AJE is delighted to summarize recent updates from the United States Department of Education! We hope this information is helpful for parents and teachers.

Important Announcements:

• In accordance with an executive order issued by the President, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), announced a special enrollment period (SEP) for individuals and families for marketplace coverage in response to the COVID-19 public health emergency.  This SEP will allow those in states with marketplaces served by the HealthCare.gov platform to enroll in 2021 health insurance coverage.  Through May 15, 2021, these marketplaces will operationalize functionality to make this SEP available to marketplace-eligible consumers who are submitting a new application or updating an existing application.
• The Department’s What Works Clearinghouse released a practice guide on assisting students struggling with mathematics in grades K-6, distilling intervention research into six practice recommendations for educators.
• The Department’s Federal Student Aid (FSA) office recently updated the resources on entrance and exit counseling on StudentAid.gov.
• The Department of Education — in collaboration with the Department of Agriculture — issued guidance to postsecondary institutions about temporarily expanded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility for students in need.

Safely reopening schools:

• President Biden announced steps to accelerate school reopening nationwide by treating in-person learning as an essential service and prioritizing educators for vaccinations in every state.
• Over 30 states have already taken steps to prioritize educators for vaccination. On March 2nd, President Biden directed every state to do the same because he wants every educator, school staff member, and childcare worker to receive at least one shot by the end of the month of March.
• Throughout March, pre-K-through-12 educators and staff and childcare workers will be able to sign up for an appointment at a pharmacy near them.

Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona

• On March 1, by a bipartisan vote, the Senate approved Miguel Cardona as the 12th U.S. Secretary of Education. He was officially sworn in by Vice President Harris the next day.
• He has penned an op-ed in USA Today (focused on his plan to get students back in schools full-time) and traveled with First Lady Dr. Jill Biden to visit Benjamin Franklin Elementary School in his hometown of Meriden, Connecticut, and Fort LeBoeuf Middle School in Waterford, Pennsylvania. Both schools have reopened for in-person learning.

State Assessments

• Last week, the Department provided guidance to states emphasizing the importance of flexibility in administering assessments this year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.  It supports the use of testing data as a source of information for parents and educators to better target resources and support — rather than for accountability purposes. State assessment and accountability systems play an important role in advancing educational equity, identifying student needs, and targeting the resources to address them. As such, the Department of Education is not inviting “blanket waivers of assessments.”
• Flexibility given to states when conducting assessments includes: extending the testing window and moving assessments to the summer or fall, giving the assessment remotely, where feasible, and shortening the assessment, making testing more feasible to implement and prioritizing in-person learning time.

Department of Education’s Data Strategy

• The Department of Education’s Data Governance Board adopted an inaugural Data Strategy in December 2020.
• The strategy establishes the agency’s vision for accelerating progress toward becoming a data-driven organization and fully leveraging high-quality data to advance the Department’s mission of ensuring equal access and fostering educational excellence for the nation’s learners.

Digest of Education Statistics

• The “Digest of Education Statistics 2019,” from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), is the 55th in a series of publications initiated in 1962.
• Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field of American education — from pre-kindergarten through graduate school — drawn from government and private sources, but especially from surveys and other activities led by NCES. The digest has data on the number of schools, students, and teachers in the U.S., as well as statistics on educational attainment, finances, libraries, technology, and international comparisons.