projects on education

Research Topics & Ideas: Education

170+ Research Ideas To Fast-Track Your Project

If you’re just starting out exploring education-related topics for your dissertation, thesis or research project, you’ve come to the right place. In this post, we’ll help kickstart your research topic ideation process by providing a hearty list of research topics and ideas , including examples from actual dissertations and theses..

PS – This is just the start…

We know it’s exciting to run through a list of research topics, but please keep in mind that this list is just a starting point . To develop a suitable education-related research topic, you’ll need to identify a clear and convincing research gap , and a viable plan of action to fill that gap.

If this sounds foreign to you, check out our free research topic webinar that explores how to find and refine a high-quality research topic, from scratch. Alternatively, if you’d like hands-on help, consider our 1-on-1 coaching service .

Overview: Education Research Topics

• How to find a research topic (video)
• List of 50+ education-related research topics/ideas
• List of 120+ level-specific research topics 
• Examples of actual dissertation topics in education
• Tips to fast-track your topic ideation (video)
• Free Webinar : Topic Ideation 101
• Where to get extra help

Education-Related Research Topics & Ideas

Below you’ll find a list of education-related research topics and idea kickstarters. These are fairly broad and flexible to various contexts, so keep in mind that you will need to refine them a little. Nevertheless, they should inspire some ideas for your project.

• The impact of school funding on student achievement
• The effects of social and emotional learning on student well-being
• The effects of parental involvement on student behaviour
• The impact of teacher training on student learning
• The impact of classroom design on student learning
• The impact of poverty on education
• The use of student data to inform instruction
• The role of parental involvement in education
• The effects of mindfulness practices in the classroom
• The use of technology in the classroom
• The role of critical thinking in education
• The use of formative and summative assessments in the classroom
• The use of differentiated instruction in the classroom
• The use of gamification in education
• The effects of teacher burnout on student learning
• The impact of school leadership on student achievement
• The effects of teacher diversity on student outcomes
• The role of teacher collaboration in improving student outcomes
• The implementation of blended and online learning
• The effects of teacher accountability on student achievement
• The effects of standardized testing on student learning
• The effects of classroom management on student behaviour
• The effects of school culture on student achievement
• The use of student-centred learning in the classroom
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on student outcomes
• The achievement gap in minority and low-income students
• The use of culturally responsive teaching in the classroom
• The impact of teacher professional development on student learning
• The use of project-based learning in the classroom
• The effects of teacher expectations on student achievement
• The use of adaptive learning technology in the classroom
• The impact of teacher turnover on student learning
• The effects of teacher recruitment and retention on student learning
• The impact of early childhood education on later academic success
• The impact of parental involvement on student engagement
• The use of positive reinforcement in education
• The impact of school climate on student engagement
• The role of STEM education in preparing students for the workforce
• The effects of school choice on student achievement
• The use of technology in the form of online tutoring

Level-Specific Research Topics

Looking for research topics for a specific level of education? We’ve got you covered. Below you can find research topic ideas for primary, secondary and tertiary-level education contexts. Click the relevant level to view the respective list.

Research Topics: Pick An Education Level

Primary education.

• Investigating the effects of peer tutoring on academic achievement in primary school
• Exploring the benefits of mindfulness practices in primary school classrooms
• Examining the effects of different teaching strategies on primary school students’ problem-solving skills
• The use of storytelling as a teaching strategy in primary school literacy instruction
• The role of cultural diversity in promoting tolerance and understanding in primary schools
• The impact of character education programs on moral development in primary school students
• Investigating the use of technology in enhancing primary school mathematics education
• The impact of inclusive curriculum on promoting equity and diversity in primary schools
• The impact of outdoor education programs on environmental awareness in primary school students
• The influence of school climate on student motivation and engagement in primary schools
• Investigating the effects of early literacy interventions on reading comprehension in primary school students
• The impact of parental involvement in school decision-making processes on student achievement in primary schools
• Exploring the benefits of inclusive education for students with special needs in primary schools
• Investigating the effects of teacher-student feedback on academic motivation in primary schools
• The role of technology in developing digital literacy skills in primary school students
• Effective strategies for fostering a growth mindset in primary school students
• Investigating the role of parental support in reducing academic stress in primary school children
• The role of arts education in fostering creativity and self-expression in primary school students
• Examining the effects of early childhood education programs on primary school readiness
• Examining the effects of homework on primary school students’ academic performance
• The role of formative assessment in improving learning outcomes in primary school classrooms
• The impact of teacher-student relationships on academic outcomes in primary school
• Investigating the effects of classroom environment on student behavior and learning outcomes in primary schools
• Investigating the role of creativity and imagination in primary school curriculum
• The impact of nutrition and healthy eating programs on academic performance in primary schools
• The impact of social-emotional learning programs on primary school students’ well-being and academic performance
• The role of parental involvement in academic achievement of primary school children
• Examining the effects of classroom management strategies on student behavior in primary school
• The role of school leadership in creating a positive school climate Exploring the benefits of bilingual education in primary schools
• The effectiveness of project-based learning in developing critical thinking skills in primary school students
• The role of inquiry-based learning in fostering curiosity and critical thinking in primary school students
• The effects of class size on student engagement and achievement in primary schools
• Investigating the effects of recess and physical activity breaks on attention and learning in primary school
• Exploring the benefits of outdoor play in developing gross motor skills in primary school children
• The effects of educational field trips on knowledge retention in primary school students
• Examining the effects of inclusive classroom practices on students’ attitudes towards diversity in primary schools
• The impact of parental involvement in homework on primary school students’ academic achievement
• Investigating the effectiveness of different assessment methods in primary school classrooms
• The influence of physical activity and exercise on cognitive development in primary school children
• Exploring the benefits of cooperative learning in promoting social skills in primary school students

Secondary Education

• Investigating the effects of school discipline policies on student behavior and academic success in secondary education
• The role of social media in enhancing communication and collaboration among secondary school students
• The impact of school leadership on teacher effectiveness and student outcomes in secondary schools
• Investigating the effects of technology integration on teaching and learning in secondary education
• Exploring the benefits of interdisciplinary instruction in promoting critical thinking skills in secondary schools
• The impact of arts education on creativity and self-expression in secondary school students
• The effectiveness of flipped classrooms in promoting student learning in secondary education
• The role of career guidance programs in preparing secondary school students for future employment
• Investigating the effects of student-centered learning approaches on student autonomy and academic success in secondary schools
• The impact of socio-economic factors on educational attainment in secondary education
• Investigating the impact of project-based learning on student engagement and academic achievement in secondary schools
• Investigating the effects of multicultural education on cultural understanding and tolerance in secondary schools
• The influence of standardized testing on teaching practices and student learning in secondary education
• Investigating the effects of classroom management strategies on student behavior and academic engagement in secondary education
• The influence of teacher professional development on instructional practices and student outcomes in secondary schools
• The role of extracurricular activities in promoting holistic development and well-roundedness in secondary school students
• Investigating the effects of blended learning models on student engagement and achievement in secondary education
• The role of physical education in promoting physical health and well-being among secondary school students
• Investigating the effects of gender on academic achievement and career aspirations in secondary education
• Exploring the benefits of multicultural literature in promoting cultural awareness and empathy among secondary school students
• The impact of school counseling services on student mental health and well-being in secondary schools
• Exploring the benefits of vocational education and training in preparing secondary school students for the workforce
• The role of digital literacy in preparing secondary school students for the digital age
• The influence of parental involvement on academic success and well-being of secondary school students
• The impact of social-emotional learning programs on secondary school students’ well-being and academic success
• The role of character education in fostering ethical and responsible behavior in secondary school students
• Examining the effects of digital citizenship education on responsible and ethical technology use among secondary school students
• The impact of parental involvement in school decision-making processes on student outcomes in secondary schools
• The role of educational technology in promoting personalized learning experiences in secondary schools
• The impact of inclusive education on the social and academic outcomes of students with disabilities in secondary schools
• The influence of parental support on academic motivation and achievement in secondary education
• The role of school climate in promoting positive behavior and well-being among secondary school students
• Examining the effects of peer mentoring programs on academic achievement and social-emotional development in secondary schools
• Examining the effects of teacher-student relationships on student motivation and achievement in secondary schools
• Exploring the benefits of service-learning programs in promoting civic engagement among secondary school students
• The impact of educational policies on educational equity and access in secondary education
• Examining the effects of homework on academic achievement and student well-being in secondary education
• Investigating the effects of different assessment methods on student performance in secondary schools
• Examining the effects of single-sex education on academic performance and gender stereotypes in secondary schools
• The role of mentoring programs in supporting the transition from secondary to post-secondary education

Tertiary Education

• The role of student support services in promoting academic success and well-being in higher education
• The impact of internationalization initiatives on students’ intercultural competence and global perspectives in tertiary education
• Investigating the effects of active learning classrooms and learning spaces on student engagement and learning outcomes in tertiary education
• Exploring the benefits of service-learning experiences in fostering civic engagement and social responsibility in higher education
• The influence of learning communities and collaborative learning environments on student academic and social integration in higher education
• Exploring the benefits of undergraduate research experiences in fostering critical thinking and scientific inquiry skills
• Investigating the effects of academic advising and mentoring on student retention and degree completion in higher education
• The role of student engagement and involvement in co-curricular activities on holistic student development in higher education
• The impact of multicultural education on fostering cultural competence and diversity appreciation in higher education
• The role of internships and work-integrated learning experiences in enhancing students’ employability and career outcomes
• Examining the effects of assessment and feedback practices on student learning and academic achievement in tertiary education
• The influence of faculty professional development on instructional practices and student outcomes in tertiary education
• The influence of faculty-student relationships on student success and well-being in tertiary education
• The impact of college transition programs on students’ academic and social adjustment to higher education
• The impact of online learning platforms on student learning outcomes in higher education
• The impact of financial aid and scholarships on access and persistence in higher education
• The influence of student leadership and involvement in extracurricular activities on personal development and campus engagement
• Exploring the benefits of competency-based education in developing job-specific skills in tertiary students
• Examining the effects of flipped classroom models on student learning and retention in higher education
• Exploring the benefits of online collaboration and virtual team projects in developing teamwork skills in tertiary students
• Investigating the effects of diversity and inclusion initiatives on campus climate and student experiences in tertiary education
• The influence of study abroad programs on intercultural competence and global perspectives of college students
• Investigating the effects of peer mentoring and tutoring programs on student retention and academic performance in tertiary education
• Investigating the effectiveness of active learning strategies in promoting student engagement and achievement in tertiary education
• Investigating the effects of blended learning models and hybrid courses on student learning and satisfaction in higher education
• The role of digital literacy and information literacy skills in supporting student success in the digital age
• Investigating the effects of experiential learning opportunities on career readiness and employability of college students
• The impact of e-portfolios on student reflection, self-assessment, and showcasing of learning in higher education
• The role of technology in enhancing collaborative learning experiences in tertiary classrooms
• The impact of research opportunities on undergraduate student engagement and pursuit of advanced degrees
• Examining the effects of competency-based assessment on measuring student learning and achievement in tertiary education
• Examining the effects of interdisciplinary programs and courses on critical thinking and problem-solving skills in college students
• The role of inclusive education and accessibility in promoting equitable learning experiences for diverse student populations
• The role of career counseling and guidance in supporting students’ career decision-making in tertiary education
• The influence of faculty diversity and representation on student success and inclusive learning environments in higher education

Education-Related Dissertations & Theses

While the ideas we’ve presented above are a decent starting point for finding a research topic in education, they are fairly generic and non-specific. So, it helps to look at actual dissertations and theses in the education space to see how this all comes together in practice.

