project 180 education

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Project 180: One Teacher’s Journey to Turn Grading Upside Down

Project 180 is the first step in an effort to transform education by turning it upside down--challenging the status quo and disrupting convention. For the next two years, I will set aside traditional grading practices in my high school English classroom, seeking to improve my students’ experiences by making learning, not grading, the central focus.

For now twenty years, I have been unsettled by and dissatisfied with traditional and conventional grading practices, suspecting that there had to be a better way to approach learning, that grades--in the traditional sense--did little to help and, in many cases, made worse the learning in my classroom. I have dabbled in and experimented with standards-based grading and found it to be a promising alternative to tradition, but I think that--though it is radical in its own right, it is not radical enough to bring about the necessary shift in a system far too settled in the it’s-how-we’ve-always-done-it-rut approach to education. So, in an effort to turn things upside down, I am going to give my students A’s on day one. I am going to take grades out of the equation by giving them what they, their parents, and society have come to believe is the golden stamp of approval in American public education: an A. Then for the next 180 days, I am going to give them an opportunity to learn, to grow, free from the pressure and pretense of grades.

Can students learn without grades? My instincts say yes. But my critics--including the ghosts of my own self-doubt--will suggest otherwise, clinging to the deeply-seated standard of traditional grading as the way, the mark of learning. But two decades in, I am going to listen to my gut and take a monumental risk to learn and grow, and ultimately, hopefully make better the learning experiences in my classroom.

I first flirted with the idea after reading the Zanders’ The Art of Possibility. In one of the chapters, the authors discussed the “practice of giving an A,” an approach where students were given an A at the outset of the year during which they had to live into the A, proving in the end the end that they had earned it.

And though I found it intriguing, it never amounted to more than a casual fling, for I could not fully wrap my head around taking such a crazy path in a traditional, public-school setting. That was ten years ago, but now armed with the confidence--maybe craziness--that change not only must but can happen, I am ready to get this journey underway. We can change practice. We have to change practice. But it will happen neither easily nor expediently. It will take effort. It will take time. I am devoting both.

My original intent was not to gift A’s to all my students. My original plan was to give each student a P for pass, a seemingly simple, harmless way to take traditional grades off the table. However, after discussing the idea with our lead counselor, it became clear that a “P” could be problematic on students’ transcripts when it came to college entrance and/or scholarships. So, wishing to never do harm, I decided to go with A’s for all, which I believe better set the desired course anyway. One, it took traditional grading out of the equation. Two, it was radical enough to call attention to the shortcomings of conventional grading practices. Thus, the stage was set. But how was I going to do it?

Below is a rough sketch of my plan. But before we get there, here is a necessary preface. Students (and parents) will be given full ownership of their learning in my classroom this year. As the lead learner in the room, I will provide opportunities for students to learn and grow in an ELA environment. I will provide direction, feedback, and encouragement, but only they can provide the motivation to learn and grow. They already have their A’s for the year. Now it’s their turn to live into their A’s by making the experience what it should be in the first place, an opportunity to build themselves over the next 180 days, not a year-long sentence to get a grade. They will grow or they won’t. I can only provide the opportunity. They have to own their learning. Here is how I plan to do it.

Actually, there is a possibility of two marks in my classroom. There is a qualification to the A. An A requires the signature of both students and parents on any and all “progress reports” (details below). They do not have to complete the report, but they must sign it. Failure to sign, will result in a “P,” which indicates credit for the course with no effect on GPA.

Our work for the year will center around what I have come to call our 10 “Super-Student Standards,” standards derived from not only the Common Core but also my 20 years in an ELA classroom. I basically approached it with, “these are the things that we will hang our hats on this year, the things that we will learn.”

In addition, I came up with a “Super Student Profile” emphasizing 15 habits/behaviors of learners, things that matter, things I want my students conscious of, things I want parents to know, but things that would never be attached to a grade (in the traditional sense).

“Reporting” will happen frequently. Every day, students will reflect on their learning in their notebooks. Every two weeks, students will complete learning logs: self-assessments on standards and profiles (must be signed by student and parent). Every nine weeks, I will complete a progress report that is created through conferring with each student. The students will either agree with or challenge my assessment. Challenges must be supported by evidence. Nine week progress reports must also be signed by student and parent. Every semester, students will complete a student-led conference, a comprehensive review of their growth (must be signed by student and parent). For practice, I will use our online grading system to report completed practice.

Learning experiences will primarily occur within the context of project-based learning.

There are so many more details to share--many more, too, that I will consider and discover over this two-year project. But for now, I hope this provides a skeleton for my approach.

Why project 180? Well a few things. One, 180 degrees turns things upside down--a necessary step for change. Two, there are 180 days in a school year--this endeavor will be the most difficult thing that I have done in my career, so I will have to take it one day at a time. Plus, I plan to share my journey one day at a time on my blog ( www.letschangeeducation.com ). Three, because “upside down” is uncomfortable it must be set upright again--another 180 degrees, bringing things full circle, at which point, I hope I have learned to make learning better in my little corner of the world. If you are interested, please join my journey this fall, as I daily post the stories from the adventure at www.letschangeeducation.com .

Crazy? Maybe. Determined? Absolutely. We have to change education.

This piece was originally submitted to our community forums by a reader. Due to audience interest, we’ve preserved it. The opinions expressed here are the writer’s own.

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Project 180 turns life around for formerly incarcerated individuals

The nonprofit offers support to people starting over after serving a prison sentence..

• By Ian Swaby
• | 2:00 p.m. September 28, 2023
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In December 2022,  David Harris, also known as “Yogi,” told a programs officer, “I want a program that helps me reenter society.”

In preparing to depart prison after almost 30 years, Harris had only one condition — that wherever he was headed, it had better not be an area riddled with drug use. 

The officer suggested Project 180, cautioning him that the organization required drug and alcohol tests every 90 days.

“I says, 'OK, well, that can't hurt me,'” Harris said. “If anything, that would help.”

Although he had come a long way in his self-improvement journey, Harris had very little in the way of material possessions after he was released from the county jail and left on the sidewalk, waiting to be picked up by Project 180. 

The only clothes he owned were what he had on: shorts smaller than his boxers, a T-shirt, socks and a pair of thick boots. 

Yet while living under the nonprofit, he would continually find the strength to do what he said was the hardest thing to do at that time — to get up and face the next day. 

Today, Harris is eager to get up for work each morning at Beneva Flowers & Plantscapes, a company at which he started in December 2022 and where he is now manager of his department. 

Project 180’s founder, Barbara Richards, said she always felt called to her line of work, having volunteered in the past for a men’s prison support group in San Francisco.

While completing a master’s degree in criminology and criminal justice at Florida State University, she decided to start a reentry program and founded the nonprofit in 2008.

According to a media release, only 14% of the organization’s Residential Program graduates are arrested again during their first year after release, compared to the national rate of 44%, while those who do not graduate recidivate at a rate of 27%.

A place to start 

In addition to helping him obtain his job, Harris credits Project 180 with meeting many needs he could not have fulfilled on his own.

Staff helped him obtain health care, dental care, vision, housing, employment, and a driver's license, while the nonprofit also offers him a community of others in similar situations.

Harris had long realized that it was the people he surrounded himself with who would determine his success in life.

In 1995, he committed an armed robbery at an ATM, stealing $40, and due to his status as a repeat offender, was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

He found prison never suited him, and eventually made a decision to associate with people like judges, police officers and teachers, becoming a law clerk and pursuing a bachelor’s degree in administration from within prison. 

A story he read in Florida Law Weekly inspired him to successfully pursue the overturning of his sentence.

“Now, I'm willing to abide by the rules of society, but I have to demonstrate that I’m willing to do that,” he said. 

Amid the overwhelming experience of starting his life anew, he appreciated that staff encouraged him to slow down and enjoy moments like eating a hamburger for the first time in decades, at Miller’s Ale House.

“It was the mushrooms that did it for me,” he said. “It was the biggest hamburger I’d probably eaten in my life at that time, and I know it was the best hamburger I had eaten in my life at that time.”

One of the positive experiences has been a renewed relationship with his family.

“I used to be the guy they didn't want at the family reunions,” he said. “Now, they want to know when I’m coming home and they’re genuinely happy to hear from me.

