Samantha, 11, asks her seventh grade teacher’s permission to leave the classroom each time the subject of climate change comes up.
Samantha, from a small town in Massachusetts, sees stories about climate change on social media and in the news. She has asked her family about it, and while not wanting to scare her, they acknowledge the disastrous impact that climate change is increasingly having on our planet, including the connection between Earth’s rising temperatures and the increase in extreme storms and wildfires.
It is because Samantha knows all of this that the mere mention of climate change triggers her anxiety. Samantha’s parents are at a loss about how to help her. Unfortunately, a growing number of children and their parents are grappling with similar emotions.
Mental health clinicians and researchers have begun to notice and document what they call climate anxiety or eco-anxiety, which is defined as chronic stress caused by concern over the effects of climate change. According to an international group of researchers, specific symptoms of this phenomenon among children and young adults include intense feelings of sadness, anger, powerlessness, helplessness and guilt — all of which can fuel more general and severe anxiety or depression. Therefore, while combatting climate change itself, we must also address the anxiety that it is causing.
Another study confirms the finding that depression, general and severe anxiety and “extreme emotions such as sadness, anger and fear” are all mental health outcomes associated with eco-anxiety. These mental health challenges are not pathological, but considered to be normal human responses to a rapidly changing world.
Meanwhile, they can contribute to inaction: A national survey found that nearly 50 percent of Americans age 18 and over are fatalistic when it comes to climate change, believing that individual actions make no difference in changing its course. Yet actions are, of course, vital.
Is the solution to climate change to hide its harms from children to protect their mental health? Of course not. Climate change is a real threat, one that needs immediate solutions involving people across the globe working together. In fact, the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change cites climate educationas a key component of the global campaign to address this issue.
One solution is to teach about climate change by focusing on strategies to address its consequences. The goal of climate education should not only be to teach students the scientific basis of climate change but also to empower them to address it — not thrust them into a state of despair.
To this end, we need a climate education framework that provides facts about the problem, describes mitigation and adaptation strategies and fosters the resilience youth need to navigate their changing world and act. Below, we sketch out what this framework looks like.
Solution-focused instructional design
The framework’s academic content must include science classes that encourage students to explore the science of climate restoration and environmental protection — not just the impact of climate change. It must also include civics lessons about the role students can play, now and in the future, in influencing government policy related to climate adaptation and mitigation. Project-based learning, citizen science learning — such as NASA’s GLOBE program — and service-learning are positive, solution-oriented approaches that can be drawn on to inspire youth and prepare them to be tomorrow’s environmental stewards.
Deeply integrated social and emotional learning
But such academic content alone is not enough, even when focused on solutions. It is also essential to include social and emotional learning (SEL) in all aspects of climate change education.
SEL is a much-discussed, research-based approach to helping students build emotional intelligence, acquire emotional agility and foster meaningful relationships. These emotional skills are key to young people’s success in school and in a rapidly changing world and include nonacademic skills such as regulating emotions, perspective-taking and setting and achieving goals.
Some of SEL’s core social-emotional competencies can help students manage their climate change-related stress and prepare them to act. For example, SEL helps build capacity to manage emotions amid adversity; fosters social awareness skills, such as understanding group behaviors and influences; develops relationship skills, such as communicating effectively and collaborating with others; and nurtures self-management skills, such as channeling strong emotions into productive behaviors. Weaving SEL approaches into instruction could help bring a sense of agency to the many young people who are feeling anxiety and concern.
We need to develop this climate education framework today, and we need to roll out curricula quickly and widely. There is no time to waste.
Around the world, kids like Samantha are sitting in class, haunted by images of a disintegrating planet. We can and must provide them with a sense of purpose — a known driver of positive youth development and a protective factor against mental health struggles. We can and must prepare them to be capable climate restoration champions who know how to preserve both our planet and their own mental health.
Shai Fuxman is a behavioral health expert and senior research scientist at Education Development Center, where he leads initiatives promoting the positive development of youth.
Chelsey Goddard is an expert in prevention science and vice president at Education Development Center, where she leads the organization’s U.S.-based health, mental health and behavioral health work.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Lubbock, TX – Putnam County Schools in Tennessee is recognized by iCEV, a leading producer of Career & Technical Education (CTE) curriculum, industry certification testing, and data management, for having the 100,000th certification earner on the iCEV Testing Platform.
Serving more than 12,000 students across 22 schools, Putnam County Schools has long been recognized as a leader in promoting equitable access to CTE programs and career opportunities. In Putnam County Schools, CTE courses are aligned to relevant industry certifications that will help earners begin successful careers.
“It’s important that we provide equal access to all of our students,” said Jaclyn Vester, CTE Program Director for Putnam County Schools. “We want to make sure all of our students are leaving with the tools they need to be college and career ready.”
Having the 100,000th earner demonstrates the significant role certifications play in ensuring students in Putnam County Schools are prepared for their careers.
“We want them to really explore and think about what their next steps are, and we want to make sure as a school system that we are providing them with the skills they are going to need for those next steps,” said Vester.
By partnering with organizations such as iCEV, Putnam County Schools will continue to fulfill its mission to provide CTE students with employable skills that will help them lead successful careers in the fields of their choosing. In the previous school year alone, Putnam County Schools certified more than 1,500 students, including 374 through the iCEV Testing Platform.
“This milestone celebrates the success of Putnam County Schools and countless other CTE programs across the country,” said Dusty Moore, iCEV CEO. “The certification earners are now better prepared for their careers and are serving in communities across the country. iCEV is proud to partner with schools nationwide to provide opportunities for individuals to enhance their knowledge and validate their skills.”
With 18 industry certifications created by industry-leading businesses and organizations, the iCEV Testing Platform offers opportunities for learners to demonstrate they have the knowledge and skills necessary for work in a wide range of industries. The milestone of 100,000 certification earners represents that there are now 100,000 individuals more prepared to pursue their academic and career goals.
About iCEV Since 1984, iCEV has specialized in providing quality CTE curriculum and educational resources. iCEV is the most comprehensive online resource for CTE educators and students, offering curriculum for several major subject areas, including agricultural science, trade & industrial education, business & marketing, career exploration, family & consumer science, trade & health science, law enforcement and STEM education. iCEV also acts as a certification testing platform for industry certifications. Recognized companies and organizations utilize iCEV as the testing platform for their certifications. Additionally, iCEV offers Eduthings, a CTE data management platform that simplifies reporting for industry certifications, work-based learning, CTSO participation, and more. For more information, visit www.icevonline.com.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
It can be easy to think of school closures, remote learning and masked classrooms as part of the pandemic past.
But educators across the country know better. They see the learning loss that persists, despite their best efforts to provide some measure of consistency amid all the disruption.
While new data suggest students are making a “ ‘surprising’ rebound,” findings also show math and reading levels for elementary and middle school students are nowhere near pre-pandemic levels.
Worse yet, systemic inequality has actually worsened, with students in the poorest communities falling even further behind their more affluent peers.
Recognizing near the start of the pandemic that U.S. public schools required vast support, federal and state government officials appropriated historic levels of help via elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds.
As a recently retired superintendent of schools, I’ve watched, with immense frustration, as state and federal officials followed up their initial funding with blindly conceived appropriations tied to inflexible and short-sighted deadlines.
Now that funding is drying up at precisely the wrong time; districts will be left trying to fund nascent positions and programs on top of their normal operational costs.
In the aftermath of the pandemic, educators have been switching focus from acute short-term challenges to the chronic and stubborn ones poised to become generational pain points. Novel educational impacts of the pandemic are still emerging while others persist.
Classroom teachers and school administrators are seeing more challenging student behaviors and family distress on top of the learning gaps.
That’s why federal funding must not end. We would never ask doctors to treat their patients before they began exhibiting symptoms. So why would we ask our educators to essentially do the same?
As deadlines for the expenditure of federal dollars loom and intersect with next year’s budget development, school districts once again face the uncertainty of not having sufficient resources for challenges that they do not yet fully understand.
Short-term funding will not be sufficient for navigating out of a once-in-a-century global public health problem that fundamentally changed the way the U.S. educates our youth.
We need a more logical, reasonable and, most importantly, sustainable approach to combat pandemic-induced learning loss, in whatever form it appears. Although federal and state funding is typically allocated yearly, future funding should be targeted and guaranteed for multiple years.
Without taking a different funding approach, we will only guarantee that the impacts linger or worsen. Right now, well-intentioned federal funding may actually be widening the achievement gap. We are seeing economically disadvantaged communities starting to lag in their rate of learning as measured by standardized testing.
Leaders holding the power of the purse will need to recognize that the new playing field is still unequal, and that economic disparities among communities will continue to yield different learning outcomes. Leveling the playing field means better distribution of funds.
The federal funding that is set to expire in 2024 cannot wipe away the adverse learning impacts of the pandemic. While it can be tempting and politically expedient to declare the pandemic over, turning the page prematurely leaves students and teachers behind and potentially exacerbates existing challenges.
We can and must do better.
Hamlet Michael Hernandez is an assistant teaching professor of education and director of the Educational Leadership program at Quinnipiac University.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Worried your taking too many medicines? A presentation on Wednesday may help you advocate for yourself and keep medications in check throughout the aging process.
The Rockport Council on Aging will host Donna Bartlett, author of âMedStrong,â at a special luncheon presentation Wednesday, Feb. 21, at noon.
The lunch and presentation topic âShed Your Medsâ is free thanks to sponsorship from Addison Gilbert Hospital and the Friends of the Rockport Council on Aging. The event will take place at the Rockport Community House, 58 Broadway, where seats are limited and advance reservations are required.
A board-certified geriatric pharmacist based in Worcester, Bartlett is engaged in community outreach programming specializing in older adult medication needs, affordability and prescription coverage. Bartlett has seen first-hand the effects of staying on medication longer than necessary and the impact of âover medication.â
Those in attendance can expect to come away with a better understanding of âde-prescribingâ from an expert who has been practicing, teaching and speaking on the subject for more than 15 years. Copies of Bartlettâs book âMedStrongâ will be available for purchase at the event.
Seats may be reserved by contacting the Rockport Council on Aging at 978-546-2573.
Career Day
The DECA chapter at Rockport High School is sponsoring Career Day on Wednesday, April 3, at the school, 24 Jerden’s Lane, from 8 to 10:30 a.m., and the chapter is seeking for volunteers for presentations. Rockport High alumni are encouraged to present. Anyone interested in participating should email DECA advisor Scott Larsen at slarsen@rpk12.org.
STEAM education–science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics–prepares students for success beyond high school by helping them develop much-needed durable skills such as critical thinking and problem-solving.
An integrated STEAM education also puts students on the path to success with higher test scores, stronger attendance records, better disciplinary records, and increased engagement and graduation rates.
STEAM education is trending at an opportune time: The COVID-19 pandemic caused learning loss across the board, and a STEAM-centered curriculum that engages students while weaving important 21st-century education principles into real-world lessons is critical for success.
Let’s take a closer look at STEAM education:
What is an example of STEAM education?
Makerspaces are a great example of STEAM learning, letting students combine creativity and art elements into more traditional STEM topics. School makerspaces have emerged as centers of creativity, problem solving, collaboration, and more. These skills–often referred to as soft skills, but also known as durable skills for their importance in the workplace–are a focus of 21st-century classrooms. These days, school libraries often include makerspaces and librarians are becoming well-versed in the coding, robotics, engineering, and tinkering skills necessary to help students bring their ideas to fruition. Let’s look at some STEAM education facts: Here are 5 resources (digital and non-digital) for school makerspaces that might be worth a look.
What does STEAM do for education?
