washington, DC.

“If you are in desperate need of inspiration and hope for the future, come to the events…this is the opportunity to meet some of the most brilliant young minds working in the country,” Buccos said.

“Everybody says kids are the future,” said Buccos, “but these kids are literally solving problems now.”

To check out the National STEM Festival this Saturday, the public must to secure their spot.

Rather than thinking about bipartisanship in the traditional sense, advocates should consider a cross-partisan approach. This means achieving policy success despite support across the political divide, not because of it. Advocates who seek cross-partisan success will need to think of ways to communicate and motivate policymakers based on what these political actors care about most — animating their core constituencies. Initiatives that offer wins for all involved, even from different ideological perspectives, can unite stakeholders around shared progress.

While achieving cross-partisan agreement in a divided political environment may seem daunting, there are .

Take civics education: a significant focus for both political parties, given that 80% of likely voters value it highly. States are rolling out , like Indiana’s requirement for a and Utah’s grants for that promote innovation in teaching and learning. By signaling a renewed focus on civics and allowing for local control within state standards, these efforts gained broad appeal, promoting both national pride (an important value on the right) and civic engagement (an important value on the left).

Civics initiatives and other successful policies are characterized by several key practices: 

Clear Communication and Broad Appeal: Policy initiatives must be easy to communicate in order to build a broad base of support. The success of the science of reading, for example, demonstrates the power of simplicity and relatability in communication. This initiative gained widespread traction when advocates articulated a clear, compelling message about the failures of reading curricula then in place and the importance of evidence-based literacy instruction. The problem and solutions were easy to understand and resonated deeply among voters spanning the political spectrum. With parents and teachers aligned, policymakers eagerly followed, resulting in swift legislative changes in .

Responsiveness to Local Concerns: It has been famously said that all politics is local. Policy solutions tailored to specific local problems can transcend political polarization. The , for example, allows teachers’ licenses to be recognized in all 11 member states. This is of particular concern to military families, who relocate frequently, often . By responding directly to their unique needs, the compact earned cross-partisan support by solving a universally recognized, and highly local, problem.

Political Cover: When a change in policy is new or potentially controversial, it helps for there to be support or a mandate from a higher political or legal power. In the overhaul of , for example, political cover was provided by an immovable deadline required by law, the support of the governor and a significant commitment to a public feedback process. After the bipartisan state Board of Education rejected the first draft, several months of work by board members, school officials and advocacy organizations produced a new version. The board held six public meetings around the state and took a leadership role in driving the process. Despite what began as a highly politicized process, new standards emerged because of the board’s mandate — members didn’t have the option to argue about their opinions, were required to act and had to do it together. While the undertaking was long and messy, it ultimately led to standards that were accepted by the board, the governor and the community, reflecting a compromise across differing viewpoints that was hailed in the as a .

Mutual Wins: In politics, everyone is trying to achieve a win for their side. A key to cross-partisan success is finding a path for each side to claim victory. Efforts to , in states such as Arkansas, and , as in and , demonstrate the potential for policies to deliver wins for all stakeholders. By identifying shared goals such as educational quality and civic responsibility, but allowing each side to prioritize those goals differently, these initiatives allow for political independence but ultimately arrive at the same policy destination.

Strategic Use of Media: It is undeniable that media is powerful in shaping public policy — for example, the influence of the “Sold a Story” podcast on reading instruction reforms. This piece of investigative journalism catalyzed a wave of legislation focused on evidence-based reading practices, showcasing how media can effectively accelerate educational reforms by highlighting research-backed solutions, elevating the voices of parents and teachers, and mobilizing public and legislative support.

A cross-partisan approach could be the new strategic imperative for success in education policy, both for legislative wins and the long-term benefit of children and communities. Different political actors may need to take different roads to the ultimate destination of a common-ground solution. But the success of all students, and the country, depends on getting there together.

Amid a tumultuous application season for federal student aid, Utah public universities are taking special measures to allow students relying on those funds to plan for their enrollment.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, experienced this year. First, with a three-month postponement of its usual October rollout because of the implementation of a new simpler system. Then, there were calculation errors on applicants’ net worths since the Department of Education failed to take into account inflation.

The delays may have an impact on students’ ability to commit to a school and secure scholarships, housing and early spots in certain courses. However, some colleges in Utah have allowed more flexibility to deal with the setbacks.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

The University of Utah, the state’s flagship higher education institution, announced Monday that it would extend its enrollment deposit deadline to June 3 for incoming freshmen and transfer students to help alleviate the pressures of the ongoing FAFSA complications.