Below, we’ve included a selection of education-related research projects to help refine your thinking. These are actual dissertations and theses, written as part of Master’s and PhD-level programs, so they can provide some useful insight as to what a research topic looks like in practice.

• From Rural to Urban: Education Conditions of Migrant Children in China (Wang, 2019)
• Energy Renovation While Learning English: A Guidebook for Elementary ESL Teachers (Yang, 2019)
• A Reanalyses of Intercorrelational Matrices of Visual and Verbal Learners’ Abilities, Cognitive Styles, and Learning Preferences (Fox, 2020)
• A study of the elementary math program utilized by a mid-Missouri school district (Barabas, 2020)
• Instructor formative assessment practices in virtual learning environments : a posthumanist sociomaterial perspective (Burcks, 2019)
• Higher education students services: a qualitative study of two mid-size universities’ direct exchange programs (Kinde, 2020)
• Exploring editorial leadership : a qualitative study of scholastic journalism advisers teaching leadership in Missouri secondary schools (Lewis, 2020)
• Selling the virtual university: a multimodal discourse analysis of marketing for online learning (Ludwig, 2020)
• Advocacy and accountability in school counselling: assessing the use of data as related to professional self-efficacy (Matthews, 2020)
• The use of an application screening assessment as a predictor of teaching retention at a midwestern, K-12, public school district (Scarbrough, 2020)
• Core values driving sustained elite performance cultures (Beiner, 2020)
• Educative features of upper elementary Eureka math curriculum (Dwiggins, 2020)
• How female principals nurture adult learning opportunities in successful high schools with challenging student demographics (Woodward, 2020)
• The disproportionality of Black Males in Special Education: A Case Study Analysis of Educator Perceptions in a Southeastern Urban High School (McCrae, 2021)

As you can see, these research topics are a lot more focused than the generic topic ideas we presented earlier. So, in order for you to develop a high-quality research topic, you’ll need to get specific and laser-focused on a specific context with specific variables of interest.  In the video below, we explore some other important things you’ll need to consider when crafting your research topic.

Get 1-On-1 Help

If you’re still unsure about how to find a quality research topic within education, check out our Research Topic Kickstarter service, which is the perfect starting point for developing a unique, well-justified research topic.

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65+ Real-World Project-Based Learning Ideas for All Ages and Interests

Find and implement solutions to real-world problems.

Project-based learning is a hot topic in many schools these days, as educators work to make learning more meaningful for students. As students conduct hands-on projects addressing real-world issues, they dig deeper and make personal connections to the knowledge and skills they’re gaining. But not just any project fits into this concept. Learn more about strong project-based learning ideas, and find examples for any age or passion.

What is project-based learning?

Project-based learning (PBL) uses real-world projects and student-directed activities to build knowledge and skills. Kids choose a real-world topic that’s meaningful to them (some people call these “passion projects”), so they’re engaged in the process from the beginning. These projects are long-term, taking weeks, months, or even a full semester or school year. Students may complete them independently or working in small groups. Learn much more about project-based learning here.

What makes a good PBL project?

In many ways, PBL is more like the work adults do in their daily jobs, especially because student efforts have potential real-world effects. A strong PBL project:

• Addresses a real-world issue or problem
• Requires sustained and independent inquiry, in and out of the classroom
• Allows students voice and choice throughout the project
• Combines elements of many disciplines
• Includes collaboration with public partners, such as universities, community organizations, or businesses
• Produces a public product that is seen by those outside the school community
• Covers a complete process, including activities like research, design, production, marketing or public awareness, and enlisting supporters or investors

Outdoor Project-Based Learning Ideas

• Create a new local park, or improve an existing one by adding new features or providing needed maintenance.
• Plant a community garden to provide food for a soup kitchen, food pantry, or other organization.
• Design and create a butterfly, pollinator, or other wildlife garden to support the local ecosystem.
• Build a new walking or biking trail that’s safe for people of all ages to use.
• Devise and implement a way to reduce litter in your community.
• Set up and manage a school or community compost pile, and distribute the resulting soil to those who need it most.
• Find and help the public use a new way to grow food that requires less soil, water, or fertilizers, which are in short supply in some parts of the world.
• Design, build, and install a completely unique piece of playground equipment that serves a specific purpose or need.

School Community Project-Based Learning Ideas

• Start a comprehensive recycling program at school, or substantially improve participation in an existing one.
• Add collaborative artwork like murals or other displays to school hallways, bathrooms, or grounds.
• Determine a location or program at your school that needs improvement, then make a plan, raise the funds, and implement your ideas.
• Come up with ways to celebrate your school’s diversity and improve relationships between all students.
• Start and run a school store , including inventory, financial plans, and marketing.
• Write a school handbook for new students, with tips and tricks for helping them feel at home.
• Figure out how to offer healthier, better-tasting meals and snacks in the school cafeteria.
• Implement a mentoring program for older students to help younger students, with planned activities and appropriate training for older students.
• Design and propose a new style of grading system that ensures equity.
• Find ways to improve the indoor recess experience at your school.
• Set up and run a new school newspaper, magazine, podcast, video channel, etc.

Greater Community Project-Based Learning Ideas

• Coordinate a community art project in a central location to celebrate local culture or artists.
• Set up a program for schoolkids to socialize with senior citizens in nursing homes, hospitals, or retirement communities.
• Create a program to offer free translation services for ESL families in the community.
• Help a local animal shelter improve its facilities, or find new ways to match homeless pets with their forever families.
• Build and maintain Little Free Libraries around your community, especially in underserved areas.
• Help local businesses become more environmentally conscious, increasing sustainability and decreasing waste.
• Create and lead a walking tour of your community, highlighting its culture, history, landmarks, and more.
• Find a way to record and celebrate local voices in your community’s history.
• Come up with ideas for welcoming immigrants and other newcomers to your community.
• Set up a series of events that will encourage the community to mix and experience each others’ foods, cultures, and more.
• Create and implement a new program to inspire a love of books and reading in preschool students.
• Set up and help run a new charitable organization your community needs.

Social Issues Project-Based Learning Ideas

• Start an awareness campaign on a topic that’s important to you, like anti-bullying, healthy living, protecting the environment, civil rights, equality and equity, etc.
• Come up with and implement ways to increase voter turnout in your community, especially among younger voters.
• Write, record, and share with a wider audience your own TED Talk–style video on an issue that hasn’t been covered yet or on which you have a unique perspective.
• Devise and implement ways for unheard voices to be amplified in your school or community.
• Write and publicly perform a play that highlights a social issue that’s important to you.
• Look for areas in your community that present challenges to those with disabilities, and help to improve them to overcome those challenges.
• Research, write, and publicly present and defend a position paper on an issue that’s important to your community.
• Choose a real court case, then research the law and work with legal experts to prepare and present your own case as you would in a courtroom.
• Write, edit, seek, and incorporate real-world feedback, and publish or publicly present your own book, poem, or song on an issue that’s important to you.
• Start a program to teach a specific group (e.g., preschoolers, senior citizens, business owners) to care for and protect the environment.
• Plan and hold a fundraiser to support an issue you care about.
• Choose a law you feel is unjust, and write, research, and publicly present and defend a position paper about your desired change.

STEM Project-Based Learning Ideas

• Create an app that meets a specific purpose for a specific audience.
• Invent something new that the world needs, and then fund, create, and sell your product in the community.
• Design a game to help students learn important STEM concepts.
• Find a simple way to improve an existing product, especially if it cuts costs or improves environmental sustainability.
• Explore ways to reduce the amount of waste we produce, especially plastic and other landfill-bound items.
• Write a book or graphic novel that’s entertaining but also teaches kids about science or math.
• Devise new ways to provide clean drinking water to communities where water is scarce.
• Build an effective solar oven people can use to cook during extended power outages, or in areas where electricity isn’t available.
• Work with a university or STEM organization to gather, analyze, and present real-world scientific data.
• Design a building to fit a specific purpose or need, including researching the requirements and zoning laws, accurately drafting a plan, determining the costs, and presenting the plan to the proposed client.
• Create an interactive hands-on exhibit to teach people about STEM concepts.
• Determine a type of website you believe is missing, then research, build, and publish the site you envision.

Creative Arts Project-Based Learning Ideas

• Organize an art show for the community, seeking out those who ordinarily might not have a chance to display their work.
• Create and teach an art class in your area of expertise to children, the elderly, or another segment of the population.
• Design a mural for an area in your community that needs beautification, and seek funding or other assistance from community members to install it.
• Write a play about a topic that’s meaningful to you or your community. Work with the community to stage a performance for all to attend.
• Invite local dancers to perform at a school or community Festival of Dance, highlighting a variety of cultures and dance styles.
• Start a regular writer’s workshop where community writers can come together to share and seek feedback. Invite local authors or publishing experts to speak as guests.
• Collect stories, poems, and essays from local authors, and put them together into a book. Sell the book to raise money for a cause that’s important to local writers.
• Gather singers or instrumentalists from your community into a choir or band. Put on a concert to raise money for a special cause, or take your choir on tour to local retirement homes, hospitals, etc.
• Write a song about a person or cause that’s important to you. Produce and record the song, then find a way to share it with others.
• Make a short film about a local hero, community event, or local place. Invite others to do the same, and organize a local film festival.

What are some your favorite project-based learning ideas? Come share your thoughts in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook !

Plus, meaningful service learning projects for kids and teens ..

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Twenty Ideas for Engaging Projects

Twenty ideas for getting engaging projects going in your classroom.

The start of the school year offers an ideal time to introduce students to project-based learning. By starting with engaging projects, you'll grab their interest while establishing a solid foundation of important skills, such as knowing how to conduct research, engage experts, and collaborate with peers. In honor of Edutopia's 20th anniversary, here are 20 project ideas to get learning off to a good start.

1. Flat Stanley Refresh: Flat Stanley literacy projects are perennial favorites for inspiring students to communicate and connect, often across great distances. Now Flat Stanley has his own apps for iPhone and iPad, along with new online resources. Project founder Dale Hubert is recently retired from the classroom, but he's still generating fresh ideas to bring learning alive in the "flatlands."

2. PBL is No Accident: In West Virginia, project-based learning has been adopted as a statewide strategy for improving teaching and learning. Teachers don't have to look far to find good project ideas. In this CNN story about the state's educational approach, read about a project that grew out of a fender-bender in a school parking lot. When students were asked to come up with a better design for the lot, they applied their understanding of geometry, civics, law, engineering, and public speaking. Find more good ideas in West Virginia's Teach21 project library.

3. Defy Gravity: Give your students a chance to investigate what happens near zero gravity by challenging them to design an experiment for NASA to conduct at its 2.2 second drop tower in Brookpark, Ohio. Separate NASA programs are offered for middle school and high school. Or, propose a project that may land you a seat on the ultimate roller coaster (aka: the "vomit comet"), NASA aircraft that produces periods of micro and hyper gravity ranging from 0 to 2 g's. Proposal deadline is Sept. 21, and flight week takes place in February 2012.

4. Connect Across Disciplines: When students design and build kinetic sculptures, they expand their understanding of art, history, engineering, language arts, and technology. Get some interdisciplinary project insights from the Edutopia video, Kinetic Conundrum . Click on the accompanying links for more tips about how you can do it, too.