As STEM has risen in prominence over the past decade, arts education has yet to achieve the same recognition and integration. In order to provide a rich, robust, and inclusive curriculum for youth, STEM needs to evolve to STEAM. And in many ways, that transition is already taking place as technology and engineering drive the next wave of art and creative expression. You can’t have one without the other. As our digital world encompasses new storytelling mediums across design, audio engineering, music production, digital art, and more, new unique skill sets are required to prepare young people for careers of the future. STEAM education principles need to become embedded into media production, music production, and graphic design to enable the next wave of innovation and creativity needed for these major technological shifts. STEAM education lesson plans can incorporate so many learning principles. Here’s why creativity is essential in today’s curriculum.
What is STEAM and STEM activity?
Much STEM and STEAM activity happens in labs. A STEM or STEAM lab is an environment where students, irrespective of grade, can come together and actively participate in hands-on STEM and STEAM learning. These educational spaces encourage active learning and problem solving. In these STEM laboratories, students can develop their science, engineering, and mathematics skills by using technology to create, collaborate, and complete projects–learning and applying knowledge to find new solutions. Imagine a technology-enhanced learning environment where everything is student-centered and supports theme and project-based learning–that’s a STEM lab! And these are just a few STEM and STEAM education examples. Here are 4 ideas to consider when creating a STEM or STEAM lab.
What is the value of STEAM education?
Science, technology, engineering, and math are broad but dynamic subjects that contain innumerable and specific learning concepts. Arts and sciences have traditionally been perceived as different subjects with few commonalities, and STEM programs often omit the arts from the conversation. But with a STEAM-centered curriculum, students are trained to introduce design, agile thinking, and creative solutions to solve social and scientific problems and bring new inventions to fruition. What’s more, a multi-subject approach to a STEAM education promotes deeper conceptual learning and career self-determination, and prepares youth for interdisciplinary STEAM careers in a rapidly changing workplace. So, what’s the impact of STEAM education? A STEAM learning approach encourages collaboration to understand and distill new concepts. By integrating the arts, a STEAM-centered curriculum uses tools such as quantitative visualization or fine arts imagery to deepen one’s understanding of science, math, and technology. Here’s why students will benefit from STEAM learning.
What are 3 benefits of STEM?
A new study at the University of Missouri–in partnership with Harvard-Smithsonian researchers–shows that when colleges host ‘STEM Career Days,’ the students who attend are far more likely to pursue a career in a STEM-related field. The findings not only highlight the benefits of college recruiters introducing high school students to STEM-related opportunities, but they can also help increase and diversify the STEM workforce in the United States. The benefits of STEAM education and STEM learning help students develop much-needed skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, and collaboration. Students learn how to navigate challenging situations regardless of what career field they pursue. STEM learning benefits are invaluable.
Laura Ascione is the Editorial Director at eSchool Media. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland’s prestigious Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
If you live in Arizona, school choice may be coming to your neighborhood soon. As someone who has had more school choice than I know what to do with, I can tell you what may feel like a shocking surprise: Private schools have the power to choose, not parents.
I live inPhoenix, where the nearby town of Paradise Valley is getting ready to offer the privatization movement’s brand of choice to families. The district has indicated that it will likely vote to close four public schools due to insufficient funds. If this happens, other districts will probably follow: The state’s recent universal voucher expansion has predictably accelerated the diversion of money from public to private schools.
Arizona approved use of school choice vouchers, called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, or ESAs, in 2011 on the promise that they were strictly for children with special needs who were not being adequately served in the public school system. The amount of funds awarded to qualified students was based on a tiered system, according to type of disability.
Over the years, the state incrementally made more students eligible, until full expansion was finally achieved in 2022. For some students, the amount of voucher money they qualify for is only a few thousand dollars, nowhere near enough to cover tuition at a private school. Often, their parents can’t afford to supplement the balance. However, my son, who is autistic, qualified for enough to cover full tuition.
I took him out of public school in 4th grade. Every school I applied to seemed to have the capability to accommodate his intellectual disability needs but lacked the willingness. Eventually, I found a special education school willing to accept him. It was over an hour from our home, but I hoped for the best. Unfortunately, it ultimately was not a good fit.
I then thought Catholic schools would welcome my son, but none of them did. One Catholic school principal who did admit him quickly rescinded the offer after a teacher objected to having him in her class.
The long list of general, special-ed, Catholic and charter schools that turned my son away indicate how little choice actually exists, despite the marketing of ESA proponents.
There was a two-year period where I gave up and he was home without social opportunities. I was not able to homeschool, so a reading tutor and his iPad became his only access to education.
I then tried to enroll him in private schools for students with disabilities.
These schools were almost always located in former office suites in strip malls with no outdoor access. My son’s current school shares space with a dialysis center in a medical building, while a former school was located in a small second-floor suite in a Target plaza.
Once a private school admits your child, they can rescind admission without cause. Private schools are at leisure to act as virtual dictatorships, and special-ed schools in particular are notorious for keeping parents at a distance.
My son’s current school grew tired of my requests for reasonable communication about his school day or even his general progress and made his continued enrollment subject to my acceptance of their decision not to speak to me at all.
With few other choices, I acquiesced to the school’s ultimatum and am keeping my son there while I search for a better option once again — even as he gets closer to aging out of K-12 education. As of now, he has nowhere else to go. There has never been a moment when I couldn’t accept my son for who he is; why can’t private schools do the same — especially those that market themselves to the special needs demographic?
Education is a human right, and public schools, open to all, are the guardians of this right. What privatizers call choice does not really exist.
As ESAs and private schools siphon off money and public schools start closing down, parents will be horrified to discover that nothing can defeat the closely held advantages of a private system designed to keep them out, and no amount of vouchers will make a difference.
When all the public schools are closed, and you can’t get a private school to accept your child, what will you do?
Vouchers gave my son social opportunities that he wouldn’t have had otherwise, along with tutors to help mitigate private education deficits. But he would rather attend a local school, with kids in his neighborhood, or at least the kind of private school ESA marketing promised him.
I hope that as more families experience the exclusion and powerlessness that we have lived with, they’ll realize that a balance between public and private is necessary and an excess of either at the expense of the other is disastrous.
Every day on our way to my son’s special education school, we drive by an elegant, sprawling private school campus. He waves at the children and pretends they’re his friends. He still asks to go there.
Pam Lang is a writer and graduate student at ASU pursuing master’s degrees in comparative literature and social work, and an advocate for public education and healthcare equality.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
BURLINGTON, NC — Carolina Biological, the leading school science supplier and the Smithsonian Science Education Center announced Smithsonian Science for the Classroom™, Phenomenon and Problem-Driven Edition, for grades K to 5. The print, digital and hands-on program raises the bar in student-driven 3D learning and 3D assessment. All modules in the updated core science curriculum are rolling out for the 2024-25 school year. The program still takes students on a journeyof hands-on experiences, observation, and collaboration, but added many more new opportunities for students to drive their own learning and: build reading, writing, and speaking skills; make sense of phenomena and real-world problems;drive learning with their own ideas and experiences. The new program features a robust and integrated assessment system, including a new assessment map. Accessibility for students is emphasized. Students cultivate scientific skills and knowledge through student-centric investigations as they figure out compelling phenomena and solve real-world problems. Teacher support is included. The new 2nd Edition was extensively field tested by educators and will be available for purchase through Carolina for the 2024-25 school year. Teachers can contact Carolina now to implement in classrooms next fall.
Smithsonian Science for the Classroom, 2nd Edition, is a high-quality comprehensive science program with life science, earth and space science, physical science and engineering modules developed to meet the *Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). This elementary curriculum engages, inspires, and connects students firsthand to the world around them through a total of 24 student-driven modules. It helps teachers keep classes fresh and interesting to young students and integrate science, technology, math and engineering throughengaging and hands-on lessons. Smithsonian Science for the Classroom includes print and digital components, as well as hands-on materials.
Student Agency
A strong theme in the new Edition is the power of student agency, a personalized learning concept that gives students a choice and voice in learning. When each new phenomenon or problem is introduced, students have the opportunity to access their prior knowledge, share initial ideas, and ask questions based on gaps in their understanding. These ideas and questions drive the next steps. They offer more opportunities for students to ask questions and rely upon their prior knowledge to drive their understanding and learning. Students work as scientists, doing hands-on investigations, collaborating with peers, testing models, and developing explanations as they explain a phenomenon or solve a problem. A family letter is included for every module that creates opportunities for teachers to gain knowledge about students’ prior experiences and for parents and caregivers to know what to ask students about in-class experiences.
“Students come to the classroom with an understanding of the world based on their previous experiences,” said Dr. Carol O’Donnell, Senior Executive and Director of the Smithsonian Science Education Center. “When students have an opportunity to access their prior knowledge, use it to make initial explanations of a phenomenon, and integrate that prior knowledge with classroom investigations, they will gain a deeper understanding of how the natural world works. The new Edition gives students more opportunities to explain phenomena and solve problems by integrating their knowledge from past experiences with carefully chosen investigations, digital interactives, and informational text.”
During field testing of the version, many educators provided feedback and enjoyed the student-driven emphasis of the investigations. Here is one of the helpful comments from 2nd Edition beta testers about the grade 4 engineering unit: “I have never had the students come up with goals for a successful solution,” said Michele Hayes, 4th grade teacher at St. John’s School in Houston, TX. “This was difficult for them, but they came up with great ideas. I will definitely use this when doing future STEM projects.”
Every lesson provides opportunities for students to practice and reinforce foundational reading and math skills. Explaining phenomena and solving problems provides motivation for students to read, write, and discuss for purpose. Students read for purpose to find evidence that explains what is confusing or surprising to them. Notebooking in science gives students opportunities to engage with the writing process, write for a purpose and a place to record and organize their design and testing plans, collected data, ideas and explanations of phenomena, and claims based on evidence.
Students talk to each other to design a solution together, brainstorm how to test it, and plan how to make it better. Students speak to each other and to the class as they ask and answer their own questions and communicate the results of their investigations through presentations.
Developers at theSmithsonian Science Education Center leveraged their incredible curiosity about the amazing things the researchers and curators are investigating at the Smithsonian and wove that into a student-driven grades K to 5 curriculum. So the students who use Smithsonian Science for the Classroom and its accompanying literacy series, Smithsonian Science Stories, aren’t just getting a cohesive, engaging, NGSS-aligned curriculum, they are getting a chance to “visit” the Smithsonian and peer into the art, culture and history through the readings. The curriculum was voted the most culturally relevant science program by the National Science Teaching Association in BEST of STEM 2023 awards.
3D Assessment
The modules integrate science and engineering seamlessly, as intended by NGSS. Guidance is provided through call-out boxes on where, when and how students are applying the three dimensions of NGSS (e.g., disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and cross-cutting concepts). This is especially useful for teachers who are relatively new to NGSS and also ensures that students are engaged in 3D learning. A new comprehensive Assessment Map in the Teacher’s Guide for each module illustrates how students progress in building skills and knowledge throughout the module. Formative and checkpoint assessments build to the module summative performance assessment, which is a science or engineering design challenge. The assessment table format makes it fast and easy for teachers to use “in the moment” assessment guidance.3D assessment assists teachers in gauging how well students are progressing in all three dimensions through a variety of assessed performance tasks and written assessments. Three-dimensional assessments required by the latest standards are performance based. Students apply their content knowledge to complete a task and answer open-ended questions about phenomena. Understanding is demonstrated in a variety of ways where students apply their knowledge and skills to a scenario. Teachers need to provide evidence that students can apply their knowledge appropriately and are building on their existing knowledge and skills in ways that lead to deeper understanding of the scientific and engineering practices, crosscutting concepts, and disciplinary core ideas.
