As the start of the school year approaches, high schools, colleges and universities across the country are figuring out how to help young people navigate the 2024 elections during these highly polarized and contentious times.
Here’s a way we can help students become informed and active participants in our democracy, while potentially avoiding fights in classrooms and on playing fields: Provide them with free, digital access to their community’s local newspaper so they can read it on their phones.
Engaging young people in democracy — getting them to follow the news and to vote — has always been a concern for educators and has always been a challenge. Young people pay less attention to the news and participate less than older people. This was the case fifty years ago and remains the case today.
That’s why in Oneonta, New York, Hartwick College’s newly launched Institute of Public Service is offering students a free digital subscription to the local paper, The Daily Star. This new initiative has emerged from the institute’s mission to help young people become more informed about and engaged with local government and the issues affecting the community where they go to school.
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It’s no surprise that the vast majority of teens report spending a lot of time on social media, especially YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram; a growing share say that they are on social media “almost constantly,” a recent report by the Pew Research Center shows.
Young people also say that social media is the most common way that they get news; many add that they do not actively seek out news, but are only exposed to it incidentally as part of their curated social media feeds.
Reliance on social media for information about candidates, policies and the actions of our government is a serious problem since much of the news content on social media is not the product of authentic, verified journalism. Inaccurate, misleading and conspiratorial information is common.
Moreover, the way social media algorithms work, readers with certain political leanings will increasingly be exposed only to content reflecting those leanings. This dynamic makes it hard for young people to find any common ground across partisan divides.
Providing young people with barrier-free access to a local newspaper is a concrete way for educational institutions to counter that trend and foster engaged citizenship.
This works because local politics is much less partisan than national politics, as New York Timescolumnist Ezra Klein pointed out in “Why We’re Polarized.” In most localities, we still see Democrats and Republicans working together to solve problems. The work of local government directly affects the lives of those in their communities.
Furthermore, Pew Research shows that Americans of both parties see value in local newspapers. Views about local news are not as starkly divided as opinions about the national media. As a result, local government and local news provide a good entry point to democracy for young people.
I’m heartened by new partnerships between local news outlets and academic institutions across the country, such as the one at the University of Vermont, through which the school is providing journalism students with the opportunity to write for local newspapers and get hands-on civic experience while also helping provide professional news coverage for their communities.
By investing in local news, schools and colleges can invest both in their communities and in democracy. Due to the changing news media environment, local newspapers have been in serious decline. Over the past several decades, we have seen hundreds close down. Currently, the majority of counties in America have only one local newspaper or, even more problematically, none at all.
Without local news, it is very difficult for people and communities to know what their local elected officials are doing and to hold power to account.
Many high school and college libraries have databases that allow students to search and access stories from a range of newspapers, and these are wonderful services. But they also take time and work to access, requiring students to log in and wade through multiple portals to get to news stories. And often the content in these databases is not updated throughout the day.
Giving students subscriptions to their local newspapers enables them to simply click the app on their phones and start reading.
Moreover, research shows that, like many other democratic behaviors, including voting, reading a newspaper and following the news is a habit: Once you start doing it, you are likely to continue.
At Hartwick, we hope that providing free, easy access to our local newspaper will result in more students consuming verified, objective news and lead to more informed and thoughtful discussions on campus and in our classrooms.
We encourage other schools to do the same. Nudging even a handful of students to become lifelong newspaper readers is a way for educational institutions to transform the lives of those students while strengthening our democracy — and our local newspapers.
Laurel Elder is professor and chair of political science at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., and is co-director of the Hartwick Institute of Public Service.
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.
As students make their way back to college and campus demonstrations about the Israel-Hamas war resume, the central conflict isn’t likely to be student to student, but between the right to freedom of speech and the right to freedom from hostile environments. Whether it’s possible for both to exist on college campuses this fall remains to be seen.
Many colleges have strengthened their policies on how and when students can protest. Some say their “fear-based” approach has gone too far and will discourage students from exercising their First Amendment rights for fear of punishment. Others say they haven’t gone far enough, and recommend further action be taken both to prevent protest and to discipline students who participate.
The new policies — which have been issued at colleges including the University of Pennsylvania, Indiana University and Virginia Commonwealth University— often require students to register and receive prior approval for holding outdoor events or demonstrations; restrict how and when students can display posters and other materials on campus; limit where protests can be held and whether amplified sound is allowed to be used. Many are trying to prevent encampments, like those that proliferated last spring, entirely.
Most of the new policy announcements begin by describing the institution’s dedication to academic freedom and freedom of speech, but Risa Lieberwitz, general counsel at the American Association of University Professors, said the new restrictions fundamentally undermine those freedoms.
