This week, there’s been no shortage of news. 

Among other things, the Education Department published new guidance that promotes responsible design of classroom technologies and addresses rising “tech-lash” in education, as well as a sweeping regulatory proposal that aims to overhaul higher ed accreditation as we know it.

Our team has the inside scoop. Got questions? We’d love to hear from you.

In this week’s edition, we round up the “Top 10 Articles of the Week” and take a closer look at:

  • Education Department Tells Schools to Judge Edtech by Outcomes, Not Screen Time

  • 🗓️ Mark Your Calendars: A Different World Returns September 24

  • ED Unveils Draft Rules on Accreditation Reform; Continues to Target November 1 Deadline

  • Who’s Applying to College These Days?

Top 10 Articles of the Week from W/A’s What We’re Reading Newsletter

  1. As Students Return, America’s Classrooms Are Dangerously Hot [TIME]

  2. Alabama family says virtual reality program helps people with autism: ‘Encouraging’ [AL.com, subscription model]

  3. Families Don’t Want School Choice, They Want Their Child to Read [The 74]

  4. Most Teens Use AI for Homework, Even if Some Think They’re Missing Out on Learning [KQED]

  5. A Is for Average [The Assembly NC]

  6. HBCUs Want to Shift From Survival to Sovereignty [Stanford Social Innovation Review]

  7. Almost Half of Colleges Haven’t Fully Submitted Student Data [Inside Higher Ed, subscription model]

  8. The HBCU Creed: We still punch above our weight [The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, subscription model]

  9. Male Gen Zers are dropping out of the US job market in droves [The New York Post]

  10. Career pathways are growing but evidence isn’t [Fast Company]

What We’re Reading: PK-12 and Higher Education

What We’re Reading: PK-12 and Higher Education

A curated daily roundup of PK-12 and higher education news, reports, and research — delivered free every Mon–Thu evening by Whiteboard Advisors.

Education Department Tells Schools to Judge Edtech by Outcomes, Not Screen Time

Photo by Thomas Park on Unsplash

New federal guidance separates instructional technology from recreational use and asks schools and providers to prove educational value.

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) entered the school screen-time debate on Thursday, issuing guidance that encourages states and districts to judge classroom technology by its impact on learning rather than by the minutes students spend on devices.

The nonbinding Dear Colleague letter, signed by Assistant Secretary of Elementary and Secondary Education Kirsten Baesler, argues that recreational and instructional technologies are different problems that should not be governed by the same policies.

What the Guidance Says

ED encourages states and districts to:

  • Separate policies governing recreational technology from those governing instructional tools.

  • Evaluate products on learning outcomes and instructional value, and build evidence into procurement and renewal decisions.

  • Review implementation after purchase, and provide professional learning that helps teachers use technology well.

  • Weigh how technology expands access for rural students, students with disabilities and others whose opportunities depend on it.

Providers are expected to publish independent evaluations whenever feasible, disclose their products' capabilities and limitations, minimize unnecessary screen exposure, and improve their tools using classroom evidence.

The key line: "Responsible design is the floor."

Between the Lines

The letter reframes evidence as a procurement question, pointing states to the evidence framework established under the Every Student Succeeds Act and encouraging districts to weigh randomized controlled trials alongside local outcome data, implementation reviews, and feedback from educators and parents. It builds on the July 2025 letter from Secretary Linda McMahon, which laid out five principles for responsible AI use: that solutions should be educator-led, ethical, accessible, transparent, and protective of student data.

The Department also cites Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan, and Texas for exploring contracting models (e.g., outcomes-based contracts) built around shared performance measures rather than product adoption or usage metrics. To date, these models have focused largely on tutoring, but they are beginning to take hold with education technology use cases too.

What They're Saying

  • Jean-Claude Brizard, president and CEO of Digital Promise, told Education Week that the guidance gives district leaders information and leverage when responding to calls for blanket limits.

  • Helen Crompton of the Research Institute of Digital Innovation in Learning told EdSurge she would prefer a “national floor” for privacy, accessibility and student data protections. She also cautioned against treating randomized trials as the only meaningful evidence.

  • Richard Culatta, CEO of the International Society for Transforming Education, said the field has spent years discussing screen time as though a math tutoring app and TikTok were the same thing.

  • InnovateEDU CEO Erin Mote called the guidance a shift from counting minutes to measuring screen value, and described evidence as "the ticket to enter America's classrooms."

What to Watch

The letter creates no federal requirements and its impact depends on whether states and districts translate it into procurement standards, implementation reviews and renewal decisions.

🗓️ Mark Your Calendars: A Different World Returns September 24

Netflix has released the trailer for its A Different World reboot and sequel series, premiering September 24. The original ran from 1987 to 1993, and followed students at the fictional historically Black Hillman College, becoming one of the most visible pop-culture windows into HBCU life for a generation of viewers who'd never set foot on a Black college campus. Debbie Allen, who directs the premiere episode, said the goal is for young people to see themselves thriving on a college campus, making friends and building a life.

ED Unveils Draft Rules on Accreditation Reform; Continues to Target November 1 Deadline

This week, the U.S. Department of Education published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM), reinforcing its intent to reform the U.S. higher education accreditation system. 

The proposed regulations are the product of ED’s Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization (AIM) Negotiated Rulemaking Committee, which convened earlier this year. As we’ve covered previously, the AIM Committee finalized a regulatory proposal to implement many of the priorities first highlighted in President Trump’s April 2025 executive order. 

According to ED, the regulations focus on achieving four primary goals of the Trump administration:

  1. Promoting academic programs and activities at higher education institutions that are focused on student outcomes.

  2. Reducing barriers that limit competition, innovation, and new education models that advance credential and degree completion.