Yet the group also offers a community of its own, something he said has been enormously helpful.

“If you look like you might have something on your mind, they want to know what it is,” he said.

The necessary support

Seth Campbell is another member of that community. Like Harris, he had nothing when he finished a three-year prison sentence in November 2022. However, he came to serve as residential program coordinator for the nonprofit.

“I slowly but surely accumulated a wealth of things, so to speak,” he said.

The former Bradenton resident had long been homeless, having never had a driver's license or vehicle nor maintained a job. 

He called the experience of learning to drive “overwhelming.”

“The only time I drove before, it was a stolen vehicle. I was kind of scared of the roadways,” he said. 

Like Harris, Campbell emphasized the community Project 180 offers.

“Usually, people go back to what’s comfortable, so I think the hard part is forming a new core and trusting complete strangers,” he said, noting that once people are able to open themselves up, they discover a new group they can align themselves with.

When Campbell experiences self-doubts, he finds it helpful to share his feelings with the group, including those who may be further along on their journey. 

Living as part of the group is a step toward living independently, he said.

“Being able to live a normal, productive life is easy, because I no longer have to put a substance in my body,” he said.

He is also grateful for the impact Project 180 has had in pushing him to take a job, including a past role with Beneva Flowers. 

Campbell says he has developed a vision for his life — to help others. He is now pursuing psychology through college courses, something he never had thought was possible in the past.

“Through people pushing me to become the best version of me, I was able to conquer those fears and believe in myself,” he said. “If I can help people for a living, and maybe even if it's just one person, it's worth it. Everything’s worth it.”

He’s also finding the opportunity to enjoy trips to locations like Orlando, Key West, and Atlanta. 

As Harris said, “Sometimes we're too proud to ask for help, but this program teaches you that you don't have to worry about being too proud to ask for help, you just be proud enough to walk through the doors that are open for you.”

A mission of understanding

The stories of Harris and Campbell echo others, said Richards.

When people leave prison, they have usually lost any credit, jobs, or housing they may have had. They often have no one to go to, and this is where the nonprofit's services come in.

At the heart of the organization, she said, is the Residential Program, which offers up to two years of program residency and other assistance for men, helping counter issues like housing affordability and housing discrimination. 

This program is specifically for those suffering from addiction, something she said impacts 75% to 95% of all people who are incarcerated. Most men in the program began using drugs prior to adulthood, she said. 

“Once someone becomes involved or becomes addicted, life becomes very chaotic, very miserable,” she said.

Another program, First Week Out is important, she said, because it establishes relationships with individuals several months before their release from prison.

Project 180 also offers a referral service to different resources in all Florida counties, a financial literacy course and CEO Workforce Education class in the Sarasota County Jail and a yearly lecture series for the public.

Richards said it is important for the community to be aware of all of the issues that Project 180 works to counter.

“We're all the same," Richards said. "As human beings, we share common needs and desires, and our underlying humanity connects us, whether we choose to see that or want that.”

Ian Swaby is the Sarasota neighbors writer for the Observer. Ian is a Florida State University graduate of Editing, Writing, and Media and previously worked in the publishing industry in the Cayman Islands.

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Project 180, dedicated to prisoner reentry, celebrates second chance employers

The nation’s only annual lecture series dedicated to prisoner reentry continues Oct. 9 and Nov. 13 to celebrate second chance employers and discuss key issues and benefits of hiring formerly incarcerated men and women.

Now entering its seventh season, the Strong Voices Strong Subjects Lecture Series is designed to provide meaningful public education about prisoner reentry issues from nationally recognized scholars, industry experts, community leaders and those impacted by incarceration firsthand.

Project 180 will host its final two lectures online and is poised to deliver the same thought-provoking content and community networking that past participants have come to expect and enjoy. Continuing Legal Education (CLE) credit is offered for each lecture.

• On Oct. 9, Return on Investment takes place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is moderated by Judge Charles E. Williams with panelists from second chance companies.
• On Nov. 13, Being the Solution takes place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Featuring Dave Dahl, former owner of Dave’s Killer Bread Co. in Portland, Oregon, and nationally acclaimed second chance employer.

Project 180’s 2020 Strong Voices Strong Subjects Lecture Series "Breaker of Chains" sponsors include The Koski Family Foundation, Community Foundation of Sarasota County and Palm Avenue Wealth Advisory Group at Raymond James.

Tickets may be secured on Project 180’s website: www.project180reentry.org/lecture-series/ .

Project 180 seeks to reduce recidivism by providing workforce education and financial literacy classes for inmates, an annual reentry lecture series for the general public, information and referrals for formerly incarcerated individuals seeking housing, programs and employment, and a comprehensive, whole-life residential program for men in recovery.

— Submitted by Barbara Richards

Project 180

Anger management program for young people aged 12-18 year.

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About the Program

Project 180 is a diversion program established for high-needs young people in the ACT aged 12.5-16 years. The Project 180 combines the following mix: full time (8.30 am - 3.00 pm) engagement based on a mix of skills-based recreational activities, educational programming and/or vocational pathways; intensive case coordination facilitated through regular meetings between Canberra PCYC, ACT Policing, CYPS; links into weekend activities such as team sports and interest groups.

Project 180 is informed by the goals of the Blueprint for Youth Justice in the ACT 2012-2022, with the focus on improving physical and mental health, education levels, and engagement in employment or other training.

Education and employment pathways are key to reducing the risk of offending and are supported by intensive case management. These areas are prioritised within the Project 180.

Outcomes include:

• Youth offending is reduced.
• Young people are diverted from the formal youth justice system.
• Young people are helped early and provided with supports and services they need.
• Young people and their families receive every possible opportunity to get back on track.
• Young people’s protective factors are increased and risk factors are decreased.
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©   2022 CNCT – Connecting Young People to Services in the ACT An initiative of the Youth Coalition of the ACT

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• Professional Education

Why Not Understanding These 10 Project Management Knowledge Areas Could Have a Devastating Impact on Your Career. 

• Categories Professional Education
• Date August 16, 2024

Understanding the 10 project management knowledge areas is crucial for any aspiring project manager looking to excel in this field. These knowledge areas provide a comprehensive framework for effectively managing projects from initiation to closure. Let’s examine each area and uncover how they equip professionals with the tools needed for any project regardless of scope and complexity.

1. Project Integration Management 

What It Is: Integration management ensures that project elements are properly coordinated. It involves making trade-

offs among competing objectives and alternatives to meet or exceed stakeholder needs and expectations.

Why It Matters: This knowledge area is vital for maintaining project cohesion and ensuring that all aspects of the project work together seamlessly. It addresses market fears of disjointed efforts and project failures due to lack of integration.

2. Project Scope Management 

What It Is: Scope management involves defining and controlling what is and is not included in the project. It ensures that all the work required—and only the work required—is completed.

Why It Matters: Effective scope management prevents scope creep, which can derail projects. This addresses market concerns about time commitment and ensures that projects stay within their defined boundaries.

3. Project Schedule Management 

What It Is: Schedule management entails planning, developing, managing, and controlling the project schedule. It ensures timely completion of the project.

Why It Matters: Managing schedules effectively helps in meeting deadlines and boosts confidence in project deliverability, directly addressing fears of time overruns and project delays.

4. Project Cost Management 

What It Is: Cost management involves planning and controlling the budget of the project. It includes cost estimating, cost budgeting, and cost control.

Why It Matters: Proper cost management helps ensure that the project is completed within the approved budget, addressing concerns about financial investment and ROI.

5. Project Quality Management 

What It Is: Quality management ensures that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken. It involves quality planning, quality assurance, and quality control.

Why It Matters: This area ensures that the project outcomes meet the required standards, addressing fears about the course’s credibility and the practical benefits of the skills learned.

6. Project Resource Management 

What It Is: Resource management involves identifying, acquiring, and managing the resources needed for the project, including human resources, equipment, and materials.

Why It Matters: Efficient resource management ensures that the right resources are available at the right time, enhancing project efficiency and effectiveness.

7. Project Communication Management 

What It Is: Communication management involves planning, executing, and monitoring the information flow within the project. It ensures that stakeholders are well-informed throughout the project lifecycle.

Why It Matters: Clear and effective communication enhances collaboration and stakeholder engagement, addressing fears of poor team coordination and project misunderstandings.