Lieberwitz, who is also a professor of labor and employment law at Cornell University, worries that these restrictions will discourage students — especially those with minority viewpoints — from exercising their First Amendment rights for fear of surveillance by college leaders. Requiring students to register their protests ahead of time also prevents them from spontaneously assembling in the case of a sudden news event, Lieberwitz said. She said these restrictions will also make it easier for universities to punish students who participate in protests.
“There comes a point where there’s so many restrictions that they’re no longer reasonable,” said Lindsie Rank, director of campus rights advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE. “They’re really there to discourage protest at all.”
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Colleges should take this opportunity to help students understand how to exercise their First Amendment rights, Rank said, “so that these debates can continue but without the violence and vandalism and some of the stuff that we saw in the spring.”
Last spring’s protests often escalated into occupation of campus buildings and dramatic clashes with university officials and police. The Associated Press reported that more than 3,000 people were arrested; many students were suspended, some were expelled and others temporarily lost access to their housing. Still others faced consequences related to their education, such as withholding of a diploma.
All the while, many Jewish and Muslim students have been harassed and have reported other negative experiences on campus since the protests began.
College leaders are under scrutiny for their handling of these protests. They’re receiving pressure from students, faculty, boards of trustees, donors and members of Congress, all of whom have competing interests. Three Ivy League presidents have resigned under pressure, with the third, Columbia’s Nemat Shafik, having stepped down last week.
Michael B. Poliakoff, the president and chief executive officer of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, is among those who think college leaders haven’t done enough.
“We need courage in these difficult times, not convenience, not passivity,” Poliakoff said.
His group issued a guide to preventing encampments and occupations that says “the difference between peaceful protest and encampment is that the latter seeks to commandeer the public square of campus to the exclusion of all else in the community.”
The guide recommends requiring students to read the college’s code of conduct and sign a form “committing themselves to obey and honor” it, or risk “clear and severe” penalties, including suspension or expulsion without the possibility of having tuition refunded.
Poliakoff said colleges often come down hard on issues such as plagiarism and academic ethics, but are too lenient on others.
“Disruption is an even greater offense against the spirit of the university, and it seems to be all too common. We need some much clearer focus on the kind of decorum, on the rules that protect everybody’s freedom,” he said.
Quick Takes
College applicant numbers increased …
In a sign of hope for enrollment, the number of college applicants rose by 7 percent last year, continuing an upward trend of the past few years, according to a new report from the Common App. While applicant numbers don’t necessarily translate into enrollment numbers, and the Common App is used by only about one-third of four-year colleges in the country, the increases show a continued aspiration to earn a bachelor’s degree. (Some of the increase could be attributed to about 50 more colleges using the Common App, making a total of 1,074 colleges.)
Notably, applicants from families living in lower-income zip codes rose by 12 percent over the previous year, compared with 4 percent for their higher-income peers – the largest increase in the eight years the Common App has measured this. And public colleges saw a bigger increase of applicants –16 percent – than private colleges at 5 percent.
Applicants from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups increased by 11 percent from last year, continuing a trend from the past three years. American Indian and Native Alaskan applicants grew the most – 15 percent – followed by Latino and Black applicants at 12 percent and 10 percent respectively. Black applicants are now 14 percent of the total pool, mirroring the country’s population.
Student applicants who would be the first in their families to go to college also increased by 5 percent. Student applicants from rural areas rose by 9 percent, compared with 6 percent from large cities.
… while the number of colleges decreased
Meanwhile, the National Student Clearinghouse reports that the number of federally recognized colleges and universities — meaning institutions whose students are eligible for federal financial aid — fell 2 percent in the last academic year. This follows a long enrollment decline, spiraling institutional debt, falling revenue from tuition and the end of pandemic relief funding that was keeping many of those vulnerable schools alive.
My colleague Jon Marcus first pointed out that colleges were closing this year at an average rate of one per week, in a story that examined what happens to students in these cases. And our Meredith Kolodner took an in-depth look at the case of Wells College, which closed abruptly, leaving students, faculty members and staffers in the dark until the last moment.
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.
NEW PALTZ, N.Y. — At the end of a semester that presaged one of the hottest summers on record, the students in Associate Professor Michael Sheridan’s business class were pitching proposals to cut waste and emissions on their campus and help turn it into a vehicle for fighting climate change.
Flanking a giant whiteboard at the front of the classroom, members of the team campaigning to build a solar canopy on a SUNY New Paltz parking lot delivered their pitch. The sunbaked lot near the athletic center was an ideal spot for a shaded solar panel structure, they said, a conduit for solar energy that could curb the campus’s reliance on natural gas.
