Plus, 2025 highlights in early educationView in browser [link removed]
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**In this week's edition:** A study finds one-fifth of California community college websites still threaten students with transcript withholding [link removed]. States, cities and communities made investments in early learning during a year of upheaval [link removed]. Plus, the Trump administration made good on many Project 2025 education goals [link removed].
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Students need transcripts to prove they’ve earned their credentials when they apply for a job or for transfer to different college, but colleges have often withheld them over unpaid debt. California and at least 12 other states now ban the practice. Credit: Emily Kaplan for The Hechinger Report
****California banned holding college students’ transcripts hostage over unpaid debt. Some colleges neglect the law.****
In 2020, California led the nation in outlawing transcript withholding, a debt collection practice that sometimes kept low-income college students from getting jobs or advanced degrees. Five years later, 24 of the state’s 115 community colleges still said on their websites that students with unpaid balances could lose access to their transcripts, according to a recent UC Merced survey.
The communications failure has been misleading, student advocates said, although overall, the state’s students have benefited from the law.
It “raises questions about what actual institutional practices are at colleges and the extent to which colleges know the law and are fully compliant with the law,” said Charlie Eaton, a UC Merced sociology professor who led the research team that conducted the survey in October.
California community colleges say they are following the law, which prohibits them from refusing to release the grades of a student who owes money to the school — anywhere from a $25 library fine to unpaid tuition. The misinformation on some college websites is a clerical problem that campuses have been asked to update, the California Community Colleges chancellor’s office said in an emailed statement.
Without an official transcript, students can’t prove they’ve earned college credits to admissions offices elsewhere or to potential employers. Millions of students nationwide have lost access to their transcripts because of unpaid fees, according to estimates from the higher education consulting firm Ithaka S+R.
Student advocates argued that the practice made little money for colleges, while costing graduates opportunities that could help them pay back their debts.
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****5 early ed highlights from 2025****
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**Jackie Mader**
In the nearly 13 years since I wrote my first early childhood story for The Hechinger Report, I have never experienced a year quite like 2025. From the gutting of federal early childhood offices to threats to Head Start and the deeply felt ramifications of aggressive federal immigration enforcement, news on the early ed beat felt constant — and especially urgent — this year.
Amid all this, there were some promising steps taken, especially at the state level, to elevate children’s issues and pay for programs that support the earliest years of life.
Here are five highlights, including a few you may have missed:
**New Mexico introduced universal child care.**New Mexico was the first state in the country to roll out universal child care to every family, regardless of income. Experts are cautiously optimistic, and acknowledge the state likely has some kinks to work out. One New Mexico source I spoke to said she’s especially worried that wealthier families will snatch up spots if guardrails aren’t put in place to prioritize certain populations, including children with disabilities. Another advocate told me she is worried that the wages for early childhood educators are still too low. This is a story that will continue to play out over the next few years, and will be watched carefully. Still, in a country that has long underfunded early learning, experts are hopeful that other states will follow suit and invest more in the child care industry in ways that support the child care staff and families.
Read the story [link removed]
****Trump administration makes good on many Project 2025 education goals****
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This year meant rollbacks of DEI initiatives, student loan forgiveness and gender-related policies, all part of the conservative blueprint.
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Last year, Project 2025 was a conservative wish list: a grab bag of proposals large and small that would transform the federal government, including in education. Months later, many of those wishes have become reality. [link removed]
****Reading list****
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OPINION: Beyond DEI offices, colleges are dismantling all kinds of programs related to equity [link removed]
Shuttering a student-run magazine in Alabama is the latest blow to fighting tyranny
Tracking Trump: His actions on education [link removed]
The president is working to eliminate the Education Department and fighting ‘woke’ ideology in schools. A week-by-week look at what he’s done
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