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JUDY WOODRUFF: After years of neglect, parents in one of Denver’s poorest neighborhoods hoped that a new preschool would be built in their community. Instead, they got much more.

William Brangham recently visited there, and he is back again with this report.

It’s part of our weekly series Making the Grade.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Fish swim in giant tanks. Collard greens grow in abundance in a massive greenhouse. Down the hall, there’s a dentist’s office, as well as a mental health center. And at the other end of the building, 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds run around like mad.

Some might say it’s an unusual mix here in the heart of one of Denver’s poorest neighborhoods, but not according to the woman who runs the place.

LYDIA PRADO, Vice President, Mental Health Center of Denver: It’s taking a new approach to community well-being.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Dr. Lydia Prado is the driving force behind this place. It’s called the Dahlia Campus for Health and Well-Being.

LYDIA PRADO: My initial conversations were with two folks who had — together, they have over 80 years of residence in this community.

And just floated the idea, I want to take integrated care to the next level. I want to think comprehensively about health. I want to be able to talk about mental health, and went to talk to them about it, and it’s like, what do you think? And they’re like, oh.

But, you know, they were very honest about it. There are going to be challenges, but if anybody’s going to give it a shot — and we’re behind you.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: For Prado, building partnerships early on was key. Heidi Heissenbuttel came on board early, bringing a branch of her Sewall Child Development Center to the new campus.

Sewall’s been a pioneer in what’s known as inclusive education, teaching children with special needs — that is, kids with autism or those with emotional or behavioral issues — and putting them in classrooms with their more typically developing peers.

Heissenbuttel says the evidence is clear that this approach works for all kids.

HEIDI HEISSENBUTTEL, CEO, Sewall Child Development Center: They learn to expect that every child learns differently, and they go on to their elementary classrooms, and they become advocates for kids who learn differently. And they will tell teachers, you need to work with that child, or why can’t he participate on the playground, or we want him in our group.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: We observed three classrooms. Here, the Tigers have circle time. Then they moved on to center time, an hour when the children get to pick what they want to do, as teachers float through the classroom facilitating vocabulary-building and individual lessons.

One-third of the children here have some special need, some with diagnosed developmental problems. Plus, 40 percent of the kids here suffer from what’s known as toxic stress.

HEIDI HEISSENBUTTEL: Toxic stress is the result of poverty, abuse and neglect, domestic violence, just life’s circumstances, when you — when a family lives under stress.

And what the best treatment, for children to have loving, stable relationships in their lives.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Arnesha Poke’s son Adrian attends the pre-K, and she says this inclusive approach is important to her.

ARNESHA POKE, Parent: Instead of, like, separating the kids off and stuff, they need to all be together, so they can learn each other and learn each other’s emotional ways, and stuff like that.

LYDIA PRADO: In the community conversation, it was extremely important, this idea of inclusivity, because it was — it’s parallel to a community’s desire to be included and inclusive.

There’s a lot of experience of being separated out.

DIANE GREENBERG, Parent: I thought she would kind of fall in with the rest of the kids and just do — not have any problems, issues at all.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Diane Greenberg and her daughter Karai used to live in a homeless shelter. She says this preschool has been life-changing.

DIANE GREENBERG: I love this place because it helps me understand how to deal with that. It helps me understand how to help her.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: The staff-to-child ratio here is one to five, whereas the state only mandates a 1-10 ratio.

TRINA POKE, Teacher, Sewall at Dahlia: I think we all respect each other and we all do like each other enough.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Teachers Trina Poke and Christine Krall.

TRINA POKE: We just kind of get so used to each other that we do just tend to feed off of each other like that.

CHRISTINE KRALL, Director, Sewall at Dahlia: I especially feel sometimes that it’s not easy to see what I’m doing. And that’s when I will share, like, the rationale and things like that during team meetings, so it doesn’t look like I’m just playing, because there is a method to the madness.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Some of the madness is designed to calm children down who may be having a tough time.

Heather Luehers is a social worker.

HEATHER LUEHERS, Social Worker, Sewall at Dahlia: When kids can’t pay attention to parents, when they are so dysregulated, they have problems, because they move inside themselves, and they just run around the classroom.

And I think, in some of our classrooms, you see that. So, what I’m doing with this child is saying, I’m the adult, I’m in charge, you don’t need to be in charge, because these kids that need to be in charge with parents that are absent don’t do well.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: A full-day preschool program with all this staff doesn’t come cheap. For a typically developing child, it’s $252 a week. For a child with special needs who requires more staffing, it’s $387.

And 90 percent of the families in this neighborhood need financial help. Many pay based on what they can afford. But research shows the return on that investment is high. Every $1 spent on early education returns $13 in savings down the road.

In addition to being one of the poorest neighborhoods in Denver, this area is also what’s called a food desert. What that means is, according to the USDA, is that, if you live in a big city, you don’t have a good grocery store within about a mile of your house. This neighborhood, it’s over two miles to a good grocery store. That’s about a 45-minute walk.

Even worse, this is what’s known as a food swamp, where all that’s available what’s available is fast food and the generally poor nutrition that comes with it.

That’s where those fish and collard greens come in. Tilapia and catfish were the fish the community said they want. And collard greens and Swiss chard were the top choices for leafy greens.

JENNA SMITH, Manager, Colorado Aquaponics: And so you will see the roots just hang down into the water, and they can just soak it up as they need it.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Wow.

Jenna Smith runs this aquaponics greenhouse, which uses one continuous loop of recycled, cleaned water for the entire operation.

JENNA SMITH: Healthy food is foundational to overall health and well-being. It’s a very important component to having — helping kids to grow up, pay attention in class, you know, be strong and active. And what better way to do that than to have it right on site?

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Where these greens now grow used to be the site of the country’s largest African-American-owned mall. But the businesses went bankrupt, and the lot was abandoned for decades.

Longtime resident and urban farmer Beverly Grant talked to us in the huge kitchen at Dahlia, a space where students sort lettuce for food boxes they take home, and where community members can take cooking classes.

BEVERLY GRANT, Mo’ Betta Green Marketplace: We have shifted from food desert to food oasis.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Grant runs her own traveling farm stand, and she met Lydia Prado early in the planning stages.

BEVERLY GRANT: The blessing is that Dr. Prado had amazing listening ears and a compassionate heart. And when she heard the stories of people like me and others, she was like, hmm, we could probably do something about that. You get that little nod from her, consider that done.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As Grant likes to say, from seed to stomach.

During our visit, preschoolers were learning that very lesson, planting seedlings that will later be transplanted into their urban farm, and could very likely end up on their own kitchen tables.

For the PBS NewsHour, I’m William Brangham in Denver, Colorado.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: But first: The Trump administration has made it very clear that it wholeheartedly supports school choice.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is a strong advocate of vouchers, which allow parents to use public tax dollars to pay for a private school education. Supporters say vouchers help students succeed, but opponents say they siphon away crucial public school resources.

Indiana has one of the largest voucher programs in the country.

And special correspondent Lisa Stark of our partner Education Week went to see how it’s working for our regular segment Making the Grade.

LISA STARK: It’s the start of the day at Emmaus Lutheran School in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where chapel is held once a week.

About 20 miles away, this is how the day begins at Fairfield Elementary, the city’s largest public elementary school.

Fairfield is warm and welcoming. So is Emmaus. Fairfield get top grades from the state for academics. So does Emmaus. But one is a public school, the other a private school that accepts vouchers.

They symbolize opposite sides of the heated voucher debate, only likely to intensify, given the administration’s strong support for school choice.

At the heart of the debate, money, and how education dollars are divvied up. Normally, the state distributes tax dollars to public schools to educate students. In Indiana, that’s about $5,800 a student. Vouchers change that. A portion of the money, the tax dollars, follow the student instead, allowing parents the use those dollars to pay tuition at the private school of their choice.

That’s the voucher program.

Robert Enlow is an advocate.

ROBERT ENLOW, President, EdChoice: We have seen over time our traditional school systems, because they’re based on zip code assignment and where you live, not providing always the best options for families.

Let’s put the money in the backpacks of the parent and let them choose where they want to go by giving parents the best options for their kids.

LISA STARK: Indiana is one of nearly 30 states that offers vouchers or similar programs. All have the same goal: allowing parents to use public funds for private schooling.

Jerry and Miriam Lunz use vouchers to send their children to private Lutheran schools, rather than their local public schools.

JERRY LUNZ, Parent: I would say the schools in our particular area are not the best from the academic standpoint. That played into some of it, but mostly the moral aspect is what we wanted, the Christian aspect, same taught at the school as at the home.

LISA STARK: Without vouchers, private high school was mostly out of reach.

MIRIAM LUNZ, Parent: We looked at the financial aspect, and we had no idea how we were going to cover the cost. Jerry is the hardest-working truck driver I know, but that doesn’t pay a lot.

LISA STARK: More than 300 private schools in Indiana accept vouchers. The vast majority are religious schools.

Keith Martin is the principal at Emmaus Lutheran.

Why does this school participate in the voucher program?

KEITH MARTIN, Principal, Emmaus Lutheran School: Simply because it allows us to serve more students and more families.

LISA STARK: In fact, nearly half of the 193 students at Emmaus rely on vouchers, bringing in about $400,000 for the school, more than a third of its budget.

KEITH MARTIN: It’s obviously very helpful, but you know, our school was here 100 years before the voucher program, and I’m confident that we will have it here 100 years with or without the voucher program.

LISA STARK: At Fairfield Elementary, a drop in students and resources due partly to vouchers has strained budgets, according to principal Lindsay Amstutz-Martin.

LINDSAY AMSTUTZ-MARTIN, Principal, Fairfield Elementary: I do know I have lost teachers every year. I have lost allocations of teachers every year, because we’re losing students, and sometimes that makes — certain grade levels’ class sizes are large.

LISA STARK: In kindergarten, for example, there are 28 students and just one teacher.

