Federal Impact—Funding and Programs that Support Student Learning and Needs

Dawn Bates, a long-time second-grade teacher and Teach Plus Illinois fellow, brings insights from both the classroom and her fellowship. With several years of teaching experience, Dawn is thinking about how shifts in federal support and funding may affect student learning, basic needs, and opportunities beyond the classroom. 

Through her Teach Plus fellowship, which focused on grades K–5, she worked on a project aimed at building teacher confidence in teaching science. While the findings are complete, the team is still finalizing how they will present them to the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), especially as science education (STEM) often lacks professional development and funding compared to subjects like math and reading. She has also helped bring coding to the early grades, making it accessible to students younger than third grade, and recently wrote a piece about the importance of coding. She hopes funding will continue to support these programs. 

Dawn’s school community has benefited from programs made possible by funding, but she worries these could disappear as there are students that rely on programs for free breakfast and lunch, eye care, and access to technology. She is glad her second-grade students have take-home computers and access to educational websites and apps that extend their learning beyond the school day but worries that cuts could jeopardize these supports. 

In addition, Dawn thinks initiatives like Grow Your Own and Golden Apple are important and believes continued investment is essential in supporting aspiring educators along with stipends for student teachers during their student teaching experience. Especially amid federal funding cuts that could impact the pipeline of future educators. In her own district, she is encouraged by the opportunity for teachers to pursue and maintain National Board Certification and hopes that funding to support this certification continues.  

Dawn’s story is a reminder that educators are not only teaching but constantly working to ensure students receive the tools and resources they need to thrive. 

Eucarol Juarez is the Senior Communications Associate for Advance Illinois.

Bringing Visibility to the Impacts of Federal Changes on Illinois Education

This month, news dropped that the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) and at least six universities in our state were suspending a scholarship program that the U.S. Department of Justice called unconstitutional for using race as a qualification.

It was hard to find the name of the program that was suspended – even in the DOJ’s press release – but having confirmed it with a number of credible sources including a program participant, the effort is the Diversifying Higher Education Faculty (DFI) program, an initiative intended to increase the number of minority full-time tenure track faculty and staff at Illinois’ two- and four-year, public and private colleges and universities. 

Decades of research show that when educators share racial and ethnic identities with their students, student academic and non academic outcomes improve. At the college level, student and faculty/staff diversity play a considerable role in underrepresented students’ decision to stay in school. But according to IBHE, ‘the average student attending a public college or university outside the City of Chicago is unlikely to have more than one course with an African American faculty member and unlikely to have even one course with a Latino faculty member during his or her college years.’ This mismatch in representation isn’t unique to Illinois, but plays out in communities across our country and stifles what’s possible for our students and those who seek to teach and mentor them. 

In an effort to ensure that the many and varied impacts of federal changes on education do not go unnoticed or unheard - like the details of the DFI news slipping between the cracks - we are both listening for and actively gathering narratives from students, families, educators, providers, system leaders, and researchers who are living through the effects of education policy changes on their work and lives. But we need your help.

If you are interested in sharing your story for us to uplift on our blog, on social, and our ever-expanding newsletter list of lawmakers, education, researchers, philanthropists, journalists and more, please complete the form linked below. You may use your real name, a pseudonym, or simply list “anonymous.” We only ask that you provide a valid email address so we can follow up with you. 

It is crucial that these experiences are shared so that others may gain awareness and insight into what is happening and how our system, the people who power it, and the people served by it are being affected but also responding to changes. 

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