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California voters will vote for a new state superintendent of public instruction on November 3, and the winner won’t run the California Department of Education.

Under Assembly Bill 181, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on July 10, a governor-appointed education commissioner takes over the department in January 2027. The elected superintendent gets a vote on the State Board of Education, a seat on the community college board, a staff of about a dozen, and six months to negotiate what the job even is supposed to do.

If you’re a parent trying to figure out who to credit or blame for your kid’s reading scores, or whether the SAT is coming back to UC admissions, the management structure of state education accountability just changed.

What Does AB 181 Actually Change?

AB 181 moves day-to-day control of the California Department of Education from the elected superintendent to an education commissioner appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate.

The department has roughly 2,500 employees and a proposed 2026-27 operating budget of about $299 million, according to EdSource’s breakdown of the office. It distributes state and federal school funds, monitors district compliance, carries out the standards the State Board adopts, and collects the test and spending data behind the California School Dashboard. All of that now reports directly to the governor.

The superintendent stays an elected, nonpartisan office with a smaller footprint. The State Board of Education grows from 11 to 13 members, and the superintendent takes one of the new seats. The superintendent also joins the Community College Board of Governors and keeps seats on the UC Board of Regents and CSU Board of Trustees, the bodies that decide what families really pay for college in California.

The rest is unwritten: the law directs the new superintendent and commissioner to spend the first six months of 2027 working out a job description, which goes to the Legislature in fall 2027 for approval. The bill passed 21-4 in the Senate and 52-5 in the Assembly inside the budget package, over objections from the California Teachers Association and termed-out superintendent Tony Thurmond.

Who Is Running, And What Did They Say In The Only Debate?

The two candidates for office are Sonja Shaw, president of the Chino Valley Unified school board, and Richard Barrera, president of the San Diego Unified board.

Both chair boards that send thousands of graduates into a UC system that currently admits on GPA and coursework with no test scores.

Their one debate on October 7 spent most of its hour on testing, parental rights, LGBTQ+ students, and President Trump, EdSource’s Thomas Peele reported. Shaw said, “More than half of our kids cannot read and write and do math, that’s priority number one.” The state’s own numbers back that up: 48.8% of students met or exceeded the English standard on 2024-25 state tests, and 37.3% did in math. Meanwhile, Barrera says the job to catch-up should belong to the UC system.

Barrera described the job as “an organizer” who would build coalitions around goals the state doesn’t currently have. The two split on whether UC should bring back the SAT, a question the Board of Regents is expected to decide next year with the superintendent voting, and one that changes the math on SAT prep spending for every California junior.

Neither candidate supports AB 181. Shaw called it an “unprecedented, unconstitutional power grab” and says she’ll sue to keep the office as it was. Barrera says he’ll work with the commissioner but told the governor and Legislature, “you don’t get to define my job.”

Both are campaigning for authority the law no longer gives them, so the votes they will actually hold on the State Board and the UC Regents are the better basis for judging them, the same way a funded California loan forgiveness program matters more than just what’s written on paper.

Where Does Accountability Land Now?

Accountability for education in the state moves from the elected superintendent to the governor. The case for AB 181 came from a December 2025 report by Policy Analysis for California Education, which found that the governor and State Board created programs while a separately elected superintendent carried them out, so “no one was accountable for running programs well.”

After January, the governor appoints the commissioner who runs the department and the 10 governor-picked members of the board that sets policy. When a literacy initiative or transitional kindergarten rollout stalls, that’s one office to call.

The superintendent’s new role becomes that of an commentator with a microphone: evaluate programs for the Legislature, serve as an independent public voice, and vote on the boards that set policy.

What Does This Mean For California Families?

Your child’s school won’t change on January 15. Local boards still hire principals and adopt curriculum, and state funding still flows by formula.

What changes is the chain of command above the district: the person to hold responsible for statewide outcomes is now whoever wins the governor chooses. The superintendent’s influence shifts toward the higher education boards, which is where the decisions like test optional policies live.

The superintendent vote still matters in three places. The winner votes on the State Board, votes as a UC regent on whether standardized testing returns, and sits on the boards that set CSU and community college policy, including the three-year bachelor’s degrees CSU just approved.

Financial aid is untouched: Cal Grants and the Middle Class Scholarship run through the California Student Aid Commission, not the Department of Education.

What Happens Next?