8. Project Risk Management 

What It Is: Risk management involves identifying, analyzing, and responding to project risks. It includes risk planning, risk identification, qualitative and quantitative risk analysis, risk response planning, and risk monitoring and control.

Why It Matters: Effective risk management ensures that potential problems are anticipated and mitigated, reducing uncertainties and increasing the likelihood of project success.

9. Project Procurement Management 

What It Is: Procurement management involves acquiring goods and services from external sources. It includes procurement planning, solicitation, source selection, contract administration, and contract closure.

Why It Matters: Managing procurement efficiently ensures that the necessary external resources are available when needed, addressing market needs for comprehensive project execution.

10. Project Stakeholder Management 

What It Is: Stakeholder management involves identifying all people or organizations affected by the project, analyzing stakeholder expectations, and developing appropriate strategies for effectively engaging stakeholders in project decisions and execution.

Why It Matters: Proper stakeholder management ensures that all stakeholders are aligned with the project goals, enhancing satisfaction and project acceptance.

Understanding these 10 project management knowledge areas equips professionals with a holistic view of project management. It addresses market needs for comprehensive skill acquisition and career advancement while mitigating fears related to course credibility and investment returns. By mastering these areas, project managers can confidently lead projects, driving success in their careers and contributing significantly to their organizations.

By focusing on these knowledge areas, a project management course not only prepares students for certification but also enhances their practical skills, making them indispensable assets in any industry.

To learn more about the Project Management Certificate at KSU Community and Professional Education, visit here. Click here

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Project 2025 Wants To Kill US Department of Education

"my son is one of millions of disabled kids that will lose access to education when the department of education is destroyed," one user on x said., anna rascouët-paz, published aug. 14, 2024.

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This education proposal has become a campaign promise of Republican candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump.

A rumor that Project 2025, a conservative coalition's plan for a future U.S. Republican presidential administration, had called for the closure of the U.S. Department of Education spread online in the summer of 2024 ( archived ):

The claim in this X post, which had more than 1.3 million views and 27,000 likes as of this writing, was echoed in several other posts on the social media platform.

This claim is true. Furthermore, shutting down the Department of Education has become a campaign promise of the 2024 Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Looking at the official Project 2025 webpage that seeks to quickly confirm or debunk information circulating about the program, we found the following paragraph:

Shut Down the Department of Education: TRUE Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership calls for the end of the Department of Education. Since the Department was created, educational outcomes have not improved, and the American school system has increasingly fallen behind other countries. Giving more control back to state and local governments, and expanding school choice, would improve education outcomes for all Americans, especially underprivileged communities. Some functions of the Department of Education would be moved to other departments including Labor, Justice, and Commerce.

This education plan has become one of Trump's campaign promises, something he mentioned several times in the summer of 2024. In early June, in an extensive interview on the Fox News program "Fox and Friends," he said: "We're going to cut the Department of Education, let it be run locally." On Aug. 12, in a conversation with Tesla founder and X owner Elon Musk, he said, "I want to close the Department of Education." The presidential campaign of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris shared a clip of the conversation in which he says this quote:

This is not the first time Republicans have advocated for the closure of the Department of Education in their campaigns. In fact, they've talked about closing the agency since then-President Jimmy Carter opened it in May 1980, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education .

In July 2024, Snopes published an in-depth report on Project 2025 , confirming that it planned on shutting down the Department of Education.

Bauman, Dan, and Brock Read. 'A Brief History of GOP Attempts to Kill the Education Dept.' The Chronicle of Higher Education, 21 June 2018, https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-brief-history-of-gop-attempts-to-kill-the-education-dept/. https://archive.is/xW7RI.

'Full Exclusive Interview With Former President Donald Trump | Will Cain Show | Fox News Video'. Fox News, 3 June 2024, https://www.foxnews.com/video/6354224797112.

Ibrahim, Aleksandra Wrona, Nur. 'Project 2025: What To Know About the Pro-Trump Plan To Overhaul US Government'. Snopes, 8 July 2024, https://www.snopes.com//news/2024/07/08/project-2025/.

'Project 2025: The Truth'. Project 2025, https://www.project2025.org/truth/.

By Anna Rascouët-Paz

Anna Rascouët-Paz is based in Brooklyn, fluent in numerous languages and specializes in science and economic topics.

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Project 180

Daily 180 (what is teaching).

“Why don’t more questions get asked about the practice of teaching? Such as: is there a better way? Such as: does it work/is it effective/does it transfer to learning?” -Brendan Gill, Teacher, California

Thank you for posing this important question, Brendan. 

Yes, there should be more questions about our practice. And I think the first question should be, “What is Teaching?”

Is it talking?

Is it assigning?

Is it grading?

Is it managing?

Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.

But also, no. 

No, that’s not enough…for learning.

For learning, there is more. There has to be more. We know this. But we, for various reasons (many of which are not ours alone), avoid this. ‘Cause there where we’d find it is messy: the inbetween, the messy middle where we meet kids–really where we meet ourselves, where we, I believe, define teaching. 

Learning defines teaching. So, learners define teachers. And that happens in a place we don’t get to often enough in our practice: the feedback-response process (FRP).

Teaching is responding. Yes, we have to talk. Yes, we have to assign. Yes, we have to grade. Yes, we have to manage. But bigger YES, we have to respond . I tell my kids that I have not taught until I’ve responded to their work with feedback.

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2 thoughts on “Daily 180! (What Is Teaching?)”

I love this. The mission statement at my school says that we are a learning community dedicated to discovery, innovation, collaboration, and excellence. We do the DICE part pretty well, but I think there are times we forget about the “learning community” piece. We assume the students are there to learn. I think there are times we forget that the adult population is part of the learning community as well. Hope you are well!

Thank you for chiming in, Bill. I always appreciate your perspective. Hope you are well, too, my friend.

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Project 2025: An attack on public education

Jane Cutter is a contributor to Socialist Reconstruction and Revolutionary Education.  

This article is part of a Liberation News series exploring the different facets of Project 2025. Project 2025 is a comprehensive plan assembled by leading figures of the right wing elite laying out how a future Trump administration would shred the civil and economic rights won in the 1930s and 60s. Read the series’s inaugural article for an overview of the project and its significance. 

Is there a crisis in U.S. education today? Even though a majority of parents report they are satisfied with their children’s schools, at the same time, overall perceptions of the education system are not so favorable. Some 60% of students are trying to learn in overcrowded classrooms while about half of all school buildings are in need of major renovations. The Heritage Foundation-sponsored far-right Project 2025 document program would eviscerate important changes made in education dating back to the 1960’s War on Poverty and the Civil Rights movement. Project 2025’s education program is racist and explicitly anti-transgender and would further the process of privatizing public education through charter schools and voucher programs. 

Project 2025: Eliminate the Department of Education, give money to states

The top goal of Project 2025 vis-a-vis education is to eliminate the Department of Education. Why does this matter? The mission of the DOE includes protecting equal access to education, allocating federal funds and monitoring their use, and enforcing  federal laws prohibiting discrimination in programs that receive federal funds.

As imperfect as it may be, getting rid of the DOE will take away an important resource for students and families to fight discrimination. Project 2025 prioritizes giving federal education monies directly to states or districts as block grants, allowing these bodies to decide how to spend the money. There is a reason why the federal government has oversight of state educational spending: states were upholding Jim Crow segregation of schools. This was so much the case that “states’ rights” is recognized as a racist dog whistle for segregation. Title IX addresses sex discrimination in federally funded programs, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act addresses the right of children with disabilities to access education. 

Flowing from this fundamentally racist and discriminatory foundation are literally pages of very specific policy and legislative priorities, ranging from overturning student loan debt forgiveness programs, to defining gender as being that which is listed on a student’s birth certificate and prohibiting the teaching of “Critical Race Theory” and implementation of restorative justice discipline programs. 

A huge part of Project 2025’s educational program centers on the privatization of education via “school choice” meaning charter schools and vouchers to offset private school tuition. Charters are ostensibly public schools, some run by for-profit companies, that are not held accountable to the same rules as other public schools. Voucher programs take funding from public schools to subsidize private school families: vouchers generally do not cover the full cost of private school tuition. 

