November 23, 2025

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has said she wants to "peel back the layers of federal bureaucracy."
Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Happy Sunday,

Cory here. I hope this newsletter finds you well, maybe girding for travel or a family gathering this week. My boys have two half-days at school on Monday and Tuesday, which is hilarious to me. Since the advent of school, back when kids didn’t take the bus but were dragged by their hair by a domesticated saber-tooth tiger to the school boulder, has anything ever been accomplished on half-days? Besides watching movies – or finger-shadows on the cave wall.

This week’s story is one we’ve been anticipating for months: steps by the Trump administration to not just fire staff at the U.S. Department of Education, but to move the work of entire offices to other federal agencies. To officially close the department, as Trump has pledged to do, this kind of outsourcing was inevitable. The questions now are: How will it work, and is it legal?

Using what are known as interagency agreements, the administration is moving much of the work of the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, which includes managing Title I, a key federal funding stream that helps schools support low-income students, to the U.S. Department of Labor, as well as much of the work of the Office of Postsecondary Education.

The U.S. Department of the Interior would take on much of the work of the department's Office of Indian Education, while the U.S. Department of State would take on international education and foreign language studies programming.

In a Tuesday statement, McMahon said, "The Trump Administration is taking bold action to break up the federal education bureaucracy and return education to the states."

Democrats called the move “outright illegal.”

You can read the full story here.

BTW, we’ll be taking some time off next week (or trying to) and so will our newsletter. Will see you again the first Sunday of December!

— Cory Turner, Correspondent, NPR Ed

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In other news...

Alaska owns dozens of crumbling schools and it wants underfunded districts to take them on. For more than a decade, the Kuspuk School District asked Alaska's education department for the money to fix a rotting elementary school. Over the last year, KYUK, NPR and ProPublica have documented a health and safety crisis inside many rural school buildings across Alaska. Read the story.

— Emily Schwing, Reporter, KYUK

A judge indefinitely bars the Trump administration from fining the University of California over alleged discrimination. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin in San Francisco issued a preliminary injunction barring the administration from cancelling funding to UC, based on alleged discrimination, without giving notice to affected faculty and conducting a hearing, among other requirements. Read the story.

— The Associated Press

Ahead of the holidays, consumer and child advocacy groups warn against AI toys. A nonprofit children's safety organization, Fairplay, is urging gift givers to avoid buying AI toys for children this holiday season, according to an advisory issued on Thursday. Fairplay, along with other child and consumer advocacy groups, say these toys – playthings like plushies, dolls, action figures, and kids' robots embedded with chatbots and other artificial intelligence technologies – can be dangerous. Read the story.

— Chloe Veltman, Culture Correspondent, NPR

Quick question: Do you have a list of old books that you’ve always been meaning to get around to? You know — the sort of book that a friend recommended a hundred years ago, or maybe one that a teacher assigned (and you ignored), or a classic that everyone’s - allegedly - already read? Yep, us too.

Thankfully, we’ve just launched Books We’ve Loved, a brand-new, limited series from our Book of the Day podcast, with new episodes dropping on Saturdays throughout the fall. This is where we’ll be wrangling some of the most compelling lit nerds out there to make the case for picking up a book from the past.

We’re inviting a cast of literary luminaries – authors, critics, and familiar NPR voices – to argue why their book pick is worth your time. We’re asking our guests questions like — why can’t they get this book out of their head? How did this book shift a paradigm, shake the culture, or change their life? And, most importantly, why should you read it now?

Listen Now

An update from the Student Podcast Challenge ...

Calling all college students & educators: It’s still not too late to enter the College Podcast Challenge. The deadline is January 16, which means you have more than a month to learn and make something you’re excited to share with us. Noodle on your big ideas over the holidays! Ask your family, your friends! We can’t wait to listen to whatever you share with us. And, watch this space for our upcoming announcement about the return of the Student Podcast Challenge – for student podcasters in grades four through 12 – for 2026.

— Janet Lee, Assistant Producer, NPR Ed

And here's something to make you smile...

How to talk to kids about Thanksgiving.

You know the drill: Trace your hand, then add the details. Two feet, a beak, a single eyeball. Color it in, and voila! Hand becomes turkey. You know the rest too: The Pilgrims fled England and landed on Plymouth Rock. The native people there, the Wampanoag, taught them to farm the land. In 1621, they sat down together for a thanksgiving feast, and we've been celebrating it ever since. It's a lesson many remember from childhood, but the story has some problems. And, of course, it leaves out what happened to native communities over the next few centuries.

Each year, elementary teachers across the country search for the best way to address the elephant — or turkey — in the room. There isn't a guide: Social studies standards vary by state. Most are intentionally vague. In many states, Thanksgiving is not explicitly mentioned in the standards. And yet children bring their lives into the classroom, leaving educators to decide how to tackle a holiday fraught with broken treaties and forced exodus. Here are some of their strategies.

As always, thank you for reading and listening!

— The NPR Education Team

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