“We recognize that choosing where to attend college is one of the biggest financial decisions a family can make,” said Steve Robinson, senior associate vice president for enrollment management in a . “Given the latest FAFSA delays, we want to ensure all admitted students have time to learn about aid packages available. We feel it is in their best interest to provide more time so that they can feel confident before committing to the university.”

In addition to that, the release says, the U. is offering a more flexible schedule for housing; all students who submit an application by June 5 will be guaranteed on-campus student housing. The May 3 “priority application deadline” will remain in place for those who would like to participate in a first round of traditional housing room reservations.

Other Utah schools don’t have an enrollment deadline, allowing students to register until the fall semester.

Utah State University, for example, advertises a priority enrollment confirmation date of April 1 so students can plan their access to campus housing, scholarships, orientation and class registration, Amanda DeRito, USU associate vice president for strategic communications, said in an email.

However, those who didn’t make the early deadline can still secure their housing and enrollment and later submit their enrollment deposit with the first semester tuition payment.

“We do not want the FAFSA delay changing students’ decisions to attend USU,” DeRito said. “We will award federal aid as soon as we are able, so students have a realistic view of their costs. Until then, we want students to continue on their path to becoming an Aggie and we are here to help them through any questions they might have.”

Salt Lake Community College is an open enrollment school and accessible to all prospective students until the first day of school on Aug. 20, said Ryan Farley, vice president of enrollment management in a statement.

“All current or prospective SLCC students pursuing federal financial aid being affected by the Department of Education’s FAFSA delays will be held harmless and accommodated by Salt Lake Community College,” Farley said. “We have experts ready anytime during business hours to assist with filling out the new FAFSA form and ensuring all students receive the aid they are eligible for despite the FAFSA challenges this year. That will continue up to and past the start of classes this fall.”

Southern Utah University also allows students to enroll anytime before the beginning of the semester, Nikki Koontz, the school’s assistant vice president of marketing communications said. However, SUU is taking action so students feel supported through the financing process.

“In light of the evolving circumstances, we’ve extended our scholarship application deadline until school begins,” Koontz said. “This extension means that students still have the opportunity to qualify for the majority of our academic merit awards, even if they decide to enroll closer to the start of the semester.”

Utah Tech University doesn’t require an enrollment deposit, so the delays haven’t immediately impacted applicants there. But, its staff is following the FAFSA process closely to best serve students, Jyl Hall, director of public relations said.

Same with Weber State University, which doesn’t have such deadlines or deposits, Rachel Badali, news coordinator for the school said in a statement.

“We know it’s so important for students to have clear information on their costs, and we’re hopeful we can start getting financial aid packages ready in early May,” Badali said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com. Follow Utah News Dispatch on and .

During the 2022-23 academic year, Utah public colleges and universities awarded 19,219 bachelor’s degrees. It was about 100 more than the previous year. But, the Utah System of Higher Education wants to see even better outcomes with a new system: giving students the option to get their bachelor’s degrees in three years rather than four.

Utah is the first public system in the country to approve a faster path to graduation by implementing a Bachelor of Applied Studies category. Instead of the regular 120 credits, the new programs would require a minimum of 90 credits.

“This exciting change in policy opens the door to innovation on our campuses and allows each institution to develop proposals for three-year bachelor’s degree programs,” said Aaron Skonnard, Utah Board of Higher Education member in a news release. “We want to be at the forefront of new approaches in higher education that accelerate outcomes for students while better meeting the needs of our workforce.”

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

The new category established by the Utah System of Higher Education would require national accreditation and need to undergo approval by the state’s Board of Higher Education before it becomes available. Areas of study would also be limited and tied to specific industry needs, the release said.

Southern Utah University already has an option to by allowing students to take summer courses to accelerate their studies.

The school is now taking in mind how to meet the evolving needs of students, said Nikki Koontz, a spokesperson for SUU. Faculty members identified three potential new programs that align with this new approach.

“We are finalizing these proposals in a rigorous curriculum review process and are looking forward to seeing how the accrediting bodies, students, and the employment markets will receive them,” she said in an email. “We want to ensure that each degree meets the standards required for accreditation and eligibility for federal financial aid.”

The 90-credit programs are still in the exploratory phase and need to be cleared through various accreditation bodies, Bryan Magaña, a spokesperson for Weber State University said in a statement. As of now, most departments in the school will continue with 120 credits, but that may change.

“Universities are always looking for ways to show people that college is possible, and a 90-credit bachelor’s degree is one way to do that,” Magaña said. “Weber State is known for meeting students where they are, and some departments here are exploring the possibility of offering 90-credit bachelor’s degrees.”

Roughly a third of Weber State students get their bachelor’s degrees over a three-year period with credits earned during high school, or associate’s degrees, he added.