Fort Wayne Superintendent Wendy Robinson sees vouchers as an assault on public schools.

WENDY ROBINSON, Fort Wayne Community Schools Superintendent: You have established a totally separate school system on the back of a structure that was intended for public schools.

LISA STARK: Another concern, Robinson says this is unfair competition, that public schools, unlike private ones, are required to educate everyone who comes in the door, including students with disabilities or limited English skills, who require more resources.

WENDY ROBINSON: If they took every student, if they were responsible for special ed, if they took ELL, if they were not allowed to pick and choose which kids they took, bring it on.

LISA STARK: Indiana’s program started out for low-income students. It was greatly expanded. It now includes students who never attended public schools, and middle-class families were added under then Governor, now Vice President Mike Pence.

VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: I have also long believed that parents should be able to choose where their kids go to school.

LISA STARK: Enrollment skyrocketed from 9,000 students to more than 34,000, 3 percent of the school population. This year, $146 million in tax dollars is going to private schools.

School choice, including vouchers, is high on the agenda of President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Trump’s first school visit was to a Florida Catholic school that accepts vouchers.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Education is the civil rights issue of our time. And it’s why I have asked Congress to support a school choice bill.

LISA STARK: Nationally, the results on vouchers are mixed, with little or no improvement in test scores for voucher students. Still, some 29 states are considering dozens of bills that would start or expand vouchers and similar programs.

ROBERT ENLOW: We have seen dramatic growth. What we’re going to see more of is more and more parents demanding more and more options.

But public school officials wonder, at what cost?

WENDY ROBINSON: I’m worried that people aren’t alarmed. Public education is the backbone of this country.

LISA STARK: A backbone increasingly under pressure.

I’m Lisa Stark of Education Week in Fort Wayne, Indiana, for the PBS NewsHour.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: How child care for the U.S. military families came to be among the best in the country.

It now serves an estimated 200,000 children. The average service member spends about 9 percent of their income on child care. The average civilian spends 25 percent.

Special correspondent Kavitha Cardoza with our partner Education Week traveled to North Carolina to see what the civilian sector can learn for our weekly series Making the Grade.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Discipline, strength, endurance, traits that define the Marine Corps. They’re also known for babies?

MARLA TALLEY, Child Care Worker: Marines do two things really, really, really well. They shoot their guns, and they make a lot of babies.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: At Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, Marla Talley oversees the child care centers.

MARLA TALLEY: We usually see a great increase in our request for infant care nine months after a unit comes back from a deployment.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Camp Lejeune is one of the country’s largest Marine Corps installations, seven times the size of Manhattan. The child development centers, or CDCs, can accommodate 1,800 children under the age of 5.

COL. MICHAEL SCALISE, U.S. Marine Corps: Everything that we do as Marines is linked with readiness. CDCS are a part of that.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Colonel Michael Scalise is deputy commander.

COL. MICHAEL SCALISE: When you think in terms of a Marine that is focused, he’s focused on training, he’s focused on deploying. Anything that he has to worry about, from his family’s standpoint, whether that’s his children or his spouse, or her children or spouse, deviate from that Marine’s ability to focus.

STAFF SGT. KATHLEEN HARGROVE, U.S. Marine Corps: I start my day at 05:45 at the barracks, which means I have to drop Annabelle off at day care no later than 5:30.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Staff Sergeant Kathleen Hargrove is a single mother.

STAFF SGT. KATHLEEN HARGROVE: I can’t really use excuses to be late in the Marine Corps. That’s not an acceptable answer. They expect you to be there when you’re told to be.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Across all branches of service, members of the U.S. military have about two million children, more than 40 percent of them under the age of 5. But child care in the military hasn’t always been this good.

DEBORAH PHILLIPS, Georgetown University: In the ’70s, the military child care system was really a system in crisis. There were very few inspections done of the program, so even basic safety and health wasn’t protected.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Deborah Phillips is a professor of psychology at Georgetown University.

DEBORAH PHILLIPS: The child care teachers in the military, child care centers were paid on a par with the garbage collectors in the military system.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: The dismal state of child care led to congressional hearings, and eventually the child care budget increased 62 percent.

Barbara Thompson recently retired from the Pentagon as director of military family readiness.

BARBARA THOMPSON, Retired Pentagon Director of Military Family Readiness: That was earth-shattering, I would say, for those of us in the military child development system. It gave us the opportunity to hire training and curriculum specialists. It provided federal dollars, so that the cost of care would be subsidized by the federal government.

DEBORAH PHILLIPS: People have referred to what happened with military child care as a Cinderella story, because you had this system going from a system in crisis to a model for the nation in under five years.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Federal subsidies meant more teachers were hired, they were more qualified, and they were paid better. It’s no surprise, then, 97 percent of military centers are independently certified as high-quality, compared to less than 10 percent of civilian centers.

WOMAN: This is a loft. And I absolutely love these.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Unlike many civilian centers, where the focus is primarily on health and safety, the military goes one step further.

MARLA TALLEY: We’re in the business of building brains. It looks like the children are doing nothing but playing, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. But the activities that they have are all designed to promote some portion of that child’s growth and development.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Even infants have lesson plans.

WOMAN: You want some bubbles?

We like to watch the bubbles. It helps us work on our focusing and tracking skills and learning that things are here one moment and they’re gone the next.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Educators use every chance to teach, even during mealtimes.

WOMAN: By pouring, that’s measuring. They’re learning how much milk. Sometimes, they will say it’s full or it’s half. So, they’re learning math.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Because teachers are paid about a third more than their civilian counterparts, there’s very little turnover. The military pays for all their training. This child care system also focuses on the unique needs of military children.

This is an age where children are forming and solidifying parental attachments. So, when a mother or father leaves for extended periods of time, it can be very upsetting.

META JACKSON, Teacher: This is when mommies and daddies may leave and go far, far away.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Most children here have had parents who’ve deployed more than once.

META JACKSON: Now, when your mommies and daddies go away, are you sad?

A lot of kids will come back and say: Dad don’t want to talk. Dad is not home yet.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Each classroom has a safe space. And teachers help children identify emotions, breathing techniques, and how to ask for help.

MARLA TALLEY: For a lot of young children, the child care facility that they go to, especially here, becomes the one stable thing in their life during that period of time.

They can come in here, and they can forget that mom or dad has deployed or that things are a little topsy-turvy at home, because, when I come here, my same friends are going to be here, my teachers are going to be here, I have a routine.

And that’s really crucial, then, because those children can then take that security back home with them.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Gunnery Sergeant Craig Skinner and Master Sergeant Bergen Skinner, who have three children in this child care center, say they see evidence every day that their children are learning.

GUNNERY SGT. CRAIG SKINNER, U.S. Marine Corps: About a week ago, Preston came in, and he actually just wrote his name down. We were doing something and he started spelling his name. And we’re like, OK, so you actually know how to do this.

MASTER SGT. BERGEN SKINNER, U.S. Marine Corps: They actually helped potty train my children.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: These Marines say child care centers give them the assurance that their children are safe and loved, an assurance most civilian parents have a harder time finding.

MASTER SGT. BERGEN SKINNER: We both work really long hours. And I can’t explain the feeling that I get when I go pick up my children and they run to me because they’re happy because they had such a great day. They love being there.

MAN: There’s only four targets out here, four individuals. Make sense?

MAN: Yes, Sergeant.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: For Marines and other service members, this peace of mind means more than being just a satisfied parent. It means they can concentrate on their mission wherever it may take them.

I’m Kavitha Cardoza of Education Week for the PBS NewsHour.

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HARI SREENIVASAN: But first: With stepped-up enforcement along the U.S.-Mexican border, there is more anxiety among immigrant communities that families members with different status might be separated.

In New Mexico, one small bi-national community along the border is working hard to keep families connected through schools.

From Public Media’s Fronteras desk and PBS station KRWG, Simon Thompson, originally from Australia, brings us this report.

SIMON THOMPSON: Daylight hasn’t even broken, but 500 children who live in Palomas, Mexico, are up and on their way to school. Their commute is not typical.

They must first cross the international border into the U.S. They show their U.S. passports and birth certificates. Customs and Immigration officials inspect their school bags. Then they’re bussed to school in Luna County, New Mexico.

Lizett Preciado is a senior at Deming High School in Luna County. A U.S. citizen, she’s lived in Palomas with her parents for seven years.

LIZETT PRECIADO, Student, Deming High School: It was good to be able to go to school there. And, like, there’s more opportunities to study and to have a better job in the future.

SIMON THOMPSON: Lizett and her family moved to Palomas from Colorado, after her mother, Rosa Marie, was deported for being in the United States illegally.

ROSA MARIA PRECIADO, Mother (through interpreter): I felt really bad, really badly, because I have four children who are citizens of the United States, and my husband is a resident. I didn’t want to go back to live in Mexico. I know it is my country, but life in Mexico in really hard.

SIMON THOMPSON: Preciado and her husband, Ramon, makes their living in Palomas raising goats. Ramon still crosses occasionally back into the U.S. to work.

Preciado says having her children educated in the U.S. was important to her, and that’s why they settled in Palomas.

ROSA MARIA PRECIADO (through interpreter): I came to Palomas because of a friend who said Palomas would be a good option to live with my children. It is easy to cross into the United States, and there is a bus to take them to school.

SIMON THOMPSON: Armando Chavez is the principal of Columbus Elementary in Luna County. He says the school district usually sees an influx of students when states enact strict immigration laws, as Arizona did in 2010.

ARMANDO CHAVEZ, Principal, Columbus Elementary: We are sometimes the holding spot for them, for them to fix the papers correctly. We are dealing with children that come from South Dakota, Missouri. It can be any state that they come, but we embrace our children that come to our door every day.

SIMON THOMPSON: School districts in Texas and California also allow students living in Mexico to come to school. But they often charge out-of-district fees or are private. For the U.S. citizen-students coming from Palomas to school in Luna County, the education is free.

