Jennifer Williams plays with her sons at home. She said leaving her job to care for her sons was a difficult call to make, but it was the right one for her family.Beth Wallis/StateImpact Oklahoma |
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When is suspending students discrimination? New guidance from the Trump administration — that echoes guidance from the first Trump term — argues that, under a previous policy, "schools ignored or covered up — rather than disciplined — student misconduct to avoid any purported racial disparity in discipline numbers that might catch the eye of the federal government.” The result: Students who should have been held accountable for their behavior stayed in class instead of being disciplined, according to the Trump Education Department. NPR Ed’s Cory Turner explains the twists and turns of how schools have, and haven’t, been able to consider race when it comes to school discipline, and why that matters.
Do colleges have … a cocaine problem? The Penn State bust put cocaine in the spotlight, but NPR could find no evidence cocaine use is gaining popularity on campus, NPR addiction correspondent Brian Mann reports. Read and listen to his story to see which substances are far more likely to be disruptive for college students.
Childcare is as costly, and scarce, as ever: Beth Wallis of StateImpact Oklahoma reports that while the state is generally one of the most affordable in the nation, the cost of care for babies and toddlers is rising, fast. She spoke to families about how that has changed the course of their lives. On a related note, NPR’s Joe Hernandez reports on why more than 400,000 kids nationwide are on waitlists for federal childcare assistance.
New restrictions on nighttime and school-time scrolling for kids: The proposed settlement with Meta requires the tech giant to pay states up to $17 billion over 10 years — and to make some key changes to Facebook and Instagram to make the platforms safer for kids, NPR’s Rhitu Chatterjee reports. They include setting up a default daily time limit of two hours for users under 18. She spoke to psychologists to ask: What do they think of the changes? Young people face other big tech challenges, Rhitu also reports. Sophie Rottenberg had been sharing all her inner struggles with an artificial intelligence chatbot: a ChatGPT therapist named Harry before her death by suicide last year.
Schools in Georgia, Florida and Colorado plan to deploy a new school safety device: drones. They're designed to confront a school shooter before police arrive. The drones can deploy strobe lights, sirens and pepper gel. They can break windows, and as a last resort, they can ram into a threat. NPR’s Michel Martin spoke with the CEO of the company that designed the devices.
On heat and climate change... A high school football player in Kansas died this month during practice on a hot day. Texas schools now have to adjust outdoor athletic practices based on heat readings. And a former tenured professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point says the school ordered faculty to stop teaching about anthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change, then pushed him out after he objected, according to a federal lawsuit.
The country is in the midst of a record-setting number of measles cases. Two measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania, including that of a newborn, have been swept up in politics. Kindergarten vaccination rates against measles in the state, and elsewhere, have fallen below the 95% threshold considered necessary to stop measles from spreading, NPR’s Maria Godoy reports. |
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