Education under capitalism

Education under capitalism is a contested space. In a technologically advanced society, the system needs its workers to be educated. Some workers need college degrees to be able to create profits for the bosses through their labor, but all jobs call for some degree of literacy, math, tech and social skills. Capitalists want the education system to produce the workers that they need at as low a cost to them as possible. The education system also “sorts” the future workers and diverts the ones capitalists consider “surplus” in a racist process called “the school-to-prison pipeline.” 

This vision of education as a factory to produce workers to meet the needs of bosses contrasts with the liberatory educational vision of socialists in which education is key to empowerment. There is a reason that the slave-holding class made it illegal to teach an enslaved person to read, and that the creation of schools for the newly freed people of the South was a feature of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. Education means you can learn about things outside of your own geographical locale and historical moment. Education transmits generations of scientific investigation, laying the foundation for critical evaluation and further investigation. 

If education is in crisis today, socialists say, it’s because this liberatory vision has been shackled by capitalism itself. But right-wing educational reformers argue that education as liberation has gone “too far” and needs to get back to teaching the “basics” while an elite few get advanced training and troublemakers are siphoned off via “no excuses” discipline. 

Project 2025 uses standardized testing data to build the case for the existence of this crisis.Testing-based reform has been the vogue among politicians, both Democrat and Republican, notably starting with George W. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind.” The Obama administration rebranded this “Race to the Top.” Both evaluated schools’ success based on testing results. “Failing” schools were “re-organized,” and non-union charter schools promoted. 

However, repression breeds resistance. More than a decade of neoliberal reform led to a resurgence of teacher-labor militancy with a series of statewide general education strikes starting in West Virginia in 2018 and a movement against excessive, high-stakes standardized testing by teachers, parents and students. 

The Trump administration’s appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education put the privatization trend on steroids and also fueled the fightback. 

COVID-19 school closures and masking and vaccine controversies were seized on by the extreme right. The nationwide uprising against racism following the police murder of George Floyd led to local adoption of anti-racist education curricula and restorative justice discipline initiatives intended to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline. In the aftermath of the virulently anti-transgender Trump administration, the Biden administration interpreted Title IX to protect the rights of trans students from discrimination at school. Again the right used its opposition to these changes as points of bigoted agitation among their base.

This is the context needed to see the Project 2025 education agenda for what it is: a plan to privatize and resegregate schools and close the door on any progressive reforms. 

While the Democrats are pushing opposition to Project 2025 to win votes, they have fully backed testing-based, pro-charter “reforms.” Even with a former teacher, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, running for Vice President, the Democrats are not even laying out a comprehensive vision for progressive education reform. Kamala Harris as California Attorney General personally played a key role in facilitating the school-to-prison pipeline. Project 2025 and the far right can’t be effectively fought by the Democrats who have gone along with the core education policies represented in the Project 2025 program.

This reactionary program can only be defeated on the basis of a program that acknowledges the increasing pain of living under this system and calls for fundamental change. This will prevent far-right forces from establishing a monopoly over anti-establishment politics. 

What’s a socialist program for education? 

Schooling does not exist in a vacuum. A foundational reorganization of the economy, taking over the richest corporations and diverting the massive military budget to meet human needs, will mean that students arrive healthy and well-nourished to school having slept soundly in safe, secure housing. Our teachers and other school staff will no longer need to work a second job just to pay the rent when rents are capped at 10% of income. 

Fully funding education will mean that class sizes can be drastically reduced — an intervention that has been proven by research to improve student learning especially for poor and nationally oppressed students. Our crumbling school buildings can be renovated or replaced to become beautiful palaces of learning. 

Racist, sexist and anti-LGBTQ school curricula and policies would be replaced with a liberatory pedagogy that inculcates self-determination and mutual respect. 

Free access to higher education would also be recognized as a right. Student debt must be erased. Likewise all children and families should have access to free, high-quality pre-school and childcare, which has been shown to play a critical role in supporting healthy child development. The basic tenet of current special education legislation — that all children, with and without disabilities, have a right to a free, appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment — would become a reality. 

Photo: Then-President Donald Trump and then-U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos visit a school in Florida. Credit: Flickr/Trump White House Archived (public domain)

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Project 2025 and education: A lot of bad ideas, some more actionable than others

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, rachel m. perera , rachel m. perera fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy jon valant , and jon valant director - brown center on education policy , senior fellow - governance studies katharine meyer katharine meyer fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy.

August 12, 2024

• Project 2025 is rife with bad ideas that, if enacted, would inflict harm on students and schools across the country.
• Many proposals would require an unlikely degree of cooperation from Congress, though others could be enacted unilaterally by a second Trump administration.
• Parts of Project 2025 are more closely aligned with a white Christian nationalist worldview than a traditional, conservative education policy agenda.

Project 2025 outlines a radical policy agenda that would dramatically reshape the federal government. The report was spearheaded by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and represents the policy aims of a large coalition of conservative activists. While former President Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, many of the report’s authors worked in the previous Trump administration and could return for a second round. Trump, himself, said in 2022 , “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do.”

In other words, Project 2025 warrants a close look, even if the Trump campaign would like Americans to avert their gaze.

Project 2025’s education agenda proposes a drastic overhaul of federal education policy, from early childhood through higher education. Here’s just a sample of the Project 2025 education-related recommendations:

• Dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (ED)
• Eliminate the Head Start program for young children in poverty
• Discontinue the Title I program that provides federal funding to schools serving low-income children
• Rescind federal civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students
• Undercut federal capacity to enforce civil rights law
• Reduce federal funding for students with disabilities and remove guardrails designed to ensure these children are adequately served by schools
• Promote universal private school choice
• Privatize the federal student loan portfolio

It’s an outrageous list, and that’s just the start of it.

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We’ve reviewed the Project 2025 chapter on education (Chapter 11), along with other chapters with implications for students. We’ve come away with four main observations:

1. Most of the major policy proposals in Project 2025 would require an unlikely amount of congressional cooperation

Project 2025 is presented as a to-do list for an incoming Trump administration. However, most of its big-ticket education items would require a great deal of cooperation from Congress.

Proposals to create controversial, new laws or programs would require majority support in the House and, very likely, a filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority in the Senate. Ideas like a Parents’ Bill of Rights, the Department of Education Reorganization Act, and a federal tax-credit scholarship program fall into this category. Even if Republicans outperform expectations in this fall’s Senate races , they’d have to attract several Democratic votes to get to 60. That’s not happening for these types of proposals.  

The same goes for major changes to existing legislation. This includes, for example, a proposal to convert funding associated with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to no-strings-attached block grants and education savings accounts (with, presumably, much less accountability for spending those funds appropriately). It also includes a proposal to end the “ negotiated rulemaking ” (“neg-reg”) process that ED follows when developing regulations related to programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA). The neg-reg requirement is written into HEA itself, which means that unwinding neg-reg would require Congress to amend the HEA. That’s unlikely given that HEA reauthorization is already more than a decade overdue—and that’s without the political baggage of Project 2025 weighing down the process.

The prospect of changing funding levels for existing programs is a little more complicated. Programs like Title I are permanently authorized. Eliminating Title I or changing the formulas it uses to allocate funds to local educational agencies would require new and unlikely legislation. Year-to-year funding levels can and do change , but the vast majority of ED’s budget consists of discretionary funding that’s provided through the regular, annual appropriations process and subject to a filibuster. This limits the ability of one party to make major, unilateral changes. (ED’s mandatory funding is more vulnerable.)

In sum, one limiting factor on what an incoming Trump administration could realistically enact from Project 2025 is that many of these proposals are too unpopular with Democrats to overcome their legislative hurdles.

2. Some Project 2025 proposals would disproportionately harm conservative, rural areas and likely encounter Republican opposition

Another limiting factor is that some of Project 2025’s most substantive proposals probably wouldn’t be all that popular with Republicans either.

Let’s take, for example, the proposed sunsetting of the Title I program. Project 2025 proposes to phase out federal spending on Title I over a 10-year period, with states left to decide whether and how to continue that funding. It justifies this with misleading suggestions that persistent test score gaps between wealthy and poor students indicate that investments like Title I funding aren’t paying off. (In fact, evidence from school finance reforms suggests real benefits from education spending, especially for students from low-income families.)