Many teachers in the Luna County schools crossed the border as students. Ricardo Gutierrez teaches the fifth grade at Columbus Elementary, the school he attended as a child.

RICARDO GUTIERREZ, Teacher, Columbus Elementary: So now it’s my turn to give back to the community.

SIMON THOMPSON: Gutierrez says keeping parents engaged in their children’s education is the biggest challenge. He opens his restaurant in Palomas for parent-teacher conferences via Skype. And for this year’s graduation ceremony, he hosted a live watch party for parents that can’t cross.

But not everybody living in the Luna County area thinks that state money should be used to educate students who don’t live in the United States.

RUSS HOWELL, Chair, Republican Party of Luna County: They are getting a free education.

SIMON THOMPSON: Luna County Republican Party chair Russ Howell says allowances like the one being made by the school district motivate people to exploit birthright citizenship.

RUSS HOWELL: They don’t live in the United States, so that forces the state of New Mexico to pay for their education, as well as those of us that are taxed to pay for them too.

SIMON THOMPSON: The New Mexico State Constitution requires public schools to be open to all the children of school age, regardless of residence.

Principal Chavez says, if there are concerns about students not paying their fair share, that is more reason to make sure they’re getting a good education.

ARMANDO CHAVEZ: They are going to more than likely live in the United States. We want to educate them. We want to get them to the highest level of education possible, so they can be successful, and so they can become productive members and contribute back.

SIMON THOMPSON: Rosa Maria Preciado says her three oldest children are already making their contributions. Her oldest daughter serves in the U.S. military and her two sons have careers in engineering and manufacturing.

ROSA MARIA PRECIADO (through interpreter): I am very proud, because I have a lot of family, and almost none of their children graduated from anything, not even high school. And I have two that graduated. And they have their careers. That has made me really proud and it has given me a lot of happiness.

SIMON THOMPSON: Lizett is scheduled to graduate next spring, and plans to study engineering at Colorado State. Preciado hopes an immigration pardon waiver she is eligible for in two years will allow the whole family to reunite in the U.S. But there are no guarantees.

For the PBS NewsHour, I’m Simon Thompson in Luna County, New Mexico.

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AUDIE CORNISH: Now let’s turn back to the contentious confirmation of Betsy DeVos as the next secretary of education.

The vote was razor-thin. And, tonight, we look at how it went down, what DeVos can do as education secretary, and the limits of her power.

It’s the focus of our weekly education segment, Making the Grade.

Lisa Desjardins gets us started.

MIKE PENCE, Vice President of the United States: On this vote, the yeas are 50, the nays are 50. The Senate being equally divided, the vice president votes in the affirmative. hand the nomination is confirmed.

LISA DESJARDINS: It marked the first time a vice president presiding over the Senate has broken a tie to confirm a Cabinet secretary, a dramatic ending to the nomination of Betsy DeVos for secretary of education.

And it came after 24 straight hours of debate, when Democrats held a rare overnight speech-a-thon to oppose DeVos. But the primary doubt came from two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Both said DeVos’ confirmation hearing led them to vote no.

Democrats like Ohio’s Sherrod Brown tried to persuade other Republicans.

SEN. SHERROD BROWN, D-Ohio: As many have said on this floor, based on her confirmation hearing, it appears she has a complete lack of knowledge as to what the Department of Education actually does.

LISA DESJARDINS: But a number of Republicans, like Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, defended DeVos.

SEN. LAMAR ALEXANDER, R-Tenn.: She has led the most effective public school reform movement over the last 30 years. And I urge you to give the new Republican president the opportunity to choose his own education secretary.

LISA DESJARDINS: DeVos is known as a school choice activist, who supports for-profit charter schools, and wants public funds to be used as vouchers for private schools.

She’s also a billionaire, who, along with her family, has donated heavily to Republicans. In the end, she survived the toughest fight for any Trump nominee yet, and Vice President Pence swore her in late today.

AUDIE CORNISH: And Lisa joins me now.

And, Lisa, outs of all of these nominees, this one ended up giving the Trump administration the most trouble. What happened?

LISA DESJARDINS: Well, I think that there was an overwhelming response from America.

Part of that, we know, was individual voters following Betsy DeVos’ hearings who called their senators. But let’s not kid ourselves. There was also a huge organizational push, largely by teachers unions.

I talked to the National Education Association. They said they directed 1.1 million emails toward senators. And then also the American Federation of Teachers, 2,000 actions from them.

These were unions making a huge push. They came close, Audie, but, in the end, this is also a tale of unions. They still have influence. They can still mobilize. But they don’t have decisive influence anymore. They lost.

AUDIE CORNISH: Right, close, but no cigar.

LISA DESJARDINS: Yes.

AUDIE CORNISH: The thing is, that is the outside opposition.

What about Democrats on the inside? What were they able to do? Because I know they were able to try to peel off a Republican in the last minute.

LISA DESJARDINS: I think Democrats thought this outside push was going to do it and win over another Republican.

But you talk to the Republicans who voted no, like Susan Collins today, and she said what did it for her what Betsy DeVos herself, that the hearing just changed Susan Collins’ mind. And, in addition, the voices she was listening to were those of teachers in her state.

She said the superintendent of the Bangor School District, also superintendent from an island school district, those voices said to her, we don’t like Betsy DeVos, we don’t trust her to run our education system. And that’s who Susan Collins listened to.

AUDIE CORNISH: What does this mean going forward for her relationship, say, with Capitol Hill, right? Is this…

(CROSSTALK)

LISA DESJARDINS: Right.

They do have an oversight role, of course, over everything in the agencies. But, for the most part, I think, Audie, this is over. Republicans, including Susan Collins, say they want to move on. They’re hoping the education secretary, now that she’s confirmed, does well.

But I think watch Democrats, because this is just another very difficult political decision for them. Do they keep opposing everything the way their base is pressuring them, or, as Dick Durbin said to me, do they try and take a deep breath and see what’s actually winnable, what could actually change something.

Our producer Pam Kirkland talked to Dianne Feinstein. She just kind of shook her head and said, “It is what it is.”

AUDIE CORNISH: Lisa, thanks so much.

LISA DESJARDINS: My pleasure.

AUDIE CORNISH: With the confirmation battle behind her, what can Betsy DeVos do now? What exactly is in her power to change at the Education Department.

Emma Brown of The Washington Post has written about this.

Welcome.

And, Emma, I want to start by asking you about what the education secretary can actually do on her own, right? We have seen an administration that’s willing to use executive power in trying to deal with regulations. What does that mean for an education secretary?

EMMA BROWN, The Washington Post: There are certain things that the education secretary absolutely can do on her own now.

One of the really important areas is civil rights. And civil rights advocates are really worried actually about what Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration will do in this realm.

They could really easily with the stroke of a pen rescind or revise the Obama administration’s controversial guidance on transgender students’ accommodations in public schools. Similarly, they can reverse the guidance that has really pushed schools and colleges to handle complaints of sexual violence differently.

So, there is a whole realm of civil rights enforcement and investigation that is really under Betsy DeVos’ management now.

AUDIE CORNISH: With both the Obama administration and the Bush administration, there were times when their Education Departments and secretaries were accused of overreach. Right?

They faced massive backlash over federal initiatives. What has that shown us about the limits of power for the education secretary?

EMMA BROWN: Yes, the Obama administration took the power of the Education Department to its limits.

And what we saw was a backlash from Congress. Congress didn’t appreciate that, and, in the end, you know, passed with overwhelming majorities a new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act, that really reined in the education secretary’s authority and shifted quite a bit of authority from the federal government in general back to states and local districts.

And so there is a real sensitivity right now in Washington to the federal role in education, and Republicans really want to see that federal role shrunken.

AUDIE CORNISH: That being said, we know that candidate Donald Trump advocated for block grants to states to support school choice programs. So, now that he will have an education secretary who also believes in vouchers and school choice, what is the appetite on Capitol Hill for something like that, right? They hold the purse strings. They would have to approve the legislation to make it happen.

EMMA BROWN: Absolutely.

And this is where she, Betsy DeVos, is going to need cooperation from Congress, you know, either in the budget language or in legislation. So, Trump’s proposal was a $20 billion proposal, which is really huge. We spend $15 billion right now on Title I funds, which is all the money that goes from the federal government to support schools that serve lots of kids who are low-income.

So, $20 billion is huge. I think that a lot of folks in the education community saw that as a really heavy lift, even before all this pushback against DeVos. But there are other ways she can promote school choice. They can do it through tax code overhaul.

They can look for examples like the D.C. voucher program. We have the only federally funded voucher program here in D.C. — to expand that. And so there will be, I think, at least the beginnings of efforts to expand school choice, maybe on a smaller scale first, before going to those bigger pushes.

AUDIE CORNISH: Given the fight over her nomination, what do you see as the political kind of hurdles going forward?

EMMA BROWN: Well, I think that the folks who have opposed her, including the teachers unions, but also civil rights advocates and the folks who just weren’t connected to either of those groups, but just came out against her because they said they believed in public schools, I think the goal of the opponents of Betsy DeVos is going to have to continue mobilizing those forces to watch everything she does and to continue applying pressure on Congress to serve as a watchdog.

So, I think, you know, she’s going to have to prove that she is an advocate for sort of this whole constituency that came out against her in the last few weeks.

AUDIE CORNISH: Emma Brown of The Washington Post, thank you.

EMMA BROWN: Thanks.

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JOHN YANG: Since the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999, there’s been a big rise in police stationed at schools. There are 44,000 around the country.

It’s led to concerns over their role and whether teenage behavior is sometimes being inappropriately criminalized. A new analysis of federal civil rights data by Education Week finds that black students are more likely to attend schools with police officers present, and they are three times more likely to be arrested on campus than white students.

Special correspondent Kavitha Cardoza with our partner Education Week has a report on how the St. Paul public schools in Minnesota are revamping their approach.

This is from our weekly series Making the Grade.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Minnesota — it’s known for the Vikings, Lake Wobegon, and being nice.