“The new edition of Smithsonian Science for the Classroom drives the powerful, three-dimensional learning and assessment intended by NGSS,” said Jim Parrish, President and CEO at Carolina Biological Supply Company. “It builds upon the original research foundation to 1) develop scientific literacy while reinforcing foundational skills in reading and math, 2) emphasize experiential learning; and 3) provide access to culturally relevant content only available through the Smithsonian Institution. The 2nd Edition provides more opportunities for all students’ ideas to drive investigation of phenomena and problems and to make sense of their natural world.”
Availability
All modules from Smithsonian Science for the Classroom, 2nd Edition, will be available for schools to purchase in the 2024-2025 school year through Carolina. It includes print and digital components, as well as hands-on materials. The program includes 24 modules for grades K to 5. Each module includes a print-format Teacher Guide, a set of 16 Smithsonian Science Stories readers, a set of 10 Student Activity Guides (grades 3-5), a class kit of hands-on materials to supply 32 students, and digital access to the Teacher Guide and student literacy materials. Prices start at $650 for one grade-level module through Carolina. Refurbishment sets are also available starting at $200 to refill the hands-on consumables for subsequent use of the module. An upgrade kit for current users will be available for purchase. Below-grade and Spanish versions of the readers are also available for purchase. For information, visit Carolina’s website, call (800) 334-5551, or e-mail curriculum@carolina.com.
Smithsonian Science Education Center
The mission of the Smithsonian Science Education Center is to transform and improve the teaching and learning of science for PreK-12 students in the United States and throughout the world. Established in 1985 as the National Science Resources Center (NSRC) under the sponsorship of two prestigious institutions – the Smithsonian Institution and the National Academy of Sciences – the Center is dedicated to the establishment of effective science programs for all students. The Smithsonian Science Education Center works to build awareness for PreK-12 science education reform among global, state, and district leaders; conducts programs that support the professional growth of PreK-12 teachers and school leaders; and engages in research and curriculum development in partnership with it is publisher, Carolina Biological Supply Company, the sole source provider of STC™, STCMS™, and Smithsonian Science for the Classroom™.
Carolina Biological Supply Company
From its beginnings in 1927, Carolina ( www.carolina.com) has grown to become the leading supplier of biological and other science teaching materials in the world. Headquartered in Burlington, NC, Carolina serves customers worldwide, including teachers, students, and professionals in science and health-related fields. The company is still privately owned by descendants of the founder, geology and biology professor Dr. Thomas E. Powell Jr.
* NGSS is a registered trademark of WestEd. Neither WestEd nor the lead states and partners that developed the Next Generation Science Standards were involved in the production of this product, and do not endorse it.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
PHOENIX, Ariz. —At its recent Impact 2024 conference, Bluum, a leading provider of education technology, unveiled five new solutions designed to address the biggest challenges in education today. The latest customizable selections of hardware, software, and services from Bluum aim to help educators increase and improve enrollment, keep schools safe and informed, and deliver curriculum innovation for K-12 and higher education.
“Bluum is on a never-ending mission to help improve learning and access to education,” said Bluum CRO Scott Pintsopoulos. “With the new solutions we unveiled at Impact 2024, we are poised to partner with educational institutions to solve some of the toughest challenges facing teachers and learners today.”
Bluum’s diverse range of new offerings include best in class brands addressing everything from stem to school safety.
The new Esports solution is designed to enhance student engagement and build a sense of community, effectively tapping into the growing interest in gaming. This innovative strategy not only boosts enrollment figures but also fosters a dynamic learning environment, aligning education with evolving trends and student interests.
The new school safety solution provides comprehensive cyber and physical security solutions to ensure a secure learning environment. Bluum’s cybersecurity offerings include strategic planning for educational leaders and tools that safeguard sensitive information, shielding schools from digital threats and ensuring the integrity of educational data. Advanced physical security measures, ranging from access control systems to surveillance technologies, empower schools to proactively address safety concerns, creating a protected space for students and staff while keeping stakeholders well-informed about potential risks and responses.
Bluum’s new curriculum innovation for primary schools packages offer a diverse range of tailored solutions that integrate STEM tools and hands-on learning opportunities to increase student engagement and foster curiosity and critical thinking skills among the youngest learners.
New curriculum innovation solutions for intermediate schools enable educators to create dynamic and interactive lessons, fostering student engagement and critical thinking, empowering educators to deliver innovative content by ensuring that students are equipped with the digital skills they need to succeed in an ever-evolving world.
Bluum’s curriculum innovation for higher education packages allow colleges and universities to integrate hybrid and blended collaborative learning tools and personalized learning experiences with their curriculum.
Bluum selected the quality products in each package to help each school or district achieve its specific goals, and also offers a range of services to ensure that the new tools are ready to go on day one and continue to provide value day after day. Bluum’s support services include the following:
White glove services make deployment easier, faster, and less costly. Bluum’s customized configuration solutions help IT teams focus on keeping classrooms running smoothly.
Bluum Shield is an original equipment manufacturer warranty extension that provides comprehensive coverage to minimize learning interruptions, maximize the value of every technology investment, and lower the total cost of ownership.
Funding advisory services help schools and districts find, apply for, and use available funds they may not be aware of.
Bluum’s professional development offerings include coaching via onsite, remote, and asynchronous learning options. Current research shows that ongoing support for instructional integration of technology tools empowers teachers to maximize learning outcomes, increase efficiency, and provide access to learning to meet individual student needs.
“We know that your teachers, your students, and your community are unique, and that even if you share common challenges with other educators, the solutions to those problems are unique,” said Emily Cook, Bluum’s vice president of educational services. “That’s why Bluum is committed to listening, learning, and collaborating with each partner to assess their particular needs and goals, then plan and implement a solution designed for success as they’ve defined it.”
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This is an adapted excerpt from “School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics and the Battle for Public Education” by Laura Pappano. Copyright 2024. Excerpted with permission by Beacon Press.
Across the country, state legislatures have passed bills to ban “age-inappropriate” books from schools, in many cases subjecting teachers and school librarians to criminal charges for possession of such books. In January, EveryLibrary, a group that tracks legislation that puts school and college librarians, higher ed faculty and museum professionals at risk of criminal prosecution, identified 44 bills in 14 states as “legislation of concern,” for the 2024 session.
This climate has teachers and librarians feeling fearful, confused and stressed. Lindsey Kimery, the coordinator of library services for Metro-Nashville Public Schools, said she has “no hidden agenda other than that reading was my favorite thing.” Having books by, about and for LGBTQ+ students, she said, “does not mean we are out there promoting it. It just means we have books for those readers, too. What I try to convey is that a library is a place for voluntary inquiry.”
Krause’s List
It is unclear how the recent book ban fervor started. Certainly, a former Texas state representative, Matt Krause, deserves some credit. On October 25, 2021, using his power as chair of the Texas House Committee on General Investigating, Krause sent a letter to the Texas Education Agency and to school districts listing some 850 books. He demanded that districts (1) identify how many copies of each title they possessed and where they were located, including which campuses and classrooms; (2) say how much the district spent to acquire the books; and (3) identify books not on his list that dealt with topics such as AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, or other subjects that “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex or convey that a student, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
Texas Rep. Matt Krause, R-Fort Worth, looks over the calendar as lawmakers rush to finish their business, Friday, May 26, 2017, in Austin, Texas. Credit: Eric Gay/ Associated Press
Districts had until November 12, less than a month, to respond. This alarmed librarians. At the time, Mary Woodard, president of the Texas Library Association, was also in charge of school libraries in the Mesquite Independent School District (ISD). She recalled receiving the letter. “I was actually at home. My superintendent forwarded it to me. It was in the evening,” she said. “I just felt a cold chill. I was beyond shocked that somebody from our state government was asking what books were available in our school libraries. I never thought I would see anything like that.” Like librarians around the state, Woodard was quickly called into a meeting with her superintendent. Ultimately, they gathered the information Krause asked for, but decided not to send it unless it was specifically requested. It wasn’t.
The lack of follow-up by Krause was interesting. He has repeatedly refused to say how he compiled the list or what he was trying to accomplish. But around the time the letter gained attention, Krause was running for state attorney general. He failed to make it onto the Republican ballot in March 2022, then decided to run for district attorney in Tarrant County as a “Faithful, Conservative Fighter,” but lost. His legislative term ended on January 10, 2023. He is now running for Tarrant County Commissioner.
The list was probably the most newsworthy thing he did as state legislator — it caught fire. Suddenly, Krause’s list was a state resource and discussed in the national media. Governor Greg Abbott called on the Texas Education Agency to launch criminal investigations into the availability of “pornographic books” in school libraries. Some of writer Andrew Solomon’s books were on the list, prompting him to write an essay titled “My Book Was Censored in China. Now It’s Blacklisted — in Texas.”
Actually, Krause’s list was quite sloppy. Media outlets dove into specifics and unearthed a ridiculous assemblage. Of course, books that mention LGBTQ+ students or are about sexuality (even from the 1970s) or race were well represented. But there was a lot that was puzzling. “Almost one in five of the books listed, I have no idea why they’re included,” wrote Danika Ellis of Book Riot, a podcast and website about books and reading, who sifted through the entire list. “Probably the one that has me the most stumped is ‘Inventions and Inventors’ by Roger Smith from 2002. What’s controversial about a book on inventions??” Other outlets shared similar head-scratching reactions. The Dallas Observer named their “10 most absurd” books on the list.
Actually, Krause’s list was quite sloppy. Media outlets dove into specifics and unearthed a ridiculous assemblage.
Yet many educators treated the list like an instructional manual. Chris Tackett, a political campaign finance expert, tweeted a photo of a man in a hoodie leaving the high school library in Granbury ISD pulling a dolly of cardboard boxes labeled “Krause’s List.” Granbury ISD’s superintendent, Jeremy Glenn, was eager to comply, as a leaked audio recording showed. He gathered librarians in January 2022 and told them that students didn’t need access to books about sexuality or transgender people. A secret recording shared by the Texas Tribune–ProPublica Investigative Unit and NBC News revealed a stunning disregard for students’ First Amendment rights.
Yet when Glenn addressed the librarians, there was clearly no room for disagreement. He stated that school board trustees had been in touch. “I want to talk about our community,” he said in a firm but syrupy drawl. “If you do not know this, you have been probably under a rock, but Granbury is a very, very conservative community and our board is very, very conservative.” He warned, “If that’s not what you believe, you’d better hide it because it ain’t changing in Granbury. Here, in this community, we will be conservative.”
He then detailed that meant not having books about sexuality or LGBTQ+ or “information on how to become transgender.” Then, Glenn revealed his discomfort with gender-fluid individuals, saying, “I will take it one step further with you and you can disagree if you want. There are two genders. There’s male and there’s female. And I acknowledge that there are men that think they are women and women that think they are men. And I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there is no place for it in our libraries.” He told librarians that he was forming a review committee of parents and educators and that they would “pull books off the shelves, especially the 850” on Krause’s list. He finished with a directive that camouflaged the seriousness of what he asked them to do: “When in doubt, pull it. Let the community sign off on it, put it back on the shelf. You’re good to go.”
Objections Reflect Times, Personal Views
Not surprisingly, the matter of what should and may be included in school libraries has long been a source of contention, often influenced by the political climate of the time. In 1950, amid the fervor of McCarthyism, the Yale Law Journal delved into a controversy between The Nation and The New York City Board of Education after the left-leaning magazine published articles critical of Roman Catholic church doctrine and dogma. The school board voted to remove The Nation from school libraries. A multi-year battle followed with The Nation offering free subscriptions, but appeals to the state department of education failed. Was it censorship, as the Yale Law Journal and The Nation defense suggested? Libraries cannot subscribe to every periodical. The schools did not remove existing materials but did not include new issues.
