This isn’t a reflection on the nation’s oldest and most renowned institution of higher learning. Remedial courses aren’t new. Plenty of colleges and universities offer courses geared toward helping students with precalculus and calculus. 

The fact that students at a highly competitive school like Harvard may need help getting caught up in a core subject should be a bright red warning light that our K-12 system is falling behind when it comes to math education.  

Looking at the most recent scores from the Nation’s Report Card, we know there has been minimal progress for students catching up from COVID learning loss, and most fourth and eighth graders on last year’s exam still performed below pre-pandemic levels, with a widening gap between disadvantaged students and their more resourced peers.  

To ensure future generations are prepared for postsecondary success, we need to look for upstream solutions—state-level math policy that we know will help students build the foundation they need.  

State leaders can act now on five essential math policies designed to transform math achievement. 

Next, we know that math coaches are an essential investment for all elementary and secondary schools and can be relied upon to lead professional development, facilitate lesson planning, teach model lessons and observe and provide immediate feedback. States like Alabama and Kentucky have implemented strong math coach programs.  

Just as we look to NAEP as a national assessment tool, teachers should be implementing regular assessments in their classrooms that provide valuable student progress information and inform future instruction tactics. When assessments are followed by timely interventions to get students back on track, student learning outcomes can dramatically improve. 

Lindsey Henderson serves as the Math Policy Director at ExcelinEd.

(The Center Square) – Victor Schwartz has been importing wine for nearly four decades, little of which prepared him to deal with President Donald Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs.

The founder of New York-based wine and spirit importers VOS Selections is trying to run a business that imports from 16 countries as tariffs seemingly change on a whim. But that’s just one challenge in the heavily regulated alcohol industry. Schwartz has set prices with the state of New York. So, during Trump’s halting and constantly changing tariff rollouts at the beginning of April, Schwartz was setting prices for May, another challenge given the likelihood of changing prices.

Schwartz and his team of 19 employees reviewed hundreds of products by SKU, or stock-keeping unit codes, to try to determine how tariffs would affect their inventory. 

“We had to strategize with a very cloudy crystal ball in terms of what our pricing was going to be, how much of an impact was going to happen and how much could a particular product afford in terms of a price increase,” he told The Center Square. 

In the end, some of it came down to where the company was going to take a loss. 

“You had to make decisions on where you were going to eat it,” Shwartz said.

Schwartz was so frustrated that he and other business owners filed a lawsuit against Trump and his administration over the tariffs.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom filed a similar lawsuit alleging that Trump doesn’t have the power he thinks he has to impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Liberty Justice Center, the Texas nonprofit that filed suit on behalf of VOS Selections and four other businesses, on Friday asked a judge for a temporary restraining order to stop tariffs from going into effect while the court determines how to proceed. 

The group’s 68-page request asks for a temporary restraining order to prevent the implementation of the April 2 tariffs Trump announced. 

“The power claimed by the President here is extreme: he claims the power to unilaterally impose infinite tariffs of his choosing on any country he chooses – even countries with which we run a trade surplus,” the TRO request notes. “Any grant of such authority by Congress to the President should qualify as a major question subject to the strictest judicial scrutiny – which this claim of authority under IEEPA cannot survive.”

California’s lawsuit noted the word “tariffs” doesn’t appear in the 1977 law and that no previous president – except Trump briefly during his first term – has used the IEEPA to impose tariffs. Both the California suit and the LJC suit claim Congress, not the president, has the power to impose tariffs.

The LJC suit says IEEPA was passed to curb presidential power. 

“The statute was passed in 1977, in the wake of various presidential scandals that motivated Congress to attempt to cabin the president’s emergency powers – the entire point was to take away power the President had previously asserted, and abused, under the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917,” the legal filing notes.

It further states: “If Congress had wanted to include broad tariff powers as part of IEEPA’s grant of emergency authority, it could have said as much.”

Trump has made bold promises about his tariffs on the campaign trail and since inauguration. He has said tariffs will make the U.S. “rich as hell,” bring back manufacturing jobs lost to lower-wage countries in decades past, and shift the tax burden away from U.S. families.