But, in the past year, a series of violent interactions within the St. Paul school system has taken center stage, school fights, teacher assaults, and one incident where a visiting student was arrested for trespassing, all caught on cell phones and, of course, widely shared on social media.

Teachers threatened to strike, the superintendent was fired, and more than 100 students walked out in protest.

Makkah Abdur Salaam is a senior.

MAKKAH ABDUR SALAAM, Student: The truth is, I don’t feel safe around police. Like, it’s point blank, period.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Students like Saffiyah Al’Aziz Muhammed say rocky police-civilian relations have filtered down to schools all over the country.

SAFFIYAH AL’AZIZ MOHAMMED, Student: Us seeing all this police brutality in the media, and then going to school, and then your interactions with school police aren’t good, it’s kind of, like, traumatizing a little bit.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Nationwide, there were nearly 70,000 arrests during the 2013 school year. And, in most states, black students are far more likely to be arrested, according to an analysis of federal data by the Education Week Research Center.

One reason might be that they are far more likely to be in schools with police officers.

Laura Olson is trying to change the relationship between students and police officers in St. Paul schools.

LAURA OLSON, Saint Paul Public Schools: If students don’t feel safe when they come to school, they’re not going to be in a position to learn.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: One of the first things she did? Change the uniforms.

Some students expressed that they felt uncomfortable, kind of that paramilitary look. So, over the summer, instead of the hard military-style blue and metal badge, they moved to a more soft blue polo shirt with stitched-on badge.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Officers, known as school resource officers, are still armed and carry Tasers, but Olson hopes this softer look makes them more approachable.

Another change? Clarify when SRO’s should step in and when should they step aside.

LAURA OLSON: We realized that we had a bit of a disconnect between what is perceived as behavior and what is criminal activity. What is the line between what schools handle and what the SRO handles? And sometimes the lines were a little blurry.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Commander Kevin Casper has also increased training for SROs in areas like mental health and de-escalation. He’s creating a different mind-set.

KEVIN CASPER, Commander, St. Paul Police Department: We want to be more guardians than warriors. If a family, if a mom or dad caught their kid with marijuana, their first instinct wouldn’t be to turn them over to the police and get them into the criminal justice system.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Casper tells of a student who was suicidal.

KEVIN CASPER: So, the SRO kind of like became his life coach, coached him, trained him, and he actually made the football team, and he’s doing great.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: That is a very emotional story for you. Tell me why.

KEVIN CASPER: It is personal. To think that cops don’t want the best for the community and kids is way, way out of what I see day to day. So …

KAVITHA CARDOZA: It’s personal for Officer Tong Yang as well.

TONG YANG, Officer: I’m also an adviser of the kids, social worker, counselor, a father figure, a coach in sports, life coach, a little bit of everything.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Now Yang only gets involved when there’s an actual crime committed. Instead, he works on building relationships.

TONG YANG: We have been pushing to be more proactive, right, to be more visible, be more approachable, building that bond between us and the kids, having that trust factor.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Most St. Paul teachers want SROs in schools. They recently threatened to strike over school violence.

CHERYL BUZICKY, Teacher: As teachers, we really just want to feel like we’re supported fully by everyone.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: The new teacher contract now includes money for additional supports, including counselors and social workers.

So, have efforts to overhaul school policing in St. Paul worked? It’s barely been a year, but the police point to far fewer student arrests, and administrators say the school climate has improved. But ask some students, they aren’t so sure.

SAFFIYAH AL’AZIZ MOHAMMED: It’s a tough question.

MAKKAH ABDUR SALAAM: I will say it was better than last year, but …

SAFFIYAH AL’AZIZ MOHAMMED: The year is not over, though.

MAKKAH ABDUR SALAAM: Yes. Yes, that’s true.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: For the PBS NewsHour and Education Week, I’m Kavitha Cardoza reporting from St. Paul, Minnesota.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Now: president-elect Trump’s pick for secretary of education, Betsy DeVos.

She is a nontraditional choice and a power player in Republican circles. Her supporters applaud a woman they see as a disrupter focused on children. Her critics worry she will erode crucial funds for public schools, and that she has not been forthright in her own financial disclosures.

She is on Capitol Hill as we speak for her confirmation hearing. And it is the focus of our weekly segment, Making the Grade.

William Brangham is our guide.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Shortly after Betsy DeVos’ confirmation hearing began this evening, she made one thing clear: She plans to push for expanded school choice around the country, much as she did during her two decades as a major political force in her home state of Michigan.

BETSY DEVOS, Education Secretary Nominee: Parents no longer believe that a one-size-fits-all model of learning meets the needs — need of every child. And they know other options exist, whether magnet, virtual, charter, home, faith-based, or any combination. Yet, too many parents are denied access to the full range of options.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: DeVos has neither taught, nor worked as an educator or supervisor in a school system, but she and her family, whose net worth tops $5 billion, have used that wealth and influence as advocates and political donors to create more charter schools in Michigan, and to try legalizing school vouchers. Vouchers let parents spend public money on private or parochial schools.

She lost the voucher battle in Michigan, but still champions their use. Democrats are worried that DeVos will undermine public education across the country.

SEN. PATTY MURRAY, D-Wash.: We focus our federal policies and investments on strengthening public schools for all students, and certainly not towards diverting taxpayer dollars to fund vouchers that don’t work for unaccountable private schools. I have major concerns with how you spent your career and fortune fighting to privatize public education and gut investments in public schools.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: DeVos’ philosophy fits right in with president-elect Trump’s, who pledged during the campaign to provide $20 billion in federal support for charter schools and vouchers.

Her support for charters, which are publicly funded schools, but which operate independently, is the subject of particular scrutiny. The Detroit Free Press found that 75 percent of schools in Michigan performed better than charters did, and they had some of the weakest oversight in the country.

Supporters point to better gains by African-American and Latino students in those schools. Today, DeVos tried to assure senators that she is not an enemy of public schools.

BETSY DEVOS: The vast majority of students in this country will continue to attend public schools. If confirmed, I will be a strong advocate for great public schools.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As the hearing continued this evening, educators are also watching closely for DeVos’ stance on civil rights, college affordability and for-profit colleges.

For more on Betsy DeVos and what she means for education in America, I’m joined by two people with divergent views about her. Randi Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of biggest teachers unions in the country, and one that opposes her nomination. And Rick Hess, who’s written several books about teachers and education, and is with the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, where Betsy DeVos is a board member.

Welcome to you both.

RANDI WEINGARTEN, American Federation of Teachers: Thank you.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Randi Weingarten, I would like to start to you.

RANDI WEINGARTEN: And Rick and I are good friends, by the way.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: And you two are good friends. That’s good to get out there.

Randi, you heard Betsy DeVos. She said she’s not an enemy of public schools. So, what concerns you?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Well, that is clearly contradictory to the 30 years of evidence, where she has called public schools dead ends, where she has said that they should be retired, where she ran a campaign against Republicans and Democrats alike in Detroit where her hashtag was #endDPS, end Detroit Public Schools.

So, I assume that she’s saying that now because suburban voters, rural voters, Democrats, Republicans alike, 90 percent of the kids in America attend public schools.

But her record speaks volumes. And what we’re concerned about is that record, because, in Michigan, as you said, for the last 25 years, she has worked to dismantle, destabilize and defund public schools at the very same time as she’s worked to shield for-profit charters from any kind of accountability.

And those schools have done very badly. And the public schools, particularly for black and brown children, have been very destabilized in places like Flint, Detroit, Ecore (ph) and other places.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Rick Hess, you have heard these criticisms before, I know.

What is — you believe her record indicates that she ought to be the secretary of education. What do you like about her?

FREDERICK HESS, American Enterprise Institute: You know, I think she’s a smart woman. She’s a thoughtful woman. She’s spent three decades as an educational advocate.

Now, it’s true that she — her vision about how you advocate to serve all children well is very different from Randi’s or the AFT’s. Betsy works from a different premise. The premise is that these dollars do not belong to systems. They do not belong to bureaucracies. They do not belong to state education agencies and local education agencies.

These are — we spend $650 billion, $700 billion a year to educate all of our nation’s children, 50 million-odd kids. If those families think those children are better served in a traditional district school or a charter school or a private option, Betsy’s philosophy is that we ought to regard it as an opportunity to make sure that each of these families and each of these kids is better served.

I don’t understand why anybody would necessarily view any of that as anti-education or anti-public education.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Well, Randi, you heard this. What do you make of that argument?

RANDI WEINGARTEN: Right.

So, at the end of the day, what Rick is ignoring is that 23 states have actually reduced their investment in public education since 2008. And what has happened here is that what DeVos advocates is a zero sum game, take the money from public schools.

So, what’s happened in Detroit? Kids have huge class sizes. The buildings are decrepit. The books that they use are from the ’60s or the ’70s. So, what happens is that they don’t have a real viable experience.

And, at the same time, what has happened is that there’s been private money that’s gone into charters and gone into vouchers to actually overpromise parents things that they ultimately don’t get.

The place that has the choice are the schools, not the parents. And the point I’m trying to make is that look at the record. The record in terms of vouchers — we have had vouchers for 25 years. They don’t do very well for kids. And the record in terms of the for-profit charters is that the for-profits have made a lot of money, but kids have suffered.

So, why are we in the midst of destabilizing, destabilizing, destabilizing, as opposed to rolling up our sleeves and actually doing what works? We have to help every child have a safe, welcoming neighborhood public school.

Parents want other option, that’s their right. But we have a responsibility to help kids have qualified, high-quality neighborhood public schools.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Rick, one of the arguments that often is made here, it seems like there is a tension between autonomy and accountability.

Everyone wants autonomy, so that schools can innovate and do what they want to do, but there should also be accountability, so that, if teachers are not doing a great job, that somehow we can hold them accountability.

DeVos has been very strong on autonomy for schools, but it seems like her record indicates she’s much less interested in holding those schools accountable when they don’t perform.