Other public universities in Utah didn’t reply to requests for comment as of publication time.

Last year BYU-Idaho and Salt Lake City-based Ensign College, private schools founded and sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced they would offer a which would preserve major courses while eliminating electives. The courses are to be offered through the faith’s  program.

Utah’s new formula also follows a pilot considered by some U.S. colleges that would remake the curriculum to allow students to graduate faster, according to . Those schools include:

• American Public University System
• Indiana University of Pennsylvania
• Merrimack College
• New England College
• Northwood University
• Portland State University
• Slippery Rock University
• The University of Minnesota at Rochester
• The University of North Texas
• The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
• The University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh
• Utica College

That fact that three former education agency employees were among those indicted shows that the program lacks adequate fraud prevention measures, said Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes.

“It was very easy for these individuals to do this,” Mayes said during a press conference. They’re accused of faking birth certificates and special education evaluations to bilk over $600,000 from the program. “I think we all have to be asking the question: ‘Is it being replicated?’ ” 

But ESA advocates saw little in the news that would lead them to push for more guardrails on Arizona’s system or halt the movement for in other states. Some dismissed it as an “inside job” that reflects more on government corruption than the thousands of families looking for better educational options for their children. To this group, the fact that Arizona investigators uncovered the alleged plot shows that existing safeguards worked.

“I don’t think there’s any program that can regulate out the possibility of bad actors,” said Lisa Snell, senior fellow at Stand Together Trust, a foundation funding school choice initiatives, and one of the leading voices nationally on ESAs. “In any sector, there are people that are taking advantage of taxpayer money.” 

She pointed to the national and as two government programs that have proven vulnerable to corruption. And she noted an investigation last year that found Los Angeles teachers union members received .

“Government employees committing fraud is a tale as old as time, and by no means unique to education,” said Mike McShane, director of national research at EdChoice, an advocacy organization.

‘This kind of abuse’

Unlike their counterparts in several states, Arizona private schools accepting ESA students don’t have to be accredited and their staff members don’t have to pass criminal background checks. There are also no testing requirements for students, and while homeschooling parents are required to use funds to teach core subjects, many pull curriculum materials from the internet. 

Some argue that, with a little over 30 employees, the program lacks the staff to accommodate its rapid growth to nearly 76,000 students since 2022. 

“What I’m most concerned about is how ripe the program clearly is for this kind of abuse,” Mayes said in detailing the .

Suspects Dolores Lashay Sweet, Dorrian Lamarr Jones and Jennifer Lopez were ESA program specialists at the department who allegedly admitted real and fictitious students — some with identical birthdays — to the program and then approved expenses on their behalf. Jadakah Celeste Johnson, and Raymond Lamont Johnson, Jr., also indicted, are Sweet’s adult children. 

In an odd coincidence, just hours after the indictments, educators met in Washington, D.C. at the conservative American Enterprise Institute whether Democrats should get behind the ESA movement. Arizona’s program came up frequently.

“No academic accountability. No financial transparency. No student safety measures,” said Bethany Little, managing principal at Education Counsel, a consulting firm. 

“I agree with you on the flaws of Arizona’s law,” responded Ravi Gupta, a former Obama staffer and charter school leader who said he supports the idea of ESAs, but sometimes questions their implementation. 

In several other states that have embraced ESAs, administrators say they’ve put guardrails in place to prevent fraud and corruption. 

In Utah, where applications for the state’s new ESA program opened last week, advanced software is designed to spot fake documents, said Jackie Guglielmo, vice president of ESA programs at the Alliance for Choice in Education, which runs the program. If the system flags something irregular, a member of the customer support team will manually review it and might ask for additional documentation, she said.

New Hampshire officials employ to differentiate people processing applications from those who approve vendors. A third group approves expenses. A bill to passed the state House last month.

Democratic Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has proposed for the program by having an outside auditor track how private schools are using ESA money. 

But Snell, with Stand Together Trust, said she doubts there are any reforms that would satisfy most Democrats. She was among the school choice supporters gathered at a over the weekend to highlight the growth of microschools, homeschool co-ops and other unconventional programs. 

Not all of the programs represented accept ESA funds, but many attendees view their success as critical to the future of their movement. John Thompson, a researcher from Kennesaw State University, which organized the event, said the notion that ESAs are a fad is “very crazy and wrong.”

“It’s not going backward,” he said.

Kaity Broadbent of Prenda Learning, a microschool network, said alternative models are responding to parents who feel their children weren’t well served in a typical classroom.

“This generation of parents cares about mental health,” she said. “They don’t just need their kids to get into Harvard. There’s a new vibe.”

While sessions focused on policy and accountability, no one mentioned the indictments.