5. Honor Home Languages: English language learners can feel pressured to master English fast, with class time spent correcting errors instead of using language in meaningful ways. Digital IS, a site published by the National Writing Project, shares plans for three projects that take time to honor students' home languages and cultures, engaging them in critical thinking, collaboration, and use of digital tools. Anne Herrington and Charlie Moran curate the project collection, "English Language Learners, Digital Tools, and Authentic Audiences."

6. Rethink Lunch: Make lunch into a learning opportunity with a project that gets students thinking more critically about their mid-day meal. Center for Ecoliteracy offers materials to help you start,  including informative essays and downloadable planning guides . Get more ideas from this video about a middle-school nutrition project, "A Healthy School Lunch."

7. Take a Learning Expedition: Expeditionary Learning schools take students on authentic learning expeditions, often in neighborhoods close to home. Check out the gallery for project ideas.

8. Find a Pal: If PBL is new to you, consider joining an existing project. You'll benefit from a veteran colleague's insights, and your students will get a chance to collaborate with classmates from other communities or even other countries. Get connected at ePals , a global learning community for educators from more than 200 countries.

9. Get Minds Inquiring: What's under foot? What are things made of? Science projects that emphasize inquiry help students make sense of their world and build a solid foundation for future understanding. The Inquiry Project supports teachers in third to fifth grades as they guide students in hands-on investigations about matter. Students develop the habits of scientists as they make observations, offer predictions, and gather evidence. Companion videos show how scientists use the same methods to explore the world. Connect inquiry activities to longer-term projects, such as creating a classroom museum that showcases students' investigations.

10. Learn through Service: When cases of the West Nile virus were reported in their area, Minnesota students sprang into action with a project that focused on preventing the disease through public education. Their project  (PDF) demonstrates what can happen when service-learning principles are built into PBL. Find more ideas for service-learning projects from the National Youth Leadership Council .

11. Locate Experts: When students are learning through authentic projects, they often need to connect with experts from the world outside the classroom. Find the knowledgeable experts you need for STEM projects through the National Lab Network . It's an online network where K-12 educators can locate experts from the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

12. Build Empathy: Projects that help students see the world from another person's perspective build empathy along with academic outcomes. The Edutopia video, "Give Me Shelter" , shows what compassionate learning looks like in action. Click on the companion links for more suggestions about how you can do it, too.

13. Investigate Climate Science: Take students on an investigation of climate science by joining the newest collaborative project hosted by GLOBE , Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment. The Student Climate Research Campaign includes three components: introductory activities to build a foundation of understanding, intensive observing periods when students around the world gather and report data, and research investigations that students design and conduct. Climate project kicks off Sept. 12.

14. Problem-Solvers Unite: Math fairs take mathematics out of the classroom and into the community, where everyone gets a chance to try their hand at problem solving. Galileo Educational Network explains how to host a math fair . In a nutshell, students set up displays of their math problems but not the solutions. Then they entice their parents and invited guests to work on solutions. Make the event even more engaging by inviting mathematicians to respond to students' problems.

15. Harvest Pennies: Can small things really add up to big results? It seems so, based on results of the Penny Harvest . Since the project started in New York in 1991, young philanthropists nationwide have raised and donated more than $8 million to charitable causes, all through penny drives. The project website explains how to organize students in philanthropy roundtables to study community issues and decide which causes they want to support.

16. Gather Stories: Instead of teaching history from textbooks, put students in the role of historian and help them make sense of the past. Learn more about how to plan oral history projects in the Edutopia story, "Living Legends." Teach students about the value of listening by having them gather stories for StoryCorps .

17. Angry Bird Physics: Here's a driving question to kickstart a science project: "What are the laws of physics in Angry Birds world?" Read how physics teachers like Frank Noschese and John Burk are using the web version of the popular mobile game in their classrooms.

18. Place-Based Projects: Make local heritage, landscapes, and culture the jumping-off point for compelling projects. That's the idea behind place-based education, which encourages students to look closely at their communities. Often, they wind up making significant contributions to their communities, as seen in the City of Stories project .

19. News They Can Use: Students don't have to wait until they're grown-ups to start publishing. Student newspapers, radio stations, and other journalism projects give them real-life experiences now. Award-winning journalism teacher Esther Wojcicki outlines the benefits this post on the New York Times Learning Network . Get more ideas about digital-age citizen journalism projects at MediaShift Idea Lab .

20. The Heroes They Know: To get acquainted with students at the start of the year and also introduce students to PBL processes, High Tech High teacher Diana Sanchez asked students to create a visual and textual representation of a hero in their own life. Their black-and-white exhibits were a source of pride to students, as Sanchez explains in her project reflection . Get more ideas from the project gallery at High Tech High , a network of 11 schools in San Diego County that emphasize PBL. To learn more, watch this Edutopia video interview with High Tech High founding principal Larry Rosenstock.

Please tell us about the projects you are planning for this school year.

Futures of Education

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The Futures of Education

Our world is at a unique juncture in history, characterised by increasingly uncertain and complex trajectories shifting at an unprecedented speed. These sociological, ecological and technological trends are changing education systems, which need to adapt. Yet education has the most transformational potential to shape just and sustainable futures. UNESCO generates ideas, initiates public debate, and inspires research and action to renew education. This work aims to build a new social contract for education, grounded on principles of human rights, social justice, human dignity and cultural diversity. It unequivocally affirms education as a public endeavour and a common good.

No trend is destiny...Multiple alternative futures are possible... A new social contract for education needs to allow us to think differently about learning and the relationships between students, teachers, knowledge, and the world.

Our work is grounded in the principles of the 2021 report “Reimagining Our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education” and in the report’s call for action to consolidate global solidarity and international cooperation in education, as well as strengthen the global research agenda to reinforce our capacities to anticipate future change.

The report invites us to rebalance our relationship with:

• each other,
• the planet, and
• technology.

Summary of the Report

Renewing education to transform the future, 2-4 December 2024

UNESCO International Forum on the Futures of Education 2024 Suwon, Gyeonggido, Republic of Korea

Interview with Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director-General for Education

Featured highlights

The International Commission

In 2019 UNESCO Director–General convened an independent International Commission to work under the leadership of the President of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, H.E. President Sahle-Work Zewde, and develop a global report on the Futures of Education. The commission was charged with carefully considering inputs received through the different consultation processes and ensuring that this collective intelligence was reflected in the global report and other knowledge products connected with the initiative.

Sustainable development challenges and the role of education

Our foresight work, looking towards 2050, envisions possible futures in which education shapes a better world. Our starting point is observation of the multiple, interlocking challenges the world currently faces and how to renew learning and knowledge to steer policies and practices along more sustainable pathways.The challenges are great. But there are reasons for optimism, no trend is destiny.

Our work responds to the call of the International Commission on the Futures of Education to guide a new research agenda for the futures of education. This research agenda is wide-ranging and multifaceted as a future-oriented, planet-wide learning process on our futures together. It draws from diverse forms of knowledge and perspectives, and from a conceptual framework that sees insights from diverse sources as complementary rather than exclusionary and adversarial.

The third in a series of major visioning exercises for education

Reimagining our future together: a new social contract for education  is the third in a series of UNESCO-led once-a-generation foresight and visioning exercises, conducted at key moments of historical transition. 

In 1972, the  Learning to Be: the world of education today and tomorrow  report already warned of the risks of inequalities, and emphasized the need for the continued expansion of education, for education throughout life and for building a learning society.

This was followed by the 1996 Learning: The treasure within report that proposed an integrated vision of education around four pillars: learning to be, learning to know, learning to do, and learning to live together in a lifelong perspective.

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7 Types of Projects that Foster Powerful Learning

2. information-data organizing projects, 3. major investigation projects, 4. design projects, 5. problem solving/decision making projects, 6. “argumentation” projects, 7. real world, authentic projects, some final thoughts.

1. Reading/Writing Projects

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18 Classroom Projects to Make Your Heart Soar

From STEM kits to creative writing — Hawaii to New York — thousands of incredible classroom projects have already been funded by the DonorsChoose community this year. Here are 18 highlights.

From budding “bird-ologists” to creative claymakers, Alaskan educators to Texas teachers — there is something about being part of the DonorsChoose community that just feels special.  

Over 3 million classroom projects have been funded through our site since we were founded in 2000 by a schoolteacher in the Bronz. That's an incredible number, but even more incredible are the real classrooms, dedicated teachers, and groups of eager young minds it represents. In 2024, supporters have already helped thousands and thousands (literally) of projects spring to life. Here are 18 of those inspiring projects now — fully-funded and sure to make your heart soar.

Calculations and Camerawork 

DonorsChoose teachers find the creative connections across subject areas that many of us would never have thought of — like Mr. Marcelino’s project that bridges math education through innovative photography!

“Your willingness to invest in education demonstrates not only your kindness but also your belief in the power of knowledge and its ability to transform lives … Please know that your generosity has not gone unnoticed. It has touched the hearts of not only myself but also the entire classroom community.”  – Mr. Marcelino’s note to donors, Capturing Brilliance: Empowering Math Education through Innovative Photography

Budding Birders

Mrs. M's " Birdologists in the Making " project took flight with the help of the DonorsChoose community. Now, her students are becoming enthusiastic ornithologists, and learning all about science and the environment!

“Without donors… we would not be able to provide these wonderful opportunities to my classroom. My students are excited to begin the spring with a chance to watch and study local birds and learn about their feeding and migratory habits. Thank you again.”  – Mrs. M, Birdologists In the Making 

Clay Creations

Zooming over to the Pacific Northwest, Ms. Wisdom's pottery-powered project in Seattle is all about molding masterpieces (and young minds) by bringing ceramics class to her school. 

“I cannot believe we are fully funded within the first hour and a half! Thank you endlessly! The kids are going to make such incredible work because of the financial support you’ve given to our classroom. I’m so excited to share my passion for clay with the kids and see what iconic work they create!” – Mrs. Wisdom, Creativity Through Clay: Our First Ceramics Class at DIMS 

More Than Make-Believe

Ms. Anita is creating a world of dramatic play possibilities for her young students that go far beyond pretend — from a classroom delivery cart of play “goods” to an actual vibrant indoor gardening center. This project transforms playtime into a rich learning experience. 

“THANK YOU for your amazing donations to our classroom. We have had a tough week, but getting this funded has just made us all smile. I cannot wait to give these supplies to my kids and watch them explore and grow in new ways. You never know who will find a new job in our class.” – Ms. Anita, Drama Queens... and Kings 

Coding Champions

Hacking the future is going to take expert knowledge in the technology of tomorrow. To make sure our young leaders of tomorrow are as ready as ever, Ms. Puig is equipping her students with the tools to become future coders. 

“ This experience has proved to me and my students that they have a community outside the school that supports their dreams and success. Many of our students come from low socioeconomic backgrounds and would not be able to purchase a laptop themselves. Through your donation, my students can see that anything is possible if they are willing to strive for it and that there is a world outside that cares about their success.” – Ms. Puig, Coding Robots and Beyond

Xylophone-Zone! 

Ms. N’s goal with her project was simple: Bring music to all. Her project is ensuring every student can join the musical fun of xylophones with a thoughtful and inclusive environment.

“These carts make xylophone playing more accessible for my students with different abilities. The purchase of these carts is going to last my students for the rest of their time at our school and will serve students for years into the future … Thank you so much for your generosity!” – Ms. N, Carting Away Xylophones 

In the Ring and Doing Their Thing

Meanwhile in Colorado, Coach Nef is working to build confidence and strength in young women through the school’s wrestling program. This project is helping empower these young wrestlers in and out of the ring! 

