New governors in Virginia and New Jersey and the winners of more than 200 mayoral races across the nation will shape education policy through key appointments that determine how schools and higher education systems are governed.

While national politics framed many of this year’s races, the most lasting impacts to the industry will likely come through decisions about teacher support, accountability, and student services.

In this week’s edition, our Head of K-12 Communications, Thomas Rodgers, breaks down how the outcomes of this week’s elections could shape education for the foreseeable future.

This week, voters across America took to the polls for highly-anticipated elections, with major implications for education. We reviewed the education policy plans and priorities of newly-elected leaders in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City to see what their agendas may signal for the years ahead.

Voters elected Abigail Spanberger as governor and Jay Jones as attorney general.

Spanberger’s education plan: Her Strengthening Virginia Schools Plan focuses on strengthening K-12 schools by boosting teacher pay, expanding early childhood programs, and addressing workforce shortages. Her plan also calls for improving literacy and math outcomes, modernizing assessments, and increasing wraparound services. She has also pledged to make college more affordable, expand dual enrollment opportunities, and support HBCUs.

Go deeper: While both roles are governor-appointed, the secretary of education is a cabinet-level position responsible for coordinating policy across early childhood, K–12, and higher education—linking the governor’s priorities to agencies and institutions statewide. Meanwhile, the superintendent of public instruction serves as Virginia’s chief executive for K–12 schools, overseeing standards, assessments, and school improvement.

Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill will shape state education policy through appointments to the commissioner of education, state board of education, and secretary of higher education.

During the election, Sherrill campaigned on expanding affordable pre-K and kindergarten statewide, investing in tutoring to address learning loss, and increasing school-based mental health services. Sherrill also supports free school meals for all students and stronger pathways connecting high schools, colleges, and employers.

Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City mayoral race puts the nation’s largest school system—serving nearly 900,000 students—under new leadership. [Chalkbeat] 

Colorado: Voters approved Propositions LL and MM to support universal school meals. The measures raise taxes on higher-income households to fund meals, staff pay, and local food purchasing programs. [Colorado Public Radio]

Texas: Two major constitutional amendments passed with implications for education and workforce development.

36 governors, seven state superintendents, and more than 6,000 legislative seats will be on ballots in 2026.

The Education Department’s Reimagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) committee concluded its negotiated rulemaking session this week, having reached consensus on the full package of federal student loan-related changes outlined in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The proposed rules, if implemented, would reshape how students and families finance higher education.

This is the first of two negotiated rulemaking committees ED is convening to set the rules for the OBBBA, with the second, the Accountability in Higher Education and Access through Demand-driven Workforce Pell Committee (AHEAD), which will set the highly anticipated regulation around Workforce Pell, set to meet December 8-12 and January 5-9. 

The RISE committee reviewed and agreed upon 17 regulatory provisions included in the OBBBA that aim to reduce student loan debt and simplify pathways to repayment for borrowers. This includes measures like eliminating the Grad PLUS program, capping Parent PLUS loans, and consolidating the various existing repayment plans into one Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP).

The RISE committee also crafted regulations related to the loan changes within OBBBA, which also include setting annual student loan limits for new borrowers at $20,500 for graduate students and $50,000 for professional students, with aggregate limits of $100,000 and $200,000, respectively. These rule changes would end a 20-year rule that allowed graduate students to borrow up to the cost of attendance on an unlimited basis.

The RISE committee also came to consensus on an extremely narrow definition for professional students, limited to those in degree programs like medicine, law, dentistry, clinical psychology, theology, and other academically similar programs. This definition is more expansive than the Department’s initial proposal, which only classed 10 degree programs as professional, but less encompassing than alternatives suggested by negotiators. [Inside Higher Ed]

In the coming weeks, ED will publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in the Federal Register. Because the committee reached “consensus” on ED’s draft regulatory changes, the Department is largely bound to publish the rules as agreed to by the committee, barring minor technical changes found during an executive branch review process. Upon its publication, the proposed rules will be subject to a 30-day public comment period. 

Typically, regulatory changes made to Title IV programs must be published as a final rule in the Federal Register by November 1 in a given year for them to go into effect July of the following year. However, given the specific implementation dates specified in the text of OBBBA, ED’s press release suggests that the agency expects these rules to go into effect in July 2026 to align with congressional intent.

Go deeper: Please reach out to our team with any questions.

On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) held a hearing, “Registered Apprenticeships: Scaling the Workforce for the Future,” to examine how to expand and modernize apprenticeship programs to meet growing workforce needs. Witnesses—Josh Laney of the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN), Dr. Latitia McCane, Gardner Carrick, John Downey, and Brent Booker—emphasized the importance of employer engagement, competency-based models, and broader access in streamlining apprenticeship registration and scaling these programs nationwide to close critical workforce gaps.

Tutoring management platform Pearl released a new report this week exploring how tutoring has evolved since the pandemic, and where it’s heading next. Drawing on data from over 1 million tutoring sessions and interviews with over 20 leaders across the K-12 tutoring ecosystem, “The State of Tutoring 2025: Tutoring in Transition” dives into how districts are shifting their tutoring strategy from emergency learning recovery to an enduring part of the instructional core.

Check out W/A Jobs, which features 3,409 career opportunities from 312 organizations across the education industry. A few roles that caught our eye over the past week:

Opportunity for state leaders: The National Governors Association (NGA) is accepting applications for its Center for Best Practices’ Policy Academy. The Policy Academy will run from January 2026 through June 2027; participants will work to develop state data dashboards that measure student and system success across academics, workforce and postsecondary readiness, civic preparation, and student experience and wellbeing. Applications are due December 4.