September 30, 2025 • 23 mins
Stephanie and Zac look more closely and provide context for three top education news stories from the last week. First, the U.S. Department of Education proposed a new priority for getting back to basics on math. And it looks, normal? Just kidding. Next, what is happening with the federal student loan program and who are we about to exclude. Finally, we care about student mental health supports...sort of. It's an episode with a lot of ellipses.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
Hi, I am Zach Chase.
SPEAKER_01 (00:02):
And I am Stephanie Melville.
SPEAKER_00 (00:04):
And after a well-deserved break, we are back
with this episode of AcademicDistinctions.
Three top stories from lastweek's Education News taken
apart, diving in a little moredeeply, giving some context.
This week's stories, newproposed priority from the
Federal Department of Educationlooks normal.
(00:25):
What?
And what the heck is going onwith federal student loans?
Also, we can fund some studentmental health supports.
Just some.
So stick around.
(00:50):
Alright, Stephanie, I've got thefirst one.
You ready for this?
Alright.
SPEAKER_01 (00:53):
I am.
Let's do it.
SPEAKER_00 (00:54):
So you and I, you know, for those who aren't in
the know, uh have someexperience with federal policy
work and the federal registry.
And so this is not necessarily anews story as me being a big old
nerd and reading an entry on thefederal registry.
SPEAKER_01 (01:09):
You are not a big old nerd, but thanks.
SPEAKER_00 (01:12):
I I am a big old nerd.
I willingly read something incourier new, so I'm gonna say
big old nerd.
SPEAKER_01 (01:18):
Okay, fine.
SPEAKER_00 (01:19):
So last week the U.S.
Department of Education proposeda new priority uh with
definitions, uh, supplementingthe existing priorities and
definitions.
And this one was reallyinteresting because it is
remarkably normal.
And so for those of us who readthese kinds of things and keep
(01:39):
track of these kinds of things,this looks like it could have
come from literally anyadministration.
The the big piece here is thatthere is a kind of back to
basics approach that has beenstarting for a while now, and it
is calling on and saying there'sgoing to be a priority for math
(02:00):
education.
And that's pretty normal.
Um, I should also say that thesepriorities, there are two kinds
of funding.
One is formula funding.
So these are your like Title I,Title II, special education, um,
professional development basedon student populations, states
and then school districts get acertain amount of money based on
(02:21):
their student population.
These priorities focus on whatthe administration wants to give
competitive grants to.
So as different offices, ifthere are still any at the U.S.
Department of Education, writecompetitive grants, these are
what researchers or programleads might be applying for
(02:44):
funding for.
And they're saying one of thepriorities that has to be
written into those grants has todo with this.
Now, why is this important?
Well, it signals to the fieldwhere what's left of the
Department of Education will befocusing.
So it's not surprising, giventhe release of our most recent
nape scores and kind offloundering student success
(03:06):
around mathematics, that thiswould be a priority.
Here's the thing that is alsoimportant, but not written into
what is in the proposedpriority.
You have to remember that theadministration across the board,
not just in education, hasprohibited any programs to
receive federal funding thatfocus on diversity, equity, and
(03:30):
inclusion.
Right.
So writing a grant that attemptsto say we want to create a
program to improve student mathscores that leaves out
considerations of the multiplefactors that might be
interacting to lower a student'sachievement is going to be a
real tightrope act, right?
So poverty, we know poverty,income, makes a difference in
(03:54):
student achievement.
But that's an element ofdiversity, equity, and
inclusion.
We know that a student's genderidentity can signal how well
they or poorly they do on anexam as well.
But considering gender or sex isno longer a component of these
(04:14):
things because it could beconsidered diversity equity or
inclusion.
So on one hand, remarkablynormal.
Yes, of course we should befocusing on math scores.
On the other hand, um, how arewe gonna do that without
actually understanding who thestudents are?
Also, worth noting is there islanguage in here that is kind of
(04:34):
like college isn't for everyone.
And that is tot true.
And there are two ways to takethat.
One, college isn't a great fitfor some kids.
That is not the road that theyare on.
I have taught many of them.
Um, I think I'm raising at leastone of them, and and that's
totally fine.
(04:55):
No shade.
So there's the differencebetween saying college isn't a
great fit for some kids, andthen with this administration,
there's a note of college isn'ta great fit for some kinds of
kids.
That is a subtext that worriesme greatly.
SPEAKER_01 (05:12):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (05:13):
Ultimately, I think this is likely to fail because
it is setting a mandate andpriority while prohibiting the
field from examining cause andconsideration of how we make
things better.
And at the end, I'm a littleworried that this is a way to
justify the further dismantlingof the Department of Education
(05:34):
or moving toward theprivatization of education,
because we can now say we madeit a priority and gave grants
and nothing happened.
Pay no attention to thehamstringing we did to programs
and researchers' abilities toget to the roots of these
problems.
