You might notice our newsletter looks a little different. Starting this week, we’re trying out a new platform for sending newsletters. Let us know what you think, and be sure to add [email protected] to your contacts so our newsletters get to you.

Hi from Lily on Chalkbeat’s National desk. Today’s big story is the campaign mounted by lawmakers and others this week to promote school choice and the federal education tax credit set to go into effect in 2027.

Keep reading to learn about the education groups pressuring Congress to put guardrails on immigration enforcement, what teens think about cellphone bans, new research into the science of reading, and important interviews with folks who work inside schools, from the cafeteria to the chess club.

Though it's already passed Congress and earned Trump's signature, lawmakers are on a campaign this week touting the federal education tax credit included in the One Big Beautiful Bill approved last year. In a hearing of the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday, Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Republican from Louisiana who chairs the committee, said the effort will bring parents more choice.

“It's not about public school versus private, not about teachers versus parents, not about Republicans versus Democrats,” he said.

States continue to opt into the program, with 23 states opting in so far according to a list released by the Education and Treasury Departments Tuesday. While all 23 states are led by Republican governors, the pressure is on for Democratic governors to either opt in or stay out. Some Democrats, including Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, have already indicated their support.

But the age-old debate around school vouchers was raised throughout the hearing, particularly by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an independent who caucuses with Democrats. He argued the effort amounts to a Trump-led campaign to privatize public education in the United States.

“We should not be creating a two-tier education system in America, private schools for the wealthy, and well-connected, and severely underfunded and under-resourced public schools for low-income, disabled and working class kids,” said Sanders.

Organizations have been working to increase the tax credit’s impact. Earlier this week, the American Federation for Children, an organization that’s long supported voucher programs, announced the launch of its own scholarship fund to accept donations via the federal tax credits.

Read the full story here.

Education advocacy groups are calling on Congress to hold up a Department of Homeland Security spending bill to put more guardrails around immigration enforcement. A standoff is looming after two people were killed by federal agents in Minneapolis and could lead to a government shutdown. The groups said aggressive immigration enforcement tactics were having a devastating impact on students and on schools’ ability to serve them. 

Six out of 10 teens aren’t on board with school cellphone bans, according to new research out this month. Policies banning or limiting phones in schools are spreading fast: 78% of teens in a new survey from the University of Southern California reported that their schools have a policy limiting or banning phones this year. But the data indicates that the majority of teens aren’t on board with the strictest bans. About 73% of students ages 13 to 17 reported to the Pew Research Foundation that they opposed “bell-to-bell” bans.

A year after the Eaton Fire destroyed over 9,000 structures in Southern California, Pasadena Rosebud Academy is still without a home. But the school’s founder, Shawn Brown, who also lost her home in the fire, said the school community has remained united. She’s tapped a network of other charter leaders who also experienced devastating wildfires as she works to rebuild.

While several states are attempting to turn around reading instruction in an effort to boost lagging test scores, no plan is identical, and it will likely take years to gauge success.

Michigan is among the states trying to make a turnaround effort, with new funding directed to teacher training and evidence-based literacy materials. But the Michigan Department of Education wants the state to go even further, reports The Detroit News, and is lobbying lawmakers to make it more difficult for districts to avoid science of reading concepts in instruction.

Meanwhile, a new report has raised questions around how science of reading strategies may fail to foster robust reading comprehension skills in major urban areas, according to The 74.

The report from SRI, a nonprofit research firm, found that in districts using phonics-based methods for five years or more in Texas, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia "a majority of reading lessons lacked 'depth' — meaning foundational skills were mainly limited to working on single words rather than reading them in sentences."

Of course, debates around comprehension have long colored dialogue around reading instruction in the U.S. Researchers told The 74 that they did observe more engagement among students when students worked with reading passages in "wide-randing contexts," and they hoped schools would incorporate that type of teaching. 

Tracey Couillard’s school kitchen partners with a nonprofit dedicated to making sure all children have access to nutritious food.

With proposals across the country to bar certain food dyes and with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s call to ban ultra-processed food from school lunches, cafeteria food is under the microscope.

Couillard told Chalkbeat in a Q&A how she runs her kitchen and incorporates nutritious food into meals without compromising on taste.

That’s how many units of affordable educator housing the San Diego Unified School District is planning to build at its headquarters. Voice of San Diego reports that the project, along with another 200 units at a second site, would represent the largest educator workforce housing portfolio in California and would be able to house 10% of the district’s workforce. 

More school districts are building workforce housing as teacher wages have not kept pace with the price of housing, but not at the same scale.

Looking for your next read? Check out these other great newsletters.