The example hits on a current matter. Aside from pressure to remove materials, what should be included in the first place? Nowadays, rather than face controversy, some librarians are simply choosing not to purchase some books. A survey conducted by School Library Journal in Spring 2022 received input from 720 school librarians, 90 percent from public schools (all anonymous). It found that 97 percent weighed the impact of controversial subjects when making purchases. “The presence of an LGBTQIA+ character or theme in a book led 29 percent of respondents to decline a purchase,” the survey report said. Forty-two percent admitted removing a “potentially problematic” book that had not faced challenge or review. An updated 2023 survey revealed that this has only become more common. Thirty-seven percent said they declined to select books with LGBTQIA+ subject matter; 47 percent admitted to removing a book on their own. Interestingly, one-third said they had considered leaving the profession “in reaction to the intensity over book bans” — but two-thirds said that intensity has moved them to be more active in fighting censorship.
Book banning is a chaotic and illogical business. How a book is received or understood is often subject to the historical moment — and the tastes of individuals.
Book banning is a chaotic and illogical business. How a book is received or understood is often subject to the historical moment — and the tastes of individuals. The notion of an objective measure or checklist to decide what is “appropriate” — something far-right school boards have worked to police and enforce — is slippery to define. In the late 1930s, the children’s book “The Story of Ferdinand,” about a bull who would rather smell flowers than fight a matador, was interpreted as carrying a pacifist political message. But in a whirl of confusion, it was marked as both pro-Franco and anti-Franco — and also as “communist, anarchist, manic-depressive, and schizoid,” according to an analysis of children’s book censorship in the Elementary School Journal in 1970.
In other words, people saw what they wanted to see. That also happened to “Sylvester and the Magic Pebble,” a children’s book by William Steig about a donkey who finds a magic pebble and, frightened by a lion, wishes himself into becoming a rock. The book contained images of police officers dressed as pigs. In 1971, the International Conference of Police Associations took offense at that portrayal of police as pigs — “pig” being a derogatory term for law enforcement officers. According to the author of the journal article, school librarians who agreed with the police association view of the drawings and “considered [the portrayal] a political statement,” pulled the books from shelves in many locales, including Lincoln, Nebraska; Palo Alto, California; Toledo, Ohio; Prince George’s County, Maryland; and several cities in Illinois.
Books often get singled out because they make someone uncomfortable. Lately, far-right activists have particularly objected to graphic images, including of intimate body parts. Which is what happened in the 1970s with Maurice Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen.” The book includes drawings that reveal the toddler hero’s penis on several pages. School and public libraries quietly devised a solution: They used white tempera to paint diapers on Mickey, the main character. At a meeting of the American Library Association in Chicago in June 1972, some 475 librarians, illustrators, authors and publishers were outraged at the practice of the painting over the penis and signed a petition denouncing it as a form of censorship.
“School libraries are for all students but not all students are the same — they have diverse interests, abilities, and maturity levels, and varied cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.”
Texas Library Association
Books that involve drugs, violence, sex and sexual orientation can attract fierce opposition, regardless of the intended message, literary merit or value. Sometimes these books offer windows into other worlds and experiences, which in 1971 bothered school board members and a few parents in a white middle-class section of Queens, New York City. Community School District 25 board voted to ban “Down These Mean Streets,” by Piri Thomas, in which the author shares his tough story of survival in Harlem as the dark-skinned son of Puerto Rican immigrants. The five members of the school board who voted to ban the book did not have children in any public schools governed by the district. At a meeting that drew some 500 people and lasted for six hours, 63 attendees spoke with most objecting to the ban. According to a New York Times account, “Book Ban Splits a Queens School District,” the five school board members who favored the ban were nicknamed “The Holy Five” or “The Faithful Five.” Four had run on a slate sponsored by the Home Schools Association, a support group for Catholic parents home-schooling their children. In a parallel to the present, some questioned their motives, concerned that they were reflecting personal interests and not the district’s. A few years later, in December 1975, the board, composed of different and recently elected members, voted to repeal the ban. The board president called the book banning “abhorrent” and “undemocratic.”
Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District v. Pico
Thomas’s book also played a role in a case on which the Supreme Court ruled in 1982. It began in September 1975, when several board members of the Island Trees Union Free School District on Long Island, New York, attended a weekend education conference in Watkins Glen, New York, organized by a far-right group, Parents of New York United, Inc. (PONY-U. Inc. for short). Island Trees Union Free School District board members mixed with representatives from the Heritage Foundation and parents opposed to school desegregation in Boston. The keynote speaker, Genevieve Klein, a member of the New York State Board of Regents, advocated for adoption of a voucher system for education. “If you are a parent who believes that reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic are basic tools necessary for developing into a contributing member of society, then you know that parental control is an immediate necessity,” she told the group. “If there is to be any hope for saving another generation from becoming functional idiots the time to act is now.”
Book bans, and opposition to them, date back decades. Here, Gail Sheehy, author of “Passages,” at podium, right, reads during the “First Banned Books Read Out,” New York, April 1, 1982. Credit: Carlos Rene Perez/ Associated Press
PONY-U. Inc. was not just a local group eager to talk about schooling. Headed by Janet Mellon, a far-right activist, the group had spent several years orchestrating opposition to sex education and human relations education in schools and to student busing across Upstate New York. Yet books were top of mind leading up to Watkins Glen. A few weeks prior, the group hosted a talk titled “Book Censorship in Our Schools” at the Central Fire Station in Ithaca, New York. The Watkins Glen conference also came on the heels of one of the most violent and divisive school textbook battles in history. For six months in 1974 and 1975, bitter conflict roiled West Virginia’s Kanawha County after a new school board member, Alice Moore, sought the removal of textbooks that she found objectionable. She had won her seat by convincing voters that schools were “destroying our children’s patriotism, trust in God, respect for authority and confidence in their parents.”
Moore mobilized other conservatives locally and nationally, including prominent education activists Mel and Norma Gabler, who sought to “excise the rot from the nation’s schoolbooks,” as Adam Laats writes in “The Other School Reformers: Conservative Activism in American Education.” That “rot” included teaching evolution; communicating a “liberated” sexuality; “graphic accounts of gang fights; raids by wild motorcyclists; violent demonstrations against authority; murders of family members; of rape” and “books that denigrated traditional patriotic stories” in favor of popular subjects at the time, including Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Gertrude Ederle, Bobby Jones, Joan Baez, W. E. B. Du Bois “and many others dear to liberal hearts.”
As protests in Kanawha County grew, violence spread. Reverend Marvin Horand, a fundamentalist minister and former truck driver, called for school boycotts, arguing that “no education at all is 100 percent better than what’s going on in the schools now. If we don’t protect our children from evil, we’ll have to go to hell for it.” The controversy resulted in two shooting deaths and multiple bombings. Horand was charged and ultimately found guilty in connection with the dynamiting of two elementary schools. The Heritage Foundation was also on the ground, providing legal support and helping a local group hold a “series of ‘Concerned Citizen’ hearings on discontent with the public schools.” Mellon of PONY-U. was one of their “expert” speakers.
At the Watkins Glen conference — with the memory of Kanawha County still fresh — board members of the Island Trees Union Free School District received a list of 32 books described as “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic and just plain filthy.” Then, in February 1976, the board ordered the Island Trees Union Free School superintendent to remove 11 books from the district’s junior and senior high schools, including nine from school libraries. The move stirred outrage, but the board defended the ban, claiming that the books contained “material which is offensive to Christians, Jews, blacks and Americans in general.” Two of the books — “The Fixer,” by Bernard Malamud, and “Laughing Boy,” by Oliver La Farge — had won the Pulitzer Prize. At a press conference, school board member Frank Martin read aloud from “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, citing sentences in which Jesus is called a “bum” and a “nobody.” Martin said that “even if the rest of the book was the best story in the world, I still wouldn’t want it in our library with this stuff in it.” The other books: “Down These Mean Streets,” by Piri Thomas; “The Naked Ape,” by Desmond Morris; “Soul on Ice,” by Eldridge Cleaver; “Black Boy by Richard Wright;” “Best Short Stories of Negro Writers,” edited by Langston Hughes; “Go Ask Alice,” by an anonymous author; “A Hero Ain’t Nothing but a Sandwich,” by Alice Childress; and “A Reader for Writers,” by Jerome Archer.
“We are not even allowed to order the newest ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ or the latest ‘Guinness World Records’ unless the board gives express permission for those specific titles. We can’t get any new nonfiction books about camels or squirrels or football without specific approval of the school board.”
A librarian from the Bear Creek Intermediate School, Keller Independent School District, Texas
Opposition to the ban grew. In April 1976, 500 people jammed a local school board meeting. Many juniors and seniors in high school also attended. One told a reporter, “These books are very tame. It’s nothing you can’t hear in the sixth-grade school bus.” Yet the board upheld the ban. Then, several months later, it reaffirmed the ban, saying that board members had read the books and pronounced them “educationally unsound.” By September 1976, the matter had attracted broad notice and Thomas, the author of “Down These Mean Streets,” wrote in The New York Times arguing for “the right to write and to read.” He explained that the book “was not written to titillate but to bring forth a clarity about my growing up in El Barrio in the 1930’s and 1940’s.” He added, “Since the horrors of poverty, racism, drugs, the brutality of our prison system, the inhumanity toward children of all colors are still running rampant, let the truth written by those who lived it be read by those who didn’t.”
When the books were first removed, Steven Pico, at 16, was vice president of the junior class and a member of the school newspaper’s editorial board. The following year, as student council president and a liaison to Island Tree Union Free District Board of Education, he attended school board meetings. He decided to mount a challenge to the ban. Pico connected with lawyers from the New York Civil Liberties Union, and four other students joined the suit. It took years for the case to make it to the high court. Pico went off to college, earning his BA from Haverford College in 1981. Just over a year later, on June 25, 1982, the Supreme Court handed down its decision. The Court ruled that the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech limited the discretion of public school officials to remove books they considered offensive from school libraries. The New York Times ran its story on the ruling on page one. Linda Greenhouse, who covered the Supreme Court, noted that Bruce Rich, general counsel to the Freedom to Read Committee of the Association of American Publishers, “called the ruling ‘marvelous’ and said it ‘sends a very important message to school boards: Act carefully.’”
The decision in Pico was taken as a victory by those opposed to book bans, but as Greenhouse’s story also stated, it was a complicated win. It was a plurality ruling, which included a four-justice majority and two concurring opinions, that recognized school officials had violated students’ rights when they removed library books they didn’t like. “Our Constitution does not permit the official suppression of ideas,” wrote Associate Justice William J. Brennan Jr. But, as Greenhouse noted, “The Court did not define the precise limits of the Constitutional right it recognized.”
In the late 1930s, the children’s book “The Story of Ferdinand,” about a bull who would rather smell flowers than fight a matador, was interpreted as carrying a pacifist political message. But in a whirl of confusion, it was marked as both pro-Franco and anti-Franco — and also as “communist, anarchist, manic-depressive, and schizoid.”
School board members in Pico wanted to remove books whose content they disapproved of. But what if books were removed as a result of a restrictive policy? Or if state legislatures or school boards passed rules that restricted library materials? Would that run afoul of the law? Or would it provide cover for de facto book bans? What if a district made a process for approving books so onerous that librarians simply stopped ordering books with certain content?
These and related questions are playing out in real time now over what should be allowed in school libraries. Keller ISD, near Fort Worth, Texas, has faced controversy. When Governor Abbott announced plans to investigate school libraries amid reports of “pornographic” books, he specifically targeted Keller ISD, putting librarians in the district on the defensive. And when the Texas Education Agency released new guidelines for how districts should prevent “obscene content” from entering school libraries — a bid for wholesale changes in how books were acquired for libraries, bypassing the graduate training that is part of being a librarian — a far-right majority Keller ISD school board, newly-election in Spring 2022 with backing from the Patriot Mobile Action PAC, was only too happy to get involved.