So very normal on the face, buttaken in the context of
everything else that's going on,not so normal.
SPEAKER_01 (05:56):
When you're talking about the inability to take a
look at what some of these rootcauses are for the problems that
we're seeing, I it I couldn'thelp but look at this and be
like, well, you know, averagesare gonna average.
Like if some groups improve, youknow, and and make good
improvements, while other groupseither, you know, like plateau
(06:19):
or drop even a little bit, wecan still see an overall
positive impact, right?
It's it's the power ofdisaggregating the data that
tells us where those impacts arehappening, you know, what groups
of kids are benefiting from thework that we're doing and what
(06:39):
groups of kids might be um on onthe harmful end of the practices
that we are doing.
It matters both ways.
And looking at our differentpopulations of students, that's
how we figure out who we'releaving behind.
Like you, I also read thisdocument as kind of calling for
vocational schools for quote,you know, like those kids, not
(07:01):
these.
SPEAKER_00 (07:02):
Without actually saying those kids, though.
SPEAKER_01 (07:04):
Right.
It's it's it's the it's thesubtext, right?
Like, I don't have a singleproblem for preparing students
for what this document refers toas like the four E's, right?
Like calling them outemployment, enrollment,
enlistment, entrepreneurship.
Those four E's, great.
They're wonderful.
I'm just concerned with the callto improve mathematics
(07:25):
instruction to promote studentachievement through, quote,
developing and implementingstrategies that provide
opportunities for the earlyidentification and support for
students struggling withfoundational and developmental
mathematic concepts.
SPEAKER_00 (07:42):
Well, you have a problem with that?
SPEAKER_01 (07:44):
I do.
I do.
Um it's like it's coded languagefor tracking.
Track early, track often.
SPEAKER_00 (07:51):
Oh, see, and I'm coming at it from an ELA
background.
To me, this feels like it isborrowing from the current
movement where we recognize thata lack of foundational skills
and literacy kind of keeps youfrom unlocking the whole
comprehension and like andmoving from learning to read to
reading to learn.
SPEAKER_02 (08:09):
Sure.
SPEAKER_00 (08:10):
And so this language to me says like if you if your
brain has an inability to makenumber sense, then we need to
identify that earlier ratherthan keep piling on the
expectations.
SPEAKER_01 (08:26):
In mathematics classes or in mathematics
instruction, very early on, wetell kids whether or not, or we
let kids identify as whether ornot they are math people.
And we, in our conversationsthat we've had with Kathy
Williams, for example, right?
Like whether or not you are amath person is bogus.
(08:46):
We are all math people.
We all do mathematics.
It's just what kind of math dowe value?
SPEAKER_00 (08:52):
The function of those like foundational
understanding and assessments inin a literacy in like a an ELA
environment is kind of misplacedif like copied and pasted onto a
math environment.
SPEAKER_01 (09:06):
Yes.
100%.
Yes.
When we talked to Kathy, andKathy was talking about no,
mathematics is slow.
Mathematics is not fast.
It's thoughtful.
It's like you struggle throughit.
You are making meaning, you aremaking sense, like it is not a
fast process.
Problem solving should be aslower-paced thing where you are
(09:30):
taking your time to make surethe thing that you're doing is
right, the algorithm that you'rerunning is correct.
And the faster you go throughwith it, the more you focus on
the rote memorization of things,this back-to-basics aspect of
stuff in mathematics.
It's just it's emphasizing thewrong thing.
And we are very quickly going toswing back toward having
(09:54):
mathematics be all about speedand memorization, procedural
fluency as opposed to conceptualunderstanding.
We're still just doing spacerace math in an AI era.
We're just continuing to tellkids what way to do math is the
right way to do math.
(10:16):
And if you don't do it my way,you're not doing it correctly.
SPEAKER_00 (10:20):
Hmm.
All right.
Well, speaking of things notadding up, my second story this
week.
One is a Newsweek article aroundstudent loan borrowers seeing
payments surge under majorchanges.
It's an analysis of the effectsof the one big, beautiful bill
now coming to play with studentloans.
(10:41):
The other article has to do witha recent American Federation of
Teachers lawsuit against theDepartment of Education.
That one comes from NPR.
And I think it's worth saying,here's what's going on with
federal student loans.
So the Biden administration saidwe need to help folks get out of
student loan debt from thefederal government so the money
can flow, so we can createintergenerational wealth and
(11:04):
mobility.
Yay! And then the GOP said, butCongress didn't say you could
make the save plan, which wasthe new lower payment plan.
And we all know how the GOPlikes to hold a president's feet
to the legislative fire and sayonly what Congress says is okay.
It's ironic because it's notwhat's happening right now.
No.
And so they paused it all.
(11:25):
And there's a case uh before theSupreme Court that says, you
know, is the save planconstitutional?
