Heidi Lyn Hadley

I do think that there are very few factors pushing on public education as much and as persistently as Christian nationalism, so I appreciated the opportunity to write with Kevin Burke about the issue. I do ALSO appreciate the really great support and editorial work from the NEPC team.

I had a judge presiding over one of my cases ask me if I had been a defendant in one of his cases because he recognized me. I was like nope. I'm counsel. I was dressed impeccably in a vintage Calvin Klein suit that I'd paid way too much money for. It happened in 2005ish and I still think about it.

Filling classrooms with computers didn't have the huge and positive impact on learning that was promised. Filling them with tablets hasn't done it either.

I know this might sound absurd to many (especially politicians) but what if we filled them with highly skilled and properly supported educators?

Godawful.

I.R.S. Says Churches Can Endorse Candidates From the Pulpit

NEW TONIGHT: The IRS says that churches can now endorse candidates from the pulpit, carving out an exemption to the decades-old ban on politicking by nonprofits.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/u...

Schools are taking a hit in every state--including the ones where most voters supported President Trump:

-Florida: $398M
-Ohio: $203M
-Louisiana: $120M
-Indiana: $107M
-Alabama: $100M
-Kentucky: $96M
-South Carolina: $94M
-Missouri: $93M
-Oklahoma: $78M
-Mississippi: $72M
-Arkansas: $64M

Trump administration throws a $7 billion wrench into school budgets The Education Department is holding back funding previously approved by Congress for teacher training, English learners, migrant education, and after-school programming. Advocates worry the Trump admi...

“Local school districts can’t afford to wait out lengthy court proceedings to get the federal funding they’re owed — nor can they make up the shortfall, especially not at the drop of a pin.” www.chalkbeat.org/2025/07/01/t...

Thank you! I am going to put this in the hands of student teachers before they graduate (and will credit you, obviously). So enormously helpful!

‘I became a teacher so I can read scripted lessons written by folks who haven’t taught in a decade in order to prepare students to take a standardized test written above their grade level!’

Said no teacher ever

Sounds like she is deliberately ignoring the will of the people of Los Angeles and California, who duly elected their mayor, governor, and senators.

Sounds like authoritarianism to me.

BREAKING: Federal agents in plain clothes and unmarked cars tried to snatch 1st graders from LA elementary schools—told staff they had “parental consent.”

They lied. When pressed, they HID THEIR IDS. DHS admits they sent them. This wasn’t a welfare check. It was a test run for a police state.

Congratulations!!

My recent GYN appointment in the Deep South included a) praise music in the waiting room, and b) a very sweet and somehow apologetic lecture on the benefits of reading smut for menopausal libido loss (all while in stirrups). Obsessed, obviously.

Yesterday, June 2, was an interesting day at work. I was reporting a story about how the Education Department hadn't delivered a report to Congress on the Condition of Education, despite the June 1 deadline mandated by law. 🧵 (1/9)

My daughter has been home from college for less than a month. She has four younger brothers. She has recently started spamming the family group chat with pictures of the toilet seat being left up in her bathroom. Daily. Nearly hourly, honestly.

It turns out that oversight for public funds for education matters. A lot.

Southern Poverty Law Center releases 2024 "Year in Hate and Extremism" Report The SPLC identifies 1,371 extremist organizations nationally in 2024, noting a 25 percent increase in Alabama and mainstream infiltration of far-right ideologies.

The SPLC identifies 1,371 extremist organizations nationally in 2024, noting a 25 percent increase in Alabama and mainstream infiltration of far-right ideologies.

"Try as we might, we cannot understand the 2023 Plan as anything other than an intentional effort to dilute Black Alabamians’ voting strength and evade the unambiguous requirements of court orders standing in the way."

It's like how learning in schools has basically stopped after the standardized tests since NCLB. My kids report that they watch movies in almost every class for the last month of school; I used to teach content right up to the next to last day.

Like, your critical thinking, reasoning, and intellectual skills are the product. There's not a great shortcut to that product; it's the sum of a million little processes.

or is "required by state learning standards" it's really not that far of a jump to see learning and/or education as a series of products rather than a process where you, the learner, are the product.

Some of this has to be attributed to the standardization and high stakes assessment culture; if students have only been told that everything they are learning "will be on the end of level test"

Some of the books they are banning baffle me. Like, this book is almost 20 years old? And there are way wackier (by their standards) books out there that it seems they would want to ban before this one. But sure, we're all safe from the revolutionary ideas in Water for Elephants now. 🙄

This this this!

When high-needs schools can’t pay for teachers, they’ll outsource learning to machines and our most vulnerable students will simply get test-prep curriculum.

I have a feeling this is Louise Plummer, who had the most GLORIOUS laugh in the BYU English department?

100% can agree that teachers need high quality resources to draw on AND expert knowledge of how we learn, but they definitely need the autonomy to make choices about what gets delivered. I spend a lot of time in classrooms because I supervise student teachers and currently, autonomy feels strained.

So true. The moves being made (and not just in this article) to convince teachers that skilled instructional planning isn’t at the heart of the job worries me.

PD is often about teaching a program with fidelity. We'd do a lot better job if we spent less on canned programs and scripted curriculum and a lot more on teacher expertise about the very complex act of learning to read and learning to be literate.

I say pretty regularly that it worries me that so many of our young teachers grew up under NCLB legislation and have thus very little ability to imagine curricula that is actually, genuinely responsive to the students they teach.

$19 million in HBCU funding suspended after Trump diversity ban: ‘Not looking too good’ 19 schools are recipients of this scholarship program run by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Confirmed $19 million in HBCU funding for 2025 is suspended pending review from the USDA for this year's 1890 Scholars. Affects 2 Alabama schools. My latest for @al.com. www.al.com/news/2025/02...