‘Bigger than any superintendent’

Inside Arizona, however, the news upset advocates who say thousands of children are benefiting from the flexibility ESAs offer.

“This type of thing is just devastating to those of us who really depend on the program,” said Kathy Visser, who administers a Facebook page for ESA families and vendors. “It angers us because accountability matters more to us than anyone else.”

Hobbs has also proposed background checks for staff members at private schools accepting ESA funds and for students to attend public school for a minimum of 100 days before they qualify for the program. But have opposed the measures, likening them to “death by a thousand cuts.”

This was the second batch of indictments involving the program since last summer, when a grand jury in Maricopa County accused of fraud and theft of over $87,000 from the program. 

They allegedly created receipts and claimed reimbursements for “bogus” educational services, according to a prosecution report. When investigators examined one woman’s account linked to the ESA program, they found charges at retail stores, restaurants and companies like Uber and Airbnb. The case is ongoing.

Also last summer, the former head administrator of the ESA program, Christine Accurso, and another high-ranking official, Linda Rizzo, following a “cybersecurity incident” in which student names and their disabilities to a parent through ClassWallet, the program’s online financial platform. 

Superintendent Tom Horne, a Republican and strong advocate for ESAs, hired Accurso when he defeated Democratic incumbent Kathy Hoffman in 2022. After Accurso’s resignation, Horne put John Ward, who has years of auditing experience, in charge of the program. 

While a tip from a credit union alerted officials to large amounts being withdrawn from Sweet’s account, Horne, , said it was his department that raised concerns about Jones and Lopez and that he is working to “root out potential fraud and abuse.” 

But in an email to ����Ӱ��, Hoffman said the state legislature should reform the program and fund more fraud prevention efforts.

“Ultimately, the problems with this program are bigger than any superintendent,” she said. “The ESA program does not have — and has never had — enough oversight to ensure tax dollars are being spent appropriately.”

Disclosure: Stand Together Trust provides financial support to ����Ӱ��.

A bill that would have — or display — in their classrooms has hit a dead end.

The Utah House on Monday narrowly voted down , a bill that would have banned teachers from “endorsing, promoting or disparaging” certain beliefs or viewpoints, including religious or political beliefs and sexual orientation or gender identity.

The bill sponsored by Rep. Jeff Stenquist, R-Draper, faltered on a vote, with several Republicans joining Democrats in opposition.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

It’s the end of the line for the legislation — at least this year. Stenquist told Utah News Dispatch in a text message Monday that he likely won’t seek to resurrect it during the remaining four days of the 2024 legislative session that’s set to end before midnight Friday.

However, Stenquist said he’ll continue to work on it perhaps for 2025.

The vote came after the bill was altered on the House floor earlier Monday morning, when Rep. Neil Walter, R-St. George, successfully changed the bill to strip out language that also would have regulated teachers’ “social beliefs” — one of the bill’s terms that teacher advocates worried was too broad and vague.

“I’m concerned ‘social belief’ could (mean) anything they might believe,” Walter said.

He argued regulating “social beliefs” could create a chilling effect in classrooms, worried it could make teachers fear “inadvertently running afoul” of the law and therefore cause them to be “very careful, too careful” in some contexts.

“For example, I think we would all acknowledge and agree … that (Adolf) Hitler was an evil man,” Walter said, “but there could be people who were taught or feel that they have a social belief that he is not. We wouldn’t want to put a teacher … in a classroom in jeopardy for saying something that might persuade (a student) to reconsider their views.”

The bill would have would required teachers to tread carefully as to not sway a student to change their beliefs.

Walter’s version also would have allowed teachers to display “personal photographs” in general rather than only photographs of their family members.

Stenquist asked the House not to adopt Walter’s version, arguing that it would open a “big loophole” in the intent of the bill with regard to displaying photographs. He also worried removing “social beliefs” from the bill would allow scenarios where teachers could talk about “certain ideologies and world views that maybe don’t fit neatly in a political bucket or religious bucket.”

Stenquist started working on the legislation about a year ago, after some parents and gender identity with young students outside of curriculum. However, Stenquist has said his bill isn’t meant to regulate certain viewpoints, but rather ensure teachers remain politically and socially “neutral” in the classroom.

“Parents want to know” teachers aren’t pushing “other types of worldviews or ideologies” onto students that some parents “may not be comfortable with,” Stenquist said. “And that applies to all parents, regardless of what end of the political spectrum you may fall.”

Stenquist acknowledged concerns swirling around the bill over regulating what teachers can and can’t say, but he argued his bill would address a “perception out there that our students are being pushed toward particular ideologies.”