“Encouraging girls to join wrestling is an inclusive way to build confidence, strength, and mental clarity in our young women. I have coached Girl's Wrestling for 6 years and have seen so much growth and progress.” – Coach Nef,  Promote Girls’ Wrestling 

A Graphic Novel Gateway

Nothing like the beautifully-designed world of graphic novels to really inspire new readers to get into books. That’s what Mrs. Andrade (and all her amazing project supporters) are making happen with this project — fostering a love of reading, one comic book at a time.

“I am blown away by your continued generosity and passion for helping students grow their love of reading! The books you have provided were in our class library right away and are already in the hands of my students. They are so excited to read them all.” – Mrs. Andrade, Graphic Novels for Eager Readers! 

Clean Classroom Crew

Projects like Ms. Ry's are so critical — helping an amazing teacher like herself create a safe, clean, and healthy learning space for even the youngest of students! 

“My students were wide eyed when they saw the whole bin cleaning supplies for them. Thank you so much for your help. It means so much to us! Having a clean and healthy classroom is so important to me and their parents.” – Ms. Ry, Germ Free For Firsties, Please

Adventure Time! 

Mr. C's "Leap, Hop, and Team Up!" project is a perfect showcase of how creative our educators are with the lessons they cook up for their students. This project is bringing the joy, teamwork skills, and adventure of an obstacle course to P.E. class.

“Thanks to your support, we will be able to create an obstacle course in our physical education program. Your contribution goes beyond just new equipment. Obstacle courses provide a wealth of benefits for children. They help develop gross motor skills, problem-solving skills, teamwork and communication and confidence and self-esteem. We are thrilled to bring this engaging activity to our PE classes.”  – Mr. C, Leap, Hop, and Team Up!

Hygiene Essentials

No young person should have to worry about accessing hygiene products. Ms. Hannigan's "Feminine Products for Teens" provides crucial supplies for any student who needs it — so they can just focus on getting a great education.

“Thank you so very much for creating the equal opportunity to provide feminine products to my students! My students will be very appreciative of your generosity. Unfortunately, being a title 1 school, most of my students are in need of these basic supplies. This will help them feel comfortable and assist their attendance!” – Ms. Hannigan, Feminine Products for Teens

Street Art Superstars

With the funds of the online community here at DonorsChoose, Ms. Monica was able to bring art and activism to life for her students. From paint pens in class to a field trip to Baltimore's Graffiti Alley, this project inspired some amazing young artists in the making. 

“Due to your generosity and kindness, all 3 classes of middle and high school students (76 students) were able to make artworks with paint markers, spray paint, and stencils … In addition, eight finalized artists showcased their artwork at the Baltimore City Hall Black History Month Competition. I hope the end results of this project encourage you to continue to make donations to DonorsChoose projects!” – Ms. Monica, Student Street Art Project

Baseball and Beyond 

Coach Hills’ goal isn’t just for jerseys. Ensuring ALL students are free from the worry of uniform fees levels the playing field. That means support for this project boosted team spirit and celebrated the dedication of these young athletes.

“Our baseball players will be excited to know that individuals like yourself are supporting them both on and off the field. We have been working hard to learn and grow from the game of baseball, so we can't wait to show you the end results.” – Coach Hills, New Baseball Attire

Bilingual Bookworms

Ms. Crotteau's "SEL Bilingual Books" project provides her students with the tools to navigate emotions and build a strong foundation for success all while strengthening their skills in the English language, too. 

“I cannot believe that my project was funded in one day!! The Donor's Choose community is amazingly supportive of teachers! My newcomer ML students will learn from and enjoy the realistic multicultural photos in the Excellerations’ feelings and emotions books!” - Mrs. Crotteau, SEL Bilingual Books

Keeping It Kind

Over in the Aloha state, Mrs. Mishima-Donahue is helping her students become advocates for kindness. Together, they’re learning about community service and doing the daily work to stop bullying in their school and beyond.

“My students loved this service project. They felt like they made a difference on campus. They spent two weeks making kindness and anti-bullying posters … Each Wednesday morning, my students stand in front of the Cafeteria (our morning drop-off) and hold their signs proudly to promote kindness for everyone to see.” – Mrs. Mishima-Donahue, Prevent Bullying By Spreading Kindness

Contributing any amount to a DonorsChoose project like the ones listed above means you're helping students’ curiosity flourish and their potential to soar. Take a look at teacher projects still in need of funding on DonorsChoose today .

Cold Weather, Cozy Snacks, Can’t Lose

For Ms. Sami in Alaska, preparation for freezing temperatures makes all the difference in her students’ ability to learn. That’s why her project asking for warm food resources was one that touched the hearts of our whole DonorsChoose community this year.

 “Thank you so much for providing my students with cozy snacks to improve their educational experiences … My students do not always have the resources others do. Snacks and warm food are more expensive and challenging to get. They appreciate the little things so much more. School is the center of the community and I want to continue to build that joy of coming to school.” – Ms. Sami, “Chicken Noodle Soup for Rural Alaska Souls”  

A Classroom for All of Us

Sometimes the very basics go a powerful way for students. That’s why projects like Mr. Rodriquez’s are so critical — helping this amazing teacher create a safe and comfortable environment for all his kids to learn freely, especially those who have just arrived in the United States.

“Thank you so much for your donations. We are continuously receiving new students from other countries and they have very little resources when they arrive. Every single day I’m asked for a pencil or paper to write on … I had no idea if this would work, I am now a believer that there are still people out there that care for our young immigrants and their success here in the USA.” – Mr. Rodriguez, They Just Came to the U.S.A.!

Teen Necessities 

No young person should have to worry about accessing hygiene products. Mrs. Weddle's "Teen Self Care Package"project is now providing crucial supplies for any student who needs it — so they can just focus on getting a great education!

“I want to express my heartfelt gratitude for your kindness and generosity. This winter, no child should be without necessities, and thanks to you, my scholars are fortunate to have their needs met. Your ongoing support provides them with essential items like socks, lotion, and deodorant. I am truly grateful for your golden hearts and commitment to making a difference in the lives of these children .” – Mrs. Weddle, Teen Self Care Package

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Project 2025 and education: A lot of bad ideas, some more actionable than others

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, rachel m. perera , rachel m. perera fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy jon valant , and jon valant director - brown center on education policy , senior fellow - governance studies katharine meyer katharine meyer fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy.

August 12, 2024

• Project 2025 is rife with bad ideas that, if enacted, would inflict harm on students and schools across the country.
• Many proposals would require an unlikely degree of cooperation from Congress, though others could be enacted unilaterally by a second Trump administration.
• Parts of Project 2025 are more closely aligned with a white Christian nationalist worldview than a traditional, conservative education policy agenda.

Project 2025 outlines a radical policy agenda that would dramatically reshape the federal government. The report was spearheaded by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and represents the policy aims of a large coalition of conservative activists. While former President Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, many of the report’s authors worked in the previous Trump administration and could return for a second round. Trump, himself, said in 2022 , “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

In other words, Project 2025 warrants a close look, even if the Trump campaign would like Americans to avert their gaze.

Project 2025’s education agenda proposes a drastic overhaul of federal education policy, from early childhood through higher education. Here’s just a sample of the Project 2025 education-related recommendations:

• Dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (ED)
• Eliminate the Head Start program for young children in poverty
• Discontinue the Title I program that provides federal funding to schools serving low-income children
• Rescind federal civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students
• Undercut federal capacity to enforce civil rights law
• Reduce federal funding for students with disabilities and remove guardrails designed to ensure these children are adequately served by schools
• Promote universal private school choice
• Privatize the federal student loan portfolio

It’s an outrageous list, and that’s just the start of it.

We’ve reviewed the Project 2025 chapter on education (Chapter 11), along with other chapters with implications for students. We’ve come away with four main observations:

1. Most of the major policy proposals in Project 2025 would require an unlikely amount of congressional cooperation

Project 2025 is presented as a to-do list for an incoming Trump administration. However, most of its big-ticket education items would require a great deal of cooperation from Congress.

Proposals to create controversial, new laws or programs would require majority support in the House and, very likely, a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority in the Senate. Ideas like a Parents’ Bill of Rights, the Department of Education Reorganization Act, and a federal tax-credit scholarship program fall into this category. Even if Republicans outperform expectations in this fall’s Senate races , they’d have to attract several Democratic votes to get to 60. That’s not happening for these types of proposals.  

The same goes for major changes to existing legislation. This includes, for example, a proposal to convert funding associated with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to no-strings-attached block grants and education savings accounts (with, presumably, much less accountability for spending those funds appropriately). It also includes a proposal to end the “ negotiated rulemaking ” (“neg-reg”) process that ED follows when developing regulations related to programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA). The neg-reg requirement is written into HEA itself, which means that unwinding neg-reg would require Congress to amend the HEA. That’s unlikely given that HEA reauthorization is already more than a decade overdue—and that’s without the political baggage of Project 2025 weighing down the process.

The prospect of changing funding levels for existing programs is a little more complicated. Programs like Title I are permanently authorized. Eliminating Title I or changing the formulas it uses to allocate funds to local educational agencies would require new and unlikely legislation. Year-to-year funding levels can and do change , but the vast majority of ED’s budget consists of discretionary funding that’s provided through the regular, annual appropriations process and subject to a filibuster. This limits the ability of one party to make major, unilateral changes. (ED’s mandatory funding is more vulnerable.)

In sum, one limiting factor on what an incoming Trump administration could realistically enact from Project 2025 is that many of these proposals are too unpopular with Democrats to overcome their legislative hurdles.

2. Some Project 2025 proposals would disproportionately harm conservative, rural areas and likely encounter Republican opposition

Another limiting factor is that some of Project 2025’s most substantive proposals probably wouldn’t be all that popular with Republicans either.

Let’s take, for example, the proposed sunsetting of the Title I program. Project 2025 proposes to phase out federal spending on Title I over a 10-year period, with states left to decide whether and how to continue that funding. It justifies this with misleading suggestions that persistent test score gaps between wealthy and poor students indicate that investments like Title I funding aren’t paying off. (In fact, evidence from school finance reforms suggests real benefits from education spending, especially for students from low-income families.)

The phrase “Title I schools” might conjure up images of under-resourced schools in urban areas that predominantly serve students of color, and it’s true that these schools are major beneficiaries of Title I. However, many types of schools, across many types of communities, receive critical support through Title I. In fact, schools in Republican-leaning areas could be hit the hardest by major cuts or changes to Title I. In the map below, we show the share of total per-pupil funding coming from Title I by state. Note that many of the states that rely the most on Title I funds (darkest blue) are politically conservative.

Of course, the impact of shifting from federal to state control of Title I would depend on how states choose to handle their newfound decision-making power. Given that several red states are among the lowest spenders on education —and have skimped on programs like Summer EBT and Medicaid expansion —it’s hard to believe that low-income students in red states would benefit from a shift to state control.

What does that mean for the type of support that Project 2025 proposals might get from red-state Republicans in Congress? It’s hard to know. It’s worth keeping in mind, though, that the GOP’s push for universal private school voucher programs has encountered some of its fiercest resistance from rural Republicans across several states .

3. Project 2025 also has significant proposals that a second Trump administration could enact unilaterally

While a second Trump administration couldn’t enact everything outlined in Project 2025 even if it wanted to, several consequential proposals wouldn’t require cooperation from Congress. This includes some actions that ED took during the first Trump administration and certainly could take again.