The project would require $43,613 in startup money. It would be profitable within roughly five years, the students said. And over 50 years, it would save the university $787,130 in energy costs.
Michael Sheridan’s classes at SUNY New Paltz include a course that engages business students in designing proposals for greening the campus. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
“Solar canopies have worked for other universities, including other SUNY schools,” said Ian Lominski, a graduating senior who said he hopes to one day work for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. “It’s well within the realm of possibility for SUNY New Paltz.”
Sheridan’s course is an example of an approach known as “campus as a living lab,” which seeks to simultaneously educate students and reduce the carbon footprint of college campuses. Over the past decade, a growing number of professors in fields as diverse as business, English and the performing arts have integrated their teaching with efforts to minimize their campuses’ waste and emissions, at a time when human-created climate change is fueling dangerous weather and making life on Earth increasingly unstable.
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Engineering students have helped retrofit buildings. Theater students have produced no-waste productions. Ecology students have restored campus wetlands. Architecture students have modeled campus buildings’ airflow and worked to improve their energy efficiency. The efforts are so diverse that it’s difficult to get a complete count of them, but they’ve popped up on hundreds of campuses around the country.
“I think it’s a very, very positive step,” said Bryan Alexander, a senior scholar at Georgetown University and author of the book “Universities on Fire: Higher Education in the Climate Crisis.” “You’ve got the campus materials, you’ve got the integration of teaching and research, which we claim to value, and it’s also really good for students in a few ways,” including by helping them take action on climate in ways that can improve mental health.
That said, the work faces difficulties, among them that courses typically last only a semester, making it hard to maintain projects. But academics and experts see promising results: Students learn practical skills in a real-world context, and their projects provide vivid examples to help educate entire campuses and communities about solutions to alleviate climate change.
Andrea Varga, an associate professor of theatre at SUNY New Paltz, teaches students about the climate consequences of the global fashion industry and how they can promote more sustainable practices. Varga said that in the early 1990s and 2000s, climate activism was her “side identity,” but more recently she’s integrated her instruction with building a greener future. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
From the food waste students and staff produce, to emissions from commuting to campus and flying to conferences, to the energy needed to power campus buildings, higher education has a significant climate footprint. In New York, buildings are among the single largest sources of carbon emissions — and the State University of New York system owns a whopping 40 percent of the state’s public buildings.
About 15 years ago, college leaders began adding “sustainability officers” to their payrolls and signing commitments to achieve carbon neutrality. But only a dozen of the 400 institutions that signed on have achieved net-zero emissions to date, according to Bridget Flynn, senior manager of climate programs with the nonprofit Second Nature, which runs the network of universities committed to decarbonizing. (The SUNY system has a goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2045, per its chancellor, John B. King Jr.)
Campus sustainability efforts have faced hurdles including politics and declining enrollment and revenue, say experts. “Higher ed is in crisis and institutions are so concerned about keeping their doors open, and sustainability is seen as nice to have instead of essential,” said Meghan Fay Zahniser, who leads the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
But there’s change happening on some campuses, she and others noted. At Dickinson College, in Pennsylvania, a net-zero campus since 2020, students in statistics classes have run data analyses to assess why certain buildings are less efficient than others. Psychology students studying behavior change helped the campus dining hall adopt a practice of offering half, full and double portions to cut down on food waste. Physics students designed solar thermal boxes to boost renewable biogas production on an organic farm owned by the college.
Neil Leary, associate provost and director of the college’s Center for Sustainability Education, teaches classes in sustainability. Last fall’s students analyzed climate risks and resilience strategies for the campus and its surrounding county and then ran a workshop for community members. Among the recommendations emerging from the class: that athletic coaches and facilities staff receive training on heat-related health risks.
Andrea Varga talks with honors students at SUNY New Paltz after they’ve made presentations as part of her Ethical Fashion course. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
Similarly, at SUNY Binghamton, Pamela Mischen, chief sustainability officer and an environmental studies professor, teaches a course called Planning the Sustainable University. Her students, who come from majors including environmental studies, engineering and pre-law, have helped develop campus green purchasing systems, started a student-run community garden and improved reuse rates for classroom furniture.
And across the country, at Weber State University in Utah, students have joined the campus’s push toward renewable energy. Engineering students, for example, helped build a solar-powered charging station on a picnic table. A professor in the school’s construction and building sciences program led students in designing and building a net-zero house.
