Major changes to federal student loan rules took effect July 1 under last year's One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Grad PLUS loans, which let graduate and professional students borrow up to the full cost of their degree, are gone for new borrowers. Parent PLUS loans are now capped at $20,000 a year and $65,000 total per student, and anyone taking out a loan on or after July 1 faces a lifetime cap of $257,500. New borrowers also lose most of their repayment menu, down to just two options: a Tiered Standard Plan and a new income-driven plan called the Repayment Assistance Plan, or RAP. "These are the most changes we have seen at this scale in a very long time," Sarah Austin, a policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, told CBS News.
The part that belongs in your classroom is the Pell Grant side of the same law. Starting July 1, Pell Grants now cover short-term workforce programs, as brief as eight weeks, in fields such as nursing assistance, early childhood education, and automotive mechanics, categories that used to fall outside federal aid entirely. For a CTE or business student weighing a two-year credential against a four-year degree, that is new money on the table, not a talking point. Pair it with the new lifetime borrowing caps, and the federal calculus behind "which path pays off" looks different than it did in June.
Delegates at the NEA's Representative Assembly in Denver voted this week to approve a proposal to develop model national, state, and local policies protecting educators and students from discipline caused by AI-related identity theft, Education Week's Sarah D. Sparks reported July 6. Arkansas middle school teacher Callie Day, who brought the proposal, said she has seen a rise in fake social media accounts and videos built to humiliate and endanger teachers and administrators with realistic facsimiles. Washington state delegate Janet Caldwell backed it in blunt terms: "Generative AI can now create deepfake photos, videos, and audio using a real person's face and voice without their knowledge or their consent. By the time the truth comes out, the damage is already done. A permanent record, a lost job, a shattered reputation."
This is not a hypothetical risk confined to students targeting classmates. NEA's own reporting has tracked deepfake incidents aimed at teachers and administrators, and the union just signaled it sees this as an employment-protection issue, not only a student-discipline one. If a fabricated image, video, or recording of you or a colleague surfaces, document it immediately and loop in your building administrator and local union representative before a district policy exists to guide the response. A national model policy is coming, but the incident that hits your building first will not wait for it.
The U.S. Department of Education announced over the Fourth of July weekend that it plans to amend the Equity in IDEA regulation, K-12 Dive's Kara Arundel reported July 7. The rule requires districts to measure racial disparities in special education annually across 14 categories, including disability identification, placement, and discipline; districts found significantly disproportionate must reserve 15% of their federal IDEA Part B funds for programs that address the gap. The department's 2026 unified agenda says a proposed rule is coming in August, with no details yet on what changes. Selene Almazan, legal director of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, called the move "deeply troubling," and Daniel Losen of the National Center for Youth Law said the disparities the rule tracks are "large and persistent." Not everyone agrees the current rule is well aimed: Paul Morgan of the University at Albany has published research finding that, among similarly situated students, White and English-speaking children are more likely to be identified for services than their racial and language-minority peers.
If your district has ever been flagged significantly disproportionate, the 15% funding set-aside tied to that finding is exactly what is on the table in August's proposed rule. Special education staff and case managers should expect a public comment period once the rule is published, and disability-rights groups have a track record here: COPAA sued the department in 2018 over a similar delay and won, putting the rule back in force within a year. Whatever the department proposes, it will not eliminate the underlying IDEA requirement to track racial disparities, only how that tracking gets done.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined July 6 to block a Texas law requiring app stores and app developers to verify a user's age, and to obtain parental consent for minors before allowing app downloads or purchases, while a First Amendment challenge to the law continues in lower court. The justices denied the challengers' request to lift the 5th Circuit's decision allowing the law to take effect during litigation. The appeals court had reasoned that "Texas has a substantial, if not compelling, interest in protecting children, and parents need to have the necessary information to make informed choices affecting their children's upbringing." The ruling stands in contrast to Nebraska's social media age-verification law, where a federal judge blocked the core provisions in late June on First Amendment grounds.
This moves the age-verification fight to a different layer than the one schools have been dealing with. Instead of a platform-by-platform patchwork, like the social media minimum-age bills moving through state legislatures, Texas's law puts the check at the app store itself, on Apple's and Google's own storefronts, on a student's personal device, not a school-issued one. That is a different enforcement point than the phone bans and classroom device policies your building already manages, and it reaches students outside of school hours in a way those policies never could.