On November 3, voters pick both the superintendent and the governor who will appoint the commissioner. The law takes effect January 15, 2027, when the commissioner takes the department.

By June 30, 2027, the commissioner owes the Legislature a plan to fund the superintendent’s duties, with a final report on streamlining state oversight due October 1, 2027.

If Shaw wins and sues, add a court date to the calendar.

For families, the near-term work doesn’t change: watch the UC Regents’ testing decision, check your district’s dashboard scores, and run the college ROI math on the schools your student is targeting, because none of that waits for Sacramento to finish its org chart.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does The Education Commissioner Replace The State Superintendent?

No. The superintendent remains an elected statewide office. The commissioner, appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate, takes over running the California Department of Education on January 15, 2027. The superintendent keeps board seats and a small staff while the two negotiate the rest of the job.

Can The New Superintendent Sue To Block AB 181?

Sonja Shaw says she will, arguing the law is unconstitutional. The California Constitution created the office but left most of its duties to the Legislature to define. Richard Barrera has not said he would sue.

Will AB 181 Change Anything At My Child’s School This Year?

No. Local districts still run schools, and state funding formulas don’t change. The law reorganizes who manages the state department and who sets statewide policy, which affects program rollouts and accountability over time, not daily operations in January.

The post California Parents Are Voting For A State Superintendent Who Won’t Run The Department Of Education appeared first on The College Investor.

Cleveland State University announced the Cleveland State Commitment on October 9, 2026 with a promise of $0 tuition for Ohio first-year students whose families have an adjusted gross income of $125,000 or less.

The university’s Board of Trustees approved the program that morning. It starts in fall 2027, requires a 3.0 high school GPA, and covers up to eight consecutive semesters. Like most tuition-free college programs, it is a last-dollar award: CSU pays whatever tuition is left after federal and state grants and scholarships are applied.

Eligibility runs through the FAFSA, and families must re-confirm their income every year. The 2027-28 FAFSA is already open, so students graduating high school in spring 2027 can file now.

Why It Matters

Over the last several years, more and more colleges have been promoting free tuition programs for low- and middle-income families.

When comparing offers, the $125,000 cap reaches further up the income ladder than most public-university promise programs. CSU says about 73% of Ohio households fall under that line, and that the program is aimed at middle income families earning $75,000 to $125,000 who receive little grant aid but still find the price of college out of reach.

The University of Akron’s Making Akron Possible grant, by comparison, covers tuition for families earning $85,000 or less, a threshold the school raised from $50,000 in 2024. Ohio’s other state aid programs, including the Ohio College Opportunity Grant, target lower-income families.

It’s important to remember that tuition is only part of the bill. The average cost of attendance at a four-year public college was $23,990 for 2025-26 with room and board included, and the Cleveland State Commitment does not include housing, meals, books, transportation, or program-specific fees. A commuting student could get close to a $0 bill, while a student living on campus will still owe thousands a year.

Who Qualifies And What It Covers

How This Connects

The CSU press release says many students are choosing work over college because of cost, but that long term earnings numbers still favor a college degree.

The Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce puts median lifetime earnings at $2.8 million for bachelor’s degree holders and $1.6 million for workers with only a high school diploma, which is a $1.2 million gap over a lifetime.

Our take is that college is still a worthwhile investment when the price is right, and a last-dollar tuition promise at a public university is one of the cleaner ways to get the price right. Graduates who stay in the state can also stack this with Ohio’s student loan forgiveness programs for teachers, health care workers, and other public service careers.

What’s Next

CSU has not published a cost estimate for the program or a count of how many students it expects to qualify. Funding comes from CSU scholarships, donors, foundations, and community partners rather than a state appropriation, so the program’s size will depend on fundraising.

Watch for whether other Ohio public universities match the $125,000 threshold and whether CSU extends the offer to transfer students, who are excluded for now.

Families with a spring 2027 graduate should file the 2027-28 FAFSA and check eligibility on CSU’s program page.

The post Cleveland State Will Cover Tuition For Ohio Students From Families Earning $125,000 Or Less appeared first on The College Investor.

The Question

I’ll never understand why the government assumes parents will be paying for their kids to attend post-secondary school.

We were a one-income (educator) family until six years ago when my husband went back to work and finally got his own teaching position. He was a stay-at-home dad until then. So our savings is next to nothing.