On the leafy SUNY New Paltz campus about 80 miles north of Manhattan, campus sustainability coordinator Lisa Mitten has spent more than a decade working to reduce the university’s environmental toll. Among the projects she runs is a sustainability faculty fellows program that helps professors incorporate climate action into their instruction.
One day this May, Andrea Varga, an associate professor of theatre design and a sustainability fellow, listened as the students in her honors Ethical Fashion class presented their final projects. Varga’s class covers the environmental harms of the global fashion industry (research suggests it is responsible for at least 4 percent of greenhouse emissions worldwide, or roughly the total emissions of Germany, France and the United Kingdom combined). For their presentations, her students had developed ideas for reducing fashion’s toll, on the campus and beyond, by promoting thrifting, starting “clothes repair cafes” and more.
Andrea Varga is one of more than 70 current and former SUNY New Paltz professors and staff to participate in the university’s sustainability faculty fellows program. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
Jazmyne Daily-Simpson, a student from Long Island scheduled to graduate in 2025, discussed expanding a project started a few years earlier by a former student, Roy Ludwig, to add microplastic filters to more campus washing machines. In a basement laundry room in Daily-Simpson’s dorm, two washers are rigged with the contraptions, which gradually accumulate a goopy film as they trap the microplastic particles and keep them from entering the water supply.
Ludwig, a 2022 graduate who now teaches Earth Science at Arlington High School about 20 miles from New Paltz, took Varga’s class and worked with her on an honors project to research and install the filters. A geology major, he’d been shocked that it took a fashion class to introduce him to the harms of microplastics, which are found in seafood, breast milk, semen and much more. “It’s an invisible problem that not everyone is thinking about,” he said. “You can notice a water bottle floating in a river. You can’t notice microplastics.”
Around campus, there are other signs of the living lab model. Students in an economics class filled the entryway of a library with posters on topics such as the lack of public walking paths and bike lanes in the surrounding county and inadequate waste disposal in New York State. A garden started by sculpture and printmaking professors serves as a space for students to learn about plants used to make natural dyes that don’t pollute the environment.
In the business school classroom, Sheridan, the associate professor, had kicked off the student presentations by explaining to an audience that included campus facilities managers and local green business leaders how the course, called Introduction to Managing Sustainability, originated when grad students pitched the idea in 2015. The projects are powered by a “green revolving fund,” which accumulates money from cost savings created by past projects, such as reusable to-go containers and LED lightbulbs in campus buildings. Currently the fund has about $30,000.
“This class has two overarching goals,” said Sheridan, who studied anthropology and sustainable development as an undergraduate before pursuing a doctorate in business. The first is to localize the United Nations global goals for advancing sustainability, he said, and the second is “to prove that sustainability initiatives can be a driver for economic growth.”
In addition to the solar canopy project, students presented proposals for developing a reusable water bottle program, creating a composter and garden, digitizing dining hall receipts and organizing a bikeshare. They gamely fielded questions from the audience, many of whom had served as mentors on their projects.
A bike repair station at SUNY New Paltz. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger ReportMicroplastic filters in the Esopus Hall dormitory laundry room at SUNY New Paltz. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
Jonathan Garcia, a third-year business management major on the composting team, said later that he’d learned an unexpected skill: how to deal with uncooperative colleagues. “We had an issue with one of our teammates who just never showed up, so I had to manage that, and then people elected me leader of the group,” he said later. “I learned a lot of team-management skills.”
The solar panel team had less drama. Its members interviewed representatives from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, Central Hudson Gas & Electric and a local company, Lighthouse Solar, along with Mitten and other campus officials. Often, they met three times a week to research and discuss their proposal, participants said.
Lominski, the senior, plans to enroll this fall in a graduate program at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, in Syracuse. Before Sheridan’s class, he said, he had little specific knowledge of how solar panels worked. The course also helped him refine his project management and communication skills, he said.
His solar panel teammate Madeleine Biles, a senior majoring in management, transferred to New Paltz from SUNY Binghamton before her sophomore year because she wanted a school that felt more aligned with her desire to work for a smaller, environmentally minded business.
An avid rock climber whose parents were outdoor educators, she’d developed some financial skills in past business classes, she said, but the exercises had always felt theoretical. This class made those lessons about return on investment and internal rate of return feel concrete. “Before it was just a bunch of formulas where I didn’t know when or why I would ever use them,” she said.
This summer, Biles is interning with the Lake George Land Conservancy, and hopes to eventually carve out a career protecting the environment. While she said she feels fortunate that her hometown of Lake George, in New York’s Adirondack region, isn’t as vulnerable as some places to climate change, the crisis weighs on her.