At the time, the Texas Library Association and the Texas Association of School Librarians (a division of the Texas Library Association) objected to the new state guidelines. Those guidelines included the language of the Texas Penal Code Åò43.24(a)(2), a clear political statement, and a not-so-veiled threat. In most states, after all, K–12 schools and public libraries are typically exempt from obscenity laws; it is recognized that items that may clash with the language of those standards — art, biology, literature — involve creative and educational works that seek to deepen understanding of the human experience. Removing that exemption was the goal of the failed Tennessee House Bill 1944; it is a focus of several proposed bills around the country.
The Texas Library Association objected to the increased burden on librarians, superintendents and school boards to read and review thousands of titles, acknowledging the difficult task for people who lack training as librarians. Such a process means relying on personal views of elected officials and other untrained people, which got the Island Trees Free Union School Board in trouble. In a statement, the Texas Library Association also underscored the actual role that libraries play: “School libraries are for all students but not all students are the same — they have diverse interests, abilities, and maturity levels, and varied cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds.” The statement also pointedly rebuffed Abbott’s charge, adding, “Furthermore, school libraries do not collect obscene content.”
Yet the new Keller ISD school board was more than eager to take up removing “obscene content” from school libraries, and on July 8, 2022 passed an updated book policy that largely mirrored the new state guidelines. They weren’t done. A month later, on August 22, the board voted 4-2 (with one abstention) to adopt new district guidelines for selecting books. Each would be judged according to how often certain items appeared in its pages. Ill-defined terms like “prevalent,” “common,” “some” or “minimal” would indicate what amount of specific flagged content — profanity, kissing, horror, violence, bullying, drug or alcohol use by minors, drug use by adults, the glorification of suicide or self-harm or mental illness, brief descriptions of nonsexual nudity, and sexually explicit conduct or sexual abuse — would be permitted at different age levels.
Veteran board member, Ruthie Keyes, who had abstained, puzzled over how to apply the guidelines. In talking about violence, she asked, “Are they talking about military combat?” She had spoken with teachers who estimated having to remove two-thirds of their classroom library books. “That’s a lot,” she said. “And none were talking about explicit sex scenes.” (In November 2022, the board added one more rule: No mention of “gender fluidity” was permitted.)
The new policy created a selection process with more layers of librarians reviewing each purchase. Books would be also placed on a list open to review and challenge by members of the community for 30 days. The board would then approve the purchase of each book. This had an almost immediate effect. At the October 24, 2022, school board meeting, a librarian from the Bear Creek Intermediate School made her way to the mic, her hair piled in a messy swirl, glasses affixed to her face, and paper in hand. She spoke calmly about the policy, which she considered an affront to the training she and her peers had undergone. The board “has shown by its actions that Keller ISD librarians are not respected at all,” she said. “We are not even allowed to order the newest ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’ or the latest ‘Guinness World Records’ unless the board gives express permission for those specific titles. We can’t get any new nonfiction books about camels or squirrels or football without specific approval of the school board.”
“I just felt a cold chill. I was beyond shocked that somebody from our state government was asking what books were available in our school libraries. I never thought I would see anything like that.”
Mary Woodard, president of the Texas Library Association
She described “a huge environment of fear” among librarians who “are not even trusted to order a new alphabet book like ABC Cats for pre-K students.” Students, she said, keep asking why there are no new books. She must constantly say that titles are coming soon and makes excuses for the lack of new books. What she doesn’t reveal is the truth: “I certainly don’t mention the role that politics is playing in our libraries and our district.”
But in a reminder that this is political, the far-right Keller ISD Family Alliance PAC used the new policy and book removals to fundraise, trumpeting that the board had “stood up against the left’s woke agenda in schools, now we MUST hold the line and protect our hard-earned victories and our children.” Then it asked, “Can we count on you today to support our school board with a donation of $25, $50, $100, $250 or even $500?” Below the text was a “donate” button.
Much as moves to ban books get cast by far-right activists as “protecting” students, they are —and long have been — baldly political. Just last week, a federal judge in Florida heard oral arguments in a case brought by PEN America, publishers, authors and parents against the Escambia County School District and Escambia County School Board. The plaintiffs charge that the board and district removed and restricted books “based on their disagreement with the ideas expressed in those books.” Further, they “have disproportionately targeted books by or about people of color and/or LGBTQ people.”
As this case proceeds, as state legislatures prepare to take up bills that threaten librarians, teachers and the freedom of students to read, however, it is important to remember that this is more than some theoretical debate. There are consequences — for librarians doing their jobs, for children who want ordinary books, and for those for whom these restrictions are received as an attack.
In Keller ISD, during the five-and-half-hour school board meeting at which the board adopted restrictive book selection policies, a high school senior spoke during public comments. He said that he was gay, and in middle school had been told by peers that he was “a freak.” I began to agree with them,” he said. Then, he recounted, “I found a book about boys that felt the same way as I did.” Reading it made him less alone; he gained confidence as he reached high school. Yet the new library and book policies made students like him “feel attacked by the school board,” he said. “This pervasive censorship is about more than politics,” he added. “It is about lives.”
This is an adapted excerpt from “School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics and the Battle for Public Education” by Laura Pappano. Copyright 2024. Excerpted with permission by Beacon Press.
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Sometimes it’s the most basic of technologies that is the most effective. So it is with the services of the Family Engagement Lab, whose mission statement is, “to catalyze equitable family engagement and student learning by bridging classroom curriculum and at-home learning. As a national nonprofit, our work builds partnerships between teachers and historically underserved families by facilitating ongoing communication and collaboration about learning.”
Their signature tool, FASTalk, shares at-home learning activities via text messages in each family’s home language. Current partnerships include districts such as Oakland Unified School District and collaborations with the Louisiana Department of Education. In this conversation, Vidya covers the gamut—discussing the evolution in education, especially in the context of social-emotional learning, parent-teacher communication, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. She emphasizes the importance of family engagement in learning and how technology, specifically text messaging, can be a powerful tool for improving communication between teachers and parents.
Vidya introduces their program called “Fast Talk,” which utilizes prescriptive text messages to positively engage parents in supporting their children’s learning. The conversation delves into the dynamics of school-to-home communication, focusing on the need for positive interactions and the potential of technology to strengthen relationships between teachers, students, and families.
Takeaways:
Evolution in Education: The interview explores the changes in education, particularly in the areas of social-emotional learning, parent-teacher communication, and diversity, equity, and inclusion, influenced by the pandemic and broader cultural shifts.
Focus on Family Engagement: Vidya highlights the increasing focus on family engagement in education, citing the importance of collaborating and partnering with families to support students’ learning.
Role of Technology: The conversation emphasizes the role of technology, specifically text messaging, in enhancing communication between schools and families. The use of technology is seen as a tool to bridge gaps and make communication more accessible.
Positive School-to-Home Communication: Vidya stresses the significance of maintaining positive interactions in school-to-home communication, aiming to build a bank of positive interactions to address challenges effectively.
District-Level Implementation: The technology and services discussed are primarily implemented at the district level, with the goal of making family engagement tools more accessible and customizable for teachers.
Future Vision: Vidya expresses excitement about the potential for technology to further connect students, teachers, and families. The vision involves creating a more holistic understanding of students, and incorporating their cultural backgrounds and experiences into the learning process for a richer educational experience.
Kevin is a forward-thinking media executive with more than 25 years of experience building brands and audiences online, in print, and face to face. He is an acclaimed writer, editor, and commentator covering the intersection of society and technology, especially education technology. You can reach Kevin at KevinHogan@eschoolnews.com
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), growing inflation and tighter monetary policy in the United States and abroad, along with unrest in Ukraine and the Middle East, have led to a broad-based trade slowdown in 2023. Poptential™, a family of free social studies course packages, explores the historical significance of global trade in its World History curriculum, equipping high school educators with media-rich content to help students gain a deeper understanding of the importance of free trade.
“High school students rely on robust global trade for many of the products they use every day, so it’s important for them to understand how free trade impacts our economy,” said Julie Smitherman, a former social studies teacher and director of content at Certell, Inc., the nonprofit behind Poptential. “Poptential’s global trade lessons help teachers engage students in discussions about how events, such as economic swings, geopolitical upheaval, and the Covid-19 pandemic, have disrupted the flow of trade, and the importance of trade in the effort to eradicate poverty and enhance the economies of countries big and small.”
Poptential course packages boost student engagement by using a variety of pop culture media to illustrate concepts, including those taken from sitcoms, movies, animations, cartoons, late-night shows, and other sources. Lessons on the history of global trade in Poptential World History Volumes 1 & 2 e-books, include:
The Silk Road:A video featured in a mini-lesson in Volume 1 provides an overview of China’s incredibly lucrative silk trading business along the Silk Road. Silk was used as currency to exchange for other valuable goods across many continents. This trade model was a precursor to today’s globalization of trade and is not to be confused with the online black market entity titled Silk Road, which was shut down by the FBI in 2013.
Mongol Empire Accelerates Trade: With the start of the Mongol Empire in 1206, trade began to flourish. Mongol control of the Silk Road made it a safer route, allowing European merchants and craftsmen to journey to China for the first time in history. The December 4 bell ringer features a video that looks at Genghis Khan’s legacy, the rise of the Mongol Empire, and its influence on trade between East and West.
Encouraging Trade Relations: Founded in October 1945, the United Nations deals with many foreign policy issues. Featured in the same bell ringer, this video outlines the establishment of the U.N. and the role it plays in encouraging good relations among its members to promote social and economic cooperation, such as trading among nations.
Exploiting Resources and Trade Routes: Areas of the world that are rich in natural resources, such as oil, precious metals, and minerals, or those that have important trade routes, have throughout history been exploited by outsiders who want to gain control of the flow of their resources. This video in Volume 2 offers a look at how Europeans took control of Africa in the late 1800s to reap the financial benefits of its many natural resources.
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eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
WILMINGTON, Del. – A wall of the Rodriguez family home celebrates three seminal events with these words: “A moment in time, changed forever.”
Beneath the inscription, a clock marks the time and dates when three swaddled newborns depicted in large photos entered the world: Ashley, now 19, Emily, 17, and Brianna, 11.
Another“moment in time” occurred last June, one that could change the paths of Emily and Brianna. That’s when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its landmark case on affirmative action, barring colleges from taking race into consideration as a factor in admission decisions.
The ruling struck down more than 50 years of legal precedent, creating newfound uncertainty for the first class of college applicants to be shaped by the decision – especially for Black and Hispanic students hoping to get into highly competitive colleges that once sought them out.
The Rodriguez family at their home in Wilmington, Delaware, left to right: Mom Margarita, middle daughter Emily, youngest Brianna, father Rafael, with their college adviser, Atnre Alleyne. Credit: Liz Willen/The Hechinger Report
It also places the Rodriguez sisters on opposite sides of history: Ashley applied to college when schools in many states could still consider race, while Emily can expect no such advantage.
Their parents, Margarita Lopez, 38, and Rafael Rodriguez, 42, are immigrants from Mexico who moved to the United States as teenagers.
Ashley is the first in her family to attend college, a freshman studying child psychology on a full scholarship to prestigious Oxford College of Emory University, where annual estimated costs approached $80,000 this year.
Affirmative Action ends
While affirmative action made strides in increasing diversity on college campuses, it fell far short of meeting its intended goals. And now that it’s been struck down, CBS Reports teamed up with independent journalist Soledad O’Brien and The Hechinger Report to examine the fog of uncertainty for students and administrators who say the decision threatens to unravel decades of progress.
Emily is the middle daughter, a senior and mostly straight-A student at Conrad Schools of Science in Wilmington who wants to become a veterinarian, and who spent most of this fall anxiously awaiting word from her first-choice college, Cornell University.
The impact of the court’s decision on enrollment at hundreds of selective colleges and universities won’t start to become clear until colleges send out offers this spring and release final acceptance figures.