The phrase “Title I schools” might conjure up images of under-resourced schools in urban areas that predominantly serve students of color, and it’s true that these schools are major beneficiaries of Title I. However, many types of schools, across many types of communities, receive critical support through Title I. In fact, schools in Republican-leaning areas could be hit the hardest by major cuts or changes to Title I. In the map below, we show the share of total per-pupil funding coming from Title I by state. Note that many of the states that rely the most on Title I funds (darkest blue) are politically conservative.

Of course, the impact of shifting from federal to state control of Title I would depend on how states choose to handle their newfound decision-making power. Given that several red states are among the lowest spenders on education —and have skimped on programs like Summer EBT and Medicaid expansion —it’s hard to believe that low-income students in red states would benefit from a shift to state control.

What does that mean for the type of support that Project 2025 proposals might get from red-state Republicans in Congress? It’s hard to know. It’s worth keeping in mind, though, that the GOP’s push for universal private school voucher programs has encountered some of its fiercest resistance from rural Republicans across several states .

3. Project 2025 also has significant proposals that a second Trump administration could enact unilaterally

While a second Trump administration couldn’t enact everything outlined in Project 2025 even if it wanted to, several consequential proposals wouldn’t require cooperation from Congress. This includes some actions that ED took during the first Trump administration and certainly could take again.

Here are a few of the Project 2025 proposals that the Trump administration could enact with the authority of the executive branch alone:

• Roll back civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students
• Roll back Title IX protections against sex-based discrimination
• Dismantle the federal civil rights enforcement apparatus
• Eliminate current income-driven repayment plans and require higher monthly payments for low-income borrowers
• Remove protections from predatory colleges that leave students with excessive debt

Federal education policy has suffered from regulatory whiplash over the last decade, with presidential administrations launching counter-regulations to undo the executive actions of the prior administration. Take, for example, “gainful employment” regulations that Democratic administrations have used to limit eligibility for federal financial aid for colleges that leave students with excessive loan debt. A second Trump administration would likely seek to reverse the Biden administration’s “gainful employment” regulations like the first Trump administration did to the Obama administration’s rules . (Then again, with the Supreme Court striking down Chevron , which provided deference to agency expertise in setting regulations, the Trump administration might not even need to formally undo regulations.)

Other Project 2025 proposals, not explicitly about education, also could wreak havoc. This includes a major overhaul of the federal civil service. Specifically, Project 2025 seeks to reinstate Schedule F, an executive order that Trump signed during his final weeks in office. Schedule F would reclassify thousands of civil service positions in the federal government to policy roles—a shift that would empower the president to fire civil servants and fill their positions with political appointees. Much has been written about the consequences of decimating the civil service, and the U.S. Department of Education, along with other federal agencies that serve students, would feel its effects.

4. Project 2025 reflects a white Christian nationalist agenda as much as it reflects a traditional conservative education policy agenda

If one were to read Project 2025’s appeals to principles such as local control and parental choice, they might think this is a standard conservative agenda for education policy. Republicans, after all, have been calling for the dismantling of ED since the Reagan administration, and every administration since has supported some types of school choice reforms.

But in many ways, Project 2025’s proposals really don’t look conservative at all. For example, a large-scale, tax-credit scholarship program would substantially increase the federal government’s role in K-12 education. A Parents’ Bill of Rights would require the construction of a massive federal oversight and enforcement function that does not currently exist. And a proposal that “states should require schools to post classroom materials online to provide maximum transparency to parents” would impose an enormous compliance burden on schools, districts, and teachers.

Much of Project 2025 is more easily interpretable through the lens of white Christian nationalism than traditional political conservatism. Scholars Philip Gorski and Samuel Perry describe white Christian nationalism as being “about ethno-traditionalism and protecting the freedoms of a very narrowly defined ‘us’.” The Project 2025 chapter on education is loaded with proposals fitting this description. That includes a stunning number of proposals focused on gender identity, with transgender students as a frequent target. Project 2025 seeks to secure rights for certain people (e.g., parents who support a particular vision of parental rights) while removing protections for many others (e.g., LGBTQ+ and racially minoritized children). Case in point, its proposal for “Safeguarding civil rights” says only, “Enforcement of civil rights should be based on a proper understanding of those laws, rejecting gender ideology and critical race theory.”

These types of proposals don’t come from the traditional conservative playbook for education policy reform. They come from a white Christian nationalist playbook that has gained prominence in far-right politics in recent years.

At this point, it’s clear that the Trump campaign sees Project 2025 as a political liability that requires distance through the election season. Let’s not confuse that with what might happen during a second Trump administration.

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How to Prioritize With the MoSCoW Method

Do you need help prioritizing tasks when managing a project? There’s an acronym for that! It’s called the MoSCow method and it’s a great technique to help with prioritization.

What Is the MoSCoW Method?

The MoSCoW method is a technique that helps organizations prioritize what should be done first in a project. It is done in four steps that follow the acronym MoSCoW, which stands for must have, should have, could have and will not have. It’s used by anyone who needs to prioritize their work and is especially useful in project management.

The MoSCoW method can help when project planning. ProjectManager is award-winning project management software that can take the results of your MoSCow method and organize them into a project plan. Our powerful Gantt charts organize tasks, link all four task dependencies to avoid delays and can set a baseline to capture the project plan and compare it to the actual progress to ensure you stay on schedule. Get started with ProjectManager today for free.

MoSCoW Prioritization Categories

Managing a project is often about managing what you will – and won’t! – get done in the given project timeline . When there are no priorities set, projects can quickly become free-for-alls, with the loudest voices in the room getting their work prioritized over others, often not for the benefit of the project or the organization.

But there’s a different approach. It’s called the MoSCoW method for defining and managing requirements and tasks in a project . Here is a list to clarify what those requirements are:

Must-Have Requirements (M)

Another way to refer to this is as the minimum usable subset (MUS) or what the project must deliver. In other words, the project must deliver these on the target date for the project to remain on track. No delay is acceptable. It is either going to take the project off track, it’s unsafe or even illegal not to have this done by the time given in the project’s business case .

A way to understand if you’re dealing with a MUS is by asking yourself, “What happens if this isn’t met?” If the answer is, “The project fails ,” then you have a MUS. Any workaround that can be devised to continue with the project and not jeopardize its success, means this isn’t a MUS.

Should-Have Requirements (S)

This type of requirement is almost as important as a MUS, but it’s not vital to the success of the project. In other words, the project doesn’t depend on this requirement. You might not want to leave it out, as it could have a great impact on the project, but in the end, it can be done without causing any irreparable harm. Again, leaving out this requirement means a lot of work⁠ (finding a solution, changing stakeholders’ expectations, maybe experiencing some inefficiency⁠), but the project can go on.

Could-Have Requirements (C)

The difference between a should-have requirement and a could-have requirement is simply by figuring out the degree of pain that would be caused by not meeting it. That is, how will it impact the business value of the project, how many people would be affected, etc. Therefore, a could-have requirement is something you’d like but is less important than a should-have requirement. There will be an impact if it’s left out of the project, but less than the impact of a should-have requirement.

What We Will Not Have This Time (W)

Here is where you can collect those requirements that are not feasible for a specific release. Maybe next time, but the project remains strong without them. This is a great way to avoid project scope creep . Once initiatives are placed in the not-have-time category, teams know that they’re not a priority for this go-around and can place them on the back burner and out of their mind. This allows them to focus more sharply on those requirements that are important to the project.

What Is the MoSCoW Method Used For?

The MoSCow method can be of use to anyone who has work and needs to prioritize that work to know what’s essential and what can be ignored. It’s mostly used in product development, software development and project management. In project management that helps determine which tasks, requirements, products and user stories (in agile projects) the team needs to prioritize.

How to Implement the MoSCoW Method in 3 Steps

The MoSCoW method is a valuable tool, but only if you know how to use it. Here are three steps that will help you use the MoSCoW method when prioritizing your project.

1. Gather Project Requirements

Start by identifying all project requirements . Just make a giant list and be as thorough as possible. You don’t want to leave out anything that might prove essential to the project.

2. Prioritize Project Requirements

Now go through that list and attach a letter to each, according to the MoSCoW method of M for must-have, S for should have, C could have and W for what you won’t have. This allows you to prioritize the work and know what can be put aside to focus on what’s important.