“This really is about giving our students a space to focus on curriculum and focus on learning without the classroom becoming a forum in the other social discussions and divisiveness that’s happening in society at large,” Stenquist said. “Let’s just allow the classroom to be free of political social ideologies and activism.”

Democrats including Rep. Joel Briscoe, D-Salt Lake City, a former high school teacher, argued against the bill, questioning how teachers should navigate its restrictions while also trying to encourage students to think critically.

“I’m telling you, this bill will scare teachers,” Briscoe said.

He pointed to a , a nonprofit research organization, that found two-thirds of U.S. K-12 public school teachers are limiting their own instruction about political and social issues in the classroom.

“It doesn’t matter whether their state has passed a law saying they can’t do it. They’re just afraid. They’re scared as teachers,” Briscoe said, raising his voice on the House floor.

He added he doesn’t think Stenquist or the bill’s supporters are trying to scare teachers. “I think they’re good people who have good intentions,” Briscoe said, but he argued the bill will have that effect. “I don’t think that’s what’s best for our children in our classrooms.”

Walter said he’s also concerned about “unintentionally sterilizing a classroom,” but given the Utah State Board of Education already has a rule about political statements, he said removing “social beliefs” from the bill would address his concerns.

After Walter changed the bill, the House put the legislaton on hold until later Monday afternoon, when Stenquist unsuccessfully tried to pass it out to the Senate.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com. Follow Utah News Dispatch on and .

They are not day cares, nor private or public schools, but businesses that provide K-12 education to less than 100 students. Microschools are a growing trend in Utah, lawmakers say, and the Legislature approved guidelines to recognize them.

South Jordan Republican Sen. Lincoln Fillmore, who has introduced various education-related bills, said his bill , titled Education Entity Amendments, is not one of them. He asked lawmakers to look at it as land use plan and not as a change in Utah’s education policy,

House representatives voted 63-6 for final passage of the bill on Thursday. It now goes to Gov. Spencer Cox for a final nod.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

“Microschool is new and emerging and right now it’s an unofficial education center type setup comprised of groups of homeschool kids. As these have been growing in popularity, we needed to have some guidance for cities on how to regulate those,” Rep. Stephanie Gricius, R-Eagle Mountain, the bill’s co-sponsor, told the House.

Microschools in commercial buildings would be considered and regulated as a business with the International Building Code standards, which includes professional offices. They would also be permitted in all zones.

Fillmore said that these schools won’t have the same safety standards as regular schools because of their size and because children are not there the whole day.

“With these, what you have are a couple of dozen students, who get together for a couple of hours, maybe a couple of days a week, and they can be more transient. In that way they are much more like a tutoring center,” Fillmore said to the House Education Committee on Tuesday.

The bill underwent a heated debate in the Senate, after senators said they worried about removing location restrictions from these schools.

Senate Minority Whip Kathleen Riebe, D-Cottonwood Heights, said earlier this month that with , which require establishments that sell liquor and tobacco products to be away from schools, recreation centers, sports complexes or libraries.

“That we are actually tying ourselves into knots to change a law to allow schools next to places that sell beer and alcohol and tobacco for homeschoolers, but we can’t do that for school is a little disingenuous to me,” Riebe said during the Senate debate.

The bill also states that microschool students, as well as homeschool students, would be placed in the “grade levels, classes, or courses that the student’s parent and the school administrator determine are appropriate.”

House Majority Whip Karianne Lisonbee, R-Clearfield, called the bill “a really important policy” during the committee hearing. She added that those who run co-op or commonwealth schools would be able to continue operating as usual.

“I think it’s at a place where there shouldn’t be any ambiguity or questions. This is a benefit to people, this is not a requirement,” she said in the hearing. “And so an individual who might be concerned that they might be drawn into the code, (It) isn’t a requirement that you seek this benefit.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com. Follow Utah News Dispatch on and .

It started as what critics call a “” bill last year, but has since evolved into broader legislation to control what teachers can and can’t say — or display — in their classrooms. 

With , Rep. Jeff Stenquist, R-Draper, wants to ban teachers from “endorsing, promoting or disparaging” certain beliefs or viewpoints, including religious or political beliefs and sexual orientation or gender identity.

Stenquist started working on the bill about a year ago, after some parents expressed concerns about a teacher talking about pronouns and gender identity with young students.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

Stenquist said he’s trying to address a “perception problem” with teachers and “get political and ideological fights … out of the classroom.” He said his goal is to “reassure parents that students are not being exposed to some political or ideological ideal that they may not agree with,” regardless of political or social leanings.

But the bill’s opponents — including the Utah Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah — argue it’s too vague and would create a “chilling effect” on teachers, leaving them at risk over what they can or can’t say to their students without punishment.