RICK HESS: So, I think she’s mixed on accountability.

Jeb Bush, who is probably the high priest of Republican educational accountability, made an incredibly strong statement on her behalf in the last day or two. She’s been on the board of his Foundation for Educational Excellence. She’s supported calls for high standards.

But I think you’re right that there is mixed feelings, certainly on the conservative side of the spectrum, about how much we want to have simple, centralized measures determine whether or not a school is good for a kid.

It’s interesting to hear, you know, Randi talking about this, because the AFT also has, I think, voiced concerns about overreliance on simple reading and math scores as the be-all and end-all for deciding whether schools are doing a good job.

And yet, when we talk about educational accountability, simply because it is so complex to try to hold accountable 100,000 schools, because we have so few kind of good, objective measures, it often that winds up putting more and more weight on reading and math scores.

And I think, for me, part of the promise of school choice is that if educators can create a school that families want to send their kid to, and looking at the test data and looking at other metrics of achievement, families think that this school is best for their kids, I guess I’m uncomfortable with the idea that we should — that we should religiously try to deny families a school that they think is going to be best for their kid.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: All right, Randi Weingarten, Rick Hess, thank you both very much.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Now: using the power and appeal of the arts to boost low-performing schools.

Arts frequently get cut from school curricula due to money and time, but a pilot program around the country is trying to use music, performance and other arts in dozens of schools to motivate kids.

Jeffrey Brown has the story. It’s part of our weekly series on Making the Grade.

JEFFREY BROWN: Making music and using the arts to build math and other skills, that’s the theory here at the ReNEW Cultural Arts Academy, a public charter school in New Orleans, not long ago, one of the lowest performing schools in Louisiana, a state ranking near the bottom in the nation.

It’s a school now showing measurable signs of educational advancement.

Why does the singing help you do math?

STUDENT: Because, at my old school, when we didn’t have any songs for multiplication, we — like, half my class used to get, like, unsatisfactories, because they didn’t remember it for multiplication. But now that I’m at this school, and I’m singing songs, I can memorize it more.

JEFFREY BROWN: A floor above, an eighth grade social studies class uses the musical “Hamilton” to make history come alive.

Teacher Areonne Howard:

AREONNE HOWARD, ReNEW Cultural Arts Academy: I’m obsessed with “Hamilton,” and so the rap battles were just a perfect way to bring them into what a debate actually is and how to do it.

It triggers their listening skills, too, and their writing skills, because they’re going to have to write their own, and so that we provided a model for them, but they love it.

JEFFREY BROWN: Samantha King works for KID smART, a consulting company that’s helped craft the curriculum here and at other schools.

SAMANTHA KING, KID smART: The general idea of arts integration is to appeal to different modalities of children’s learning. So they get to get up and use perhaps skills and things that they love or are drawn to, theater, dance, visual arts, music. And we find that, when you put both things together, it sticks. I mean, they remember things. It’s in their body memory.

JEFFREY BROWN: Kathy Fletcher is national director of Turnaround Arts.

KATHY FLETCHER, National Director, Turnaround Arts: The idea is really simple, and it is that the arts in education can be used not just as a flower, something to do after math and science scores are up, but actually as a reform strategy, something that really can help to reach and teach and engage children.

JEFFREY BROWN: Turnaround Arts is a 5-year-old program created by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. It’s the first federal effort to use arts education as a tool to boost achievement in the nation’s lowest performing schools.

Seventy percent of its funding comes from foundations and the private sector. Turnaround began in eight schools around the country. The number recently rose to 68 in 15 states and the District of Columbia.

KATHY FLETCHER: In the decades past, the first thing to get cut when budgets are going are the arts. And I think a lot of people thought that families would get their own art lessons and dance classes.

And there’s about six million kids in this country who are in public schools, charter schools, who don’t have those opportunities, so they don’t get any arts in school. And to have something that positive and that joyful to kick-start literacy and a lot of the other core content subjects, it just seems like a smart way to teach.

JEFFREY BROWN: That strikes a personal chord in the Turnaround artists, accomplished professionals who volunteer their time to work with students and teachers.

At ReNEW Dolores T. Aaron Academy, we watched actress Alfre Woodard, singer Graham Nash and our own David Brooks, The New York Times columnist, in action.

ALFRE WOODARD, Actress: So, let me hear the sound it makes. Ah. Never hold sound in.

STUDENT: I have been watching the news.

DAVID BROOKS: And just remember to take your time. You’re going to want to, like, rush through because you will be a little nervous. But if you can stop and breathe, it will seem long to you, but it will seem great to everybody else.

GRAHAM NASH, Musician: Can you feel the vibrations in the guitar? Listen, put your hands on the body.

JEFFREY BROWN: Woodard, known for award-winning film, stage and television roles, is a veteran of the program.

Why is this work important?

ALFRE WOODARD: Somebody showed up for both of us. That’s why we’re here. Art completes not only the education, but it completes the human being, our ability to create, and to express that creation.

And we also have all the visuals now of channels in your brain opening up when you’re doing a particular discipline. So, once we had that, we wanted to come into schools, put it to the test.

GRAHAM NASH: You know, this particular school, it was one of their very first projects. And when they first came here, the windows were blacked out and the skylight was blocked off and the rats were running along the top of the wall. And now look at it.

JEFFREY BROWN: Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young is a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, but never forgets his bleak childhood in post-World War II England.

GRAHAM NASH: I like to go into a thing not knowing exactly what’s going on, but I will turn that, then I will deal with whatever it is. Right?

So, one of the kids comes up to me, and he goes, you know, Mr. Nash, we have rewritten your song “Chicago,” and here it is. And we’re going to teach it to you.

(Singing): Won’t you please come to New Orleans just to dance?

I went, OK, let’s go, you know, because you can either stop it right there and say, look, you can’t rewrite my song, blah, blah, blah, or you can just go with it and see what happens. And when you choose that moment, that’s when the world opens up and all kinds of opportunities come your way.

JEFFREY BROWN: An independent evaluation of the original eight Turnaround schools conducted showed early success. Half the schools improved their attendance rates. The average improvement in math proficiency was 22 percent and reading close to 13 percent.

And discipline problems fell. At ReNEW Cultural Arts Academy, for example, suspensions were down 51 percent. And the kids themselves?

New Orleans ninth grader Jared Mullens has seen his own turnaround through the arts.

JARED MULLENS, Student: I will be thinking, what more can I achieve in life, instead of just stopping at this point? When I’m in the arts, I’m focused.

JEFFREY BROWN: Last spring, he found himself at the White House singing for first lady Michelle Obama, an early backer of Turnaround Arts.

Months later, in New Orleans, he sang to a packed crowd of a different sort, a high school gymnasium filled with students, teachers, parents and Turnaround artists.

Turnaround Arts will expand to 20 more schools next fall. And in a step to ensure its future, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington will help manage and host the program.

From New Orleans, I’m Jeffrey Brown for the “PBS NewsHour.”

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WATCH MORE: The Obama Years

ALISON STEWART: We continue our look at the Obama years and his legacy.

Tonight, we focus on a subject that often gets less attention, public education.

Much of what happens in the classroom is decided at the state and local level. But the federal government can also be a big player in some of the most personal issues for families, which is also the focus of our weekly segment Making the Grade.

Throughout most of his term, President Obama and his former education secretary, Arne Duncan, exercised far more power and influence in education than many of their predecessors.

One major focus, a demand for greater student testing tied directly to teacher evaluation and, crucially, federal money for schools. Duncan was essentially the gatekeeper of billion of stimulus money known as Race to the Top.

Districts could qualify if they agreed to meet those criteria. Initially, many states joined in. But, over time, resistance began building to testing, data-driven metrics, and whether teachers were being judged unfairly.

The president himself addressed those concerns.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: When we talk about testing, parents worry that it means more teaching to the test. Some worry that tests are culturally biased. Teachers worry that they will be evaluated solely on the basis of a single standardized test. Everybody thinks that’s unfair.

It is unfair. But that’s not what Race to the Top is about. What Race to the Top says is there’s nothing wrong with testing, we just need better tests applied in a way that helps teachers and students, instead of stifling what teachers and students do in the classroom.

ALISON STEWART: It also led to a backlash of state standards known as the Common Core.

JULIA SASS RUBIN, Save Our Schools New Jersey: They’re impacting the kind of education kids are getting, because they’re eating up a lot of introduction time with test preparation and test drilling.

CAROLEE ADAMS, Eagle Forum: On this issue, we are shoulder to shoulder, parents, conservatives, progressives, the teachers. We’re all opposed to this because this is not about learning, this is not about education.

ALISON STEWART: The administration promoted the expansion of charter schools, and pointed to a national graduation rate topping 83 percent.

At the same time, the president’s team took a bigger role in higher education. It became the direct lender to students, instead of having the loans made directly by banks. Savings were used to expand Pell Grants. And the administration took aim at the world of for-profit colleges, cracking down on federal funds and contending that students were frequently not well-served by the schools.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the Obama legacy in education with two people who have covered it extensively, Alyson Klein of our partners at Education Week, and Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed.

Thanks to both of you for being here.

Let’s talk about what the Obama administration wanted to do when it first got into office.

Alyson, what was one thing that they wanted to tackle about through K-12 education immediately?

ALYSON KLEIN, Education Week: So, they were in a very fortunate position when they first came into office, in that the Obama administration was given $100 billion for education through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the stimulus.

And with some of that money through a program known as Race to the Top, they were able to prod states to adopt college and career-ready standards, better known as the Common Core, new forms of teacher evaluation that relied in part on student test scores, and dramatic ways of turning around the lowest performing schools, including getting rid of principals and many teachers.

ALISON STEWART: All right, we will unpack that in a little bit.

Same question for you, Scott, about higher education. What did the Obama administration wanted to tackle right away?

SCOTT JASCHIK, Inside Higher Ed: Sure.