But while people who are on thesave plan, such as yours, truly
are waiting for that course,none of the kind of deferred
payments count.
Whereas during the kind ofpandemic, the Biden
(11:48):
administration said, you knowwhat?
We're gonna put this all on it'sall deferred.
And while it's deferred, thenormal accounts that you would
accrue toward public serviceloan forgiveness will count.
So none of that's happening.
They are just frozen.
And you can move to an incomeuh-based repayment plan or maybe
not, because those things arenot moving either.
(12:09):
So the AFT has sued on behalf ofeducators saying, hey, you got
to get this stuff moving.
The other piece that's importanthere is that there is a program
for buyback.
So if you are involved in orregistered for public service
loan forgiveness, like if youwere a teacher who said, I want
to do this, um, I'm guaranteeingat least 120 months of my life
(12:33):
will be in public service afterI get this degree.
You can then buy back things.
So maybe like yours truly, youwent to grad school while you
were in repayment.
Now, if those payments weredeferred, you can pay what you
would have paid to buy backcertain months to get to your
120.
I literally have 118 paymentsmade.
(12:58):
And I have submitted over 60days ago my application.
All of the data are verified.
But what the very nice personwho was in the automated um
studentaid.gov chat told me wasthat this has to go by three
different people who then haveto verify it multiple times
(13:20):
before they can sign off.
And they may escalate my case tohave more people look at it.
Again, these are all things thatI'm not a big fan of AI
automating everybody's job.
SPEAKER_01 (13:31):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (13:31):
But but these are things, if you were going to cut
the staff at the federal uhstudent aid office, these are
all things that very, very muchcould have been automated.
So that's where we stand rightnow.
And it's a bunch of hooey.
SPEAKER_01 (13:47):
This is not just for educators, right?
SPEAKER_00 (13:51):
No.
Any public service person may ifthe job that you have qualifies
as public service, so anonprofit organization, um,
government work, those kinds ofthings.
Now, the Trump administrationdid come in and say there are
certain organizations who shouldnot qualify as public service,
(14:12):
even though they're nonprofitsbecause they didn't like the the
things that those organizationswere doing.
But more broadly, yes, anypublic service should count.
SPEAKER_01 (14:22):
So they've lowered the borrowing limits, right?
SPEAKER_00 (14:24):
Yes.
SPEAKER_01 (14:25):
Okay, so that just means now if I was from a family
in, you know, if if if if myfamily was middle or lower
class, the amount of money thatI would be able to take out uh
in a student loan is lowered.
And therefore, if I want to goto university that requires me
(14:46):
to take out more, I would needto get uh an additional loan
through like a private studentloan.
Through a bank.
Through a bank, right?
Which means now the interestrate can be higher.
The payback plans can bedifferent.
SPEAKER_00 (15:02):
Right.
There are certain protectionsthat are afforded to folks who
take out federal student loans.
And so there are caps on those,which I believe the
administration would argue thisis how we are trying to lower
the cost of college to students,kind of signaling to the quote
unquote market of highereducation.
Listen, they're only going to beable to borrow so much from the
(15:24):
federal government.
So you might want to think abouthow you're going to lower the
costs.
It isn't a great plan because ifyou can't get your mortgage
somewhere, you go somewhere elseto get your mortgage.
Right.
Same idea uh with student loansas well.
And different protections.
If you get your student loans,for instance, from the federal
(15:45):
government and you pass away,then that debt is no longer
there.
But there are some privateinstitutions where if you get
your student loans there, yourchildren, your heirs could then
be saddled with that privatedebt, depending on so there are
protections that the federalstudent loan process affords
borrowers that not all privateinstitutions afford them.
SPEAKER_01 (16:09):
Oh, that's a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00 (16:10):
Yeah.
A lot of debt operates that way,right?
So the key here is not that yournext of kin would be saddled
with this with debt because yournext of kin could be saddled
with a lot of debt.
SPEAKER_01 (16:24):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (16:25):
The key here is that we had carved out a piece that
said education isnon-transferable.
So the degree that you got fromwhatever higher education
institution, and then if youpass away, it that that degree
is gone as well.
What becomes a possibility if ifwe have to go through certain
(16:46):
private student loan lenders, isthat that debt can pass on like
a mortgage.
It isn't always that way, but itcould be.
And we've lowered both thelifetime caps as well as the
one-time caps for several ofthose loans, making it more
difficult for people to moveinto certain professions.
SPEAKER_01 (17:06):
By making it more difficult to get enough money in
loans, you know, turning toprivate loans.
You get the higher interestrates, you get the more
expensive payments, moredefaulting.
This feels a lot like the bigshort, right?
I'm not crazy.
Am I crazy?
SPEAKER_00 (17:24):
Income-driven repayment plans are still built
into the law.