Despite those concerns, the bill narrowly cleared its first legislative hurdle Monday. It advanced out of the House Education Committee with a split, 6-5 vote. Its next stop: the House floor.

What does the bill do?

HB303 would prohibit school employees or officials from using their position, “through instruction, materials or a display of symbols, images or language” to support, promote or criticize certain beliefs. It also bans them from inviting, suggesting or encouraging students to “reconsider or change” the students’ beliefs.

Those beliefs, as listed in the bill, include:

• Religious, denominational, sectarian, agnostic, or atheistic beliefs or viewpoints
• Political or social beliefs or viewpoints
• Viewpoints regarding sexual orientation or gender identity

The bill would, however, allow teachers to wear religious clothing, including jewelry such as a rosary, or other “accessories that are central to the individual’s sincerely held religious belief.” It would also allow them to display “personal photographs” of their family members.

It would also allow teachers to discuss “an age-appropriate topic” or display an “age-appropriate image or symbol” as long as it’s part of an approved curriculum.

Stenquist said the bill would require Utah school districts to implement a more “standardized policy around neutrality” across the state.

The debate

While drafting the bill, Stenquist worked with Megan Kallas, a parent and one of Stenquist’s constituents, who came to him to prevent “inappropriate conversations” that she said her first grade daughter’s teacher was having with some students outside of curriculum dealing with topics of gender identity, gender fluidity and pronouns.

Frustrated that school and district officials didn’t address the issue because there was no “policy on the books to say this is inappropriate,” Kallas said she turned to Stenquist. Since then, she said he’s crafted a bill to implement a “fair and neutral policy that protects all students and creates in the classroom an environment of learning versus an environment of ideologies being passed around from teacher to student without parental consent.”

Kallas and other supporters told the committee HB303 is aimed at ensuring teacher “professionalism” and fostering a learning environment free from political pressures or ideologies.

But Sara Jones, director of government relations for the Utah Education Association, a union that lobbies on behalf of teachers, urged lawmakers to oppose the bill, expressing concerns about ambiguous language.

For example, Jones noted the bill’s language allows teachers to display personal photographs in their classrooms or offices.

“But can those photographs include a family standing in front of a place of worship, or a family member holding a sign at a rally at the Capitol, or a same-sex couple holding a Pride flag, or would those types of personal photographs actually be interpreted as promoting religious, political (beliefs) or sexual orientation?” she questioned.

Jones also wondered how teachers are supposed to avoid “inviting” a student to change their political viewpoints while teaching topics such as U.S. government or history. “It implies classroom instruction, which includes careful analysis, discussion, deliberation of facts, should never include a student then considering how that information might change their viewpoint or their opinion,” she said.

“Ambiguous language is a hazard for educators who won’t know how the statute applies to them, and may end up facing disciplinary or licensure actions,” Jones said.

Two students spoke in favor of the bill. One from Springville High School said she believes there shouldn’t be “gay pride” flags in the classroom, and that some of her teachers have “placed biases into what they’ve been teaching.”

“When I go to school, I want to be able to be taught how to think and not what to think,” she said.

Another student, from Maple Mountain High School, also spoke against allowing “symbols” she didn’t agree with in classrooms and “teachers that would tell us things that I didn’t want to believe in, but I felt that if I disagreed I wasn’t welcome.”

“School needs to be a place of learning and it needs to be a safe place and it was not that for me,” she said. “We need to prevent different beliefs from making other people uncomfortable.”

Representatives for conservative groups including Utah Parents United spoke in favor of the bill, arguing it would ensure “balanced, unbiased and neutral content” in classrooms.

But Zee Kilpack, who identified themself as a transgender person, spoke against the bill, arguing it discourages the mere discussion of the existence of LGBTQ+ people, who’ve historically had a hard enough time feeling welcome.

“Obviously, we live in Utah. We live in a place where a lot of parents don’t support LGBTQ+ ideology. And yet, queer kids exist anyway,” they said. “School was one of the few places where I could see people that were queer.”

Kilpack also argued HB303 would not “prepare kids for the future,” from colleges to workplaces “that will have all of these ideologies expressed.” They also worried it would restrict LGBTQ+ teachers from posting pictures with their partners, “where that can be a nonpolitical statement of them just existing.”

Rep. Dan Johnson, R-Logan, asked Stenquist if the bill would “cause teachers to feel like they’re monitored so much that they can’t say anything anymore.” Stenquist acknowledged “this will be somewhat of a paradigm shift for some teachers,” but only those that “may feel like part of their job is to endorse some particular worldview.”

“But I think the vast majority of teachers will probably not be affected by this,” Stenquist said, describing the “best teachers” as those that “students don’t know what their political viewpoints are. And I think that’s the goal that we need to get to.”