“I think if I have a career in sustainability, that will be my way of channeling that frustration and sadness and turning it into a positive thing,” she said.
She recently got a taste of what that might feel like: In an email from Sheridan, she learned that her team’s canopy project was chosen to receive the startup funding. The school’s outgoing campus facilities chief signed off on it, and, pending approval from the department’s new leader, the university will begin the process of constructing it.
“It’s cool to know that something I worked on as a school project is actually going to happen,” said Biles. “A lot of students can’t really say that. A lot of projects are kind of like simulations. This one was real life.”
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.
Deciding what to disclose in a personal essay for college applications has plagued students since, perhaps, the essay first became required. How should they present themselves? What do they think colleges need to know about them? Should they try to fit their whole life story onto a page and a half? Should they focus on the worst thing that’s ever happened to them, or their greatest success?
In the first year after the Supreme Court banned the consideration of race in college admissions, how students chose to present themselves in their essay became of even greater consequence. In years past, students could write about their racial or ethnic identity if they wanted to, but colleges would know it either way and could use it as a factor in admissions. Now, it’s entirely up to students to disclose their identity or not.
Data from the Common App shows that in this admissions cycle about 12 percent of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups used at least one of 38 identity-related phrases in their essays, a decrease of roughly one percent from the previous year. About 20 percent of American Indian and Alaskan Native applicants used one of these phrases; 15 percent of Asian students; 14 percent of Black students; 11 percent of Latinx students and less than 3 percent of white students.
To better understand how students were making this decision and introducing themselves to colleges, The Hechinger Report asked newly accepted students from across the country to share their college application essays with us. We read more than 50 essays and talked to many students about their writing process, who gave them advice, and how they think their choices ultimately influenced their admissions outcomes.
Here are thoughts from eight of those students, with excerpts from their essays and, if they permitted, a link to the full essay.
Jaleel Gomes Cardoso, Boston
A risky decision
As Jaleel Gomes Cardoso sat looking at the essay prompt for Yale University, he wasn’t sure how honest he should be. “Reflect on your membership in a community to which you feel connected,” it read. “Why is this community meaningful to you?” He wanted to write about being part of the Black community – it was the obvious choice – but the Supreme Court’s decision to ban the consideration of a student’s race in admissions gave him pause.
“Ever since the decision about affirmative action, it kind of worried me about talking about race,” said Cardoso, who grew up in Boston. “That entire topic felt like a risky decision.”
In the past, he had always felt that taking a risk produced some of his best writing, but he thought that an entire essay about being Black might be going too far.
“The risk was just so heavy on the topic of race when the Court’s decision was to not take race into account,” he said. “It was as if I was disregarding that decision. It felt very controversial, just to make it so out in the open.”
In the end, he did write an essay that put his racial identity front and center. He wasn’t accepted to Yale, but he has no regrets about his choice.
“If you’re not going to see what my race is in my application, then I’m definitely putting it in my writing,” said Cardoso, who will attend Dartmouth College this fall, “because you have to know that this is the person who I am.”
– Meredith Kolodner
Excerpt:
I was thrust into a narrative of indifference and insignificance from the moment I entered this world. I was labeled as black, which placed me in the margins of society. It seemed that my destiny had been predetermined; to be part of a minority group constantly oppressed under the weight of a social construct called race. Blackness became my life, an identity I initially battled against. I knew others viewed it as a flaw that tainted their perception of me. As I matured, I realized that being different was not easy, but it was what I loved most about myself.
Klaryssa Cobian is Latina – a first-generation Mexican American – and so was nearly everyone else in the Southeast Los Angeles community where she grew up. Because that world was so homogenous, she really didn’t notice her race until she was a teenager.
Then she earned a scholarship to a prestigious private high school in Pasadena. For the first time, she was meaningfully interacting with people of other races and ethnicities, but she felt the greatest gulf between her and her peers came from her socioeconomic status, not the color of her skin.
Although Cobian has generally tried to keep her home life private, she felt that colleges needed to understand the way her family’s severe economic disadvantages had affected her. She wrote about how she’d long been “desperate to feel at home.”
She was 16 years old before she had a mattress of her own. Her essay cataloged all the places she lay her head before that. She wrote about her first bed, a queen-sized mattress shared with her parents and younger sister. She wrote about sleeping in the backseat of her mother’s red Mustang, before they lost the car. She wrote about moving into her grandparents’ home and sharing a mattress on the floor with her sister, in the same room as two uncles. She wrote about the great independence she felt when she “moved out” into the living room and onto the couch.