So there are still low paymentoptions for those who, after
they graduate, aren't making aton of money.
The issue becomes the period ofrepayment before any forgiveness
is optional is longer.
(17:45):
So you are paying even if yourpayments are lower, they're
still, you know, proportional toyour income, and you will be
paying them for a longer periodof time.
All right.
As the great poets of old ABBAused to say money, money, money,
money, money, money, money,money.
But you've got something aboutlike a good use of money,
(18:07):
question mark.
SPEAKER_01 (18:08):
Question mark, yeah.
Um, you know what?
Uh the money, money's back.
K-12 dive got us um a headlinethat says education department
brings back mental healthgrants.
Yay! The money is back.
We cut a billion dollarssupporting student mental health
(18:29):
in schools.
SPEAKER_00 (18:30):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (18:31):
Uh, and we, you know what, we're we're getting some
of it back.
We're getting 270 milliondollars back.
Not nothing, not nothing, but weare getting it back for um only
school psychologists.
SPEAKER_00 (18:48):
School psychologists instead of school psychologists
and school social workers andschool counselors.
SPEAKER_01 (18:56):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (18:58):
Can I can I say a thing about that that I think
the average listener may notunderstand?
SPEAKER_01 (19:05):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (19:06):
On the how much each of those roles costs ledger, the
school psychologist is mostlikely to be the most expensive
role.
So in some cases, that mayrequire a doctorate to be a
school psychologist.
SPEAKER_01 (19:25):
Correct.
SPEAKER_00 (19:26):
Whereas a school social worker might only require
a master's.
SPEAKER_01 (19:31):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (19:32):
A ton of clinical hours, both of them.
Um, and then a school counselingposition could require a
master's as well.
So a psych position, a schoolpsych, as it's referred to often
in the shorthand, tends to bethe more expensive of all of
those three.
So if you're talking aboutgetting the most bodies in a
(19:53):
school, you would say, I wouldsay we're gonna fund all three
of these dependent on which youthink meets the needs of your
population.
But that's not yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (20:03):
Nope, nope, it's not, it's not.
It's uh meant to address thenationwide shortage of school
psychologists.
SPEAKER_00 (20:10):
Sure.
We got a nationwide shortage ofschool everything, like insert
here.
SPEAKER_01 (20:16):
Yeah.
Okay students.
We have a shortage of students.
SPEAKER_00 (20:20):
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
SPEAKER_01 (20:24):
Yeah.
So the National Association ofSchool Psychologists uh
recommends that schools have onepsychologist for every 500
students.
SPEAKER_00 (20:34):
And what have we got on average?
SPEAKER_01 (20:36):
On average, according to the Department of
Education data from the 23-24school year shows that that
ratio is really more like onefor every 1,065.
SPEAKER_00 (20:48):
Okay.
So in 2019, the ACLU found aratio of one school social
worker for every 2,106 students.
SPEAKER_01 (20:56):
Oh.
SPEAKER_00 (20:57):
Those are pre-pandemic numbers.
We know we have an influx of spof funding to improve that, so
probably better now.
SPEAKER_01 (21:05):
But probably not by much, if I had to guess.
unknown (21:08):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (21:09):
So to recap our stories from this week, there is
a new priority proposed by theU.S.
Department of Education focusingon real-world math and improving
student math outcomes.
It has a couple of differentcaveats in there.
One on making sure we assessstudents early on for some sort
of math disability, but thatcould oftentimes lead to
(21:30):
tracking, as Stephanie pointedout.
And it focuses a lot on maybenot college for everybody.
And then making sure not collegefor everybody, the one big
beautiful bill, uh, or one bigbeautiful act, I suppose.
SPEAKER_01 (21:45):
One big beautiful bill act, ABBA.
Not to be confused with ABBA.
SPEAKER_00 (21:51):
Oh man, never confuse ABBA.
Uh the one big beautiful billact has uh started taking an
effect and is going to increasestudent loan payment amounts,
lower access to certain jobs,and higher education for some,
or increase the likely highinterest limits of credit and
(22:13):
borrowing from privateinstitutions.
And finally, we're getting moreschool psychologists, but funded
at just a little over a quarterof what they were funded at
previously.
So more of less, I suppose.
Definitely.
And those are the top threestories making academic
distinctions this week.
I'm Zach Chase.
SPEAKER_01 (22:31):
I'm Stephanie Melville.
And thanks for listening.
Thanks so much for joining ustoday on this episode of
Academic Distinctions.
As always, we hope that youenjoyed today's episode and that
you'll share it.
Follow us on Instagram atAcademic Distinctions Pod.
Find us on Blue Sky at FixingSchools, or find us on Facebook.
(22:54):
As always, this is your call toaction to share the podcast,
like us, and subscribe.
You can find us online atacademicdistinctions.com.
If you have a question for thepod or a topic you'd like us to
dig into, email us at mail atacademicdistinctions.com.
