This week, W/A’s Head of Postsecondary Communications, Ted Eismeier, is filling in for Ben.

At 8:31 a.m. this morning, an email from Dr. Aarti Dhupelia hit our inboxes with news worth spreading on College Decision Day: One Million Degrees has signed a new five-year agreement with City Colleges of Chicago to scale its “wraparound support” model to more than 3,000 scholars a year.

Here's why that’s a big deal. A decade-long randomized controlled trial by the University of Chicago’s Inclusive Economy Lab found that OMD participants were 73% more likely to earn an associate degree within three years and earned an average of $14,246 more per year seven years after enrollment. In the world of higher education those kinds of results are rare. 

And it isn't a one-off. 

April was National Community College Month, and the sector is making waves: 

Underneath the stream of announcements, the policy machinery in Washington is moving. The Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization (AIM) negotiated rulemaking committee has been reviewing transfer credit policy this spring, including how to push receiving institutions to boost the number of transfer credits they accept. 

That sort of federal action reflects a groundswell of opposition to the college-transfer-status-quo. Earlier this spring, our team led a confidential message-testing project for a new initiative working to close the transfer divide. The takeaway (with specifics stripped out): higher ed leaders, state policymakers, and practitioners agree the status quo isn't working, and the appetite for change is real. 

That sort of consensus could not come at a better time. As Aarti explained in a recent op-ed for Community College Daily: "Community colleges are not a fallback. They are a bold first choice." 

A closing thought: Regardless of what you or I think, students are voting with their feet. Last year, public two-year enrollment grew 4%, with career-focused certificate programs up 6.6%. Perhaps as more people in positions of influence and power see their own kids and family members choose community college first, the narrative that surrounds them will begin to evolve.

Today, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) published final regulations to implement congressional changes to student loans and student loan repayment passed through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). 

Catch up quick: As we’ve covered previously, the regulations were developed and finalized through the negotiated rulemaking process. ED first convened the Reimagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) negotiated rulemaking committee to craft the regulations in September 2025. The regulations have since undergone a public comment period in which the regulations received over 80,000 public comments, and are now final.

This package of regulations does not implement all of the changes Congress made through OBBBA (which will be finalized through succeeding packages of regulations); however, it makes significant alterations to student loan borrowing and repayment programs available to borrowers post-graduation.

One of the most debated issues addressed by this package is the designation of post-graduate programs as either “graduate” or “professional” programs. As mandated by Congress in OBBBA, students in “graduate” programs will only be able to borrow $20,500 annually for their program while students in “professional” programs can borrow up to $50,000 annually for their program.

With the regulations, ED defines the following programs as “professional.” All other graduate programs are now considered “graduate” programs by ED:

Despite objections in the public comment period, and pressure from a coalition of state attorneys general, ED opted to exclude nursing programs from its definition of “professional” programs, confining students enrolling in those programs to the lower $20,500 annual cap on student loans.

The regulations also operationalize OBBBA provisions sunsetting the federal Grad PLUS loan program, and eliminates existing income-contingent repayment programs (including the Biden administration SAVE repayment plan). In their place, the regulations establish a new Tiered Standard repayment plan and a new income-driven repayment plan. The final rule will allow a borrower to rehabilitate a defaulted loan twice over the loan’s lifetime, where previous rules only allowed rehabilitation once.

Typically, new Title IV higher education regulations published by ED before November 1 in a given year cannot go into effect until July the following year. However, given that OBBBA specifically mandated that the changes go into effect on July 1, 2026, these regulations will go into effect on that date.

We also expect ED to finalize two other packages of regulations in the next few months that include regulations operationalizing the new federal Workforce Pell grant program and implementing new accountability requirements for higher education programs. More to come. In the meantime, reach out to us if you have any questions.

K-12 cybersecurity has reached an inflection point. In just two years, the share of U.S. districts experiencing a cyber incident has climbed from roughly one in three to one in two, and leaders now describe breaches not as worst-case scenarios but as a condition they operate under every day. At the same time, AI is reshaping both the threat landscape and the tools schools rely on, while student identity remains the widest protection gap in the sector.

Join us for a 60-minute conversation with leaders from Microsoft, the Brookings Institution, and Oklahoma City Public Schools as we unpack the findings of Clever's new Cybersecure 2026 Report, exploring what district leaders, vendors and policymakers should do to address the challenges of an evolving cybersecurity landscape. Moderated by Evo Popoff, the panel will dig into the rise of vendor-related breaches, the persistent student identity gap, and what it takes to build identity-centered guardrails in an AI-shaped future. 

🗓️ Wednesday, May 6 at 2 p.m. ET

As state legislative sessions are closing, there has been a lot of action on AI policy across the education landscape. 

In fall 2025, the dominant mode of state action on AI in education was voluntary guidance, like frameworks and model policies issued by state agencies. Only a handful of states enacted legislation. That has changed dramatically over the past few months. 