In President Obama’s first state of the union, he said something no president had said before, which is that every American needs at least one year of post-secondary training to succeed in today’s economy. And you see that priority reflected in much that the administration did, proposals for free community college, putting more money into aid for low-income students.

The key difference between past administrations is that I would say, historically, the focus of higher ed policy has been on helping middle-class families who were already going to send their children to college to do so in more affordable ways.

President Obama focused on the students who weren’t going, those who needed higher education, but were not seeking it.

ALISON STEWART: Alyson, let’s unpack a little bit of what you talked about.

Testing became a buzzword among K-12 education, associated with Common Core state standards. The Common Core was obviously an idea, a way to have a federal standard, so that students in Nevada could be compared to students in Texas.

What happened in theory with Common Core and testing vs. what happened in practice?

ALYSON KLEIN: So, the Obama administration didn’t tell states that they had to adopt the Common Core standards, but they did give them, a number of states, money who chose to do that.

And they also used some of the money from the stimulus which I talked about to help states develop new, more innovative forms of tests aligned with those standards.

But they were really demanding a lot from states at once. Teach had to adjust to brand-new standards that were much more rigorous in many cases than the standards they had before and brand-new types of tests. And it just put a lot of pressure on a system.

ALISON STEWART: And also on teacher evaluations. That became a very difficult subject, because you had teachers in certain schools with certain sort of support and scaffolding being compared to teachers in other schools perhaps in more affluent areas.

ALYSON KLEIN: Yes, that’s right.

And one of the big issues with teacher evaluation is that teachers felt that it didn’t necessarily reward them for taking on more challenging groups of students. And, as I mentioned before, the tests and the standards were changing at the same time that teacher performance was being held to those tests.

So, they really felt like that was an unfair situation for them.

ALISON STEWART: Charter schools was another big part of the Obama administration’s push. I believe there was something like $208 million for charter schools in 2008-2009. And that’s up to $333 million, approximately, now. Why the focus on charter schools?

ALYSON KLEIN: So, charter schools are one of the few areas of K-12 education policy where Democrats and Republicans really see eye to eye for the most part.

The Obama administration in particular really pushed states that had lowest — low-performing schools to consider turning those schools into a charter. But they also asked states to set a high bar for charters, make sure that charters were serving all different kinds of students, students in special education and English-language learners, and were being held to the same standards as regular public schools.

ALISON STEWART: Scott, let’s bring you into the conversation.

SCOTT JASCHIK: Sure.

ALISON STEWART: You mentioned bringing new people into the higher education population.

How did the president and his administration make this possible? Were they successful with bringing people in to the higher population, higher education population that wouldn’t have been there before?

SCOTT JASCHIK: Many times, they were successful, but not the way he proposed it.

ALISON STEWART: What does that mean?

SCOTT JASCHIK: So, take free community college.

President Obama proposed a state-federal partnership that would make community college free. Congress never touched it. So, you could say, on one hand, nothing happened. But the reality is that districts all over the country took the idea and ran with it.

And so there are free community college programs in individual districts all over the country. Also, I would say, by talking about the issue, President Obama put much more emphasis on that choice than you ever saw before.

President Obama and also Michelle Obama used their bully pulpits to say, hey, it’s important to go. And they said — they linked it over and over again to jobs that students would need for the future.

And in that sense, I think he changed the conversation. Community colleges used to be sort of a side issue. He made them much more central. He also focused a lot on endorsing alternative ways to go to college. He’s a fan of online education, competency-based education, all kinds of new approaches that, again, he used the bully pulpit to promote, not so much federal legislation, but with attention.

ALISON STEWART: How about dealing with income inequality? We see that in secondary education. Kids who come from well-to-do families often go to college. It’s a very small percentage of people who come from lower-income families.

What did he do and his administration do to help those folks?

SCOTT JASCHIK: So, early on, he promoted large increases — and he got some — in Pell Grants, which is the largest federal program for low-income students.

He wasn’t thrilled with the results, though, because a lot of the money ended up going to students at for-profit institutions, where he questioned the quality.

So, I think that’s part of what led him to free community college, to focus attention on another sector. He also focused a lot on the quality of institutions. He wasn’t, you know, looking at community colleges through rose-colored glasses. He talked about the need for them to improve their graduation rates, to improve their — the connection between their job training programs and actual careers.

So, he was putting attention there, not on Harvard and Stanford.

ALISON STEWART: What about attention about what’s going on, on campus? There were so many stories about sexual assault issues on campuses in the past year-and-a-half.

SCOTT JASCHIK: I think this is an area where the Obama administration played a very significant role.

One, they talked about it a lot, not just the Education Department, but President Obama, Vice President Biden, in repeated events. They also, the administration changed the rules. They told colleges to change the burden of proof when colleges were considering these cases, saying it had to only be a preponderance of evidence. So, that’s a lower standard than, say, guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

And they empowered the Office for Civil Rights at the Education Department to have resources to do more investigations, so, attention and policy, at the same time that activists on campuses were raising the issue more than ever.

ALISON STEWART: A final question for both of you.

What do you think will be the lasting impact of his education legacy, the thing that will stick around, regardless of what’s going on in terms of politics?

ALYSON KLEIN: That’s a great question.

I would say one of the big focuses of the administration was on turning around the lowest-performing schools. And that’s something that’s been enshrined in a law called the Every Student Succeeds Act.

States will still have to focus on schools that are just at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to performers. So, that’s something that I expect to continue no matter who’s in the White House.

ALISON STEWART: What do you think, Scott?

SCOTT JASCHIK: I would say this idea of free college, even though he didn’t get it.

Today, New York’s governor proposed free public higher education. That comes out of the Sanders and Clinton plans, but I also think it comes out of the Obama proposal about free community college. Eight years ago, people were not talking about the idea of free college. Now they are.

ALISON STEWART: Scott Jaschik and Alyson Klein, thanks for joining us.

ALYSON KLEIN: Thank you.

SCOTT JASCHIK: Thank you.

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HARI SREENIVASAN: But first: a story about an effort in Flint, Michigan, to help its youngest residents cope with the possible effects of lead-contaminated water.

It’s part of our weekly series on education, Making the Grade.

HARI SREENIVASAN: More than a year after alarmingly high levels of lead were found in Flint’s water supply, the city has opened a free all-day early childhood center for children 2 months to 5 years of age.

BOB BARNETT, University of Michigan, Flint: It’s for any children currently living in Flint or were living in Flint when lead exposure was at its worst.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Bob Barnett, a dean of education for the University of Michigan in Flint, helped create the new early learning program.

BOB BARNETT: We made phone calls. We went door to door to every single neighborhood in the city.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Barnett had a mission, to reach families with the youngest children. That’s because lead is a neurotoxin that targets the developing brain.

DR. MONA HANNA-ATTISHA, Hurley Medical Center: A child’s brain doubles in size from zero to 2. And when you have these insults to the developing brain at such a young age, it really impacts that entire trajectory of learning.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician who discovered elevated lead levels in Flint’s children, says there’s a well-established link between lead exposure and learning disabilities.

DR. MONA HANNA-ATTISHA: Lead has been shown to drop children’s I.Q., so it impacts how they think, and it impacts how they act. It has been linked to attention-deficit disorder, impulsivity, many other developmental delays. And so it has these life-course-altering consequences.

HARI SREENIVASAN: More than 5,000 of Flint’s youngest children were put in danger when the city switched to a new water source, the Flint River, in the spring of 2014, causing lead from aging pipes to leach into the system.

Since then, Flint officials have switched back to Lake Huron for their water supply, and although lead levels have been dramatically reduced, residents are still urged to use bottled or filtered water for everything from drinking to bathing.

The lead exposure lasted only 18 months, but health officials say a threat still exists.

DR. MONA HANNA-ATTISHA: Imagine these little babies who were on formula, and all they’re getting is this lead-tainted water mixed with powdered formula for the entire year, not that they’re all going to have problems. And we’re not going to wait to see who is going to have problems.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Hanna-Attisha sees the new child care facility as a needed intervention.

DR. MONA HANNA-ATTISHA: The most important medication that I can prescribe to our Flint kids is early education. People are like, you’re a doctor. Don’t you want like, you know, health care stuff? I’m like, no, I want early education.

HARI SREENIVASAN: The center is an expansion of a high-quality program called Great Expectations Early Childhood run by the University of Michigan in Flint.

BOB BARNETT: We know that lead exposure, especially in our youngest children, birth to 5, affects their cognition and their behavior. We also know that the impact of early childhood education and intervention can counter that.

HARI SREENIVASAN: The free program has been able to accommodate 240 children. Another 220 families remain on the waitlist.

Major donations from 10 foundations, as well as millions from the state of Michigan, cover tuition costs as high as $15,000 to $20,000 per child per year.

Joyce Sanders says she and her husband could not have afforded the program for their 3-year-old daughter, Nyla. Sanders is anxious to protect her child’s ability to learn.

JOYCE SANDERS, Flint Parent: She’s so incredibly bright. And it’s terrifying to think that this exposure could take that away from her. It is terrifying. And I’m trying to do everything I can to give her the resources, so that she can hold on to that.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Nyla and her 5-year-old sister, Kaia, both tested positive for low levels of lead in their blood.

But because lead has a short window of detection in the bloodstream, Sanders is unsure how much her children ingested.

JOYCE SANDERS: I don’t really know what their exposure level is. Every time they get anything, I’m worried: Is this something that I’m missing?

HARI SREENIVASAN: Like many parents in Flint, the experience has left Sanders feeling uneasy.

JOYCE SANDERS: I have noticed with my daughter Nyla, she can sometimes get upset, and it’s very, very hard to calm her down. And that just may be one of those quirky things, or it could mean something. And if it means something, that’s huge. And so those type of things are always in the back of my mind.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Great Expectations uses the Reggio Emilia teaching approach, which emphasizes emotional well-being, something educators believe is a good fit for kids with possible lead exposure.

