Hi, it’s Lily on the national desk this week. Our big story today comes out of Philadelphia, where families say English learners need more help to graduate. Stick around for another chapter in the science of reading saga, a reminder that school supplies are already out in stores, and the skinny on the divisive technology fitted to school buses that’s hitting drivers with fines.

Also, don’t forget to RSVP to our teacher turnover event on July 30, hosted by Ideas Editor Matt Barnum. He has new data on teacher attrition to share, plus a classroom-level view on how to bolster the profession. When you register for the event, leave any questions you have, and we’ll do our best to answer.

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English learners are less likely to graduate from high school than their peers.

Take Philadelphia’s four-year graduation numbers from this year: Roughly 88% of non-English learners graduated from high school, compared with 71.5% of English learners. That disparity is partially because students aren’t getting enough support or flexibility from the district, according to families and advocates.

One teacher said the district is “pretty far behind and out of touch” when it comes to supporting newcomers in high school. Several teachers said just getting some English learners to consistently attend school is a challenge, because they’re balancing both school and work to support themselves or their families. And suspensions due to truancy only push students further away from schools.

The district says it is “deeply committed” to helping those students. It has flexible options like virtual school, although those options are rarely accessible to students learning English. Advocates say the district needs to pour more resources into its newcomer programs, so students learn English faster.

There’s also less support coming from the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Education is actively removing support for English learners. Agency officials said in April they plan to dissolve the office supporting these students, though the office had previously been decimated by layoffs.

Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s deputy chief of staff, reportedly asked Texas lawmakers why they didn’t pass a law funding public education only for citizens or those lawfully present in the country. Such a law would challenge the U.S. Supreme Court’s precedent in Plyler v. Doe, a landmark decision that guaranteed undocumented students the right to free public education. And last year, the department quietly rescinded guidance spelling out the educational rights of immigrant students.

That flurry of federal activity means states and districts — like Philadelphia — are shouldering more of the responsibility to support English Learners, with less guidance from the feds.

Read the full story.

Most testing is done digitally these days, and that may be why some in education are skeptical of outright bans on screens in the classroom. Bubble sheets are a relic of the past. And that means students need to have some familiarity with computers before they’re expected to take a standardized test. But as parent-led groups continue to plead for less screen time in schools, some argue that testing isn’t a good enough reason to introduce screens to young children.

School bus cameras with technology that reads the license plates of cars illegally passing buses are catching more scofflaws in communities across the country, from Miami to New Haven, Connecticut.

Such programs target drivers breaking a cut and dried law: You can’t pass a stopped school bus, because doing so could lead to a child getting hurt or even killed. More than 8,000 such violations occur everyday in Florida, state officials estimate. 

BusPatrol, which touts its AI-powered automated process to ticket drivers, now has a presence on more than 40,000 buses in 24 states. But the company’s increasing presence on America’s roads has come with considerable controversy.

A New York City pilot program with BusPatrol has attracted criticism — the president of BusPatrol was the former chief of staff to the city’s former deputy mayor during the Eric Adams administration.

In Miami, innocent motorists complained they were getting unfairly ticketed so often due to flaws in the technology that the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office temporarily suspended its program. The program has since resumed. A Bloomberg Businessweek investigation in Montgomery County, Maryland found that there’s little evidence that the technology has led to a decline in collisions near stopped school buses.

And critics also worry that outfitting thousands of buses in America with license plate-reading technology will turn the vehicles that children ride into pawns of a surveillance state. In leaked documents, 404 Media learned that BusPatrol plans to share the data it collects with law enforcement, beyond just cases of drivers suspected to have broken the law.

If this sounds familiar, you may have heard the controversy over Flock Safety, another company behind license plate reading technology frequently used by law enforcement agencies around the country. Some communities inadvertently shared Flock license plate data with U.S. Border Patrol in 2025 as the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement activity ramped up, one report found. That revelation sparked protests and calls for municipalities to ditch the tech.

The concerns over Flock spill over into education, too. Flock partnered with school safety company Raptor Technologies in 2025 to offer license plate reading technology for “schools to automatically identify vehicles as they enter campus grounds, expediting the dismissal process.” Police have searched data from Flock school security cameras in immigration investigations, raising questions about the cameras’ place in schools.

That’s the percentage of Freedom of Information Act requests the U.S. Department of Education has granted, either fully or partially, since February 2025, according to a review by The 74. Officials say downsizing, last year’s government shutdown, and an increase in requests all contributed to such a low response rate, but a delay in requests means a delay in getting important, public information to Americans.

That’s Keyana Hawthorne, a high school English teacher in Mississippi, one of several educators frustrated by her state’s new process for buying classroom supplies. As the back-to-school economic engine revs up, school supply displays are out at many stores across the country. And every year teachers dig into their own wallets to spend hundreds of dollars stocking up on supplies.

While Mississippi offers supplemental funding, teachers say a new system for spending that money isn’t easing the financial burden.