A tariff is a tax on imported goods. The importer pays the tax and can either absorb the loss or pass the tax on to consumers in the form of higher prices.

In his “Liberation Day” speech, Trump said foreign nations for decades have stolen American jobs, factories and industries. He said the tariffs would bring in new jobs, factories and industries and return the U.S. to a manufacturing superpower.

“Our country and its taxpayers have been ripped off for more than 50 years,” Trump said. “But it is not going to happen anymore.”

Some nations, including China, have responded with retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods. Others have signaled they are eager to make a deal with the Trump administration. Trump has not yet announced any trade deals. Trump paused the higher tariffs for 90 days, giving his administration limited time to make deals with 75 nations the White House said reached out seeking trade negotiations.

(The Center Square) – Texas broke its own employment records again in March,  leading the U.S. in job creation. The outlier was in the oil and natural gas sector, which reported a loss, breaking its own pattern of job records, reflecting market volatility.

As in previous months, Texas broke its own employment records for having the greatest number of jobs, the greatest number of Texans working and the largest labor force in state history in March, according to the latest Texas Workforce Commission data.

Texas employers reported the largest labor force in state history again with a new record of 15,778,500, marking 57 of 59 months of growth. Over the year, Texas’ civilian labor force added 301,400 workers, more than any other state.

Texas also reached a new high for the greatest number of Texans working last month, including the self-employed, totaling 15,137,500.

Texas also added 26,500 positions over the month to reach a total of 14,282,600 nonfarm jobs in March. Texas employers added 192,100 nonfarm jobs over the year, more than any other state, bringing the annual nonfarm growth rate to 1.4%, again outpacing the national growth rate by 0.2%.

“Texas leads the nation in job creation thanks to our booming economy and highly skilled workforce,” Gov. Greg Abbott said. “Every month, Texas welcomes businesses from across the country and around the world to innovate and invest in our great state. By funding our schools more than ever before and expanding career and technical training programs, we will prepare more Texans for better job and bigger paycheck opportunities to build a more prosperous Texas.”

“The robust Texas economy continues to create opportunities for our workforce, as evidenced by over 544,000 job postings in March, despite record employment,” noted TWC Commissioner Representing Labor Alberto Treviño III. “TWC is committed to ensuring Texans can capitalize on this economic momentum by providing services like career counseling, job search assistance, and skills training, helping them develop a clear path to career success.”

Texas is also “outpacing the nation in various industries, reinforcing the state’s reputation across the world as the best for doing business,” TWC Commissioner Representing Employers Joe Esparza said.

Last month, the Private Education and Health Services industry reported the largest over-the-month increase after adding 9,500 jobs, according to the data. Construction added 8,500 jobs over the month; Trade, Transportation, and Utilities added 6,100. As Texas expands construction and infrastructure projects statewide, the construction industry reported the largest growth in the country of 3.4% over the year, outperforming the industry’s growth rate nationally by 1.6%.

Unlike previous months, the Texas upstream sector reported a loss of 700 jobs over the month in oil and natural gas extraction. Total jobs in the sector hovered just over 204,400.

The upstream sector includes oil and natural gas extraction and some types of mining. It excludes other sectors like refining, petrochemicals, fuels wholesaling, oilfield equipment manufacturing, pipelines, and gas utilities, which support hundreds of thousands of additional jobs statewide.

That’s down from the sector adding 1,900 jobs over the month in February, bringing the total upstream employment to 205,400 two months ago before the Trump tariff war began, The Center Square reported.

“As a result of recent commodity price movement and significant market volatility, there are high uncertainties in outlooks for future energy supply, demand and prices,” the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association notes in an analysis of the employment data.

TIPRO and others have expressed concerns about the Trump administration tariff policy and pushing for foreign crude production, which is negatively impacting the industry and caused oil prices to tank, The Center Square reported. A silver lining, industry executives argue, is the administration rolling back Biden-era regulations that targeted it, The Center Square reported.