“We definitely feel that this year, the window is narrower for students whose GPA does not tell the full story of their brilliance and the challenges they’ve overcome.”
TeenSHARP co-founder Atnre Alleyne
But many students, counselors and families view this admission cycle as the first test of whether colleges will become less diverse going forward, while cautioning it may take years before a clear pattern emerges. The Hechinger Report contacted more than 40 selective colleges and universities asking for the racial breakdown of those who applied for early decision and were accepted this year.
About half the institutions responded and none provided the requested information. Several said that they would not have such data available even internally until after the admissions cycle wraps up next year. Some have cited advice from legal counsel in declining to release the racial and ethnic composition for the class of 2028.
For the Rodriguez family, higher education has already become a symbol of upward mobility, a life-altering path to meaningful careers and the sort of financial stability that Margarita and Rafael have never known.
College wasn’t a part of their culture, and before last year Rafael and Margarita had no idea how complicated and competitive the landscape would be for their bright, hardworking daughters. Of all U.S. racial or ethnic groups, Hispanic Americans are the least likely to hold a college degree.
“I never even dreamed about a place like Emory, or about all the schools that have really good financial aid,” Margarita said recently. She wouldn’t have looked beyond the local community college and state universities for her daughters if she hadn’t learned about TeenSHARP, a nonprofit that prepares high-performing students from underrepresented backgrounds for higher education.
She immediately signed up Ashley, and later, Emily.
TeenSHARP co-founder Atnre Alleyne, with his wife, Tatiana Poladko, and team of advisers, guided Ashley and Emily through their high school course selection and college essays, while pointing out leadership opportunities and colleges with good track records of offering scholarships.
Emory is one. The school admitted no Black students until 1963, but has aggressively recruited students from underrepresented backgrounds in recent years. Hispanic enrollment had been growing before the Supreme Court’s decision, from 7.5 percent in 2017 to 9.2 percent in 2021. Ashley’s class at Oxford is 15 percent Hispanic.
“I felt like I was right at home here,” Ashley said, shortly after arriving in August. The entire Rodriguez family dropped her off and stayed for a few days until she was settled. “It felt very homey to me,” she said. “Everybody is so welcoming.”
The entire Rodriguez family dropped Ashley Rodriguez off for her freshman year at Emory University’s Oxford College this fall. Credit: Image provided by Emily Rodriguez
Still, Ashley worried about her grades as she adjusted to her new workload. She fielded constant texts and calls from her family, who were adjusting to having her away from home for the first time.
Emily missed her sister terribly – together they’d started their high school’s club for first-generation scholars, helping others navigate college choices. “She has the brain and I like to talk,” Emily joked.
This fall, Emily set her sights on some of the most selective colleges in the country, many of which had terrible track records on diversity even before the Supreme Court’s decision. She approached her search knowing that she was unlikely to get any boost based on her ethnicity.
That makes her angry.
“We have so much history behind us as people of color,” Emily said. “So why would we be put at the same level as somebody whose family has benefited off of the harm done to communities of color?”
Emily also knew she would need a hefty scholarship to attend one of her dream schools; her family can’t afford the tuition, and they’ve been loath to saddle their daughters with loans.
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing if poor whites now benefit from affirmative action.”
Richard Kahlenberg, an author and scholar at Georgetown University
Elite schools like those on Ashley and Emily’s lists are more likely to be filled with wealthy students: Families from the top 0.1 percent are more than twice as likely to get in as other applicants with the same test scores. But such schools also offer the most generous scholarship and aid packages, and Emily and Ashley believed they presented the best shot at a different life from their parents’.
“Ever since I was little, I knew that college was the ticket to break this cycle our family has been in for generations and generations, of not knowing, of not being educated,” Emily said. “And because of that, having to work with their backs instead of their brains.”
That the Rodriguez sisters could even consider top-tier colleges is a credit to their mother.
“I want them to have the opportunity I never had,” Margarita said. “I know that life after education will be easier for them. I don’t want them to be working 12, 14 hours like their dad did.”
Rafael Rodriguez has always worked: first, with livestock as a child in central Mexico and later, in Florida, on an orange farm until the age of 15, with a residential permit. His earnings went toward helping the rest of the family come to the United States and settle in West Grove, Pennsylvania.
Rafael didn’t attend high school because he had to help support his parents and sisters. He now owns a trucking company.
Margarita desperately wanted to go to college, but said her mother did not believe in taking out loans for higher education and refused to sign her financial aid forms.
Instead, she married Rafael a few days after graduating from high school and had Ashley a year later. Emily was born 17 months later. Margarita was thinking of enrolling in community college until Brianna came along six years later. She now helps Rafael with his trucking business while working as a translator.
Ashley Rodriguez fields calls, Facetime requests and texts from her family while settling in as a freshman at Oxford College of Emory University in Georgia. Credit: Image provided by Emily Rodriguez
Both sisters are keenly aware of the gulf between their lives and their mom’s. In her college essay, Ashley described being “a daughter of two immigrant parents who undertook a dangerous journey from their native Guanajuato, Mexico, to America.”
Emily wrote about how Margarita had violated “every norm of our Mexican community, allowing me to sacrifice my time with family on weekends and in the summer” to attend Saturday leadership trainings with TeenSHARP, as well as college-level courses in epidemiology and health sciences at Brown, Cornell and the University of Delaware.
The pressure Emily feels is both formidable and familiar to the immigrant experience, magnified by the divisive court decision.
Hamza Parker, a senior at Smyrna High School in Delaware, feels it as well. He was at first unsure of whether or not to write about race in his essay, a debate many students have been having.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority decision that race could be invoked only within the context of the applicant’s life story, leaving it up to students to decide if they would use their essays to discuss their race.
Meanwhile, conservative activist Edward Blum, who helped bring the case before the court, has threatened more lawsuits and said he would challenge essays “used to ascertain or provide a benefit based on the applicant’s race.”
“I never even dreamed about a place like Emory, or about all the schools that have really good financial aid.”
Margarita Rodriguez, mother
Hamza wavered at first, then rewrote his essay to describe his family’s move to the United States from Saudi Arabia in sixth grade and the racism he subsequently experienced. He applied early decision to Union College in upstate New York; earlier this month, he learned via email that he did not get in.
Neither Hamza nor his father, Timothy Parker, an engineer, know why, or what role affirmative action played in Union’s decision: Rejections never come with explanations.
Parker hopes his son will now consider an HBCU like the one he attended, Hampton University, in Virginia. He worries that if Hamza ends up at a school where he is clearly in the minority, he could be made to feel as though he doesn’t belong.
“I’m letting it be his choice,” Parker said, noting that Hamza might also feel more comfortable at an HBCU given the nation’s divisive political climate. With the end of affirmative action, he added, “It feels like we are going backwards not forward.”
HBCUs are becoming more competitive after the court’s decision. Chelsea Holley, director of admissions at Spelman College in Atlanta, said Black high schoolers may be choosing HBCUs because they fear further assaults on diversity and inclusion and believe they’ll feel more comfortable on predominantly Black campuses.
Parker is now finishing his applications to Denison University, the University of Maryland, the University of Delaware, and Carleton College. He’s not sure if Hampton will be on his list.
Alleyne, Hamza’s adviser, said that while they will never know if the court’s decision had any impact on Hamza’s rejection from Union, he’s concerned about what it portends for other TeenSHARP seniors.
“We have so much history behind us as people of color. So why would we be put at the same level as somebody whose family has benefited off of the harm done to communities of color?”
Emily Rodriguez, high school senior
“There are so many factors at play with every application,” Alleyne said. “We definitely feel that this year, the window is narrower for students whose GPA does not tell the full story of their brilliance and the challenges they’ve overcome.”
Alleyne is also concerned that scholarships once available for students like Parker are disappearing. Some of the race-based scholarships his students applied for in past years are no longer listed on college websites, he said.
At the same time, there are plenty who believe that the court’s decision was a much-needed correction, including Richard Kahlenberg, an author and scholar at Georgetown University who testified in the case. He argues that the ban will lead to a fairer landscape for low-income students for all races.
Kahlenberg is in favor of using affirmative action based on class instead of race. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing if poor whites now benefit from affirmative action,” Kahlenberg said.
For the Rodriguez family, Cornell’s early decision announcement was long anticipated, to be marked on the magnetic calendar attached to their refrigerator as soon as they knew it. Ashley would be home from Emory for winter break and would hear the news alongside her sister.
For weeks, the family had prepared themselves for bad news: Cornell had announced it was limiting the number of students it would accept early decision, in what the university said was “an effort to increase equity in the admissions process.”
Still, Emily had spent a summer studying at Cornell and gotten to know some faculty and advisers there. She had fallen in love with the animal science program, and the lively upstate New York college town of Ithaca, set amid stunning gorges and waterfalls.
Rafael Rodriguez, affectionately known as “Papa Bear,” keeps a close eye on the jam-packed family calendar. Credit: Liz Willen/The Hechinger Report
“Let’s go, let’s go!” Rafael said as they huddled together in front of Emily’s laptop. Emily wore a white t-shirt with “Cornell” emblazoned in bold red letters on the front, for good luck. She wavered, then clicked.
“Congratulations, you have been admitted to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences: College major: Animal Science at Cornell University for the fall of 2024. Welcome to the Cornell community!” said the email on her screen, adorned with red confetti.Annual estimated costs for next year would be $92,682 – but Cornell pledged to meet all of it.
Emily screamed, and the room erupted in cheers. Every member of the family began sobbing. Cinnamon, the family’s three-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, barked wildly.
Emily jumped up and down. “Ivy League!” she shouted. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. I did it.”
Brianna, a sixth grader who will work with TeenSHARP once she’s in high school, hugged both of her sisters.
It will be her turn next.
Additional reporting was contributed by Sarah Butrymowicz.
This story about the end of affirmative action is the second in a series of articles accompanying a documentary produced by The Hechinger Reportin partnership with Soledad O’Brien Productions, about the impact of the Supreme Court ruling on race-based affirmative action.Hechinger is a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Acton, MA – Discovery Museum and Natick-based MathWorks announced today their continued partnership to bring the Museum’s Traveling Science Workshops to classrooms throughout Massachusetts and beyond for the 2023-2024 school year. This is the fourteenth consecutive school year that MathWorks has invested in the school outreach program.
Traveling Science Workshops (TSW) are state curriculum-aligned, small group, in-classroom workshops that use simple, everyday materials and a hands-on approach to allow students to be scientists by exploring, observing, asking questions, and sharing discoveries. Museum educators deliver twenty-three STEM topics—including Sound, Weather & Climate, Physical Changes of Matter, and Force & Motion—to give elementary and middle school students direct experience with how things work in the physical world. It is the only classroom-based program of its kind in Massachusetts.
MathWorks has partnered with Discovery Museum since 2010 to bring TSW to school classrooms, supporting program growth and developing virtual workshops and distance learning resources for teachers. MathWorks also supports community access to the Museum by funding free-access Friday nights and a week of reduced admission pricing in the fall. MathWorks volunteer groups also undertake on-site projects several times each year.
For the 2022-2023 school year—the 30th year of Traveling Science Workshops—Discovery Museum delivered more than 2,600 workshops to more than 51,000 students in their classrooms, a remarkable 28% increase in the number of workshops and a 26% increase in the number of students served from the prior school year. For the first time, demand exceeded staff capacity, and a waiting list had to be created. For the 2023-2024 school year, the Museum has increased its teaching capacity and expects to serve upwards of 54,000 students.
“The impact of delivering STEM explorations into students’ hands at a young age cannot be overstated,” said Kevin Lorenc, director of corporate communications at MathWorks. “Opening young minds to observing and ‘doing’ science in their everyday lives helps students better understand their world and can spark an early interest in a STEM-track education and career path. We’ve partnered with Discovery Museum for 14 years to bring hands-on STEM to students because it matters to them and the communities they will ultimately contribute to.”
