Celebrations over the peace deal the United States and the Taliban signed on Saturday did not last long. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Sunday he would not free 5,000 Taliban prisoners, a key component of the agreement, before power-sharing talks between the rival factions begin on March 10.

Almost everything in education news this year paled in comparison to the two mass-casualty shootings that claimed 27 lives. School safety dominated headlines from February until the November midterms. But with little agreement on school safety solutions, the news cycle ground on to other things. Here are this year’s top five stories in education.

Gregory Wills, a professor of church history at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, has spent years chronicling American religious history in general—and Southern Baptist history in particular. Last year, seminary President Albert Mohler, a WORLD News Group board member, asked Wills to head a research team investigating the school’s historic ties to slavery and racism.

Based on his previous research, Wills had an idea of what he would find.

Voters in Seattle approved a tax increase in November to fund education initiatives, including a program making two years of community college free for all high school graduates.

Almost nothing about the 2018 midterm elections indicated U.S. politicians find much to agree on. But at the state level, at least one issue came up again and again in stump speeches and TV ads: early childhood education.

The U.S. Department of Education released its official rewrite of Title IX regulations just before Thanksgiving, serving up plenty for victims’ rights advocates to chew on. The holiday leftovers might be long gone, but DeVos-induced heartburn rages on.

U.S. schools have long emphasized small class sizes as the best environment for teaching and learning. But education experts don’t agree on the benefits, with dueling studies showing both significant and minimal effects.