“Which mattress I sleep on has defined my life, my independence, my dependence,” Cobian wrote.
She’d initially considered writing about the ways she felt she’d had to sacrifice her Latino culture and identity to pursue her education, but said she hesitated after the Supreme Court ruled on the use of affirmative action in admissions. Ultimately, she decided that her experience of poverty was more pertinent.
“If I’m in a room of people, it’s like, I can talk to other Latinos, and I can talk to other brown people, but that does not mean I’m going to connect with them. Because, I learned, brown people can be rich,” Cobian said. She’s headed to the University of California, Berkeley, in the fall.
– Olivia Sanchez
Excerpt:
With the only income, my mom automatically assumed custody of me and my younger sister, Alyssa. With no mattress and no home, the backseat of my mom’s red mustang became my new mattress. Bob Marley blasted from her red convertible as we sang out “could you be loved” every day on our ride back from elementary school. Eventually, we lost the mustang too and would take the bus home from Downtown Los Angeles, still singing “could you be loved” to each other.
Oluwademilade Egunjobi worked on her college essay from June until November. Not every single day, and not on only one version, but for five months she was writing and editing and asking anyone who would listen for advice.
She considered submitting essays about the value of sex education, or the philosophical theory of solipsism (in which the only thing that is guaranteed to exist is your own mind).
But most of the advice she got was to write about her identity. So, to introduce herself to colleges, Oluwademilade Egunjobi wrote about her name.
Egunjobi is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants who, she wrote, chose her first name because it means she’s been crowned by God. In naming her, she said, her parents prioritized pride in their heritage over ease of pronunciation for people outside their culture.
And although Egunjobi loves that she will always be connected to her culture, this choice has put her in a lifelong loop of exasperating introductions and questions from non-Nigerians about her name.
The loop often ends when the person asks if they can call her by her nickname, Demi. “I smile through my irritation and say I prefer it anyways, and then the situation repeats time and time again,” Egunjobi wrote.
She was nervous when she learned about the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision, wondering what it might mean for where she would get into college. Her teachers and college advisors from a program called Matriculate told her she didn’t have to write a sob story, but that she should write about her identity, how it affects the way she moves through the world and the resilience it’s taught her.
She heeded their advice, and it worked out. In the fall, she will enter the University of Pennsylvania to study philosophy, politics and economics.
– Olivia Sanchez
Excerpt:
I don’t think I’ve ever had to fight so hard to love something as hard as I’ve fought to love my name. I’m grateful for it because it’ll never allow me to reject my culture and my identity, but I get frustrated by this daily performance. I’ve learned that this performance is an inescapable fate, but the best way to deal with fate is to show up with joy. I am Nigerian, but specifically from the ethnic group, Yoruba. In Yoruba culture, most names are manifestations. Oluwademilade means God has crowned me, and my middle name is Favor, so my parents have manifested that I’ll be favored above others and have good success in life. No matter where I go, people familiar with the language will recognize my name and understand its meaning. I love that I’ll always carry a piece of my culture with me.
Francisco Garcia, Fort Worth, Texas
Accepted to college and by his community
In the opening paragraph of his college application essay, Francisco Garcia quotes his mother, speaking to him in Spanish, expressing disappointment that her son was failing to live up to her Catholic ideals. It was her reaction to Garcia revealing his bisexuality.
Garcia, 18, said those nine Spanish words were “the most intentional thing I did to share my background” with colleges. The rest of his essay delves into how his Catholic upbringing, at least for a time, squelched his ability to be honest with friends about his sexual identity, and how his relationship with the church changed. He said he had strived, however, to avoid coming across as pessimistic or sad, aiming instead to share “what I’ve been through [and] how I’ve become a better person because of it.”
He worked on his essay throughout July, August and September, with guidance from college officials he met during campus visits and from an adviser he was paired with by Matriculate, which works with students who are high achievers from low-income families. Be very personal, they told Garcia, but within limits.
“I am fortunate to have support from all my friends, who encourage me to explore complexities within myself,” he wrote. “My friends give me what my mother denied me: acceptance.”
He was accepted by Dartmouth, one of the eight schools to which he applied, after graduating from Saginaw High School near Fort Worth, Texas, this spring.
– Nirvi Shah
Excerpt:
By the time I got to high school, I had made new friends who I felt safe around. While I felt I was more authentic with them, I was still unsure whether they would judge me for who I liked. It became increasingly difficult for me to keep hiding this part of myself, so I vented to both my mom and my closest friend, Yoana … When I confessed that I was bisexual to Yoana, they were shocked, and I almost lost hope. However, after the initial shock, they texted back, “I’m really chill with this. Nothing has changed Francisco:)”. The smiley face, even if it took 2 characters, was enough to bring me to tears.