Lead teacher Katie McCormack:

KATIE MCCORMACK, Teacher, Cummings Great Expectations: We’re working a lot with impulse control, so everyone can listen, everyone can take turns and pay attention. We really want to just see where they are at developmentally.

DR. MONA HANNA-ATTISHA: These early childhood teachers are actually brain builders. They’re building these kids’ neural connections. It is unethical for us to sit back and wait and study these kids in five, 10 years, and say, oh, look at the impact of lead exposure.

We must be proactive. We must be preventative.

HARI SREENIVASAN: The new center is housed in one of Flint’s shuttered elementary schools. The city’s school enrollment has declined dramatically since the 1980s, when car manufacturing jobs started disappearing.

Flint school’s superintendent, Bilal Tawwab.

BILAL TAWWAB, Superintendent, Flint Community Schools: Right now, we have only 5,000 kids in Flint Community Schools. At one time, there was about 50,000 kids. Actually, we have more closed buildings than open buildings.

HARI SREENIVASAN: More than 40 percent of Flint’s residents live below the poverty line. And Superintendent Tawwab says using vacant buildings for early education coupled with good nutrition will better prepare Flint’s children.

BILAL TAWWAB: I would like to believe this is just the start of some very, very important work.

HARI SREENIVASAN: But while educators hope to expand the program, there’s only enough money to serve 240 of the 5,000 to 6,000 children in the city. And even those slots are operating on limited three-years grants.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Hari Sreenivasan.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: A deeper look now into one of president-elect Trump’s key Cabinet picks today, and again to John Yang.

JOHN YANG: One of those choices that immediately drew a lot of attention was his pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos. It sends a number of signals about what Mr. Trump intends to do with his education policy, but it also raises some questions.

Alyson Klein of Education Week joins me now to talk about this.

Alyson, thanks for coming.

Betsy DeVos, not necessarily well-known nationwide. Who is she and what does she say or what does her — the pick say about a Trump administration on education?

ALYSON KLEIN, Education Week: So, on the campaign trail, Trump didn’t talk much about cases — about policy, but, when he did, he talked about school choice.

And Betsy DeVos is a longtime school choice advocate. So we can expect that this administration is going to make good on its promise to make school choice a huge priority.

JOHN YANG: What can the federal government do on school choice?

ALYSON KLEIN: So, that’s a great question.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump proposed taking $20 billion in federal funding, which is almost a third of the U.S. Department of Education’s budget, and using that for a school choice program.

It’s unclear if a proposal like that could actually pass Congress. Senator Lamar Alexander, who will actually preside over Betsy DeVos’ confirmation hearing, put forth a similar proposal last year and it just didn’t get the votes to clear procedural hurdles. So it’s unclear if they will be able to do their grand vision on school choice.

But certainly having somebody like Betsy DeVos talking about school choice from the bully pulpit of the Department of Education could really give some lift to the issue in states and districts.

JOHN YANG: Another thing that Mr. Trump spoke a lot about on the campaign trail was Common Core. He is against it. He doesn’t like it. What do we know about Betsy DeVos’ position on Common Core?

ALYSON KLEIN: Well, she’s clarified her position on Common Core today, saying that she thinks it’s a federal boondoggle.

She’s also said that she’s in favor of accountability and local control. Some school choice advocates had actually been worried that DeVos was a Common Core supporter because she’s on the board of Governor Jeb Bush’s organization, and obviously Governor Bush is quite a supporter of Common Core.

But she made it clear today that she stands with Mr. Trump in opposing the standards.

JOHN YANG: How does she compare, her background compare? She was a philanthropist. She was a chairman of the Michigan Republican Party. How does her background and her experience compare with previous education secretaries?

ALYSON KLEIN: It’s unusual background.

We have never that I can think of really had an advocate at the helm of the department. Our last couple education secretaries, Secretary John King, who is in the post now, Arne Duncan, Obama’s first education secretary, had both worked in school districts, had been — John King was the state chief in New York. Arne Duncan was a school superintendent in Chicago.

Other education secretaries, like Lamar Alexander, actually, have been governors. So it’s unusual to have somebody who has primarily been an advocate.

JOHN YANG: She’s never worked in public education. She’s never run a big bureaucracy or a big organization. Is that what you’re saying?

ALYSON KLEIN: Yes, that’s correct.

JOHN YANG: What’s been the reaction to her being named as his nominee?

ALYSON KLEIN: Depends on who you ask.

School choice advocates are really excited to have one of their own, one of their champions headed to the Department of Education. Teachers unions are really unhappy with the pick. They picked up on what you picked up on, that she doesn’t have a background in a school district.

And they are also opposed to this idea of vouchers, which they say siphon off money for public schools.

JOHN YANG: And that’s been an issue for some time now in public education.

ALYSON KLEIN: Yes, absolutely.

The idea of creating a federal school choice program has been something that Republicans have wanted to do for a really long time. The closest they have come is a voucher program for the District of Columbia. But with DeVos in the Education Department, they may really be able to that vision further.

JOHN YANG: Any sense will she have any trouble getting confirmed, do you think?

ALYSON KLEIN: I would expect not.

Senator Alexander put out a very supportive statement on her confirmation today. She’s certainly donated to a lot of Republicans. And so they may really look upon her appointment favorably.

JOHN YANG: Alyson Klein helping us understand who Betsy DeVos is, thanks so much for coming in.

ALYSON KLEIN: Thanks for having me.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Now let’s turn to an election story at the state level.

There are important ballot initiatives all around the country. Tonight, we look at one of those battles, over bilingual education in California.

More than 9 percent of all students in the United States don’t speak English fluently. They struggle more in school, trailing behind in every academic measure and at every grade. In California, that’s true for nearly one in every four children, or almost 1.5 million kids.

Special correspondent Kavitha Cardoza with our partner Education Week visited California, where voters will soon decide how to best teach these children.

It’s part of our weekly series Making the Grade.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: At a farmers market in San Francisco, signs of multiculturalism are everywhere, a good place to convince citizens to vote in favor of allowing bilingual education in California schools.

SHELLY SPIEGEL-COLEMAN, Executive Director, Californians Together: Hi. We’re here with information about Proposition 58 that’s going to be on the ballot in November. What Proposition 58 will do will really put the decision-making back into the hands of the people closest to the students, the parents and the schools.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Almost 20 years ago, Californians overwhelmingly voted in favor of doing exactly the opposite, voting for a proposition which required students who didn’t speak English fluently to be taught only in English. Most bilingual programs closed.

A Silicon Valley software developer was the architect of the successful English-only proposition back then. Ron Unz remains opposed today.

You’re not a parent or a teacher or a researcher. How did this become your issue?

RON UNZ, Chairman, English for the Children: Well, I come from a little bit of an immigrant background myself, in that my mother was born in Los Angeles, but grew up not speaking a word of English. She learned English very quickly and easily when she started kindergarten. And that really was the same case with many other people she knew.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Unz says learning English quickly is key to assimilating in the U.S.

RON UNZ: Bilingual education doesn’t work now. It’s never worked in the past. And despite its advocates’ extremism ideological commitment to that policy, it’s just totally unsuccessful.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: California State Senator Ricardo Lara agrees that learning English is key. He disagrees on how to get there. Among his five siblings, he and his sister did well in an English-only environment. His other three siblings struggled, until they switched to bilingual schools. Then they began to excel academically.

RICARDO LARA (D), California State Senator: Kids learn differently, and we all know that that’s a fact now. So why are we going to have a one cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all approach to learning English in California, which is one of the most diverse states?

KAVITHA CARDOZA: State senator Lara is sponsoring Proposition 58, which will make it easier for local school districts to expand bilingual education.

He says it’s part of a broader cultural shift in the past 20 years. Globalization has made knowing more than one language a benefit, rather than a burden.

Adelante Spanish Immersion School saw the benefit 20 years ago. They managed to keep their bilingual programs intact. Principal Christine Hiltbrand says much of the demand is being driven by middle-class, educated parents.

CHRISTINE HILTBRAND, Principal, Adelante Spanish Immersion School: We had about 100 kids on the wait-list. And the district, because of that popularity, has opened a second Spanish immersion school. And that’s full, too.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Their method is called dual-language immersion. Half the student body speaks English at home, half speak Spanish. In early years, children here spend most of their time learning all their subjects in Spanish. Gradually more classes are taught in English, until the fourth grade, when they spend exactly half the time in each language.

Learning a second language was hard at first, but Arianna Baca says it gets easier.

ARIANNA BACA, 5th Grade Student: And then I’m like, oh, so now it’s English time, and now I speak in English. And my brain just switches off.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Children say knowing two languages is useful, even beyond school.

ANDREW TINSON, 5th Grade Student: Sometimes, I use Spanish when I go to, like, a market because, sometimes people at the market, they speak Spanish. And, also, I went to Spain, and so everybody there speaks Spanish, so it was very useful.

MARVIN GARRIDO, 5th Grade Student: My mom works cleaning houses, and sometimes she wants to, like, send messages to her boss to clean the house. Sometimes, she wants me to help her to put what to say and stuff like that.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Laurie Olsen is a bilingual advocate.

LAURIE OLSEN, Bilingual Education Advocate: Proficiency in two or more languages is important. It’s a skill. It’s a high-level skill. We as a society need people who can be the firefighters and the service providers and the doctors and the diplomats that have the ability to speak across languages and communities.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: There’s a broad coalition in favor of giving school districts the option of bilingual education. But critics like Ron Unz remain unconvinced.

RON UNZ: And I think it would be very ridiculous for the state to consider moving back to the old Spanish almost-only system, or so-called bilingual education.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: He points out, after the English-only proposition passed, test scores went up.

But that’s only half the story. Though there was an initial bump, when researchers followed these children over time, they found, by middle school, those in English-only classes struggled, because it’s hard to keep up with, say, history or science if you don’t fully understand what’s being said. Only those in bilingual classes continued to do well in school.