Until next week, friends.
This podcast is underwritten bythe Federation of American
Scientists.
Find out more at FAS.org.
Hi, I am Zach Chase.
SPEAKER_01 (00:02):
And I am Stephanie Melville.
SPEAKER_00 (00:04):
And after a well-deserved break, we are back
with this episode of AcademicDistinctions.
Three top stories from lastweek's Education News taken
apart, diving in a little moredeeply, giving some context.
This week's stories, newproposed priority from the
Federal Department of Educationlooks normal.
(00:25):
What?
And what the heck is going onwith federal student loans?
Also, we can fund some studentmental health supports.
Just some.
So stick around.
(00:50):
Alright, Stephanie, I've got thefirst one.
You ready for this?
Alright.
SPEAKER_01 (00:53):
I am.
Let's do it.
SPEAKER_00 (00:54):
So you and I, you know, for those who aren't in
the know, uh have someexperience with federal policy
work and the federal registry.
And so this is not necessarily anews story as me being a big old
nerd and reading an entry on thefederal registry.
SPEAKER_01 (01:09):
You are not a big old nerd, but thanks.
SPEAKER_00 (01:12):
I I am a big old nerd.
I willingly read something incourier new, so I'm gonna say
big old nerd.
SPEAKER_01 (01:18):
Okay, fine.
SPEAKER_00 (01:19):
So last week the U.S.
Department of Education proposeda new priority uh with
definitions, uh, supplementingthe existing priorities and
definitions.
And this one was reallyinteresting because it is
remarkably normal.
And so for those of us who readthese kinds of things and keep
(01:39):
track of these kinds of things,this looks like it could have
come from literally anyadministration.
The the big piece here is thatthere is a kind of back to
basics approach that has beenstarting for a while now, and it
is calling on and saying there'sgoing to be a priority for math
(02:00):
education.
And that's pretty normal.
Um, I should also say that thesepriorities, there are two kinds
of funding.
One is formula funding.
So these are your like Title I,Title II, special education, um,
professional development basedon student populations, states
and then school districts get acertain amount of money based on
(02:21):
their student population.
These priorities focus on whatthe administration wants to give
competitive grants to.
So as different offices, ifthere are still any at the U.S.
Department of Education, writecompetitive grants, these are
what researchers or programleads might be applying for
(02:44):
funding for.
And they're saying one of thepriorities that has to be
written into those grants has todo with this.
Now, why is this important?
Well, it signals to the fieldwhere what's left of the
Department of Education will befocusing.
So it's not surprising, giventhe release of our most recent
nape scores and kind offloundering student success
(03:06):
around mathematics, that thiswould be a priority.
Here's the thing that is alsoimportant, but not written into
what is in the proposedpriority.
You have to remember that theadministration across the board,
not just in education, hasprohibited any programs to
receive federal funding thatfocus on diversity, equity, and
(03:30):
inclusion.
Right.
So writing a grant that attemptsto say we want to create a
program to improve student mathscores that leaves out
considerations of the multiplefactors that might be
interacting to lower a student'sachievement is going to be a
real tightrope act, right?
So poverty, we know poverty,income, makes a difference in
(03:54):
student achievement.
But that's an element ofdiversity, equity, and
inclusion.
We know that a student's genderidentity can signal how well
they or poorly they do on anexam as well.
But considering gender or sex isno longer a component of these
(04:14):
things because it could beconsidered diversity equity or
inclusion.
So on one hand, remarkablynormal.
Yes, of course we should befocusing on math scores.
On the other hand, um, how arewe gonna do that without
actually understanding who thestudents are?
Also, worth noting is there islanguage in here that is kind of
(04:34):
like college isn't for everyone.
And that is tot true.
And there are two ways to takethat.
One, college isn't a great fitfor some kids.
That is not the road that theyare on.
I have taught many of them.
Um, I think I'm raising at leastone of them, and and that's
totally fine.
(04:55):
No shade.
So there's the differencebetween saying college isn't a
great fit for some kids, andthen with this administration,
there's a note of college isn'ta great fit for some kinds of
kids.
That is a subtext that worriesme greatly.
SPEAKER_01 (05:12):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (05:13):
Ultimately, I think this is likely to fail because
it is setting a mandate andpriority while prohibiting the
field from examining cause andconsideration of how we make
things better.
And at the end, I'm a littleworried that this is a way to
justify the further dismantlingof the Department of Education
(05:34):
or moving toward theprivatization of education,
because we can now say we madeit a priority and gave grants
and nothing happened.
Pay no attention to thehamstringing we did to programs
and researchers' abilities toget to the roots of these
problems.
So very normal on the face, buttaken in the context of
everything else that's going on,not so normal.