3. Track the Completion of Project Deliverables

Now that you’ve classified your requirements, you can carry out the work in a timely manner. Tracking that work ensures that you don’t miss any deadlines and that all high-priority requirements will be met.

Benefits of the MoSCoW Method

The clear benefit of using the MoSCoW method is that it provides a means to prioritize work and know what is essential to the project and what can be ignored if time and cost prevent one from completing every requirement. But there are more advantages of the MoSCoW method, some of which we list below.

Helps Ensure Stakeholder Satisfaction

Stakeholders have a vested interest in the project and the project should satisfy their expectations . The MoSCoW method helps manage stakeholders by getting them to all agree on the prioritization of requirements and, therefore, helps to resolve any conflicts that might arise over the execution of those requirements.

It’s Easy to Understand and Implement

Using the MoSCoW method identifies the priority of project requirements. This information can then be disseminated to the project team so it’s clear to everyone what must be done. Now the team understands what’s prioritized and can implement those requirements first.

Helps Teams Cut Unnecessary Costs

The MoSCoW method allows everyone on the project team to know what they have to get done first, which increases revenue by decreasing operational costs, improving productivity and increasing customer satisfaction.

Moscow Method Example

Leadership guru Susanne Madsen leads this training video on how to use the MoSCoW Method to prioritize your requirements in a project.

How ProjectManager Helps You Prioritize

ProjectManager is online project management software that can make sure your requirements are being met throughout the life cycle of the project. Because our software gives you real-time data, you’re able to meet your priorities.

Our real-time dashboard shows real-time data that is displayed over six different project metrics. These numbers are crunched and illustrated in colorful, easy-to-read graphs and charts that keep project managers keenly assessed on the progress of their priorities.

Workflow is also visualized with kanban boards that keep teams focused on their priorities. Online Gantt charts can link dependencies and teams can collaborate at the task level, adding comments, documents and images.

There’s so much more that ProjectManager offers. To get a full picture of what we can do to help you better manage your next project, try our free 30-day trial today.

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Tim Walz’s Class Project on the Holocaust Draws New Attention Online

Mr. Walz, now the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee, asked his high school students in 1993 which country was most at risk for genocide. Their prediction came to pass: Rwanda.

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By Neil Vigdor

• Aug. 9, 2024

The prediction was spot on: Rwanda was barreling toward a devastating genocide.

It did not emanate from a think tank, but from a high school geography class in western Nebraska. The year was 1993. The teacher? Tim Walz, now the Democratic vice-presidential candidate and Minnesota governor.

Thirty-one years later, the class project is drawing new attention. Mr. Walz, a geography teacher at the time, had asked his students to take what they had learned about the Holocaust to predict which nation was most at risk for genocide.

“They came up with Rwanda,” Mr. Walz said, talking about the project at a conference last month . “Twelve months later, the world witnessed the horrific genocide in Rwanda.”

The project was reported on in a 2008 On Education column for The New York Times that has been widely shared in recent days. Mr. Walz had drawn the attention of the reporter, Samuel G. Freedman, for an earlier column because Mr. Walz was the only K-12 teacher serving in Congress at the time, Mr. Freedman said.

“While I was interviewing Walz for the initial column, he told me how the genocide project was one of his proudest moments as an educator,” said Mr. Freedman, who is now a journalism professor at Columbia University . That sparked Mr. Freedman to revisit the story later.

Mr. Walz, when he delivered the lesson plan, had been teaching global geography in Alliance, Neb., and had been chosen for a Belfer fellowship to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that was opening. Speaking at the conference last month, held by Esri, a company that makes G.I.S. software widely used in mapping, he said the project had a profound effect on his students and bred some cynicism.

“How could a bunch of students in western Nebraska, in Alliance, use a computer program and some past historical knowledge to come up with this?” he said. “Why was nobody doing anything about that?”

Several years later, when he was studying for his master’s degree in experiential education at Minnesota State University, Mankato, Mr. Walz wrote his thesis on Holocaust education, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported .

As governor, Mr. Walz signed a bill last year that requires high schools and middle schools to teach about the Holocaust, along with other genocides.

Neil Vigdor covers politics for The Times, focusing on voting rights issues and election disinformation. More about Neil Vigdor

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MoSCoW Prioritization

What is moscow prioritization.

MoSCoW prioritization, also known as the MoSCoW method or MoSCoW analysis, is a popular prioritization technique for managing requirements. 

  The acronym MoSCoW represents four categories of initiatives: must-have, should-have, could-have, and won’t-have, or will not have right now. Some companies also use the “W” in MoSCoW to mean “wish.”

What is the History of the MoSCoW Method?

Software development expert Dai Clegg created the MoSCoW method while working at Oracle. He designed the framework to help his team prioritize tasks during development work on product releases.

You can find a detailed account of using MoSCoW prioritization in the Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) handbook . But because MoSCoW can prioritize tasks within any time-boxed project, teams have adapted the method for a broad range of uses.

How Does MoSCoW Prioritization Work?

Before running a MoSCoW analysis, a few things need to happen. First, key stakeholders and the product team need to get aligned on objectives and prioritization factors. Then, all participants must agree on which initiatives to prioritize.

At this point, your team should also discuss how they will settle any disagreements in prioritization. If you can establish how to resolve disputes before they come up, you can help prevent those disagreements from holding up progress.

Finally, you’ll also want to reach a consensus on what percentage of resources you’d like to allocate to each category.

With the groundwork complete, you may begin determining which category is most appropriate for each initiative. But, first, let’s further break down each category in the MoSCoW method.

Start prioritizing your roadmap

Moscow prioritization categories.

1. Must-have initiatives

As the name suggests, this category consists of initiatives that are “musts” for your team. They represent non-negotiable needs for the project, product, or release in question. For example, if you’re releasing a healthcare application, a must-have initiative may be security functionalities that help maintain compliance.

The “must-have” category requires the team to complete a mandatory task. If you’re unsure about whether something belongs in this category, ask yourself the following.

If the product won’t work without an initiative, or the release becomes useless without it, the initiative is most likely a “must-have.”

2. Should-have initiatives

Should-have initiatives are just a step below must-haves. They are essential to the product, project, or release, but they are not vital. If left out, the product or project still functions. However, the initiatives may add significant value.

“Should-have” initiatives are different from “must-have” initiatives in that they can get scheduled for a future release without impacting the current one. For example, performance improvements, minor bug fixes, or new functionality may be “should-have” initiatives. Without them, the product still works.

3. Could-have initiatives

Another way of describing “could-have” initiatives is nice-to-haves. “Could-have” initiatives are not necessary to the core function of the product. However, compared with “should-have” initiatives, they have a much smaller impact on the outcome if left out.

So, initiatives placed in the “could-have” category are often the first to be deprioritized if a project in the “should-have” or “must-have” category ends up larger than expected.

4. Will not have (this time)

One benefit of the MoSCoW method is that it places several initiatives in the “will-not-have” category. The category can manage expectations about what the team will not include in a specific release (or another timeframe you’re prioritizing).

Placing initiatives in the “will-not-have” category is one way to help prevent scope creep . If initiatives are in this category, the team knows they are not a priority for this specific time frame. 

Some initiatives in the “will-not-have” group will be prioritized in the future, while others are not likely to happen. Some teams decide to differentiate between those by creating a subcategory within this group.

How Can Development Teams Use MoSCoW?

  Although Dai Clegg developed the approach to help prioritize tasks around his team’s limited time, the MoSCoW method also works when a development team faces limitations other than time. For example: 

Prioritize based on budgetary constraints.

What if a development team’s limiting factor is not a deadline but a tight budget imposed by the company? Working with the product managers, the team can use MoSCoW first to decide on the initiatives that represent must-haves and the should-haves. Then, using the development department’s budget as the guide, the team can figure out which items they can complete. 

Prioritize based on the team’s skillsets.

A cross-functional product team might also find itself constrained by the experience and expertise of its developers. If the product roadmap calls for functionality the team does not have the skills to build, this limiting factor will play into scoring those items in their MoSCoW analysis.

Prioritize based on competing needs at the company.

Cross-functional teams can also find themselves constrained by other company priorities. The team wants to make progress on a new product release, but the executive staff has created tight deadlines for further releases in the same timeframe. In this case, the team can use MoSCoW to determine which aspects of their desired release represent must-haves and temporarily backlog everything else.