Here are a few of the Project 2025 proposals that the Trump administration could enact with the authority of the executive branch alone:

• Roll back civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students
• Roll back Title IX protections against sex-based discrimination
• Dismantle the federal civil rights enforcement apparatus
• Eliminate current income-driven repayment plans and require higher monthly payments for low-income borrowers
• Remove protections from predatory colleges that leave students with excessive debt

Federal education policy has suffered from regulatory whiplash over the last decade, with presidential administrations launching counter-regulations to undo the executive actions of the prior administration. Take, for example, “gainful employment” regulations that Democratic administrations have used to limit eligibility for federal financial aid for colleges that leave students with excessive loan debt. A second Trump administration would likely seek to reverse the Biden administration’s “gainful employment” regulations like the first Trump administration did to the Obama administration’s rules . (Then again, with the Supreme Court striking down Chevron , which provided deference to agency expertise in setting regulations, the Trump administration might not even need to formally undo regulations.)

Other Project 2025 proposals, not explicitly about education, also could wreak havoc. This includes a major overhaul of the federal civil service. Specifically, Project 2025 seeks to reinstate Schedule F, an executive order that Trump signed during his final weeks in office. Schedule F would reclassify thousands of civil service positions in the federal government to policy roles—a shift that would empower the president to fire civil servants and fill their positions with political appointees. Much has been written about the consequences of decimating the civil service, and the U.S. Department of Education, along with other federal agencies that serve students, would feel its effects.

4. Project 2025 reflects a white Christian nationalist agenda as much as it reflects a traditional conservative education policy agenda

If one were to read Project 2025’s appeals to principles such as local control and parental choice, they might think this is a standard conservative agenda for education policy. Republicans, after all, have been calling for the dismantling of ED since the Reagan administration, and every administration since has supported some types of school choice reforms.

But in many ways, Project 2025’s proposals really don’t look conservative at all. For example, a large-scale, tax-credit scholarship program would substantially increase the federal government’s role in K-12 education. A Parents’ Bill of Rights would require the construction of a massive federal oversight and enforcement function that does not currently exist. And a proposal that “states should require schools to post classroom materials online to provide maximum transparency to parents” would impose an enormous compliance burden on schools, districts, and teachers.

Much of Project 2025 is more easily interpretable through the lens of white Christian nationalism than traditional political conservatism. Scholars Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry describe white Christian nationalism as being “about ethno-traditionalism and protecting the freedoms of a very narrowly defined ‘us’.” The Project 2025 chapter on education is loaded with proposals fitting this description. That includes a stunning number of proposals focused on gender identity, with transgender students as a frequent target. Project 2025 seeks to secure rights for certain people (e.g., parents who support a particular vision of parental rights) while removing protections for many others (e.g., LGBTQ+ and racially minoritized children). Case in point, its proposal for “Safeguarding civil rights” says only, “Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.”

These types of proposals don’t come from the traditional conservative playbook for education policy reform. They come from a white Christian nationalist playbook that has gained prominence in far-right politics in recent years.

At this point, it’s clear that the Trump campaign sees Project 2025 as a political liability that requires distance through the election season. Let’s not confuse that with what might happen during a second Trump administration.

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What does project 2025 actually plan for education.

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Here's a hint.

Word has spread about Project 2025 and its Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise , some of it accurate, some of it not. That’s not surprising; nobody really wants to read an entire 900-page policy document, and some of that document hints at more than it explicitly says.

What does the document actually have to say about education? Let’s take a deep breath and read carefully.

Education in the Foreword

Some of the broadest promises are laid out by Kevin Roberts (Heritage Foundation) in the foreword, where the first promise is to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life and protect our children.”

Roberts calls for “deleting” a list of terms starting with “sexual orientation and gender identity” as well as “diversity, equity and inclusion,” “reproductive rights,” and a host of similar terms. It’s not clear how he proposes that “deleting” would occur, but through the 900 pages it becomes clear that the federal government would stop using them.

Roberts also calls for the criminalization of pornography and the imprisonment of any person who produce and distribute it; “Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders.” No specific definition of pornography is included.

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Roberts demands that “parents’ rights” are non-negotiable and that “States, cities and counties, school boards, union bosses, principals, and teachers who disagree should be immediately cut off from federal funds.”

He declares “parental authority” central to policy, and in that context makes the call for vouchers clear, calling it “a goal all conservatives and conservative Presidents must pursue.”

The Chapter on Education

The education chapter was written by Lindsey Burke , chief of the Heritage Center’s Center for Education Policy. She’s also works at EdChoice, a school choice advocacy group formerly named after Milton Friedman, and she was part of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s transition team in 2021.

Burke leads off with some broad goals, including the elimination of the Department of Education and the goal that “families and students should be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments.” She salutes Friedman’s ideal, with education publicly funded but “education decisions are made by families.” She points to state leadership where the “future of education freedom and reform is bright and will shine brighter when regulations and red tape from Washington are eliminated.”

Federal money comes with federal rules and regulations attached. Burke proposes that federal dollars come to the states as block grants with no rules or regulations attached. She nods to the characterization of the department that runs through the whole document—a department born of a deal between Jimmy Carter and the National Education Association, attractive because it gave certain people a way to extend their influence via federal power and “continuously expand federal expenditures.” The federal education infrastructure has been “[b]olstered by an ever-growing cabal of special interests that thrive off federal largesse.”

Burke proposes several core principles to guide the next administration.

Advancing education freedom. The administration could give more families more options by way of “portability of existing federal education spending to fund families.” In other words, take the money DC sends to the states and distribute it to families as vouchers.

Burke suggests federal tax credit scholarships, the same voucher program unsuccessfully pushed by Betsy DeVos during her tenure as education secretary. Burke also notes that the federal government could immediately put universal vouchers in place for “federal” children (i.e. military families, DC residents, and members of sovereign tribes.

Turn federal funding into grants to the states “over which they have full control.” Let the states use the funds for “any lawful educational purpose,” regardless of what the original federal intent might have been.

College loans should be handled by private lenders and treated as investments. Students should pay the loans back, and politicians must not be allowed to interfere just to score some political points.

Civil rights must be safeguarded, which in this case means rights “based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.”

Policy should be set by Congress, and neither the President (through executive orders) nor agencies (through regulation and guidance).

Burke also suggests some reforms.

She wants to address administrative “bloat,” arguing that the federal Department of Education has spawned a “shadow” department of state-level education employees through the “labyrinthian nature of federal education programs.” She calls for a Department of Education Reorganization Act to “reform, eliminate, or move” programs. (That name calls back to the Department of Education Organization Act that established the department.)

Title I is the program that sends federal dollars to buttress lower-income school districts. Burke recommends that these dollars to be turned into block grants that the states should use to fund vouchers. By the end of the decade, the federal program should be eliminated and “states should assume decision-making control over how to provide a quality education to children from low-income families.” In other words, Title I would disappear and states would have to figure out how to replace the funding and pick up the slack themselves.

Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funds, like Title I funding, should become a no-strings block grant to states. IDEA is supposed to cover 40% of states’ special education costs.

The various offices of the departments should either be eliminated or be moved into a different department. For instance, the department’s Office of Civil Rights should have its work moved to the Department of Justice.

Burke also has a list of rules and regulations that she wants to see eliminated.

The Biden administration tightened the rules for giving grants to charter schools; Burke would like to reverse that. She would like the Office of Civil Rights to stop collecting gender data that includes “nonbinary” as a category. She would like to undo loan forgiveness. And while the Biden changes to Title IX hadn’t taken place yet when this document was written, Burke wanted to roll back what changes had started to recognize anything other than gender as anything other than gender at birth.

The Project also wants to undo the shift in Title VI that looked at school discipline for “disparate impact” (i.e. considering if a school disproportionately punished minority students).

Burke characterizes school meal programs as “some of the most wasteful federal programs in Washington.” But she especially objects to the feds withholding those funds from schools that insist on holding to “gender at birth” rather than “sexual orientation and gender identity” language.

Other recommendations.

Burke calls on Congress to rescind the National Education Association’s charter, and members should hold hearings to see how much federal taxpayer money the NEA has used for radical causes. And she has a whole assortment of recommendations for keeping critical race theory out of classrooms.

Burke argues that parental rights are treated as “second-tier,” and she would like to see them legislated into a “top-tier” position with rights like free speech and free exercise of religion. Every proposed rule should undergo strict scrutiny to make sure it doesn’t infringe on parental rights. Burke calls for a private right of action, so that parents who think institutions have violated their rights may sue. She recommends a federal law similar to those already passed in some states such as Florida and Oklahoma.

Federal law should require school staff to out LGBTQ students to their parents, and no school staff should be allowed to address a student by anything other than the gender and name on their birth certificate without parental approval. However, if staff member objects, those parents do not have the right to insist their child be addressed by their chosen name or gender.

No mention here of students’ rights.

States should be free to opt out of any federal education program, but still collect the funds as a grant they can use as they please.

Outside the chapter.

In the chapter for the Department of Defense, there is a proposal that all students in schools that receive federal funding be required to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery; this to improve recruiter “access” to candidates.

The Department of Agriculture chapter advocates for making it harder for schools to qualify for free school meals, and resist attempts to create universal free meal programs.

So what do we have here.

There are several major threads when it comes to K-12 education.

Vouchers, vouchers, vouchers. Eliminate the federal Department of Education, and turn the money for Title I and IDEA into block grants that states can use for anything education-adjacent (but Heritage is hoping it will be for vouchers), with Title I ending within a decade.

That is no small potatoes. In 2022, Title I amounted to over $16 billion . IDEA is underfunded according to the targets set by law, but it still accounts for roughly $13 billion .

Project 2025 is also deeply concerned about LGBTQ issues as well as other culture war issues. In discussion of virtually all issues, they make certain to demand an end to so much as mentioning Certain Terms. Project 2025 is deeply committed to reinforcing the traditional nuclear family and a government that treats that family as the only proper way to live. Such policies would have large implications for a public school system that is unavoidably diverse.

Heritage published their first Mandate for Leadership in 1981 and has made many similar attempts since ; this is the 9th edition. If implemented, it would visit considerable disruption to our public education system, which is, of course, the point. We will have to wait another six months to see if ninth time’s a charm.

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Ending the U.S. Department of Education: What it would mean and why Trump and Project 2025 want it

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When Donald Trump told Elon Musk one of his first acts as president would be to “close the Department of Education, move education back to the states,” he was invoking a GOP promise that goes back to President Ronald Reagan and the department’s founding.

Yet through multiple Republican administrations, including Trump’s first term, the U.S. Department of Education has persisted.

That hasn’t stopped Democrats from sounding the alarm that Trump’s views epitomize the GOP’s bad intentions for public schools. The fact that the Republican Party’s platform also calls for closing the department , as does the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 , has only intensified Democrats’ distress .

“We are not going to let him eliminate the Department of Education that funds our public schools,” Vice President Kamala Harris said to thunderous applause in her speech at the Democratic National Convention, where she placed the department alongside prized institutions and programs like Social Security, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act.

The department has become a “kind of trophy” in a larger debate about the meaning of public education, said Rick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

In fact, he said, “The Department of Education actually has very little to do with that debate. Abolishing it doesn’t advance school choice and keeping it doesn’t do much for traditional district schools. But it’s become a symbol of which side you’re on in that debate.”

So, what exactly does the U.S. Department of Education do? Why do so many conservatives want to see it go away? Why has it survived? And what would it take for that to actually happen?