SPEAKER_01 (05:56):
When you're talking about the inability to take a
look at what some of these rootcauses are for the problems that
we're seeing, I it I couldn'thelp but look at this and be
like, well, you know, averagesare gonna average.
Like if some groups improve, youknow, and and make good
improvements, while other groupseither, you know, like plateau
(06:19):
or drop even a little bit, wecan still see an overall
positive impact, right?
It's it's the power ofdisaggregating the data that
tells us where those impacts arehappening, you know, what groups
of kids are benefiting from thework that we're doing and what
(06:39):
groups of kids might be um on onthe harmful end of the practices
that we are doing.
It matters both ways.
And looking at our differentpopulations of students, that's
how we figure out who we'releaving behind.
Like you, I also read thisdocument as kind of calling for
vocational schools for quote,you know, like those kids, not
(07:01):
these.
SPEAKER_00 (07:02):
Without actually saying those kids, though.
SPEAKER_01 (07:04):
Right.
It's it's it's the it's thesubtext, right?
Like, I don't have a singleproblem for preparing students
for what this document refers toas like the four E's, right?
Like calling them outemployment, enrollment,
enlistment, entrepreneurship.
Those four E's, great.
They're wonderful.
I'm just concerned with the callto improve mathematics
(07:25):
instruction to promote studentachievement through, quote,
developing and implementingstrategies that provide
opportunities for the earlyidentification and support for
students struggling withfoundational and developmental
mathematic concepts.
SPEAKER_00 (07:42):
Well, you have a problem with that?
SPEAKER_01 (07:44):
I do.
I do.
Um it's like it's coded languagefor tracking.
Track early, track often.
SPEAKER_00 (07:51):
Oh, see, and I'm coming at it from an ELA
background.
To me, this feels like it isborrowing from the current
movement where we recognize thata lack of foundational skills
and literacy kind of keeps youfrom unlocking the whole
comprehension and like andmoving from learning to read to
reading to learn.
SPEAKER_02 (08:09):
Sure.
SPEAKER_00 (08:10):
And so this language to me says like if you if your
brain has an inability to makenumber sense, then we need to
identify that earlier ratherthan keep piling on the
expectations.
SPEAKER_01 (08:26):
In mathematics classes or in mathematics
instruction, very early on, wetell kids whether or not, or we
let kids identify as whether ornot they are math people.
And we, in our conversationsthat we've had with Kathy
Williams, for example, right?
Like whether or not you are amath person is bogus.
(08:46):
We are all math people.
We all do mathematics.
It's just what kind of math dowe value?
SPEAKER_00 (08:52):
The function of those like foundational
understanding and assessments inin a literacy in like a an ELA
environment is kind of misplacedif like copied and pasted onto a
math environment.
SPEAKER_01 (09:06):
Yes.
100%.
Yes.
When we talked to Kathy, andKathy was talking about no,
mathematics is slow.
Mathematics is not fast.
It's thoughtful.
It's like you struggle throughit.
You are making meaning, you aremaking sense, like it is not a
fast process.
Problem solving should be aslower-paced thing where you are
(09:30):
taking your time to make surethe thing that you're doing is
right, the algorithm that you'rerunning is correct.
And the faster you go throughwith it, the more you focus on
the rote memorization of things,this back-to-basics aspect of
stuff in mathematics.
It's just it's emphasizing thewrong thing.
And we are very quickly going toswing back toward having
(09:54):
mathematics be all about speedand memorization, procedural
fluency as opposed to conceptualunderstanding.
We're still just doing spacerace math in an AI era.
We're just continuing to tellkids what way to do math is the
right way to do math.
(10:16):
And if you don't do it my way,you're not doing it correctly.
SPEAKER_00 (10:20):
Hmm.
All right.
Well, speaking of things notadding up, my second story this
week.
One is a Newsweek article aroundstudent loan borrowers seeing
payments surge under majorchanges.
It's an analysis of the effectsof the one big, beautiful bill
now coming to play with studentloans.
(10:41):
The other article has to do witha recent American Federation of
Teachers lawsuit against theDepartment of Education.
That one comes from NPR.
And I think it's worth saying,here's what's going on with
federal student loans.
So the Biden administration saidwe need to help folks get out of
student loan debt from thefederal government so the money
can flow, so we can createintergenerational wealth and
(11:04):
mobility.
Yay! And then the GOP said, butCongress didn't say you could
make the save plan, which wasthe new lower payment plan.
And we all know how the GOPlikes to hold a president's feet
to the legislative fire and sayonly what Congress says is okay.
It's ironic because it's notwhat's happening right now.
No.
And so they paused it all.
(11:25):
And there's a case uh before theSupreme Court that says, you
know, is the save planconstitutional?
But while people who are on thesave plan, such as yours, truly
are waiting for that course,none of the kind of deferred
payments count.
Whereas during the kind ofpandemic, the Biden
(11:48):
administration said, you knowwhat?