“The world that we are passing along to our kids is going to require them to be creative thinkers and problem solvers, yet they build, create, and explore far less than their grandparents or even their parents did,” said CEO Neil Gordon. “Thanks to the ongoing and impactful support of MathWorks, we continue to grow our Traveling Science Workshops program to get science into more kids’ hands, spark their interest in the world around them, and build confidence in their own abilities as problem-solvers.”
About Discovery Museum
Discovery Museum is a hands-on museum that blends science, nature, and play, inspiring families to explore and learn together. The museum and its Discovery Woods accessible outdoor nature playscape and giant treehouse blend the best of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) learning on a beautiful 4.5-acre campus abutting 180 acres of conservation land in Acton, MA, about 20 miles west of Boston. Originally founded in 1982 and expanded to two museums in 1987, the museum reopened in a single, 16,000sf accessible building after a complete renovation and expansion in early 2018. Hands-on, open-ended exhibits developed by professional educators inspire curiosity and exploration, providing a fun and engaging experience for children and adults to discover their world together. Serving families and schools from towns throughout the region, the museum is devoted to informal education that enhances classroom learning. Discovery Museum is committed to accessibility and is a proud recipient of the Massachusetts Commonwealth Award, the only winner in the Access category, and a LEAD® Community Asset Award from The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Discovery Museum was also recognized in 2023 as a Finalist for the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) National Medal, the highest honor in the museum field. For more information, please visit discoveryacton.org. Discovery Museum is a community-supported non-profit organization, supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
About MathWorks
MathWorks is the leading developer of mathematical computing software. MATLAB, the language of engineers and scientists, is a programming environment for algorithm development, data analysis, visualization, and numeric computation. Simulink is a block diagram environment for simulation and Model-Based Design of multidomain and embedded engineering systems. Engineers and scientists worldwide rely on these products to accelerate the pace of discovery, innovation, and development in automotive, aerospace, communications, electronics, industrial automation, and other industries. MATLAB and Simulink are fundamental teaching and research tools in the world’s top universities and learning institutions. Founded in 1984, MathWorks employs more than 6000 people in 34 offices around the world, with headquarters in Natick, Massachusetts, USA. For additional information, visit mathworks.com.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
Next year will mark seven decades since the U.S. Supreme Court declared racially segregated public schools to be unconstitutional. Even the current Supreme Court’s conservatives have embraced that Brown vs. Board of Education decision.
Yet, 70 years after Brown, a key obstacle to racial equality in education continues to be white resistance to racial integration and to adequate funding for the education of Black and Latino children.
In the 1950s and 1960s, white resistance took the form of a revolt against integration and busing.
Private “white academies” — also known as segregation academies — sprang up to preserve the advantages held by the previously white-only public schools.
Today, one form of ongoing resistance is what scholars label “hoarding opportunities.” By using zoning and districting to create and perpetuate overwhelmingly white spaces and declining to share resources with Black and Latino children, white Americans limit the reach of integration and perpetuate inequality.
Not surprisingly, in 2022, the Government Accountability Office declared that school segregation continues unabated. The agency reported that even as the nation’s student population has diversified, 43 percent of its schools are segregated, and 18.5 million students, more than one-third of all the students in the country, are enrolled in highly segregated schools (75 percent or more of the students identify as a single race or ethnicity).
The Midwest — with 59 percent of all schools classified as segregated — is the leader in segregation.
The same GAO study showed that when new school districts are formed, they tend to be far more racially homogeneous than the districts they replace.
A key obstacle to racial equality in education continues to be white resistance.
Direct evidence of white resistance to racial equity in education can be seen in a survey experiment my co-authors and I conducted in 2021 that closely replicated findings from earlier periods. The study shows that white Americans continue to be reluctant to support increased funding for schools for Black children.
In our experiment, 552 white Americans were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first group was asked: “Do you favor or oppose expanding funding for pre-kindergarten programs so that it is available for poor children nationwide? The $24 billion a year cost would be paid for by higher taxes.”
The second group was asked the same question, except that “poor children” was replaced by “poor Black children.”
About 75 percent of respondents in the first group said they favor spending tax dollars for such a program. However, in the group asked about “poor Black children,” just 68 percent were in favor. This is a significant gap in support.
The experiment suggests that among white Americans, support for public education funding for poor children is robust. But less so for poor Black children.
White resistance to desegregation and school funding for Black students has severe consequences for racial equality and the economy.
Research published this month shows that Black students who attended Southern desegregated schools in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s experienced positive lifelong cognitive effects.
And data from the U.S. Department of Education still shows “substantial” racial gaps in reading and math competencies, high school graduation rates and, inevitably, college entry.
A recent Brookings report estimated that if the racial gap in education and employment had been eliminated, the U.S. GDP from 1990 to 2019 would have been $22.9 trillion larger. This would benefit us all.
The great promise of Brown was one of equal access to high-quality education. The hope was that income and other social disparities among white, Black and Latino people would dissipate over time. White resistance contributed to America not keeping this promise.
Policymakers, funders and education advocates must overcome white resistance to strengthen support for programs geared toward Black and Latino children.
This will help America’s quest to fulfill the promise of Brown. It’s time.
Alexandra Filindra is an associate professor of political science and psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago and a Public Voices Fellow through The OpEd Project. She is also the author of “Race, Rights and Rifles.”
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
BOSTON – American Student Assistance ® (ASA), a national nonprofit changing the way kids learn about careers and navigate a path to postsecondary education and career success, today announced that the organization has entered into a 10-year, $25 million affiliation agreement with the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), the nation’s leading entrepreneurship education organization.
Through this strategic alliance, NFTE and ASA will expand access to high-quality entrepreneurship education programs, services, and opportunities for middle and high schoolers from rural, marginalized, and economically disadvantaged communities—both in-person and digitally—through school district partnerships, curriculum development and collaborative programming, and business plan competitions.
The agreement between ASA and NFTE consists of an immediate $5 million unrestricted grant and annual matching grants of up to $2 million for the next 10 years. ASA’s support will help NFTE move from a school-by-school approach to a more systemwide strategy to work with states and school districts to more effectively and efficiently expand the number of schools, teachers, and students that the organization works with each school year. NFTE currently serves 50,000+ students annually across 30 U.S. states. ASA’s support will allow NFTE to expand its position as one of the nation’s largest entrepreneurship education nonprofits.
“Research shows that access to high-quality entrepreneurship education leads to better career and economic outcomes. ASA is honored to enter into a new strategic alliance with NFTE, as part of our mission to engage many more young people with their future planning through impactful entrepreneurial experiences,” said ASA CEO and President Jean Eddy. “As a leader in providing unique and engaging digital-first career readiness experiences to more than 15 million kids annually, this union underscores our commitment and intentional focus on the learners in historically underrepresented communities.
Curriculum development and programming includes NFTE’s new Exploring Careers course, which provides teens with exposure to a broad exploration of career opportunities. The alliance will also further enable NFTE’s pitch competition programs, including its high-profile business plan competition series known as the Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge.
In addition, the alliance will fund professional development for teachers; research that articulates the benefits of career readiness programming through entrepreneurship education; and support statewide policies that promote students’ acquisition of credentials and certifications in entrepreneurship.
“This partnership enshrines NFTE’s longstanding relationship with ASA, a fellow supporter of the power of entrepreneurship education, and aligns our two organizations’ missions to help young people discover who they are and what they love,” said NFTE CEO Dr. J.D. LaRock. “I look forward to continuing our mutual efforts to foster creativity, success, and self-actualization among our nation’s youth.”
NFTE established the idea of the entrepreneurial mindset as a set of skills and attitudes that can be learned, practiced, and refined through experience. It is the foundation of the nonprofit’s nearly four decades of work with youth from under-resourced communities. NFTE’s research-based, award-winning entrepreneurial programs are designed to activate and cultivate the entrepreneurial mindset, which not only enhances college and career readiness but also uniquely prepares learners for the future of work. Developing the entrepreneurial mindset lays a foundation for success throughout life, and effective entrepreneurship education can reduce educational and workplace inequities.
As part of the strategic alliance, Jean Eddy will be joining the NFTE’s Board of Directors, and Dr. LaRock will be appointed to ASA’s Board of Directors.
About American Student Assistance® (ASA)
American Student Assistance® (ASA) is a national nonprofit changing the way kids learn about careers and navigate a path to postsecondary education and career success. ASA believes all students should have equitable access to career readiness learning, starting in middle school, so they will be equipped to make informed, confident decisions about their futures. ASA fulfills its mission by providing free digital-first experiences, including Futurescape® and Next Voice™, and EvolveMe™, directly to millions of students, and through impact investing and philanthropic support for educators, intermediaries, and others. To learn more about ASA, visit www.asa.org/about–asa.
About The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE)
Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) ignites the entrepreneurial mindset with unique learning experiences that empower students to own their futures. A global nonprofit founded in 1987, NFTE provides high-quality entrepreneurship education to middle school, high school, and postsecondary students in 30 U.S. states and 31 countries. NFTE brings the power of entrepreneurship to students regardless of family income, community resources, special needs, gender identity, race, or ethnicity. NFTE has educated more than 1.25 million students, delivering programs in school, out of school, in person, online, and through hybrid models. Visit nfte.comto learn more.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
“What are you going to do with that?” is a question I heard often from my family as both an undergraduate and a graduate student.
Yes, I was an English major. My older siblings were going to nursing and medical school and all of my cousins were pursuing engineering, science and business degrees. So there was always an edge to that question every time it came up at family gatherings. A just-under-the-surface skepticism about the usefulness of a humanities degree as job preparation.
I know now that this question was meant kindly — and was informed by the older generation’s desire to see their children enjoy a return on investment (ROI) on a college education similar to what they themselves experienced as first- and second-generation college-goers.
College degrees changed the trajectories of their lives. They opened opportunities for economic and social mobility and moved my parents’ generation beyond the experiences of their grandparents and great-grandparents, many of whom, as first- and second-generation immigrants to this country in the nineteenth century, started their working lives as farmers or day laborers.
My aunts, uncles and parents were keenly aware that they themselves had benefited substantially from America’s grand expansion of the public higher education system post-World War II. Though their question burdened me at the time with self-doubt, among other things, they asked it out of a caring sense of concern for my future.
Decades later, I now have the privilege of serving as the dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at George Mason University, an access-oriented public research university that servesand graduates high numbers of students who are first-generation college goers, military veterans, economically under-resourced or transfer students, or from historically underrepresented groups.
As the idea of higher education as a public good is increasingly questioned or under attack, and as public perceptions of the value of a college degree relative to its cost continue to shift, I often remind my faculty of our fundamental purpose: We are here to educate our students.
We are here to engage them in the kinds of high-impact discovery learning that public research universities can offer at scale; the kinds of experiences that can change the trajectory of their lives and the lives of their families.
“What can’t you do with a humanities degree?”
It is because of my institution’s access-oriented educational mission that I view the release of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ Humanities Indicators report, “Employment Outcomes for Humanities Majors: State Profiles,” as an important occasion.
Drawing on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the data collected and analyzed in this study should help change national narratives about both the “death” of the humanities and the low ROI on a four-year college degree.
The first national study of its kind, the report offers a state-by-state comparison of the salary ranges and unemployment rates of college graduates who majored in the humanities with those of, on the one hand, high-school and two-year college graduates and, on the other hand, college graduates in the arts, education, social sciences, business, natural sciences and engineering.
In doing so, the report tells a very different story than the one you typically see circulating in the media these days. Key takeaways:
Earnings: Humanities graduates’ earnings are substantially higher than those of people without a college degree and are often on par with or higher than those of graduates in non-engineering fields.