The U.S. Department of Education: a brief history

The federal government spent money on education and developed education policies going back to the 19th century . But the U.S. Department of Education didn’t become a stand-alone agency until 1980, when it split off from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

President Jimmy Carter advocated for the creation of the department to fulfill a campaign promise to the National Education Association . Congress passed the Department of Education Organization Act in 1979. Some Democrats and the American Federation of Teachers opposed the idea, due to fears about excessive federal meddling in local education decisions and concerns that it would cater to the NEA’s interests.

Reagan, Carter’s successor, campaigned on abolishing the brand-new department. But Reagan’s first education secretary, Terrel Bell, commissioned the landmark report “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform,” warning that America was losing its competitive edge. It advocated for a strong federal role to ensure students received a high-quality education.

“If the federal government is coming out with a report that shows all the things that need to be fixed and at the same time, we’re backing out of it, those are not compatible positions,” said Michael Feuer, dean of George Washington University’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development.

The U.S. Department of Education does a lot of things, like monitor school performance and promote evidence-based practices . Its biggest K-12 programs by dollar amount provide money to high-poverty schools and for students with disabilities . Some of its most high-profile and controversial work involves enforcing civil rights protections. The department also plays a major role in distributing financial aid for higher education.

The department is not the primary funder of U.S. schools . Before the infusion of pandemic relief dollars, the federal government only covered about 8% of K-12 educational costs. In recent years, it’s been closer to 11%. But refusing that money to avoid federal rules isn’t necessarily easy.

Why do conservatives want to end the Department of Education?

Some of the dislike is purely ideological.

For conservatives, less government is better. Education is not mentioned directly in the U.S. Constitution. And a new department overseeing functions that remain mostly the purview of local government is low-hanging fruit.

Under Democratic administrations, the department has also sided with more progressive approaches to education and to civil rights enforcement.

The Obama administration, for example, told schools that if they suspended or expelled Black students at much higher rates than other groups, that could be a sign they were illegally discriminating in how they administered student discipline . Critics said the rules pushed schools to adopt laxer disciplinary policies that made schools less safe. Betsy DeVos, Trump’s education secretary, rescinded those rules . (The Biden administration has not reinstated them.)

More recently, the Biden administration issued Title IX rules that provide greater and more explicit protections for LGBTQ students — rules that Republican-led states have sued to block .

Jonathan Butcher, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said states have been a source of innovation, like charter schools and educational savings accounts. The federal department not only distracts states from efforts to improve education but creates unnecessary bureaucracy.

All the while, achievement gaps based on race and poverty haven’t gone away, Butcher noted, though they have narrowed by some measures .

“We have ample evidence that it is not serving its purpose,” Butcher said of the department. Abolishing it, he added, is “consistent with both the interest in smaller government and the interest in doing what’s right for kids.”

What does Trump say about abolishing the Department of Education?

In his conversation with Musk that aired on X , the social media platform previously known as Twitter, Trump said the U.S. had a “horrible” education ranking at the bottom of developed countries while spending the most.

It’s not totally clear what sources Trump was using. On recent international tests , the U.S. ranked sixth in reading, 10th in science, and 26th in math among 81 countries. Older test results show the U.S. ranked lower , especially in math . The U.S. does spend more per-pupil than most developed nations , including many that score better on key measures.

Trump said some states won’t do well, but many would do a better job on their own while spending less money.

“Of the 50, I would bet that 35 would do great, and 15 of them or 20 of them would be as good as Norway,” Trump told Musk. “You know Norway is considered great.”

He said the federal government could provide “a little monitor. You want to make sure they are teaching English, as an example. Give us a little English, right?”

Trump’s campaign did not respond to a request to elaborate on the candidate’s plans.

How would abolishing the Department of Education work?

Abolishing a federal department would require an act of Congress, just as creating one does. It likely would also require broad bipartisan support , which the idea doesn’t have.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, has regularly introduced legislation to abolish the department — but the bill has failed to gain traction.

Despite that, Massie said his proposals were serious. “Damn right I want to terminate the Department of Education,” he said in a statement. “Public education in America has gone downhill ever since this bureaucracy was created.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, widely seen as a blueprint for a future Trump administration — despite the candidate’s denials — lays out a much more detailed plan that considers necessary steps from Congress and the executive branch.

For example, the plan says civil rights enforcement should move to the Department of Justice, educational data collection to the U.S. Census Bureau, and support for Native American students to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Butcher acknowledged that BIA schools don’t have a good track record. But he argued that the agency was better positioned to work on improving educational outcomes.

Meanwhile, Project 2025 says Title I funding for high-poverty schools should be turned into vouchers and then phased out over time, while money from the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act should be given directly to parents.

On a podcast earlier this year, Lindsey Burke, the Heritage Foundation’s director of the Center for Education Policy and author of Project 2025′s education chapter, acknowledged the political difficulty of simply abolishing the department.

But she said the executive branch could take certain actions on its own, such as ending student loan forgiveness programs and not enforcing the new Title IX rules.

Ending the Education Department now ‘part of the conversation’

Hess, of the American Enterprise Institute, said he doesn’t oppose eliminating the department, but the idea has become a kind of “boogie man or quick fix” that’s become a substitute for substantive debate on the federal role in education.

“So much of the culture war that reached a boil during the pandemic focused on schools and colleges, which made the department more contested terrain and made education more contested terrain,” he said.

He’s skeptical that a future Trump administration would get any closer to eliminating the department than the first one did. And a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision limiting the power of administrative agencies could make it even harder to make dramatic changes via executive order, Hess said.

Feuer, of George Washington University, thinks the department has made positive contributions, despite some flaws, and wants to see it stick around. An unfriendly administration could dramatically cut funding or eliminate programs without eliminating the department. That’s the wrong debate to have when students are still recovering from COVID disruptions , he said.

“If we now take this really important moment and get everyone fighting about maintaining the department, instead of keeping our eyes on the kids and the teachers and doing some good work, that would be a really unfortunate distraction,” he said.

Butcher acknowledged that it’s “a big, ambitious idea,” but said it’s also a serious one. Past efforts, he said, lacked willpower and an advocate who prioritized it.

He was encouraged when every candidate in Republican presidential primary debates last year (except Trump, who did not participate) said they supported ending the department .

“We have made it a part of the conversation,” Butcher said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at [email protected] .

Conservatives have wanted to shut down the agency for decades. But the latest round of the culture war and the 2024 election have thrust the idea back into the spotlight.

Some preschools are still scheduling short days at the beginning of the school year to ease in children, a practice the Education Department wants to end.

Chicago Public Schools’ largest charter school network opened its original campus 25 years ago with a focus on sending students to college.

The program serves 85 Indiana counties but only two ZIP codes in Marion County, leaving more than 60,000 kids in the county without access.

Students, parents, teachers, and literacy experts discuss how the program can be successful as the district continues to iron out details.

English language learners make up more than a quarter of the district’s enrollment this school year. District leaders are working to hire more bilingual teachers who communicate in different languages.

Watch Reimagine Education and learn what's new with responsible AI in education >

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Develop confident communicators: A guide to Speaker Progress for educators

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Speaker Progress, a Learning Accelerator from Microsoft, helps educators develop students’ public speaking skills. Designed to accompany Speaker Coach, Speaker Progress enables you to create, customize, and assign speaking projects to your students, and collect insights about their performance over time. With AI-powered real-time coaching , Speaker Progress allows students to take ownership over their own communication skills development. Follow the steps below in our guide to Speaker Progress for educators and start using this innovative tool with your students.

Get started with Speaker Coach

Educator benefits:

• Streamline public speaking instruction and identify focus areas.
• Provide automatic, personalized feedback on qualities like pace, pitch, filler words, and more.
• Examine skill development over time for individuals, classes, grade or year levels, and schools.

Student benefits:

• Build confidence in public speaking through AI-powered real-time coaching.
• Offer a private space to practice and refine presentation delivery.
• Develop critical foundational and future-ready communication skills.

How to create a Speaker Progress assignment

Creating engaging speaking assignments for your students is quick and easy with Speaker Progress. All you need is a class in Microsoft Teams for Education to get started. Here’s how to set up your first assignment:

• Open Microsoft Teams for Education and go to Assignments in a class channel.
• Select Create .
• Select Learning Accelerators and then Speaker Progress .

Check out the Getting started with Speaker Progress for educators article from Microsoft Support for more details.

Tip: If you already have an assignment created, you can also add a Speaker Progress activity by selecting Learning Accelerators from the New assignment screen. This is helpful when you already have existing content that might benefit from a presentation practice session.

Customize the assignment

When you add a Speaker Progress assignment, you can customize how students practice their presentation. You determine important parameters like how much time is spent practicing, how many attempts can be made, and how students receive feedback.

To customize a Speaker Progress assignment:

• Choose an engaging Presentation title that reflects the assignment’s purpose. Consider using the name of the presentation that students will practice.
• Determine the Number of attempts a student can practice their presentation before submitting the assignment.
• Set the time limit that students can practice their presentation during each attempt. Time ranges are between 1-10 minutes.
• Decide if you want to Require video when students complete the assignment. If selected, a recording of the attempt is made with the student’s internal camera and shared with you when submitted. If you want to include body language feedback, you need to choose this option.
• Decide whether to release a rehearsal report to students at the end of each attempt. The rehearsal report contains AI-generated feedback on communication skills listed as strengths and opportunities for improvement.

Tip: The first time you create a Speaker Progress assignment, you’ll receive a short overview of what Speaker Progress is and how to use it. Take a moment to review the overview.

Choose feedback types

When you create the Speaker Progress assignment, you will be prompted to choose the aspects of public speaking that you want students to focus on while practicing. Speaker Progress uses AI to assess qualities like pitch, pace, and pronunciation to help evaluate students as they speak. Tips are provided in real time, helping learners make adjustments and overcome challenges in the moment. Simply toggle the switches next to the feedback types to learn more and apply them to the assignment.

You can select all the feedback types or choose from:

• Filler Words
• Pronunciation
• Inclusiveness
• Repetitive language
• Body language

Tip: Selecting feedback types allows you to create a personalized experience that targets the exact skills your students need to develop. You must select at least one to create the assignment, so take a moment to review the cards that appear on screen or check out Getting started with Speaker Progress for educators: What students are evaluated on .

Finalize and send the assignment

The last step before assigning practice to students involves finalizing the Speaker Progress assignment in Microsoft Teams for Education. Just like all other assignments in Microsoft Teams, you can adjust when it’s delivered, who should complete the assignment, and what additional resources to include. You can also add a point value for grading and include any directions for students. Check out the training course Organize content, create assignments, and assess learners’ understanding in Microsoft Teams if you need help completing any of the fields.

You might consider adding a rubric and a Microsoft Reflect check-in if this is your students’ first time using Speaker Progress. A rubric will clarify how you plan to evaluate their speaking skills, and a short Reflect check-in can provide you with insights on how students feel using Speaker Progress.

Foster well-being in the classroom

When you’re finished customizing the assignments, be sure to choose Assign .

Tip: Built-in AI in assignments can help you generate instructions and enrich your content. Get suggestions for adding more details, adding learning objectives, emphasizing key concepts, and even making your assignments more interesting. After the content is created, you can make further edits and updates as you go.

How students complete Speaker Progress assignments

When students receive a Speaker Progress assignment, they select the Speaker Progress link in the My work section. Students will be prompted to check their microphone and video settings before beginning their rehearsal. They can also view the time limit and number of attempts that you set up when creating the assignment.

What makes Speaker Progress assignments so beneficial is that students do not need an audience or someone to assess their speech. Students immediately receive AI-generated feedback when they start speaking. The feedback includes words of encouragement and coaching tips that appear as pop-ups on their computer screen. Students can mute this feedback if it’s distracting and opt to see it in the rehearsal report once they’re done practicing.