We're gonna put this all on it'sall deferred.
And while it's deferred, thenormal accounts that you would
accrue toward public serviceloan forgiveness will count.
So none of that's happening.
They are just frozen.
And you can move to an incomeuh-based repayment plan or maybe
not, because those things arenot moving either.
(12:09):
So the AFT has sued on behalf ofeducators saying, hey, you got
to get this stuff moving.
The other piece that's importanthere is that there is a program
for buyback.
So if you are involved in orregistered for public service
loan forgiveness, like if youwere a teacher who said, I want
to do this, um, I'm guaranteeingat least 120 months of my life
(12:33):
will be in public service afterI get this degree.
You can then buy back things.
So maybe like yours truly, youwent to grad school while you
were in repayment.
Now, if those payments weredeferred, you can pay what you
would have paid to buy backcertain months to get to your
120.
I literally have 118 paymentsmade.
(12:58):
And I have submitted over 60days ago my application.
All of the data are verified.
But what the very nice personwho was in the automated um
studentaid.gov chat told me wasthat this has to go by three
different people who then haveto verify it multiple times
(13:20):
before they can sign off.
And they may escalate my case tohave more people look at it.
Again, these are all things thatI'm not a big fan of AI
automating everybody's job.
SPEAKER_01 (13:31):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (13:31):
But but these are things, if you were going to cut
the staff at the federal uhstudent aid office, these are
all things that very, very muchcould have been automated.
So that's where we stand rightnow.
And it's a bunch of hooey.
SPEAKER_01 (13:47):
This is not just for educators, right?
SPEAKER_00 (13:51):
No.
Any public service person may ifthe job that you have qualifies
as public service, so anonprofit organization, um,
government work, those kinds ofthings.
Now, the Trump administrationdid come in and say there are
certain organizations who shouldnot qualify as public service,
(14:12):
even though they're nonprofitsbecause they didn't like the the
things that those organizationswere doing.
But more broadly, yes, anypublic service should count.
SPEAKER_01 (14:22):
So they've lowered the borrowing limits, right?
SPEAKER_00 (14:24):
Yes.
SPEAKER_01 (14:25):
Okay, so that just means now if I was from a family
in, you know, if if if if myfamily was middle or lower
class, the amount of money thatI would be able to take out uh
in a student loan is lowered.
And therefore, if I want to goto university that requires me
(14:46):
to take out more, I would needto get uh an additional loan
through like a private studentloan.
Through a bank.
Through a bank, right?
Which means now the interestrate can be higher.
The payback plans can bedifferent.
SPEAKER_00 (15:02):
Right.
There are certain protectionsthat are afforded to folks who
take out federal student loans.
And so there are caps on those,which I believe the
administration would argue thisis how we are trying to lower
the cost of college to students,kind of signaling to the quote
unquote market of highereducation.
Listen, they're only going to beable to borrow so much from the
(15:24):
federal government.
So you might want to think abouthow you're going to lower the
costs.
It isn't a great plan because ifyou can't get your mortgage
somewhere, you go somewhere elseto get your mortgage.
Right.
Same idea uh with student loansas well.
And different protections.
If you get your student loans,for instance, from the federal
(15:45):
government and you pass away,then that debt is no longer
there.
But there are some privateinstitutions where if you get
your student loans there, yourchildren, your heirs could then
be saddled with that privatedebt, depending on so there are
protections that the federalstudent loan process affords
borrowers that not all privateinstitutions afford them.
SPEAKER_01 (16:09):
Oh, that's a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_00 (16:10):
Yeah.
A lot of debt operates that way,right?
So the key here is not that yournext of kin would be saddled
with this with debt because yournext of kin could be saddled
with a lot of debt.
SPEAKER_01 (16:24):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (16:25):
The key here is that we had carved out a piece that
said education isnon-transferable.
So the degree that you got fromwhatever higher education
institution, and then if youpass away, it that that degree
is gone as well.
What becomes a possibility if ifwe have to go through certain
(16:46):
private student loan lenders, isthat that debt can pass on like
a mortgage.
It isn't always that way, but itcould be.
And we've lowered both thelifetime caps as well as the
one-time caps for several ofthose loans, making it more
difficult for people to moveinto certain professions.
SPEAKER_01 (17:06):
By making it more difficult to get enough money in
loans, you know, turning toprivate loans.
You get the higher interestrates, you get the more
expensive payments, moredefaulting.
This feels a lot like the bigshort, right?
I'm not crazy.
Am I crazy?
SPEAKER_00 (17:24):
Income-driven repayment plans are still built
into the law.
So there are still low paymentoptions for those who, after
they graduate, aren't making aton of money.
The issue becomes the period ofrepayment before any forgiveness
is optional is longer.
(17:45):
So you are paying even if yourpayments are lower, they're
still, you know, proportional toyour income, and you will be
paying them for a longer periodof time.