What Are the Drawbacks of MoSCoW Prioritization?

  Although many product and development teams have prioritized MoSCoW, the approach has potential pitfalls. Here are a few examples.

1. An inconsistent scoring process can lead to tasks placed in the wrong categories.

  One common criticism against MoSCoW is that it does not include an objective methodology for ranking initiatives against each other. Your team will need to bring this methodology to your analysis. The MoSCoW approach works only to ensure that your team applies a consistent scoring system for all initiatives.

Pro tip: One proven method is weighted scoring, where your team measures each initiative on your backlog against a standard set of cost and benefit criteria. You can use the weighted scoring approach in ProductPlan’s roadmap app .

2. Not including all relevant stakeholders can lead to items placed in the wrong categories.

To know which of your team’s initiatives represent must-haves for your product and which are merely should-haves, you will need as much context as possible.

For example, you might need someone from your sales team to let you know how important (or unimportant) prospective buyers view a proposed new feature.

One pitfall of the MoSCoW method is that you could make poor decisions about where to slot each initiative unless your team receives input from all relevant stakeholders. 

3. Team bias for (or against) initiatives can undermine MoSCoW’s effectiveness.

Because MoSCoW does not include an objective scoring method, your team members can fall victim to their own opinions about certain initiatives. 

One risk of using MoSCoW prioritization is that a team can mistakenly think MoSCoW itself represents an objective way of measuring the items on their list. They discuss an initiative, agree that it is a “should have,” and move on to the next.

But your team will also need an objective and consistent framework for ranking all initiatives. That is the only way to minimize your team’s biases in favor of items or against them.

When Do You Use the MoSCoW Method for Prioritization?

MoSCoW prioritization is effective for teams that want to include representatives from the whole organization in their process. You can capture a broader perspective by involving participants from various functional departments.

Another reason you may want to use MoSCoW prioritization is it allows your team to determine how much effort goes into each category. Therefore, you can ensure you’re delivering a good variety of initiatives in each release.

What Are Best Practices for Using MoSCoW Prioritization?

If you’re considering giving MoSCoW prioritization a try, here are a few steps to keep in mind. Incorporating these into your process will help your team gain more value from the MoSCoW method.

1. Choose an objective ranking or scoring system.

Remember, MoSCoW helps your team group items into the appropriate buckets—from must-have items down to your longer-term wish list. But MoSCoW itself doesn’t help you determine which item belongs in which category.

You will need a separate ranking methodology. You can choose from many, such as:

• Weighted scoring
• Value vs. complexity
• Buy-a-feature
• Opportunity scoring

For help finding the best scoring methodology for your team, check out ProductPlan’s article: 7 strategies to choose the best features for your product .

2. Seek input from all key stakeholders.

To make sure you’re placing each initiative into the right bucket—must-have, should-have, could-have, or won’t-have—your team needs context. 

At the beginning of your MoSCoW method, your team should consider which stakeholders can provide valuable context and insights. Sales? Customer success? The executive staff? Product managers in another area of your business? Include them in your initiative scoring process if you think they can help you see opportunities or threats your team might miss. 

3. Share your MoSCoW process across your organization.

MoSCoW gives your team a tangible way to show your organization prioritizing initiatives for your products or projects. 

The method can help you build company-wide consensus for your work, or at least help you show stakeholders why you made the decisions you did.

Communicating your team’s prioritization strategy also helps you set expectations across the business. When they see your methodology for choosing one initiative over another, stakeholders in other departments will understand that your team has thought through and weighed all decisions you’ve made. 

If any stakeholders have an issue with one of your decisions, they will understand that they can’t simply complain—they’ll need to present you with evidence to alter your course of action.  

Related Terms

2×2 prioritization matrix / Eisenhower matrix / DACI decision-making framework / ICE scoring model / RICE scoring model

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A chief architect of Project 2025 is ready to shock Washington if Donald Trump wins a second term

FILE - President Donald Trump listens as acting director of the Office of Management and Budget Russel Vought speaks during an event on “transparency in Federal guidance and enforcement” in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

FILE - Acting OMB Director Russel Vought walks towards reporters after doing an interview at the White House, Monday, March 11, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, File)

FILE - Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., center, speaks during a news conference, Wednesday, May 12, 2021, with Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., back left, and former OMB Director and President of Citizens for Renewing America Russel Vought, as they express their opposition to “critical race theory,” on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Russell Vought sounds like a general marshaling troops for combat when he talks about taming a “woke and weaponized” federal government.

He recently described political opposition as “enemy fire that’s coming over the target,” while urging allies to be “fearless at the point of attack” and calling his policy proposals “battle plans.”

If former President Donald Trump wins a second term in November, Vought may get the opportunity to go on the offensive.

A chief architect of Project 2025 — the controversial conservative blueprint to remake the federal government — Vought is likely to be appointed to a high-ranking post in a second Trump administration. And he’s been drafting a so-far secret “180-Day Transition Playbook” to speed the plan’s implementation to avoid a repeat of the chaotic start that dogged Trump’s first term.

Among the small cadre of Trump advisers who has a mechanic’s understanding of how Washington operates, Vought has advised influential conservative lawmakers on Capitol Hill, held a top post in the Trump White House and later established his own pro-Trump think tank. Now, he’s being mentioned as a candidate to be Trump’s White House chief of staff, one of the most powerful positions in government.

“If we don’t have courage, then we will step away from the battle,” Vought said in June on former Trump aide Steve Bannon’s ‘War Room’ podcast . “But our view is that’s where the country needs us, and we’re not going to save our country without a little confrontation.”

Conservative blueprint to change the government

Led by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Project 2025 is a detailed 920-page handbook for governing under the next Republican administration. A whirlwind of hard-right ambitions, its proposals range from ousting thousands of civil servants and replacing them with Trump loyalists to reversing the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of medications used in abortions. Democrats for months have been using Project 2025 to hammer Trump and other Republicans, arguing to voters that it represents the former president’s true — and extreme — agenda.

Trump in recent weeks has sought to distance himself from Project 2025. He posted on social media he has not seen the plan and has “no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it.”

His campaign said Tuesday that Project 2025’s “demise would be greatly welcomed.” That same day, Paul Dans, the project’s executive director and a former Trump administration personnel official, stepped down.

Trump’s attempts to reject the blueprint are complicated by the connections he has with many of its contributors. More than two dozen authors served in his administration, including Vought, who was director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.

The Trump campaign did not respond to questions about which Project 2025 proposals the former president opposes or whether Vought would be offered a high-level government position in a new Trump term.

Vought did not respond to an interview request or to questions first emailed in February to his think tank, the Center for Renewing America , which played a key role in creating Project 2025.

Those who know Vought described him as fiercely dedicated to Trump’s cause, if not to the former president himself.

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“A very determined warrior is how I would see Russ,” said a former Trump administration official who worked with Vought in the White House and requested anonymity to speak candidly about him. “I don’t think he thinks about whether or not he likes Donald Trump as a person. I think he likes what Donald Trump represents in terms of the political forces he’s able to harness.”

Washington insider

Born in New York and raised in Connecticut, Vought has described his family as blue collar. His parents were devout Christians. Vought’s father, a Marine Corps veteran, was a union electrician and his mother was a schoolteacher.

Vought’s father, nicknamed Turk, didn’t stand for idleness or waste. Mark Maliszewski, an electrician who knew him, recalled that after a job Turk Vought would scold his co-workers if they tossed out still usable material.

“He’d go over and kick the garbage can,” Maliszewski said. “He’d say: ‘What is this? If those were quarters or dollars in that garbage can, you’d be picking them up.’”

Russell Vought graduated in 1998 from Wheaton College, a Christian school in Illinois that counts the famed evangelist Billy Graham among its alumni. He moved to Washington to work for Republicans who championed fiscal austerity and small government.

“I worked with a lot of different staff people and as far as work ethic, tenacity, intellect, knowledge (and) commitment to principle, Russell was one of the more impressive people I worked with,” said former GOP Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, who hired Vought in 2003.

After honing his credentials as a fiscal hawk, Vought was named policy director of the House Republican Conference, the party’s primary messaging platform chaired at the time by then-Rep. Mike Pence, who went on to serve as Indiana governor and Trump’s vice president.