Hafsa Sheikh felt her applications would be incomplete without the important context of her home life: She became a primary financial contributor to her household when she was just 15, because her father, once the family’s sole breadwinner, could not work due to his major depressive disorder. Her work in a pizza parlor on the weekends and as a tutor after school helped pay the bills.
She found it challenging to open up this way, but felt she needed to tell colleges that, although working two jobs throughout high school made her feel like crying from exhaustion every night, she would do anything for her family.
“It’s definitely not easy sharing some of the things that you’ve been through with, like really a stranger,” she said, “because you don’t know who’s reading it.”
And especially after the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action, Sheikh felt she needed to write about her cultural identity. It’s a core part of who she is, but it’s also a major part of why her father’s mental illness affected her life so profoundly.
Sheikh, the daughter of Pakistani immigrants, said her family became isolated because of the negative stigma surrounding mental health in their South Asian culture. She said they became the point of gossip in the community and even among extended family members, and they were excluded from many social gatherings. This was happening as she was watching the typical high school experiences pass her by, she wrote. Because of the long hours she had to work, she had to forgo the opportunity to try out for the girls’ basketball team and debate club, and often couldn’t justify cutting back her hours to spend time with her friends.
She wrote that reflecting on one of her favorite passages in the Holy Quran gave her hope:
“One of my favorite ayahs, ‘verily, with every hardship comes ease,’ serves as a timeless reminder that adversity is not the end; rather, there is always light on the other side,” Sheikh wrote.
Her perseverance paid off, with admission to Princeton University.
– Olivia Sanchez
Excerpt:
Besides the financial responsibility on my mother and I, we had to deal with the stigma surrounding mental health in South Asian culture and the importance of upholding traditional gender roles. My family became a point of great gossip within the local Pakistani community and even extended family. Slowly, the invitations to social gatherings diminished, and I bailed on plans with friends because I couldn’t afford to miss even a single hour of earnings.
Manal Akil, Dundalk, Maryland
Life lessons from cooking
Manal Akil explores the world’s cultures without leaving her family’s kitchen in Dundalk, Maryland.
“I believe the smartest people in all of history were those who invented dishes. The first person who decided to throw tomato and cheese on dough, the first person who decided to roll fish with rice in seaweed,” Akil wrote. “These people experimented with what they had and changed the world.”
For Akil, cooking is about much more than preparing a meal. It’s about knowing when you have to meticulously follow directions and when you can be creative and experimental. It’s about realizing when you make a mistake, and being mentally flexible enough to salvage your ingredients with a positive attitude. And it’s about marveling at the similarities and differences of humanity across cultures.
Akil’s parents are from Morocco, but she chose not to mention her cultural identity in her essay. Because she didn’t choose where she came from, she feels it doesn’t reveal much about who she is. In supplemental essays, Akil said she did write about her experience growing up with immigrant parents. In those essays, she wrote about how she understands her parents’ native language, but can’t speak it, and how she had to become independent as a young child.
But the life lessons Akil has gained through cooking are so important to her that she chose to focus on them in her primary essay instead of sharing a personal narrative. When comparing essay ideas and drafts with her classmates, she realized that most of them were writing much more directly about their identities and experiences.
She felt her nontraditional approach to personal essay writing was risky, but it worked. She was admitted to eight colleges, and in the fall she’ll enter Georgetown University.
“I have never, nor will ever, regret any time spent making food; all my work in the kitchen has paid off,” Akil wrote. “I enter with ambition and leave with insight on myself and the world. Each plate served, each bite taken, and each ‘Mmmh’ has contributed to my growth.”
– Olivia Sanchez
Excerpt:
In the comfort of my own home, I have been to many countries from all around the world. Throughout this world travel, I have picked up on different quirks unique to each region, while simultaneously connecting the dots between the world. South Asia with its warm taste profile, East Asia with its wholesome flavors, and North Africa with its savory delights. Thousands of miles apart and all so distinct in regard to culture, yet sharing similar foods, just under different names: Paratha, Diao Lu Bing, and Msemen — all flaky pancakes. I love discovering such culinary parallels that make me say, “This reminds me of that!” or “That reminds me of this!” These nuances serve as a powerful reminder that regardless of our varied backgrounds, we as humans are one because at the end of the day, food is the heart of every civilization.