Earnings Disparities: Except in a few northwestern states, humanities majors earn at least 40 percent more than people with only a high school degree.
Unemployment: The unemployment rate of humanities majors is around 2-4 percent in every state, similar to that of engineering and business majors and substantially lower than that of people without a college degree.
Occupational Versatility: Humanities graduates make up big portions of the legal, museum and library workforces across all states; other significant areas of humanities graduate employment are education, management and sales.
Without question, the total cost of college attendance should continue to be a concern for all of us. And earnings and occupation are not the only measures of success in one’s career or life. But I am excited, as a dean, to have in hand the American Academy of Arts & Sciences’ new Humanities Indicators report and its “State of the Humanities 2021: Workforce and Beyond”report as resources to use to help current undergraduate and graduate students see how humanities majors in all 50 states have put their degrees to work across a broad spectrum of occupations and industries.
The workforce data in this new American Academy of Arts & Sciences report is the perfect complement to individual storytelling in helping today’s humanities majors think through “What are you going to do with that?” — and see clearly the vast world of work that opens to them through education in these disciplines.
“What can’t you do with a humanities degree?” is a tagline we invite the George Mason undergraduate admissions officers to keep top of mind as they begin their recruitment road trips.
Even as technological change is accelerating and reshaping jobs in ways that will require all of us to reinvent our careers, this American Academy of Arts & Sciences report gives today’s college students a data-informed way to conceptualize both the job opportunities and the career earning trajectories of humanities majors in all 50 states and across many sectors of our nation’s knowledge-based economy.
Ann Ardis is dean of George Mason University’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
INDIANAPOLIS — Certell, the creator behind the Poptential™ family of free social studies course packages, announced a significant update to its digital curriculum and platform designed to help students better understand the principles that have shaped American history while giving teachers tools to better manage their classroom and improve learning.
Poptential course packages have been updated to incorporate “American Principles” designed to foster a greater understanding of American civic life and sharpen critical thinking skills among students. Additionally, Certell introduced a powerful new dashboard for teachers called Engauge™, which helps instructors understand student engagement with Poptential e-books in real time.
The integration of American Principles into Poptential social studies courses is a significant milestone. These principles are fundamental ideas that have shaped U.S. history, culture, and identity, serving as the bedrock of American civic life. The goal is to ensure that students not only grasp these principles but also understand why they were deemed essential by the nation’s founders.
Julie Smitherman, a former social studies teacher and director of content at Certell, expressed the importance of this update, stating, “An understanding of American Principles is as relevant today as it was at the founding of our country. It equips students to analyze history critically and think independently when addressing current issues, preparing them to become engaged citizens.”
The seven American Principles seamlessly integrated into Poptential are Civic Engagement, Egalitarianism, Entrepreneurship, Governance, Individualism, Liberty, and Trade.
In addition to American Principles, Poptential e-books now feature Pop! exercises designed to cultivate students’ Passion, Original thinking, and Power to change the world. These exercises enable Poptential students to gain a profound understanding of the world and how they can positively impact society.
Used with Poptential e-books, Engauge captures real-time data on student engagement with online materials and homework. The free dashboard provides teachers with a range of insights, including:
● The ability to track completed, partially completed, and unfinished work.
● Class-level data showcasing how students engage with the e-books.
● Comparative data to assess individual student performance against class averages and other benchmarks.
“Many data-driven tools provide formal assessments of students, but Engauge is different because it provides evidence of student engagement in the tools used for learning,” said Andy Wiggins, social studies teacher at North Central High School in Indianapolis, IN. “This behind-the-scenes look at student learning activity can help teachers set students up for success when it comes time for more formal assessments.”
Engauge also serves as a helpful professional development tool for teachers. Since data-informed decision-making is at the heart of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), Engauge can help teachers analyze student learning data to identify areas of strength and areas for improvement.
Poptential courses offer comprehensive content for instructors, including lessons, e-books, bell ringers, quizzes, tests, and pop culture media to make learning engaging and relatable. Poptential offers course packages in American History, World History, U.S. Government/Civics, and Economics, all available for free at www.poptential.org.
About Certell, Inc.
Certell is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to fostering a generation of independent thinkers. With over 100,000 users across the United States, Certell’s Poptential™ family of free social studies courses has garnered numerous awards, including recognition from EdTech Digest Awards, Tech&Learning, Tech Edvocate Awards, the National Association of Economics Educators, and Civvys Awards. For more information about Poptential™ and Certell’s mission, please visit www.poptential.org.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
For more news on AI in education, visit eSN’s Digital Learning page
Aresounding 90 percent of educators in a recent survey said they believe that AI has the potential to make education more accessible.
Teachers are recognizing that when implemented ethically and with thoughtful consideration, AI can help students with special needs, learning disabilities, and language barriers, for example, and experience more effective, personalized learning methods, according to the 2023 Educator AI Report: Perceptions, Practices, and Potential from digital curriculum solution provider Imagine Learning.
With generative AI emerging as a pivotal element in the dynamic educational landscape of 2023, Imagine Learning conducted the survey to explore the perceptions, current practices, and future aspirations of educators who have already embraced technology in the classroom. The inaugural report showcases a comprehensive exploration of AI’s current and future role in K-12 classrooms.
When it comes to readiness, however, only 15 percent of educators feel “prepared” or “very prepared” to oversee the use of generative AI in the classroom, with over twice that number (32 percent) expressing they are completely unprepared to do so. What’s more, educators indicate a disparity when it comes to the likelihood of using Generative AI in the classroom, with district and school leaders perceived as less likely to embrace new AI tools when compared to educators and students.
On top of this, only one-third (33 percent) of surveyed educators feel that they have the support they need from their district and school leadership to successfully implement generative AI into their teaching.
Other key findings from Imagine Learning’s report include:
Almost half of educators (44 percent) who have used generative AI believe that its use has alleviated the burden of their workload and made their jobs easier.
Of the respondents who reported they have not used AI in the classroom, 65 percent cite a lack of familiarity as the primary obstacle to the future utilization of generative AI, with 48 percent also expressing ethical concerns.
72 percent of educators are most concerned about plagiarism and cheating due to generative AI, highlighting the need for clear guidelines for students for using AI with academic integrity.
“Generative AI is a blend of promise and prudence. Its transformative potential is undeniable, but the journey forward requires thoughtful consideration,” said Sari Factor, Vice Chair and Chief Strategy Officer, of Imagine Learning. “Learning is above all a human endeavor. With generative AI as a tool to simplify lesson planning, reduce administrative tasks, and enhance personalized learning, we can empower the potential of teachers and students and improve learning outcomes.”
Laura Ascione is the Editorial Director at eSchool Media. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland’s prestigious Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
This episode of Innovations in Education, hosted by Kevin Hogan, is sponsored by McGraw Hill.
In this special edition of Innovations in Education, Content Director Kevin Hogan speaks with McGraw Hill’s Patrick Keeney about various aspects of career and technical education (CTE), including its expansion beyond traditional vocational or trade-focused subjects, the importance of soft skills, and the curriculum and teaching methods used in CTE courses for middle school students.
Patrick emphasizes the value of helping students explore different career paths and develop essential skills early in their education. The conversation also highlights the evolving nature of CTE in middle schools and its potential to provide students with a more comprehensive and purposeful educational experience.
Kevin is a forward-thinking media executive with more than 25 years of experience building brands and audiences online, in print, and face to face. He is an acclaimed writer, editor, and commentator covering the intersection of society and technology, especially education technology. You can reach Kevin at KevinHogan@eschoolnews.com
Charlotte N.C. – Aperture Education, a Riverside Insights company and the leading provider of social-emotional skills assessment and intervention solutions, and Committee for Children, the leading provider of social-emotional curriculum programs in the U.S., announced today that they will partner to offer four co-developed assessments to support schools in demonstrating the impact of evidence-based social and emotional programs.
Built from the Aperture DESSA suite, these assessments complement Committee for Children’s Second Step® programs, which are research-based social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula developed to nurture SEL in children’s daily lives, both in and outside of the classroom. By having integrated assessment and curriculum tools, educators can gain valuable insights from reliable, real-time data about instructional effectiveness and the impact of SEL curriculum on students.
“As schools introduce social-emotional learning into their curriculum, it’s imperative to show how these investments translate into improved outcomes for their students. Years of evidence show how Second Step improves critical life skills and mental wellbeing,” said Riverside Insights CEO Vivek Kartha. “We are proud to collaborate with the Committee for Children and contribute to improving student outcomes by aligning our gold standard DESSA assessments with their world-class curriculum.”
Committee for Children’s research- and evidence-based Second Step programs include SEL curricula for early learning through middle school, with additional offerings for out-of-school time and adults. Second Step programs are used in 45,000 schools across all 50 states and reach 26.9 million children worldwide annually. Second Step helps students build vital skills for success, like effective communication, resilience and problem-solving. Research shows that teaching these life skills has positive, lasting effects on students, including improved academic achievement in areas such as math, reading and writing.
Aperture’s strengths-based assessments for Second Step are standardized, nationally normed and exceed professional standards for psychometric rigor. They will enable educators in grades K-8 to assess a student’s social and emotional skills in less than five minutes and offer middle school students the ability to self-report. Empowered with their own results, students gain agency to offer a key voice in their learning and development. Educators can access student data in real-time via Aperture’s highly scalable platform, and users will find it easy to navigate between the two company’s offerings. This collaboration ensures that users can access results aligned to program language and appropriately measure skills that are taught through Second Step.
“Our partnership with Aperture enables us to offer our school community partners something they’ve been seeking: a high-quality assessment tool aligned to their Second Step curriculum,” said Committee for Children CEO Andrea Lovanhill. “By bringing easy-to-use, data-driven DESSA assessments to schools using our Second Step programs, teachers and support staff will have access to data that quickly and reliably illustrates whether students are learning the skills taught through the program and growing their competencies, as well as where additional instructional support may be needed. This partnership provides school and district leaders with a validated assessment to identify which classrooms and schools need additional implementation support and gives them a way to evaluate the return on their investment in the Second Step program.”
This first-of-its-kind partnership will support district decision making as school budgets are growing tighter and education leaders look to vendors to prove that their products are producing outcomes for students and seek ways to get more value from existing products.
The assessments will be available for Second Step schools to purchase in early 2024. For more information, email info@apertureed.com.
About Committee for Children
Committee for Children is a global nonprofit that has championed the safety and well-being of children through bullying prevention, child protection, and social-emotional learning for more than 40 years. With a history of action and influence, we’re known as a leader in social-emotional education and a force in advocacy, research, and innovation in the field. We take a comprehensive approach to SEL, promoting social-emotional well-being from birth to early adulthood—supporting not just classrooms, but entire communities. As our programs impact the lives of more than 26.9 million children per year, we rise to meet societal challenges to ensure children everywhere can thrive. Visit cfchildren.org to learn more.
About Aperture Education
Aperture Education has empowered over 6,500 schools and out-of-school time programs across North America to measure, strengthen, and support social and emotional competence in K-12 youth and educators. The Aperture System includes the DESSA suite of strength-based assessments, aligned intervention strategies, and robust reporting, all in one easy-to-use digital platform. This system enables education leaders to make strategic, data-based decisions to champion mental wellbeing, support life skill development, and foster stronger communities within their organizations. Aperture has supported more than three million students in their social and emotional growth and continues to develop innovative solutions to bring the whole child into focus. To learn more, visit www.ApertureEd.com.
About Riverside Insights
Riverside Insights, one of the nation’s leading and most long-standing developers of research-based assessments, is led by a powerful mission: to provide insights that help elevate potential and enrich the lives of students, patients, employees, and organizations globally. For more information, visit www.RiversideInsights.com.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