All right.
As the great poets of old ABBAused to say money, money, money,
money, money, money, money,money.
But you've got something aboutlike a good use of money,
(18:07):
question mark.
SPEAKER_01 (18:08):
Question mark, yeah.
Um, you know what?
Uh the money, money's back.
K-12 dive got us um a headlinethat says education department
brings back mental healthgrants.
Yay! The money is back.
We cut a billion dollarssupporting student mental health
(18:29):
in schools.
SPEAKER_00 (18:30):
Okay.
SPEAKER_01 (18:31):
Uh, and we, you know what, we're we're getting some
of it back.
We're getting 270 milliondollars back.
Not nothing, not nothing, but weare getting it back for um only
school psychologists.
SPEAKER_00 (18:48):
School psychologists instead of school psychologists
and school social workers andschool counselors.
SPEAKER_01 (18:56):
Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (18:58):
Can I can I say a thing about that that I think
the average listener may notunderstand?
SPEAKER_01 (19:05):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (19:06):
On the how much each of those roles costs ledger, the
school psychologist is mostlikely to be the most expensive
role.
So in some cases, that mayrequire a doctorate to be a
school psychologist.
SPEAKER_01 (19:25):
Correct.
SPEAKER_00 (19:26):
Whereas a school social worker might only require
a master's.
SPEAKER_01 (19:31):
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (19:32):
A ton of clinical hours, both of them.
Um, and then a school counselingposition could require a
master's as well.
So a psych position, a schoolpsych, as it's referred to often
in the shorthand, tends to bethe more expensive of all of
those three.
So if you're talking aboutgetting the most bodies in a
(19:53):
school, you would say, I wouldsay we're gonna fund all three
of these dependent on which youthink meets the needs of your
population.
But that's not yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (20:03):
Nope, nope, it's not, it's not.
It's uh meant to address thenationwide shortage of school
psychologists.
SPEAKER_00 (20:10):
Sure.
We got a nationwide shortage ofschool everything, like insert
here.
SPEAKER_01 (20:16):
Yeah.
Okay students.
We have a shortage of students.
SPEAKER_00 (20:20):
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
SPEAKER_01 (20:24):
Yeah.
So the National Association ofSchool Psychologists uh
recommends that schools have onepsychologist for every 500
students.
SPEAKER_00 (20:34):
And what have we got on average?
SPEAKER_01 (20:36):
On average, according to the Department of
Education data from the 23-24school year shows that that
ratio is really more like onefor every 1,065.
SPEAKER_00 (20:48):
Okay.
So in 2019, the ACLU found aratio of one school social
worker for every 2,106 students.
SPEAKER_01 (20:56):
Oh.
SPEAKER_00 (20:57):
Those are pre-pandemic numbers.
We know we have an influx of spof funding to improve that, so
probably better now.
SPEAKER_01 (21:05):
But probably not by much, if I had to guess.
unknown (21:08):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (21:09):
So to recap our stories from this week, there is
a new priority proposed by theU.S.
Department of Education focusingon real-world math and improving
student math outcomes.
It has a couple of differentcaveats in there.
One on making sure we assessstudents early on for some sort
of math disability, but thatcould oftentimes lead to
(21:30):
tracking, as Stephanie pointedout.
And it focuses a lot on maybenot college for everybody.
And then making sure not collegefor everybody, the one big
beautiful bill, uh, or one bigbeautiful act, I suppose.
SPEAKER_01 (21:45):
One big beautiful bill act, ABBA.
Not to be confused with ABBA.
SPEAKER_00 (21:51):
Oh man, never confuse ABBA.
Uh the one big beautiful billact has uh started taking an
effect and is going to increasestudent loan payment amounts,
lower access to certain jobs,and higher education for some,
or increase the likely highinterest limits of credit and
(22:13):
borrowing from privateinstitutions.
And finally, we're getting moreschool psychologists, but funded
at just a little over a quarterof what they were funded at
previously.
So more of less, I suppose.
Definitely.
And those are the top threestories making academic
distinctions this week.
I'm Zach Chase.
SPEAKER_01 (22:31):
I'm Stephanie Melville.
And thanks for listening.
Thanks so much for joining ustoday on this episode of
Academic Distinctions.
As always, we hope that youenjoyed today's episode and that
you'll share it.
Follow us on Instagram atAcademic Distinctions Pod.
Find us on Blue Sky at FixingSchools, or find us on Facebook.
(22:54):
As always, this is your call toaction to share the podcast,
like us, and subscribe.
You can find us online atacademicdistinctions.com.
If you have a question for thepod or a topic you'd like us to
dig into, email us at mail atacademicdistinctions.com.
Until next week, friends.
This podcast is underwritten bythe Federation of American
Scientists.
Find out more at FAS.org.
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