Three states enacted K-12 AI education law in the current cycle: Idaho and Utah this session, and New York (the RAISE Act) in late 2025. 25 additional states have active legislation still in play—which means considerably more states may have AI education laws on the books by the end of May.

AI literacy bills, which require schools to teach students about AI and associated skills, still appear in 2026, but governance has become the primary legislative frame. 

Across bills that are still active this session, common provisions include:

Illinois offers a notable counter-signal: A bill that passed the Senate would prohibit using AI tools to generate or score teacher evaluations, putting a hard limit on where AI governance ends and professional judgment must begin.

State leaders are focused on more than AI awareness and instead asking districts to be accountable to how it is being used and what students learn and have access to.

The states to watch before sessions close:

The state-level sprint on AI legislation is part of a larger reckoning. As W/A Co-founder and CEO Ben Wallerstein noted in January, policymakers are no longer just asking whether schools can afford technology. They're asking whether it's working, and who's accountable when it isn't. At the federal level, that pressure has been building across the aisle. In January 2026, a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on youth technology use further emphasized policymakers' concerns about how technology affects student well-being, cognition, and learning—with schools now expected to answer for how they adopt and oversee these tools. 

However, federal actions are pulling in opposite directions. The Trump administration's Executive Order 14365 limited states' ability to establish AI guidelines conflicting with federal priorities. As a result, state momentum shifted from sweeping AI guidance toward narrower, more defensible legislation: consumer protection, minor safety, disclosure. But on April 13, the U.S. Department of Education finalized its AI in Education priority, directing discretionary grant funding toward AI literacy, personalized learning, and educator professional development, with first competitions expected in the 2026-27 cycle. States that have been building AI governance frameworks are now better positioned to compete for that funding.

How states navigate these conflicting signals through legislative action or guidance will define the role of AI in education and the policy landscape for school year 2026-27 and beyond. 

Hosted by ISTE+ASCD and Whiteboard Advisors, the Solutions Summit is a one-day, exclusive event that convenes leaders from across the education ecosystem. This year’s Summit will be held on Sunday, June 28, 2026, from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and will feature a mix of interactive panels and small-group activities focused on real-world decision-making, product impact, and the future of learning.

We're in a period of enormous change in higher education. AI disruption, campus closures, growing skepticism about the value of a degree, and political pressure are all competing to see what can cause the most chaos in the university market.

This week, W/A Vice President and Editor of The EdSheet Matt Tower sat down with Geoff Watson, CEO of NCFDD, to talk through one piece of that conversation that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves: university faculty.

Faculty are the lifeblood of universities. They shape the student experience, drive research, and their classrooms are the first stop on campus tours. But according to NCFDD’s 2025 State of Faculty Development Report, investments in faculty rarely make the “headline” list, resulting in faculty feeling undervalued and undersupported.

EnGen and World Education Services (WES) released a new report this week that investigates the value and uptake of English language upskilling. According to the report, Unlocking Untapped Talent: A Playbook for State and Local Leaders to Strengthen Local Workforce, millions of workers are ready, willing, and able to fill high-demand jobs, but need career-aligned English instruction to access them. To tap into this talent pool, a growing number of states—including North Dakota, Michigan, Utah, and Maine—are implementing coordinated cross-agency strategies to scale English Language Learning and connect English instruction to today’s world of work.

Interested in learning more? Join EnGen, WES, and state leaders from North Dakota and Michigan on May 13 at 2 p.m. ET for a webinar. Moderated by Antonio Tijerino, president and CEO of the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, this session will spotlight how states and localities are successfully strengthening talent pipelines through English language upskilling.

In the early 2000s, elementary students spent an average of 36.8 minutes per day out on the playground, according to the Center on Education Policy. Today, the national average amount of recess in elementary school is between 20-30 minutes. Oklahoma, however, is bucking this trend: Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) signed in April a new law that mandates at least 40 minutes of recess per day for students in grades K-5 and prohibits schools from withholding recess as a punishment. [Education Week, subscription model]

With the law’s passage, Oklahoma joins a handful of states working to incorporate more unstructured play into the school day:

Next Tuesday, the EdRedesign Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education will launch “DREAM ON,” a new series exploring how communities are expanding opportunity across the country. The series aims to tell a different kind of story, focusing on what’s working instead of what’s broken. The premiere episode travels to San Antonio to examine Communities In Schools, the subject of landmark Harvard-Cornell research on relationship-based, personalized student supports. The study found that these supports can raise graduation rates, boost college attendance, and increase lifetime earnings for low-income students.

You’re invited! On May 5, join the EdRedesign Lab for a virtual premiere and Q&A. Watch the first episode and hear from host and Vox Video co-founder Joe Posner, Emmy-winning journalist James Watson, Rey Saldaña of Communities in Schools, and Jamie Gracie and Rob Watson of the EdRedesign Lab. New episodes will drop monthly.

Check out W/A Jobs, which features 3,983 career opportunities from 317 organizations across the education industry. A few roles that caught our eye over the past week: