Mitt Romney unveiled his education policy proposal to the Latino Coalition's annual economic summit in May. It was Romney's most explicit outline to date of his education agenda. (Cover Photo by AFP/Getty) ____________________

Want more stories about schools across the nation, including the latest news and unique perspectives on education issues? Visit www.edweek.org.

About Education Week:
Education Week is America’s most trusted source of independent K-12 education news, analysis, and opinion. Our work serves to raise the level of understanding and discourse about education among school and district leaders, policymakers, researchers, teachers, and the public. Published by the nonprofit organization Editorial Projects in Education, Education Week has been providing award-winning coverage of the field for over 35 years.

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President-elect Donald Trump ran on a pledge to abolish the U.S. Department of Education. After his election victory, a flood of educators and activists have asked the same question: Can he really do that?

The short answer: It’s possible, but he couldn’t do it alone. Members of Congress would have to approve a plan to reorganize federal agencies, and Trump would face a lot of hurdles in winning their support.

And even if the agency closed, its responsibilities—like administering Title I funding, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and student loans—would be transferred to other federal agencies.

Conservative pledges to shut down the Education Department date back to the presidency of Ronald Reagan, shortly after the agency’s 1979 creation. None have followed through on that promise—so far.

“I’m bored.” It’s a phrase that regularly comes out of the mouths of students.

But this Toronto teacher has found a solution.

Through a 10-minute “nothing period,” in which students are quiet and seated and able to occupy themselves, Margaret Fong's class has learned how to occupy themselves and their time when they don’t have anything to do. Some have invented games in this free time, or drawn comic books, others have come to relish the opportunity to just breathe. She’s seen this learning have a positive impact on students, and it’s been particularly helpful in her split classroom, keeping one grade occupied while she works with the other.

Here, she explains how she’s put this practice into effect, and offers tips for teachers who’d like to do the same.

When an ambitious, hard-working animal lover sees the need for veterinary services in her own town, she plans to get the schooling she needs—starting with a solid, online education. Learning from the farm through her K12-powered school gives Ava time for practical hands-on skill development as she cares for more than 50 animals in her own sanctuary.

Ava has a clear vision for her future, and she knows the value of hard work. With the full support of her parents, she’s ready to begin fulfilling her vision of studying veterinary sciences and someday offering full-scale veterinary services to her community.

For more than 25 years, K12 has been heeding the call of families and students who asked for an alternative to traditional onsite education. We’re in awe of what Ava has done with this opportunity and can’t wait to see how the next generation of students will thrive. Learn more at https://bit.ly/40XuDKT.

K12 Robotics Competition – Full Showcase Video (YouTube)
On June 3, 2025, nine teams of students gathered for the ultimate battle of the bots—the
K12 Robotics Competition finals. If you couldn’t attend the in-person event, now’s your
time to catch up on all the action!
These teams emerged as the top robotics masters in their grade bands after two qualifier
rounds. They’ve proven themselves to be true robotics masters, demonstrating innovation,
creativity, and problem-solving skills—not to mention great teamwork. Find out here who
will emerge victorious and take home the grand prize of $500.
Let the bot battles begin!

Connect with K12!

Find a school: K12.com
Facebook: facebook.com/StrideK12
Instagram: instagram.com/k12learn
TikTok: tiktok.com/@stridek12

You’ve heard your stories, you’ve seen their dishes, now it’s time for the final episode of the 2025 K12 National Cook-Off! Join us for a recap of the event —complete with highlights, judges’ feedback, and an interview with our winner.
But first, we’ll announce your pick for the People’s Choice winner! They will receive $250 thanks to your support.

If you want to see more K12 events like this, be sure to subscribe and leave a like on this video so we know!

Enrolling in a K12-powered school is a great way to add some flexible fun and memorable events to your child’s education. Visit our website to learn more about how K12 can work for you!

Kids don’t come with instruction manuals, but when it comes to supporting them as their Learning Coach, we have some solid suggestions for you. Watch for 6 great tips on completing Learning Coach tasks.

Help & Support: https://www.help.k12.com/
First Day of School Resources: https://www.help.k12.com/s/article/First-Day-of-School-Resources-2025

There’s nothing more aesthetically pleasing than GOLD. ⭐🤩 That’s why the golden ratio can be found just about anywhere—even in this K12 Teaching Moment! What do you think? Is the golden ratio as beautiful as people say? 👀 Comment below. #shorts

Middle-earth almost never came to life! On this day, September 21, we remember how J.R.R. Tolkien struggled for years, constantly editing The Hobbit until a nudge from a former student gave him the push he needed. In this K12 Teaching Moment, learn why completing your projects matters and how a little encouragement can make all the difference.

🍳 Join Us for the 2024 K12 National Cook-Off Finals! 🍽️

📅 Date: August 14, 2024 ⏰ Time: 5pm ET

📍 Filming Location: Kitchen of Purpose, Arlington, VA

🔥 What’s Cooking? Budding chefs in grades 6–12 have battled it out in the virtual round, and now six talented finalists are ready to sizzle in the in-person cook-off! They’ll whip up mouthwatering dishes, vying for the $1,000 grand prize. 🏆
👨‍🍳 Meet the Finalists: Discover their winning recipes and get a taste of their culinary magic! https://enrichment.k12.com/cookoff/

👉 Competition Overview:
Round 1: Students submitted original recipes, showcasing creativity and skill.
Round 2: In-person cook-off in Arlington, VA, at the Kitchen of Purpose, judged by Chef David Ho from Food Network’s Chopped, Postre Chef Isabel Coss, and Chef Daniela Hurtado.

🎁 Prizes:
1st place: $1,000
2nd place: $500
3rd place: $350
Culinary Gift baskets for 4th, 5th, and 6th place

👩‍👧‍👦 Join the Culinary Excitement! Mark your calendar and prepare for a feast of flavors!
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Connect with K12!

Find a school: K12.com
Facebook: facebook.com/StrideK12
Instagram: instagram.com/k12learn
TikTok: tiktok.com/@stridek12

Welcome to the 2024 K12 Robotics Competition!

This year, we invited students in grades 4–12 to join the K12 Robotics League. Students worked in teams of two or three, with guidance from their instructors, and participated in two virtual qualifying rounds. Teams competed against others in their grade bands (4–6, 7–9, and 10–12) and skill levels (intermediate and advanced).

Today, we celebrate the top teams from the qualifying rounds as they compete for the national championship! Congratulations to all the students participating today—you’ve demonstrated incredible creativity, problem-solving skills, and coding expertise. Be proud of your achievements and enjoy this exciting culmination of your hard work!

Let the bot battles begin!

Date: June 19th, 2024
Time: 8:30AM ET
Location: Live-streamed on Facebook + Youtube
Hosted by: K12
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http://www.k12.com. K12 is the leader in online learning for grades K through 12 for two fundamental reasons: we develop our own curriculum, widely regarded as the highest quality available online, and we are devoted to fulfilling the promise of education for every child.

Connect with K12!

Find a school: K12.com
Facebook: facebook.com/StrideK12
Instagram: instagram.com/k12learn
TikTok: tiktok.com/@stridek12

Testing a model parachute can tell us many things and help us learn about a variety of concepts, such as proportionate size and scale, gravity, air resistance, weight relationships. In this freeform activity about preventing free-falling, students design their own model parachutes while considering factors in their test drops such as distance, weight, and time.

View the full activity on TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/u

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more!

Music: Hyperfun - Kevin MacLeod

Student teams create, test and improve oil spill cleanup kits, designing them to be inexpensive and accessible for homeowners to use or for big companies to give to individual workers to aid in personal home, community or corporate environmental oil cleanup. After deciding on a target user and scenario, teams conduct research and draw from an assortment of ordinary materials and supplies.

View the full activity at TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/makerchallenges/v

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more!

Music: Trapped - Quincas Moreira

Students learn about one-axis rotations, and specifically how to rotate objects both physically and mentally to understand the concept. They practice drawing one-axis rotations through a group exercise using cube blocks to create shapes and then drawing those shapes from various x-, y- and z-axis rotation perspectives on triangle-dot paper (isometric paper). They learn the right-hand rule to explore rotations of objects. A worksheet is provided. This activity is part of a multi-activity series towards improving spatial visualization skills.

View the full activity on TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/c

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more

Music: Sky Scraper - Geographer

The school’s playground is flooded again, and the students cannot go out to recess! Students learn about the different states of matter and how water changes. They use this knowledge, along with research about natural disasters, to come up with an engineering solution that prevents playground flooding. They plan and design a model, test it, and share results. After sharing results, they redesign and complete at least two more trials to find the optimal solution.