To questions about how to define a “social belief” or concerns that the bill’s language is too vague, Stenquist said it’s difficult to define “neutrality” in state code, but he welcomed anyone to offer “better language” to make it clearer than the current bill. It may not be “perfect,” he said, but he urged lawmakers not to “make perfect the enemy of good.”

Rep. Carol Spackman Moss, D-Holladay, who has worked as an educator, argued against the bill, worried it will especially impact teachers of history, social studies, literature and other subjects that can cover controversial topics. She said it suggests “teachers aren’t trained and aren’t professional enough,” while there are already school policies and procedures in place that address unprofessionalism.

Rep. Kera Birkeland, R-Morgan, vehemently argued in favor of the bill, saying it doesn’t “target” any single group.

“I get really tired of hearing that we’re targeting people,” said Birkeland, who this year sponsored a in government-owned bathrooms and other facilities while also expanding unisex and single stall facilities. “We try to show kindness and compassion and then we’re told, ‘But you’re rejecting them.’ We’re not.”

Birkeland said the “majority of people do not care who you love, they want to let you love who you love and be who you are. But when we try to run bills to create balance, and the first thing we throw out is, ‘This targets one community,’ we send a message to these kids that they’re being targeted, and they’re not.”

“We want everyone — everyone — to walk in that class and feel like they belong, and that has to do with coming in and being spoken to with respect and dignity,” Birkeland said. “That’s why this bill’s before us, so that every kid — no matter their identity, no matter their beliefs — walks in and knows that they are respected, and will be treated with dignity.”

But one of Birkeland’s Republican colleagues, Rep. Neil Water, R-St. George, opposed the bill, saying he’s worried about its unintended consequences — along with legislation the Utah Legislature has already passed this year to in public entities.

“I’m concerned about sterilizing our classrooms,” he said.

House Majority Whip Karianne Lisonbee, R-Clearfield, also supported the bill, first thanking students who spoke in support of the bill. “They showed bravery in an increasingly political school environment.”

“This bill refocuses our classrooms to basic academic learning and provides a professionalism standard that will support all students,” Lisonbee said. “It is vital that we provide these standards and the expectation of learning and exploring different ideas in a neutral environment.”

Utahn Jacob Hancey spoke against the bill, arguing against restricting teachers from expressing their viewpoints to help foster realistic, healthy debates.

Hancey said he “never saw eye-to-eye on anything political” with one of his high school teachers, “but our discussions were wonderful. We became friends until the day he died.”

“Every day we’d have arguments … I learned so much more from him and the respect that he showed me by giving me this chance to form my opinions and really refine them,” Hancey said, urging lawmakers not to support the bill.

“Because I think those conflicts are a chance for students to grow.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com. Follow Utah News Dispatch on and .

Changes that started with passed in 2022 are now in effect for those with 529 education savings accounts. Now, besides putting aside funds for school expenses, account owners can jumpstart their retirement savings.

Starting Jan. 1, account owners are now able to roll over unused funds to Roth IRA accounts. It’s an important change for those who had concerns about oversaving for educational purposes, said Greg Dyer, chief compliance officer at , a state agency that manages and provides education on the savings plan.

“Congress’ intent was really to help kickstart the retirement savings for a beneficiary that has gotten through college,” he said, “and doesn’t need them anymore for college expenses.”

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

During the first 10 days of the change, there were more than 90 rollovers in Utah, Dyer said. The state has the fourth largest 529 plan in the country with over $21 billion in assets under its management, a fact Dyer attributed to the state’s low fees in investments and, overall, a good reputation.

529 plans, which got their name from section 529 of Internal Revenue Code, allow people from all over the country — except for Wyoming — to save for tuition and other school expenses, such as books, fees, room and board and other K-12 and graduate school expenses in their state’s plan.

Though there are different kinds of plans, one of the most popular works similarly to a Roth IRA, allowing people to have tax-advantaged savings plans for education purchases.

“You don’t get a federal tax deduction going in, but the funds can compound and grow tax deferred,” Dyer said. “And if you use them for qualified education expenses, then the taxes are waived.”

But, there are some requirements to be able to transfer the funds: Accounts must be over 15 years old and account owners can’t roll over any funds or earnings that have accrued in the past five years.

“Those funds can grow but you can’t put a contribution in last year and then roll over this year,” he said. “You have a five-year kind of wait period.”

The annual amount that users can roll over is limited to the Roth IRA contribution cap, which is typically around $7,000 for all savings sources.

“Let’s say that you put $5,000 into your regular Roth IRA,” he said, “you can only do $2,000 from your 529 plan.”