Vought left Capitol Hill for a lobbying organization attached to the Heritage Foundation. When Trump was elected, Vought became OMB’s deputy director.

His confirmation hearing was contentious. Liberal Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders accused him of using Islamophobic language when he wrote in 2016 that Muslims “do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.”

Vought told senators his remarks were taken out of context and said he respected the right of every person to express their religious beliefs.

The Senate confirmed him to be OMB’s No. 2 by a single vote. He became acting director in early 2019 after his boss, Mick Mulvaney, was named Trump’s acting chief of staff . Vought was confirmed as OMB director a year and half later as the COVID-19 pandemic was sweeping the globe.

OMB is a typically sedate office that builds the president’s budget and reviews regulations. But with Vought at the helm, OMB was at the center of showdowns between Trump and Congress over federal spending and the legal bounds of presidential power.

After lawmakers refused to give Trump more money for his southern U.S. border wall, the budget office siphoned billions of dollars from the Pentagon and Treasury Department budgets to pay for it.

Under Vought, OMB also withheld military aid to Ukraine as Trump pressured President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate President Joe Biden and his son. Vought refused to comply with a congressional demand to depose him during the subsequent Democrat-led House investigation that led to Trump’s first impeachment. The inquiry, Vought said, was a sham.

Following Trump’s exit from the White House, Vought formed The Center for Renewing America. The organization’s mission is to be “the tip of the America First spear” and “to renew a consensus that America is a nation under God.”

Vought has defended the concept of Christian nationalism , which is a fusion of American and Christian values, symbols and identity. Christian nationalism, he wrote three years ago, “is a commitment to an institutional separation between church and state, but not the separation of Christianity from its influence on government and society.”

The only way to return America to the country the Founding Fathers envisioned is “radical constitutionalism,” Vought said on Bannon’s podcast. That means ensuring control of the executive branch rests solely with the president, not a vast federal bureaucracy.

Anticipating the fights to achieve this, Trump’s backers need to be “fearless, faithful and frugal in everything we do,” he said.

A declaration of less independence

Vought’s center was part of a coalition of conservative organizations, organized by the Heritage Foundation, that launched Project 2025 and crafted a detailed plan for governing in the next Republican administration.

The project’s public-facing document, “Mandate for Leadership,” examined nearly every corner of the federal government and urged reforms large and small to bridle a “behemoth” bureaucracy.

Project 2025 calls for the U.S. Education Department to be shuttered, and the Homeland Security Department dismantled, with its various parts absorbed by other federal offices. Diversity, inclusion and equity programs would be gutted. Promotions in the U.S. military to general or admiral would go under a microscope to ensure candidates haven’t prioritized issues like climate change or critical race theory.

The blueprint also recommends reviving a Trump-era personnel policy that seeks to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers as political appointees, which could enable mass dismissals.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat , a New York University history professor and author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” criticized Project 2025 as “a recipe for mass chaos, abuses of power, and dysfunction in government.”

The overarching theme of Project 2025 is to strip down the “administrative state.” This, according to the blueprint, is the mass of unelected government officials who pursue policy agendas at odds with the president’s plans.

In his public comments and in a Project 2025 chapter he wrote, Vought has said that no executive branch department or agency, including the Justice Department, should operate outside the president’s authority.

“The whole notion of independent agencies is anathema from the standpoint of the Constitution,” Vought said during a recent appearance on the Fox Business Network .

Critics warn this may leave the Justice Department and other investigative agencies vulnerable to a president who might pressure them to punish or probe a political foe. Trump, who has faced four separate prosecutions, has threatened retribution against Biden and other perceived enemies .

Diminishing the Justice Department’s independence would be a “radically bad idea,” said Paul Coggins, past president of the National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys.

“No president deserves to sic the Justice Department on his political enemies, or, frankly, to pull the Justice Department off his political friends,” he said.

It is not clear what job Vought might get in a second Trump administration. He could return as OMB director, the job he held at the end of Trump’s presidency, or an even higher-ranking post.

“Russ would make a really, really good (White House) chief of staff,” Mulvaney said.

Whatever the position, Vought is expected to be one of Trump’s top field commanders in his campaign to dominate Washington. ___

Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

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Huffman, Pressley Demand Heritage President Come Before Congress, Release Project 2025’s Secret 180-Day Plan

Congressman Jared Huffman (CA-02) and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), co-founders of the Stop Project 2025 Task Force, led their colleagues on a letter to Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation, requesting that he come before Congress to discuss Project 2025 and release its undisclosed “180-Day Playbook.”

Project 2025 is a far-right, over 900-page policy blueprint that aims to monopolize power for a Republican President, with plans to dramatically transform reproductive freedoms, public education, LGBTQIA+ rights, the economy, and more. In addition, the authors of Project 2025 have deliberately kept several of their proposals hidden through an undisclosed 180-Day Playbook, which authors describe as a roadmap of comprehensive, concrete, early actions for each federal agency.

“You have conspicuously declined to publish or disclose any of the prioritized early actions that we believe would obviously be the most important parts of Project 2025,” Pressley, Huffman, and colleagues wrote in their letter. “The immediate executive orders, emergency declarations, presidential directives, and other measures are likely to have profound impacts on the American people and their government. Therefore, we believe it is overwhelmingly in the public interest for you to actually keep your ‘open book’ promise by disclosing the ‘Fourth Pillar’ of Project 2025, and we hope you’ll consider explaining why, unlike the first three pillars, you have been keeping it secret for so long.”

In their letter, Huffman, Pressley, and their colleagues expressed alarm about the harmful impact Project 2025 would have on our democracy, reproductive freedoms, public education, LGBTQIA+ rights, economy, environment, public health and more, and argued that Congress and the American people deserve to have a complete and fully informed understanding of how Project 2025 would impact them.

“It is time to stop hiding the ball on what we are concerned could very well be the most radical, extreme, and dangerous parts of Project 2025,” the lawmakers continued. “If we are wrong about that – if your secret ‘Fourth Pillar’ of Project 2025 is actually a defensible, responsible, and constitutional action plan for the first days of a second Trump presidency – then we hope you will publish it, without edits or redaction. Allow the American people to see it and scrutinize it. Allow members of Congress to see it, so that we can discuss it with you and with the growing number of our constituents who seek to understand what Project 2025 portends for their government and their lives.”

The lawmakers requested Mr. Roberts come before Congress for a substantive meeting with lawmakers to discuss Project 2025 and to share an unredacted, unedited copy of the secret 180-day action plan. They requested a response to their letter by no later than Friday, August 16 th .

Joining Reps. Pressley and Huffman in sending the letter are Reps. Mark Pocan, Sean Casten, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Hank Johnson, Sydney Kamlager-Dove, Nanette Diaz Barragán, Jasmine Crockett, Lloyd Doggett, Dan Goldman, Barbara Lee, Suzanne Bonamici, Rashida Tlaib, Jamie Raskin, Sylvia García, Seth Moulton, Becca Balint, Diana DeGette, Shri Thanedar, Gerry Connolly, Delia Ramirez, Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jim Costa, Bonnie Watson Coleman, Judy Chu, Jill Tokuda, Gabe Amo, Cori Bush, Seth Magaziner, Maxwell Alejandro Frost, Terri Sewell, Summer Lee, Frederica Wilson, Brendan Boyle, Ted Lieu, and Robert Garcia.

A copy of the letter is available here .

Reps. Huffman and Pressley are founding members of a Congressional Task Force designed to stop Project 2025 , a nearly thousand-page blueprint for Donald Trump to seize “supreme” powers and control the lives of every person who calls America home. The Stop Project 2025 Task Force was announced by Rep. Huffman in June and its members are leaders on many of the issues currently under attack by Project 2025.

As founder of the Task Force, Rep. Huffman has repeatedly sounded the alarm on Project 2025, a bucket list of extremist policies that would uproot every government agency to take over the government, eliminate checks and balances, and roll back rights and freedoms. 

• On July 30, 2024, Rep. Huffman issued a statement on reports that Paul Dans is stepping down from his role as the head of Project 2025.
• On July 17, 2024, Rep. Jared Huffman sent a letter decrying the FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr for crafting part of Project 2025 in his official capacity as an executive-level employee of the federal government.

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