View the full activity on TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/u

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more

Music: Cold Funk Funkorama

Students investigate the property dependence between liquid and solid interfaces and determine observable differences in how liquids react to different solid surfaces. They compare copper pennies and plastic "coins" as the two test surfaces. Using an eye dropper to deliver various fluids onto the surfaces, students determine the volume and mass of a liquid that can sit on the surface. They use rulers, scales, equations of volume and area, and other methods of approximation and observation, to make their own graphical interpretations of trends. They apply what they learned to design two super-surfaces (from provided surface treatment materials) that are capable of holding the most liquid by volume and by mass. Cost of materials is a parameter in their design decisions.

View the full activity at TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/w

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit http://www.TeachEngineering.org for more!

Music: Coupe - The Grand Affair

Students work in teams to design a tabletop supply organizer inspired by the natural home of an insect species. Their prototype stores the group’s classroom supplies (scissors, crayon boxes, pencils, and glue sticks). In addition to following measurement constraints that apply to their prototype, students must design their supply organizer with the idea that supplies must be easily retrievable and the organizer must be sturdy enough to withstand everyday classroom wear and tear. Students test their prototype in the classroom for a period of 5 days and evaluate its effectiveness.
This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

View the full activity on TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/u

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more

Music: Educated man

In this activity, students discover that the concept of mechanical advantage describes reality fairly well. They act as engineers creating a design for a ramp at a construction site by measuring multiple different inclined planes and calculating the theoretical mechanical advantage versus the actual mechanical advantage of each.

View the full lesson on TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/c

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more

Music - Daily Beetle By Kevin MacLeod

Building upon their understanding of forces and Newton's laws of motion, students learn about the force of friction, specifically with respect to cars. They explore the friction between tires and the road to learn how it affects the movement of cars while driving. In an associated literacy activity, students explore the theme of conflict in literature, and the difference between internal and external conflict, and various types of conflicts. Stories are used to discuss methods of managing and resolving conflict and interpersonal friction.

View the full lesson on TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/lessons/view/cub_

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more

Students test the insulation properties of different materials by timing how long it takes ice cubes to melt in the presence of various insulating materials. Students learn about the role that thermal insulation materials can play in reducing heat transfer by conduction, convection and radiation, as well as the design and implementation of insulating materials in construction and engineering.

View the full activity at TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/u

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit http://www.TeachEngineering.org for more!

Music: Cali Buzz - Yung Logos

Students investigate motors and electromagnets as they construct their own simple electric motors using batteries, magnets, paperclips and wire.

View the full activity on TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.org/acti...

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more!

Music: Deep Hat - Vibe Tracks

Students randomly select jelly beans (or other candy) that represent genes for several human traits such as tongue-rolling ability and eye color. Then, working in pairs, students randomly choose new pairs of jelly beans from those corresponding to their own genotypes. The new pairs are placed on toothpicks to represent the chromosomes of the couple's offspring. Finally, students compare genotypes and phenotypes of parents and offspring for all the pairs in the class. In particular, they look for cases in which parents and offspring share the exact same genotype and/or phenotype, and consider how the results would differ if they repeated the simulation using more than four traits.

View the full activity on TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/d

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more!

Music: Cold Funk Funkorama

Students learn about the types of waves and how they change direction, as well as basic wave properties such as wavelength, frequency, amplitude and speed. During the presentation of lecture information on wave characteristics and properties, students take notes using a handout. Then they label wave parts on a worksheet diagram and draw their own waves with specified properties (crest, trough and wavelength). They also make observations about the waves they drew to determine which has the highest and the lowest frequency. With this knowledge, students better understand waves and are a step closer to understanding how humans see color.

View the full lesson on TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/lessons/view/clem

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more

While we know air exists around us all the time, we usually do not notice the air pressure. During this activity, students use Bernoulli's principle to manipulate air pressure so its influence can be seen on the objects around us.

View the full activity at TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/c

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit http://www.TeachEngineering.org for more!

Music: Aimless Amos

During a power failure, or when we go outside at night, we grab a flashlight so we can find our way. What happens inside a flashlight that makes the bulb light up? Why do we need a switch to turn on a flashlight? Have you ever noticed that for the flashlight to work you must orient the batteries a certain way as you insert them into the casing? Many people do not know that a flashlight is a simple series circuit. In this hands-on activity, students build this everyday household item and design their own operating series circuit flashlights.

View the full activity on TeachEngineering: https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/c

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit http://www.TeachEngineering.org for more!

Music: Alternate - Vibe Tracks