Then, there’s also a lifetime limit of $35,000 for these rollover contributions.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com. Follow Utah News Dispatch on and .

A group of Hunter High School students and educators welcomed first lady Jill Biden in a visit to the school, part of her whirlwind trip to Utah on Tuesday.

The majority of Hunter High students were dismissed in the afternoon, but some, including choir group The Madrigals and student council members, stayed to perform or to shake the first lady’s hand, sporting school T-shirts and jackets.

At the high school, Jill Biden, who is also a teacher, highlighted educator wellness in one of Utah’s most diverse areas, in front of 140 Hunter High employees in the school’s commons. Posters with teacher appreciation messages decorated the walls.

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ����Ӱ�� Newsletter

In a quick visit to the Beehive State, Biden visited Hunter High School in West Valley City with Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General, and Abby Cox, Utah’s first lady. She was also scheduled to attend .

“Today first lady Cox and I are here to tell you that you are not alone,” Biden said, “that we understand, that we are working to honor this profession to give you the support that you deserve.”

Sometimes it feels like the weight to educate people across the country “is too heavy to carry,” Biden said, especially after the pandemic as students have needed support for more issues in addition to academic performance.

She praised the president’s initiatives to address mental health and academic needs of students, including passing a bipartisan gun safety law and a student loans forgiveness program.

“But he can’t do this alone. And here in Utah, he doesn’t have to, thanks to the work of your governor and your first lady,” Jill Biden said, adding that Utah has taken “a big step” to ensure that teachers are properly compensated.

Jill Biden also highlighted the work of Utah’s first lady, Abby Cox, also an educator, to address exhaustion and burnout among teachers and school staff.

Educator wellness is one of Cox’s . As some educators in Hunter work with children in the foster care system and those with intellectual disabilities, the state is working with these communities to ensure their success.

“Dr. Biden and I have this passion for educators in common. She has been an advocate for teachers for as long as she’s been a teacher, and it’s been a long time,” Cox said. “So I love this opportunity that she and I have to come together in a shared purpose and a shared goal of uplifting our educators making sure that you have the tools and resources that you need to be successful.”

Biden touched down on a cold Salt Lake City day and hurried to her motorcade Tuesday afternoon. She arrived an hour later than scheduled, a delay she later attributed to an inch of snow in Washington D.C., a fact she could laugh at in Utah.

Biden was greeted by first lady Abby Cox and her 17-year-old daughter, Emma Kate. Temperatures at the private hangar off Salt Lake City International Airport hovered around freezing at Biden’s arrival, attended by local media.

Following her visit to Hunter High School, the first lady was scheduled to attend fundraising events in Park City.

“It’s super special that we were chosen,” Jordan Martinsen, an English teacher at Hunter High, said during the school event. “(The fact) that she’s a teacher herself makes it a more genuine message because she’s kind of been there and done that.”

While she was receptive to the message, she’s still waiting for more action from the state to address educators’ wellness, she said.

“I love this school, and I love this district. So I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “They talked about a lot of really nice, lovely things. Sometimes that’s not the day-to-day reality, but I did like the message and I think it’s nice to be reminded that there’s people on your side.”

Parallel to West Valley City, which according to the is a minority-majority community, Hunter High’s school body is predominantly composed of students of color, which make up 66% of its population – 50% of them are Hispanic – according to 2022 data.

About 48% of students were also reported to be economically disadvantaged, according to the Granite School District.

“Compensation is a part of meeting teachers’ needs, but it’s also about instructional support,” Granite School District superintendent Rich K. Nye said on Tuesday. “What does it look like to have, say, a literacy paraprofessional in the room, or an interventionist in the room, or a school psychologist, or licensed clinical social worker to be able to meet the needs of the students?”

The district has grown its mental health resources available for teachers through insurance plans or its own wellness clinics, Nye said.

The district has also prioritized strategies to address teachers’ retention concerns, prioritizing the recruitment of educational support professionals, and taking into account their interests and that they represent the communities’ demographics.

Biden, according to her , has championed different educational initiatives to open up more opportunities to all students, such as universal preschool and more affordable higher education chances, including free community college.

In her , Biden walked through Glendale Middle School, located on Salt Lake City’s west side and also known for its, where she met with students and spoke about her commitment to raise teachers’ compensations and recruit more staff of color.

The first lady was set to depart Utah Tuesday night for San Francisco, where she’s scheduled for additional fundraising events for the Biden Victory Fund and other community meetings. Jill Biden will visit San Francisco and Healdsburg in California, in addition to Columbus, Ohio.

McKenzie Romero contributed to this report.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Utah News Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor McKenzie Romero for questions: info@utahnewsdispatch.com. Follow Utah News Dispatch on and .