A bar above the recording lets learners know when they’re reaching the end of their session. If the assignment has a time limit, the bar changes to red to let students know they have 30 seconds remaining. When they’re finished, students select the stop button. The session automatically ends once the time limit expires. Learn more about the student experience in the support article Getting started with Speaker Progress for students .

Tip: For more accurate feedback, encourage students to find a quiet, distraction-free space to complete Speaker Progress assignments.

Review the rehearsal

When students finish rehearsing, they can choose to:

• Try again if you allowed more than one attempt when creating the Speaker Progress assignment. If learners try again, their current recording is erased and replaced with a new recording. Learners can’t recover and submit a previous recording.
• View the rehearsal report if you allowed students to review the report before grading and returning the assignment.
• Attach the recording to their assignment. If students are on their last try and viewing their report isn’t allowed, their last recorded attempt is automatically attached to their assignment.

The rehearsal report includes a breakdown of strengths and opportunities for improvement based on the AI feedback. Suggestions are designed to be actionable so students can immediately make changes to their delivery. Students can also re-watch their rehearsal by playing the recording and listening for feedback instances.

Tip: Directing students to re-watch a rehearsal and identify when they used filler words or repetitive language can help them take steps to improve their delivery.

Assess an assignment

When you open a student’s completed Speaker Progress assignment, you automatically receive the rehearsal report along with the rehearsal recording. If a student previously completed Speaker Progress assignments, the insights cards in the report include comparison data from their most recent assignment. A plus sign (+) indicates an increase in occurrences in a specific feedback type, and a minus sign (-) indicates a decline.

After reviewing the report and insights, you can use Speed Grader to share your feedback and assign a grade. Use the dropdown menu to Return the assignment to the student or Return for revision if students need to practice more.

Tip: Share a copy of the Speaker Progress Presentation Tips infographic with students so that they have a resource to reference when rehearsing or after you return a Speaker Progress assignment.

Speaker Progress is available for you to use with any age or subject area. Open Microsoft Teams for Education, create an assignment, and start helping students develop speaking skills. To learn more about Speaker Progress, take the Develop confident presenters with Speaker Progress training course on Microsoft Learn.

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-warnings-from-democrats-about-project-2025-and-donald-trump

Fact-checking warnings from Democrats about Project 2025 and Donald Trump

This fact check originally appeared on PolitiFact .

Project 2025 has a starring role in this week’s Democratic National Convention.

And it was front and center on Night 1.

WATCH: Hauling large copy of Project 2025, Michigan state Sen. McMorrow speaks at 2024 DNC

“This is Project 2025,” Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak, said as she laid a hardbound copy of the 900-page document on the lectern. “Over the next four nights, you are going to hear a lot about what is in this 900-page document. Why? Because this is the Republican blueprint for a second Trump term.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has warned Americans about “Trump’s Project 2025” agenda — even though former President Donald Trump doesn’t claim the conservative presidential transition document.

“Donald Trump wants to take our country backward,” Harris said July 23 in Milwaukee. “He and his extreme Project 2025 agenda will weaken the middle class. Like, we know we got to take this seriously, and can you believe they put that thing in writing?”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, has joined in on the talking point.

“Don’t believe (Trump) when he’s playing dumb about this Project 2025. He knows exactly what it’ll do,” Walz said Aug. 9 in Glendale, Arizona.

Trump’s campaign has worked to build distance from the project, which the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, led with contributions from dozens of conservative groups.

Much of the plan calls for extensive executive-branch overhauls and draws on both long-standing conservative principles, such as tax cuts, and more recent culture war issues. It lays out recommendations for disbanding the Commerce and Education departments, eliminating certain climate protections and consolidating more power to the president.

Project 2025 offers a sweeping vision for a Republican-led executive branch, and some of its policies mirror Trump’s 2024 agenda, But Harris and her presidential campaign have at times gone too far in describing what the project calls for and how closely the plans overlap with Trump’s campaign.

PolitiFact researched Harris’ warnings about how the plan would affect reproductive rights, federal entitlement programs and education, just as we did for President Joe Biden’s Project 2025 rhetoric. Here’s what the project does and doesn’t call for, and how it squares with Trump’s positions.

Are Trump and Project 2025 connected?

To distance himself from Project 2025 amid the Democratic attacks, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he “knows nothing” about it and has “no idea” who is in charge of it. (CNN identified at least 140 former advisers from the Trump administration who have been involved.)

The Heritage Foundation sought contributions from more than 100 conservative organizations for its policy vision for the next Republican presidency, which was published in 2023.

Project 2025 is now winding down some of its policy operations, and director Paul Dans, a former Trump administration official, is stepping down, The Washington Post reported July 30. Trump campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita denounced the document.

WATCH: A look at the Project 2025 plan to reshape government and Trump’s links to its authors

However, Project 2025 contributors include a number of high-ranking officials from Trump’s first administration, including former White House adviser Peter Navarro and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.

A recently released recording of Russell Vought, a Project 2025 author and the former director of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, showed Vought saying Trump’s “very supportive of what we do.” He said Trump was only distancing himself because Democrats were making a bogeyman out of the document.

Project 2025 wouldn’t ban abortion outright, but would curtail access

The Harris campaign shared a graphic on X that claimed “Trump’s Project 2025 plan for workers” would “go after birth control and ban abortion nationwide.”

The plan doesn’t call to ban abortion nationwide, though its recommendations could curtail some contraceptives and limit abortion access.

What’s known about Trump’s abortion agenda neither lines up with Harris’ description nor Project 2025’s wish list.

Project 2025 says the Department of Health and Human Services Department should “return to being known as the Department of Life by explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care.”

It recommends that the Food and Drug Administration reverse its 2000 approval of mifepristone, the first pill taken in a two-drug regimen for a medication abortion. Medication is the most common form of abortion in the U.S. — accounting for around 63 percent in 2023.

If mifepristone were to remain approved, Project 2025 recommends new rules, such as cutting its use from 10 weeks into pregnancy to seven. It would have to be provided to patients in person — part of the group’s efforts to limit access to the drug by mail. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a legal challenge to mifepristone’s FDA approval over procedural grounds.

WATCH: Trump’s plans for health care and reproductive rights if he returns to White House The manual also calls for the Justice Department to enforce the 1873 Comstock Act on mifepristone, which bans the mailing of “obscene” materials. Abortion access supporters fear that a strict interpretation of the law could go further to ban mailing the materials used in procedural abortions, such as surgical instruments and equipment.

The plan proposes withholding federal money from states that don’t report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention how many abortions take place within their borders. The plan also would prohibit abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, from receiving Medicaid funds. It also calls for the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that the training of medical professionals, including doctors and nurses, omits abortion training.

The document says some forms of emergency contraception — particularly Ella, a pill that can be taken within five days of unprotected sex to prevent pregnancy — should be excluded from no-cost coverage. The Affordable Care Act requires most private health insurers to cover recommended preventive services, which involves a range of birth control methods, including emergency contraception.

Trump has recently said states should decide abortion regulations and that he wouldn’t block access to contraceptives. Trump said during his June 27 debate with Biden that he wouldn’t ban mifepristone after the Supreme Court “approved” it. But the court rejected the lawsuit based on standing, not the case’s merits. He has not weighed in on the Comstock Act or said whether he supports it being used to block abortion medication, or other kinds of abortions.

Project 2025 doesn’t call for cutting Social Security, but proposes some changes to Medicare

“When you read (Project 2025),” Harris told a crowd July 23 in Wisconsin, “you will see, Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare.”

The Project 2025 document does not call for Social Security cuts. None of its 10 references to Social Security addresses plans for cutting the program.

Harris also misleads about Trump’s Social Security views.

In his earlier campaigns and before he was a politician, Trump said about a half-dozen times that he’s open to major overhauls of Social Security, including cuts and privatization. More recently, in a March 2024 CNBC interview, Trump said of entitlement programs such as Social Security, “There’s a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.” However, he quickly walked that statement back, and his CNBC comment stands at odds with essentially everything else Trump has said during the 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump’s campaign website says that not “a single penny” should be cut from Social Security. We rated Harris’ claim that Trump intends to cut Social Security Mostly False.

Project 2025 does propose changes to Medicare, including making Medicare Advantage, the private insurance offering in Medicare, the “default” enrollment option. Unlike Original Medicare, Medicare Advantage plans have provider networks and can also require prior authorization, meaning that the plan can approve or deny certain services. Original Medicare plans don’t have prior authorization requirements.

The manual also calls for repealing health policies enacted under Biden, such as the Inflation Reduction Act. The law enabled Medicare to negotiate with drugmakers for the first time in history, and recently resulted in an agreement with drug companies to lower the prices of 10 expensive prescriptions for Medicare enrollees.

Trump, however, has said repeatedly during the 2024 presidential campaign that he will not cut Medicare.

Project 2025 would eliminate the Education Department, which Trump supports

The Harris campaign said Project 2025 would “eliminate the U.S. Department of Education” — and that’s accurate. Project 2025 says federal education policy “should be limited and, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated.” The plan scales back the federal government’s role in education policy and devolves the functions that remain to other agencies.

Aside from eliminating the department, the project also proposes scrapping the Biden administration’s Title IX revision, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. It also would let states opt out of federal education programs and calls for passing a federal parents’ bill of rights similar to ones passed in some Republican-led state legislatures.

Republicans, including Trump, have pledged to close the department, which gained its status in 1979 within Democratic President Jimmy Carter’s presidential Cabinet.

In one of his Agenda 47 policy videos, Trump promised to close the department and “to send all education work and needs back to the states.” Eliminating the department would have to go through Congress.

What Project 2025, Trump would do on overtime pay

In the graphic, the Harris campaign says Project 2025 allows “employers to stop paying workers for overtime work.”

The plan doesn’t call for banning overtime wages. It recommends changes to some Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, regulations and to overtime rules. Some changes, if enacted, could result in some people losing overtime protections, experts told us.

The document proposes that the Labor Department maintain an overtime threshold “that does not punish businesses in lower-cost regions (e.g., the southeast United States).” This threshold is the amount of money executive, administrative or professional employees need to make for an employer to exempt them from overtime pay under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

In 2019, the Trump’s administration finalized a rule that expanded overtime pay eligibility to most salaried workers earning less than about $35,568, which it said made about 1.3 million more workers eligible for overtime pay. The Trump-era threshold is high enough to cover most line workers in lower-cost regions, Project 2025 said.

The Biden administration raised that threshold to $43,888 beginning July 1, and that will rise to $58,656 on Jan. 1, 2025. That would grant overtime eligibility to about 4 million workers, the Labor Department said.

It’s unclear how many workers Project 2025’s proposal to return to the Trump-era overtime threshold in some parts of the country would affect, but experts said some would presumably lose the right to overtime wages.

Other overtime proposals in Project 2025’s plan include allowing some workers to choose to accumulate paid time off instead of overtime pay, or to work more hours in one week and fewer in the next, rather than receive overtime.

Trump’s past with overtime pay is complicated. In 2016, the Obama administration said it would raise the overtime to salaried workers earning less than $47,476 a year, about double the exemption level set in 2004 of $23,660 a year.

But when a judge blocked the Obama rule, the Trump administration didn’t challenge the court ruling. Instead it set its own overtime threshold, which raised the amount, but by less than Obama.

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Democrats at DNC attack Trump on how they say Project 2025 would hurt education in states

Critics say low-income students could suffer in red-state rural schools.