  3. Holding institutions accountable for discrimination and other unlawful acts.

  4. Advancing academic freedom, intellectual inquiry, and student learning by ensuring that accreditation requires that institutions support and prioritize intellectual diversity among faculty.

The regulatory proposal is sprawling in scope, covering everything from updating the process by which accrediting agencies are recognized by ED to how they conduct oversight of institutions they accredit. Some of the more noteworthy provisions include:

  • Transfer Credits: Provides students seeking to transfer into their institution with a written rationale for each transfer credit that the institution rejected. This would be the first federal policy to address long-debated issues with transfer and articulation. 

  • Conflict of Interest Policy: Requires accreditors to “adopt procedures necessary to manage conflicts of interest and prevent collusion between agencies, the institutions or programs which they accredit, related, associated, or affiliated trade associations, or professional organizations.” This includes a focus on programmatic accreditors, which have been framed as “monopolies” and accused of credential inflation. 

  • Evaluation of Student Outcomes: Adds new regulatory language requiring accrediting agencies to review program-level data including retention rates, completion rates, graduation rates, and/or employment outcomes as part of their decisions to accredit institutions. Even prior to the rulemaking, accreditors had been increasingly focused on outcomes, including initiatives like WSCUC’s KID Dashboard.

  • Streamlining the Recognition Process: Changes the process by which ED recognizes accreditors as authorized gatekeepers of Title IV funds for new accrediting agencies seeking approvals.

  • Simplifying the Process of Changing Accreditors: Streamlines the process for institutions seeking to change their accreditor to create more competition among accrediting bodies and choice for institutions.


What’s Next

Since the AIM Committee reached consensus on a regulatory proposal at its final May meeting, the NPRM published by ED this week is substantively similar to that agreed upon draft. ED is collecting public comments on the proposed regulations through September 21, which will be taken into consideration by ED before a “final rule” is published.

Should ED publish the regulations by November 1, they will go into effect in July 2027. If ED does not publish the regulations as a final rule by November, the new regulations would not go into effect until July 2028 (barring statutory direction from Congress to the contrary). We’ll continue to monitor the progression of the proposed regulations closely.

Who’s Applying to College These Days?

The Common App, which offers a simplified application to more than 1,100 colleges and universities across the U.S., released this week a report on final applicant trends from the 2025-26 college admissions season. The report sheds light on how first-year college applicants are approaching the admissions process across demographic, geographic, and socioeconomic lines.

Key Findings

  • Applicant and application counts are up: More than 1.5 million distinct first-year applicants applied to 1,146 Common App member institutions in 2025-26 (+2% YOY). Applicants are also submitting a greater volume of applications (+6% YOY), and on average, applicants are applying to more schools than in previous years (+4% YOY).

  • Growth concentrates around historically underserved applicant groups: The number of applicants from low-income backgrounds, first-generation applicants, and/or applicants who identify as an underrepresented minority race/ethnicity are growing at faster rates than their peers.

  • International applicant rates decline by double digits: The number of international applicants decreased by 10% between 2024-25 and 2025-26, with the most pronounced declines from Asia (-11% YOY) and Africa (-17% YOY). This steep decline, according to Common App Senior Data Scientist Dr. Rodney Hughes, may be driven by concerns about students obtaining student visas amid tightening restrictions and intensifying recruitment competition from institutions outside of the U.S.

  • Standardized testing is making a comeback with applicants, but not institutions: The number of applicants that reported a test score rose 11% YOY, and the number of applicants who did not report a test score dropped 5% YOY. Importantly, low-income applicants, first-gen applicants, and those who identify as an underrepresented minority race/ethnicity remain less likely to report a test score. That said, only 5% of Common App member institutions required a test score to submit an application in 2025-26, still down dramatically from about 55% prepandemic.

  • Applicants lean toward public, less selective institutions: Applications to public members grew more (+7%) than those to private members since 2024-25 (+5%); meanwhile, application growth was slowest for the most selective institutions (with admit rates <25%).

  • Whiteboard Advisors announced that Sydni Dunn has joined the firm full-time as a senior director. Dunn previously served as press secretary and director of communications at the Louisiana Department of Education; earlier in her career, she reported for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Welcome, Sydni!

  • Aaron Lemon-Strauss, who has served as executive director of the U.S. Department of Education’s FAFSA program since 2024, joined Recoding America as its chief digital and AI officer.

  • StriveTogether named Eshauna Smith as its first president. Smith most recently served as director of community impact at Ballmer Group; she was also previously the CEO of Urban Alliance.

  • Axim Collaborative selected Louis Soares, former chief learning and innovation officer at the American Council on Education, as its next vice president of partnerships. 

  • Veteran public education leader Millard House II joined Region 4 Education Service Center as director of strategic initiatives, where he will work with superintendents, school boards, and school district leaders to strengthen organizational systems and support with leadership development.

Check out W/A Jobs, which features 3,564 career opportunities from 327 organizations across the education industry. A few roles that caught our eye over the past week:

  • BookNook is hiring an HR Manager, People Operations to own all day-to-day human resources functions including payroll and benefits administration and talent acquisition and performance management.

  • EDU.FYI is hiring a Head of Operations and Program Management to create, improve, and maintain operating procedures across key business functions.

  • General Assembly is hiring a Senior Account Director, Enterprise to initiate and maintain strategic client relationships that drive revenue growth.

  • ISTE is hiring a Senior Marketing Manager to lead marketing efforts for its digital platforms and professional learning product portfolios. Priority to candidates based in D.C., Maryland, or Virginia.

  • Clever is hiring an Engineering Manager to lead the organization’s technical strategy and scale the organization’s highest-visibility digital interfaces.

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