Did our FAFSA last night and the SAI is 28,000. I knew it’d be high because of the two of us working now, but that doesn’t say anything about our actual situation. Obviously our daughter is applying for scholarships nonstop and has a part-time job when she’s able to work around school activities, but it’s all so sad for kids today. School is so expensive, even Pennsylvania state schools.

— Margot

Welcome to the Friday mailbag, where we take one reader question and answer it. Have one? Send it to us — details at the bottom.

The Short Answer

You’re asking the question most parents never get a straight answer to after they see their Student Aid Index. The FAFSA treats your 18-year-old as part of your household’s balance sheet until she turns 24, and it does that whether or not you plan to pay a dime.

The idea that parents pay first started with the College Board’s College Scholarship Service in 1954, decades before the Department of Education existed. The age-24 cutoff came from the Higher Education Amendments of 1986. Congress set it just past the oldest age a student could still be receiving a Pell Grant, so parent finances would count for every traditional undergraduate.

The longer answer runs through three places: a private college pricing system from the 1950s, the 1979 law that created the Department of Education, and a 1986 rewrite of the Higher Education Act. Each one added a layer to the FAFSA formula your family ran into when you filed the 2027-28 FAFSA.

Parents-Pay-First Started With Colleges, Not Congress

The idea that parents pay for their children’s college predates federal student aid. In 1954, the College Board launched the College Scholarship Service with about 100 member colleges, with the goal of collecting “a single set of financial data from students and parents”.

Harvard’s John Monro, its first chairman, built a formula to measure what a family could afford rather than using aid to bid for top students. That formula is the ancestor of every Student Aid Index calculation in use today.

The logic was rationing limited aid dollars: colleges had limited scholarship money, so they asked what each family could pay first and covered the gap.

When the U.S. Government created the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant (today’s Pell Grant) in 1972, it adopted the same structure with an “expected family contribution” built into the formula.

Federal law still frames it this way: aid fills the gap when parents can’t pay, not when they won’t. That’s why income limits for Pell are calculated on household income and not the student’s alone.

What The Department Of Education’s Charter Actually Says

The 1979 law that created the Department of Education also explicity put parents first. The Department of Education Organization Act, signed October 17, 1979, includes this congressional finding: “parents have the primary responsibility for the education of their children, and States, localities, and private institutions have the primary responsibility for supporting that parental role” (20 U.S.C. § 3401).

The law’s stated purposes describe the federal role as supplementing state and local efforts and encouraging “the increased involvement of the public, parents, and students in Federal education program.”

That language captures the philosophy of how federal financial aid policies are crafted. It’s not a specific rule, but it’s a thesis that education is the responsibility of the parent first, even higher education. The parental contribution model was already 25 years old when the department opened. The charter reflects the same belief that drives the financial aid model today.

The 1986 Law That Set “24” As The Magic Age

Before 1987, federal programs judged independence “strictly in terms of a student’s financial and living relationship with his or her parents“. A typical version of that test, used by Minnesota’s state grant program since 1968, required three things: parents didn’t claim the student on their taxes, the student lived at home no more than six weeks a year, and parents gave no more than $750 of support.

However, around this time, reports were warning that families were gaming the system to qualify for larger financial aid awards.

The numbers behind that concern: Independent students made up 14% of Pell recipients in 1974-75 and 47% by 1983-84, according to a 1985 study by economist W. Lee Hansen. Hansen traced much of that growth to older adults enrolling for the first time and found the incentive for students under 25 to switch status was modest, but status-shifting to unlock larger aid packages was the part that drew Congress’s attention.

Congress answered with the Higher Education Amendments of 1986, which President Reagan signed on October 17, 1986. Starting with the 1987-88 school year, a student was independent if he or she was 24 or older, an orphan or ward of the court, a veteran, married, a graduate student, or had legal dependents. Those same categories still decide who can borrow at the higher independent student loan limits today.

Higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz says the age limit was part of an effort to eliminate the so-called Bright Line Test for independent status, “which was prone to abuse,” the same kind of gaming that still drives the penalties for FAFSA fraud. A narrow version survived for single undergraduates who showed $4,000 a year of their own resources for two years, until Congress repealed it in 1992. “Congress wanted to make sure that families couldn’t abuse the new age-based rule, so they set the age threshold at 24 years old as of December 31 of the academic year,” Kantrowitz told The College Investor.