Democrats have made conservatives' controversial Project 2025 and its education agenda a weapon in their attacks against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at the Democratic National Convention.

Dismantling the Department of Education is a key issue for conservatives this election season and is mentioned in the 922-page playbook for the next conservative president. And while Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, it aligns in many ways with his Agenda 47 platform.

President Joe Biden slammed the Republican vision for education as he addressed the Democratic National Convention on Monday night.

"Donald Trump, and his Republican friends, they not only can't think, they can't read very well," Biden said, adding,"Seriously, think about it. Look at their Project 2025. They want to do away with the Department of Education."

Michelle Obama touched on the subject in her speech the following night: "Shutting down the Department of Education, banning our books -- none of that will prepare our kids for the future."

Trump reiterated his plan for education in his wide-ranging X Spaces interview last week with Elon Musk.

"I want to close up the Department of Education (and) move education back to the states," Trump told Musk's more than 1 million listeners, claiming that the U.S. had fallen to the bottom of rankings among other countries and that states do a better job educating their children without federal mandates.

The U.S. is not ranked at the bottom, as Trump claimed, but due to historic learning loss during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is close to the bottom half in subjects like math in the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Nearly a third of U.S. students also ended last school year behind grade level in at least one academic subject, according to new data released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).

It's unclear whether the former president would close the agency and redistribute its funding to states or stop funding it and close it altogether. ABC News has reached out to the Trump campaign but didn't receive a response by time of publication.

Critics of the plan say it would hurt mostly small, rural school systems, many of them in red states.

In an interview with the nonprofit More Perfect Union, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said he would defend public education against defunding because it would exacerbate the "haves and the have-nots." An Education Department official warned that if the agency were shuttered, states would lose a "large chunk" of funding from the feds and state and local governments -- on average about 10%. State and local governments make up roughly 90% of public school funding.

Education finance expert Jess Gartner said school districts with the "highest need" students could take a devastating blow if the federal agency's funding was cut because funding for school districts isn't always equally distributed.

"Those targeted funds were being targeted for a reason," Gartner said.

'I can't find the word 'education' in (the Constitution)'

House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., is one of the most vocal opponents of the department. She raises caregivers' and local school board members' concerns that they shouldn't have to "co-parent" with the government.

Conservatives also reject what they characterize as bureaucrats infusing culture war topics into their kids' school curriculums.

Foxx argued it's unconstitutional for the government to handle state education issues in the first place.

"I can't find the word 'education' in there (the Constitution) as one of the duties and responsibilities of Congress or the federal government," Foxx told ABC News.

That ideology gives way for Trump to work with Foxx and congressional Republicans to pass a department closure if he wins the White House and Republicans maintain control of the House and take over the Senate in November, according to Arnold Ventures Director of Higher Education Clare McCann.

"Congress created the Department of Education," McCann told ABC News, adding, "Congress could uncreate it if they wanted."

In theory, McCann said, Trump could make the shift with congressional approval but it's unlikely it would happen immediately. There would need to be a support system to dole out the money to states, but that's something the department would be equipped to do.

"There's a reason the Department of Education was created and it was to have this kind of in-house expertise and policy background on these issues," McCann said. "The civil servants who work at the Department of Education are true experts in the field," she added.

Arkansas moves against 'indoctrinating' students

Former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Sanders has pushed for conservative education reform since becoming the first woman elected as the state's governor in 2022. Last year, she signed into law the state's LEARNS Act, which calls for raising minimum teacher salaries, introducing universal pre-K, banning teaching on "gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual reproduction" before fifth grade and banning curriculum that would "indoctrinate students with ideologies, such as Critical Race Theory."

It also instituted a universal voucher program for so-called "school choice," which is also similar to plans in Trump's Agenda 47 and Project 2025.

Superintendent of the Little Rock School District Jermall Wright said abolishing the Department of Education would be "catastrophic."

Wright, who cited friction with the school board in announcing last week he was stepping down from his position after two years on the job, said such an action would hinder title and grant funding meant to supplement state funding. He also fears it would strip states of Title I funding for low-income and disadvantaged students as well as McKinney-Vento funds, which includes support for the unhoused and transient populations.

"We rely on those additional funds to provide, you know, an array of services and supports for students and families," Wright told ABC News. "The face of homelessness has changed. It's not just, you know, people who are living on streets. We have extremely mobile families. They move from apartments to apartments, hotels, motels, etc. We have children who may live with family members that are not their biological parents. All those types of situations."

Before Little Rock, Wright led the Mississippi Achievement School District -- which encompasses two smaller districts totaling about 5,000 students in the rural Mississippi Delta. He said he saw firsthand the amount of federal aid some districts in the poorest state in the nation rely on.

"In those small rural districts, the majority of our funding came from federal funds, which I'd never experienced that a day before in any place that I had worked," he said, adding "Those districts wouldn't be able to survive, let alone, you just can't function."

Wright also said the federal agency plays an essential role in overseeing states' civil rights issues.

An impact on vulnerable students

That's a concern in other states like California, where education advocates worry abolishing the department would have an impact on vulnerable students and students with disabilities as well as general learning outcomes for students and teachers.

"There's a critical role for the U.S. Department of Education to support states in thinking about how to meet the needs of student groups who either have been marginalized, underserved, or for whom we really haven't had the opportunity to think about how best to meet their needs," said Sarah Lillis, California executive director for Teach Plus

Gartner, the education finance expert, said much of this conversation is dependent on economic opportunity, not location.

"There are very wealthy districts in California and there are very poor districts in California (and everywhere else)," Gartner told ABC News. "Wealthy districts aren't going to be impacted very much by their Title I money being cut. They're going to go out and pass a bond and raise that money - and then some - locally in two days. It's the poor, rural district that's going to be devastated by that and have no recourse to fill that gap."

Due to their emphasis on local control, states like Texas with strong economies would virtually be unaffected, according to state policy experts.

Others say they don't need the feds' help.

Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield said the state doesn't look to the U.S. Department of Education for guidance on education policy. She told ABC News that she's fine with abolishing the agency.

"We are making decisions about education focused on our own state," Critchfield told ABC News, adding "It is very rare that we're reaching out to the federal government to help us know what initiatives and goals we want to have here for our kids in Idaho."

Critchfield believes shuttering the department would have "little impact" on her state.

"We don't look to them (the Department of Education) to say what should we be working on," Critchfield said. "I'm talking to leaders in the state, local school boards, parents in our state, they're the ones telling me what I should be focused on. Outside of (the Department of Education) watchdogging, the influence on outcomes just isn't there."

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The founder of a software-development company says there's a 'huge demand' for training and education applications — extended reality can help

• Treeview is a developer of extended-reality software that serves clients such as Microsoft.
• Its founder spoke with BI about the company's training, education, and mixed-reality applications.
• This article is part of " Build IT ," a series about digital-tech trends disrupting industries.

Treeview , a leading boutique development shop in South America, has established a global presence in extended-reality software.

The company works with enterprise companies in the US, Europe, and the South Pacific to develop augmented- and virtual-reality applications for major platforms, including Meta's Quest, Apple's Vision Pro, and Microsoft's HoloLens. Its clients include Microsoft, education institutions such as the University of Alberta, and healthcare companies like Medtronic.

Business Insider spoke with Treeview's founder, Horacio Torrendell, to learn more about how business and enterprise clients are leveraging AR and VR hardware for XR applications.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

How'd you get into this line of work?

Treeview started around 2015 when I got an Oculus DK2 for university. I began doing freelance work with the hardware when there were very few VR developers in South America. I found some clients, started growing, and started to build a team. We did a lot of work with startups from 2017 to 2020. Now we're focusing on enterprise clients.

What's your take on the arc of the AR/VR industry's journey so far?

I see it more as steps than an arc. It's all generation-based, with new hardware opening up new use cases.

We started with PC VR for tinkering and exploration, then mobile VR like Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard. Next came stand-alone VR and mobile AR, where we did a lot of work with startups on projects similar to Ikea Place and construction tools. Now we're entering the mixed-reality generation with Vision Pro and Meta Quest .

Each step brings initial confusion as people figure out how to use the new technology, so I think of it as a staircase. Every time there's a new step up, there's a period of adjustment. We're at the start of the mixed-reality generation, and people are still figuring out what they can do with it. I expect we'll see much more mature use cases in the next year or two as the current technology paradigm settles.

What kind of problems are companies coming to you with now?

Our main focus for the last three years has been training and education. There's a huge demand in this area, but it's challenging to scale because building a high-quality training simulator requires a lot of effort.

We're excited about the emerging trend of merging AI with XR. Currently, AI is primarily a back-end, server-side concept that people interact with through text prompting. What's really interesting now is exploring how we can interact with AI through different computing interfaces, particularly immersive ones.

Can you help me visualize how AI is being integrated into a training experience?

One project we're working on with Microsoft is part of what they call the industrial metaverse. It's mainly around digital twins , which are digital replicas of physical locations with data overlaid onto that information. We're working on one of the largest renewable-energy-production sites in Uruguay .

We have a bunch of data and a real-life location, and we want to interact with that data. The way we're thinking of this is, how do you query that information? We have data that doesn't make sense without the context of the location, which is this actual wind farm.

Previously, you might filter that information by time stamps or ask specific questions with a predefined user interface. But we're exploring how to have a conversation with that data through an AI model that's trained on top of that data and large language models.

It's opening the possibility of having a conversation with a computer about a piece of content that is a physical representation of a physical place with data on top of that place.

What sort of hardware platforms do you target on a project like this?

This project targets Microsoft HoloLens 2, mobile with AR capabilities, and the standard web. We have to remember that XR is just one component in a larger set of software solutions. It's crucial to vertically integrate these technologies based on how you're interacting with the data.

Having stakeholders around a table with HoloLens, discussing data on-site in a real environment, would be the highest tier of experience. But there's still value in having a website with a 3D model that you can browse and interact with through chat prompts.

Let's zoom out a bit and talk about your workflow when starting a new project. How do you begin to scope out what a project is going to be?

We call that the discovery phase. It's about trying to understand what the client or the use case is about, not just receiving a list of requirements. It's a brainstorm that we have with clients.

For many of these corporations, there's value in deploying a solution. But there's also a lot of value in the innovation approach, in knowing exactly what's going on with this technology, exploring it, and doing some internal tinkering.

What's the scale of what you're normally building in terms of distribution?

With business-to-business projects, there is not a massive distribution. There are specific use cases and internal tools rather than customer-facing applications. However, we do have some clients, especially on the startup side, who have done more massive rollouts.

For context, we recently launched a free educational app for Apple Vision Pro. The project is called Inviewer , and it's like a Wikipedia of interactive spatial content. This app is featured in the education category of the app store, which is pretty cool. After four weeks, it had about 2,600 users.

Are companies looking to hit certain metrics, like reducing time or improving knowledge?

One of our largest clients is a startup that's a leader in employee training, though I can't name it due to nondisclosure agreements. What I can say is that some companies are training employees for specific tasks, like installing an electric circuit.

There's also huge demand in the market for institutions to provide context to, say, students about what they can do, especially for professional or technical careers. They want to get a feel for what it's like to install solar panels , for example.

These kinds of applications address a real need in the market. They help people understand career options they might not have known existed.

You mentioned you developed for the Apple Vision Pro. How are the latest headsets, like the Vision Pro, changing what you can achieve?

Apple brought the whole concept of eye gazing , the concept of prioritizing windows, and the fact that those windows can be expanded. That's a lot of new paradigms in the user-interface experience that Apple brought to the table, and it's been amazing.

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