How does Adelante stack up? Student scores are seven points higher in reading than the state average, and 13 points higher in math. And by fifth grade, children are fully bilingual.

Patricia Gandara is a researcher with the University of California Los Angeles.

PATRICIA GANDARA, University of California Los Angeles: Because we now know definitively that there are huge advantages, advantages in employment, advantages — social advantages, psychological advantages. There are — and cognitive advantages.

It just seems to me to be such a shame that we are an immigrant country. We are blessed with this richness of languages. And to not take advantage of that, to not let our kids have that opportunity seems to me just a tremendous waste, a tremendous waste of resources.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: Recent polling in California suggests voters support more bilingual programs. Spiegel-Coleman says, 20 years ago, attitudes were different.

SHELLY SPIEGEL-COLEMAN: We would’ve gotten dirty looks. We would’ve been insulted. People would have said things to us like, that’s the Spanish-only program, they should be learning English.

We didn’t get any of that today.

KAVITHA CARDOZA: She’s hoping those changed attitudes will translate into votes this November.

For the “PBS NewsHour” and Education Week, I’m Kavitha Cardoza reporting from San Francisco.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: But first: At a time when public schools across the country are cutting the arts out of education, a jazz musician in Boston is finding a way to push through the noise.

Lisa Stark of our partners at Education Week has this report. It’s for our weekly education series, Making the Grade.

LISA STARK: Myran Parker-Brass began singing at age 5. She’s never stopped. A classically trained mezzo-soprano, she’s now raising her voice to push arts education in Boston’s public schools.

MYRAN PARKER-BRASS, Executive Director for the Arts, Boston Public Schools: Finding the opportunity to teach, as well as to perform, has always been what keeps me sane, I think.

LISA STARK: Parker-Brass is the district’s arts director, a job she jumped into five years ago after two decades with the Boston Symphony. A one-time public schoolteacher herself, she had an ambitious plan.

MYRAN PARKER-BRASS: Our goal is that we will have 100 percent of our students in K-8 receiving at least weekly arts education.

LISA STARK: They’re almost there. In 2009, less than 70 percent of elementary and middle school students had a regular arts class. Today, over 90 percent do.

CHILDREN: She was right behind us, wasn’t she?

LISA STARK: Taking theater, dance, music and visual art at least once a week. And the percentage of high school students taking art classes has nearly tripled.

ALLYSSA JONES, Program Director for Performing Arts, Boston Public Schools: It’s been a huge, huge change.

LISA STARK: Allyssa Jones, who oversees the district’s performing arts program, was a music teacher when Parker-Brass came on board and began ramping up the arts programs.

ALLYSSA JONES: What a parade, man, what a parade. What a battle to win. Changing minds is pretty awesome.

LISA STARK: Changing minds about the value of arts education.

MYRAN PARKER-BRASS: Learning and working in the arts provide students the opportunity to be creative, to be innovative, to be reflective, to learn how to work as a team.

LISA STARK: And it’s not just students who are harmonizing. Parker-Brass built a team to support her arts teachers, and she fine-tuned outside partnerships already in place.

These high school students, for example, explore art with the help of the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, but the lynchpin of the turnaround, increased funding. Under Parker-Brass, Boston increased its arts spending by more than 50 percent, from $17 million to $26 million, and added millions more in outside grant funding, allowing the district to double the number of full-time art teachers.

The result? An additional 14,000 students in Boston now receive instruction during the school week. Parker-Brass isn’t ready to take a bow. She’s too busy with her next push, trying to convince Massachusetts state universities to change their admission requirements to include not just academics, but a high school arts class.

MYRAN PARKER-BRASS: I think our job is to make sure that our students see art, understand art, appreciate it, and, it is — and if they are passionate enough, create it.

LISA STARK: I’m Lisa Stark of Education Week, reporting for the “PBS NewsHour.”

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On Thurs., Sept. 15 from 1-2 pm EDT, join The NewsHour for a special chat as part of our Rethinking College series, discussing Latino males and higher education.

What more should be done to get young Latino men enrolling in college? NewsHour Weekend anchor Hari Sreenivasan talked with Victor Sáenz, executive director & founder of the University of Texas-Austin’s Project MALES (Mentoring to Achieve Latino Educational Success) about the program’s efforts to tackle the financial and cultural burdens for Latino men pursuing higher education. This coverage is part of The NewsHour’s 2016 Rethinking College series, examining current challenges in higher education and a component of PBS’ Spotlight Education initiative. Project MALES combines research, mentorship and cultural outreach to assist Latino men attending the University of Texas-Austin with matriculation and retention.

Check out a recap of our discussion below.

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The Chantilly Campus of ITT Technical Institute sits closed and empty on Tuesday in Chantilly, VA. Photo by Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post via Getty Images

When American Career Institute abruptly closed its eight campuses, Matthew Robbins was among the more than 1,000 students left on the wrong side of the for-profit college’s locked doors.

The Abington, Massachusetts, resident had just weeks remaining in an 18-month program before he would receive a certificate in computer network design. Then came the January 2013 closing and a realization that more than a year of education was essentially worthless. Robbins’ credits wouldn’t transfer to another college, and he couldn’t find a similar program nearby. So he gave up on higher education for the time being and focused on his job. 

“There were no other schools that offered the courses I needed,” he said. He is still waiting to see whether the $20,000 he took out in student loans will be forgiven by the federal government. “I’m pretty much stuck with nothing here.”

Robbins is one of tens of thousands of former students who have been shut out of closed colleges — both for-profit and nonprofit. Another 40,000 are about to join them with the collapse of ITT Tech and its more than 130 campuses as the result of a crackdown by the U.S. Department of Education.

Related: The new North-South divide: Public higher education

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the trend: Nobody knows what’s happening to these displaced students, and many fear thousands may be giving up on college altogether, exactly when the country is falling behind its goal to increase the proportion of the population with degrees.

“You’re not supposed to close and leave students in the lurch,” said Kevin Kinser, a Pennsylvania State University education professor who heads Penn State’s education policy studies department. “But we’re not set up to deal with mass closures.”

Forty-seven percent of federal loan recipients whose colleges and universities closed from 2008 to 2011 neither had their loans forgiven by the Department of Education nor received federal aid to attend other schools within three years of their schools’ closing, according to The Institute for College Access and Success, or TICAS. That means those students have been left in debt with little or nothing to show for it.

The potential effect is huge. From the 2011-12 academic year through 2014-15, according to TICAS, 182 colleges closed — 150 of them for-profit — affecting more than 43,000 students.

It’s essential that schools that are closing work with federal and state governments to avoid leaving students at a dead end in their educations, said Steve Gunderson, a former Republican congressman and president of Career Education Colleges and Universities, an association of mostly for-profit schools.

Related: A solution as obvious as it is rare: Making high school graduates ready for college

“The reality is, if the credits don’t transfer to another school, they have to start over,” Gunderson said. “It’s the worst of all worlds. It’s debt without a degree.”

When a college closes, state and federal regulators generally provide students with a list of “teach-out” schools able to help them complete their degrees or certificates. The problem, critics say, is that those schools are often for-profit colleges with their own sketchy histories and a hunger for tuition money and the federal aid that comes with it.

In some cases, things work out for the best. After for-profit Ashford University’s Davenport, Iowa, campus closed earlier this year, neighboring nonprofit St. Ambrose University came to the rescue. The liberal arts university now enrolls about 40 former Ashford students, said John Cooper, St. Ambrose’s vice president for enrollment management.

“There’s been a real effort on the part of Ashford and St. Ambrose to make sure students don’t lose ground,” Cooper said.

Joe Rhodes had been attending Ashford on full academic scholarship when the school closed. After Ashford and St. Ambrose agreed to split the cost of continuing his scholarship, he decided to finish his education at St. Ambrose.

“No matter what, I was going to push through and do what I needed to do,” said Rhodes, a 20-year-old junior from Moline, Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from his new campus. “But it was kind of tough to go through that whole [admissions] process again.”

Related: Strapped for students, nonprofit colleges borrow recruiting tactic from for-profits

Yet thousands of other students may be slipping through the cracks when their schools close, especially those at for-profit colleges, who tend to have different life experiences than undergraduates at nonprofits.

For one thing, about 70 percent of students at for-profit colleges are 25 or older — a significantly higher share than at traditional nonprofit schools — and nearly 80 percent of students at for-profits attend part-time.

Students at for-profits often have spent several years working before deciding to attend college, so a shutdown sometimes leads to them choosing a job over continuing school elsewhere.

That was the case with Pamela Pinto, 26, who was just a month away from finishing a certificate in dental assisting when her American Career Institute campus in Framingham, Massachusetts, closed in 2013. The school could not find any record of her coursework, she said, so she did not have the option to transfer to another school.

“It’s as if I never took a course,” said Pinto, a former hairdresser’s assistant who eventually was able to get her dental assistant license with help from the dental office where she works. “I was stuck in the gray zone. I was stuck with a loan of $15,000 and no certificate.”

It’s difficult to know whether experiences like Pinto’s and Robbins’ are the norm. That’s because nobody tracks what happens to students whose colleges and universities lock the doors. Will they forever be left seeking lower-paying jobs that don’t require college degrees? Will the bad experience lead them to encourage their children to focus on careers rather than school?

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“It will take us a while to get any sense of what’s happening with these students,” said Jim Rawlins, admissions director for the University of Oregon. “I think it could definitely jade them, and we definitely worry about that.”

In Massachusetts, officials have tried to make sure displaced students know their options. Attorney General Maura Healey has gone after for-profit schools aggressively, suing ITT Tech and American Career Institute (ACI) for allegedly defrauding students. After ACI closed in 2013, Healey’s office made thousands of phone calls to former students to gauge the full scope of the problem.

The “boatloads of debt” borne by former students is a slap in the face after they received a substandard education, Healey said.

“It’s just so sad to talk to them. It’s bad enough that [the colleges] weren’t providing meaningful education to begin with. Now they’re even further behind.”

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Read more about higher education.

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