Kantrowitz said the number itself came from the Pell Grant time limits of the era. “Most college students graduate at age 21,” he said. “However, the Pell Grant was limited to five years for 4-year programs and 6 years for 5-year programs at the time. So, a student could still be receiving a Pell Grant at age 23, and Congress wanted to be sure that their parents’ finances were considered.“

In other words, 24 sits just past the oldest age a traditional student could still be drawing a Pell Grant, so no undergraduate on the standard path ages out of parent information while still eligible.

Kantrowitz put the goal plainly: Congress wanted “to be sure that students could not game the system to receive Pell Grants without parent information when they weren’t truly financially independent.”

Why FAFSA’s Age 24 Doesn’t Match The Tax Code

Today the rule reads that an independent student “is 24 years of age or older by December 31 of the award year,” with exceptions for orphans, foster youth, emancipated minors, veterans and active-duty service members, graduate students, married students, students with dependents, and unaccompanied homeless youth. Marriage is one of the few legal ways an undergraduate gets out early, which is why FAFSA marital status rules draw so many questions.

The tax code’s version of 24 came later. The Technical and Miscellaneous Revenue Act of 1988 added the words “who has not attained the age of 24” to the student dependency rule, effective for tax years after 1988. A 2004 law folded it into today’s “qualifying child” test: under 19, or a student under 24.

The financial aid rule came first and the tax rule followed, the opposite of what most parents assume when they file their taxes.

The bigger difference is that the tax code still asks who supports the child, and FAFSA doesn’t care. A child who pays more than half of her own support can’t be claimed as a qualifying child on her parents’ return. Meanwhile, the Department of Education’s guidance states that parents who “refuse to contribute, are unwilling to provide information, or do not claim the student as an income tax dependent,” along with a student who shows “total self-sufficiency,” don’t qualify for a dependency override “either individually or in combination“.

A 22-year-old who pays every bill can be independent for the IRS and dependent for FAFSA in the same year, a disconnect we see every day in questions about what counts on the FAFSA.

Every Federal Program Picks A Different Age

What most people understand, but rarely see directly, is that there’s no single age of adulthood in federal policy.

Health plans must let children stay on a parent’s coverage until 26 under the Affordable Care Act. The kiddie tax can reach full-time students through age 23, and the dependency exemption on income tax that once made claiming a college student valuable has been $0 since 2018.

Each age was set by a different Congress solving a different problem, which is why it’s so confusing!

The FAFSA Simplification Act Made It Harder For Big Families

The 2024-25 overhaul replaced the Expected Family Contribution with the Student Aid Index, allowed an SAI as low as -$1,500, and stopped counting how many children are in college at the same time.

Under the old formula, a family with a $30,000 ability to pay and two kids in college was expected to pay $15,000 per student. A family like yours now gets the same $28,000 SAI for each child who enrolls, with no credit for the tuition already going to a sibling.

That change hit households with several kids close in age harder than anyone, a pattern visible in our SAI chart.

Takeaway: The System Measures Capacity, Not Willingness

After nearly 20 years writing about financial aid, my view is that the age-24 rule is defensible as an upper limit for undergraduate need-based aid and fraud control, and but it doesn’t work as a description of how American families handle finances today.

Congress finalized the current test because the system was being gamed, and that problem was real. However, the result is that as parents have more income, it could make it more challenging for a student to pay, regardless of the family’s overall financial circumstances, and you’re seeing that firsthand.

For your family, here are some options that may help.

A financial aid administrator can adjust an SAI for special circumstances such as a job loss or unusual expenses by appealing your child’s financial aid award.

If parents end financial support or refuse to file, the same law lets a financial aid office offer the student Direct Unsubsidized Loans without parent information, though not grants. Students can also stack private scholarships, target tuition-free colleges, or shorten the time in college with a three-year bachelor’s degree.

The rule itself only changes if Congress changes it. Until then, an SAI of $28,000 means the formula expects money to come from the students AND parents together. Nobody is forcing you to pay it, you can make choices on higher education, but you cannot expect need-based aid to cover a significant amount of your costs.

The result is that families are better off planning around that number through crafting a college list or strategy that works for their finances.

Send Us Your Question

Got a student loan, financial aid, or money question you can’t get a straight answer on? Send it to us and we may answer it in a future Friday mailbag.

The post Why Does FAFSA Assume Parents Pay For College Until Age 24? appeared first on The College Investor.

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