It was Nov. 30 and David Arturo Munoz-Matta had eight college essays due the next day. He had spent the prior weeks slammed with homework while also grieving the loss of his uncle who had just died. He knew the essays were going to require all the mental energy he could muster – not to mention whatever hours were left in the day. But he got home from school to discover he had no electricity.
“I was like, ‘What am I gonna do?’” said Munoz-Matta, who graduated from Lamar Academy in McAllen, Texas. “I was panicking for a while, and my mom was like, ‘You know what? I’m just gonna drop you off at Starbucks and then just call me when you finish with all your essays.’ And so I was there at Starbucks from 4 until 12 in the morning.”
The personal statement he agonized over most was the one he submitted to Georgetown University.
“I don’t want to be mean or anything, but I feel like a lot of these institutions are very elitist, and that my story might not resonate with the admissions officers,” Munoz-Matta said. “It was a very big risk, especially when I said I was born in Mexico, when I said I grew up in an abusive environment. I believed at the time that would not be good for universities, that they might feel like, ‘I don’t want this kid, he won’t be a good fit with the student body.’”
He didn’t have an adult to help him with his essay, but another student encouraged him to be honest. It worked. He got into his dream school, Georgetown University, with a full ride. Many of his peers were not as fortunate.
“I know because of the affirmative action decision, a lot of my friends did not even apply to these universities, like the Ivies, because they felt like they were not going to get in,” he said. “That was a very big sentiment in my school.”
– Meredith Kolodner
Excerpt:
While many others in my grade level had lawyers and doctors for parents and came from exemplary middle schools at the top of their classes, I was the opposite. I came into Lamar without middle school recognition, recalling my 8th-grade science teacher’s claim that I would never make it. At Lamar, freshman year was a significant challenge as I constantly struggled, feeling like I had reached my wit’s end. By the middle of Freshman year, I was the only kid left from my middle school, since everyone else had dropped out. Rather than following suit, I kept going. I felt like I had something to prove to myself because I knew I could make it.
Kendall Martin wanted to be clear with college admissions officers about one thing: She is a young Black woman, and her race is central to who she is. Martin, 18, was ranked 15th in her graduating class from KIPP Austin Collegiate. She was a key figure on her high school basketball team. She wanted colleges to know she had overcome adversity. But most importantly, Martin said, she wanted to be sure, when her application was reviewed, “Y’all know who you are accepting.”
It wouldn’t be as simple as checking a box, though, which led Martin, of Kyle, Texas, to the topic she chose for her college admissions essay, the year after the Supreme Court said race could not be a factor in college admissions. Instead, she looked at the hair framing her face, hair still scarred from being straightened time and again.
Martin wrote about the struggles she faced growing up with hair that she says required extensive time to tame so she could simply run her fingers through it. Now headed to Rice University in Houston – her first choice from a half-dozen options – she included a photo of her braids as part of her application. Her essay described her journey from hating her hair to embracing it, from heat damage to learning to braid, from frustration to love, a feeling she now hopes to inspire in her sister.
“That’s what I wanted to get across: my growing up, my experiences, everything that made me who I am.”
– Nirvi Shah
Excerpt
I’m still recovering from the heat damage I caused by straightening my hair every day, because I was so determined to prove that I had length. When I was younger, a lot of my self worth was based on how long my hair was, so when kids made fun of my “short hair”, I despised my curls more and more. I begged my mom to let me get a relaxer, but she continued to deny my wish. This would make me so angry, because who was she to tell me what I could and couldn’t do with my hair? But looking back, I’m so glad she never let me. I see now that a relaxer wasn’t the key to making me prettier, and my love for my curls has reached an all-time high.
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.
The April 18 protests at Columbia University over the war in Gaza and Columbia’s investment in weapons manufacturers and companies doing business in Israel led to more than 100 arrests, and sparked widespread unrest not seen on campuses in decades. Barnard College, which is affiliated with Columbia, suspended at least 53 students and evicted them from their dorms, cut off their meal plans and barred them from campus.
We wanted to learn how the suspensions and evictions felt to students on a personal level, and what the experience meant to them. So we interviewed several Barnard students who were suspended. Most have had their suspensions lifted on the condition that they refrain from unauthorized protest, and to allow them to speak freely we are not identifying them.
A Barnard spokesperson said the college does not comment on confidential student conduct proceedings. The administration said in a statement that it was “committed to open inquiry and expression” and that “students rejected multiple opportunities to leave the encampment without consequence.”
The interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
L.S., who is Jewish, attended the protest on April 18 but said she was careful not to get arrested. Barnard suspended and evicted her from her dorm anyway. Because she is an international student, a long-term suspension could have meant the loss of her visa. She would have had to leave the country within 15 days.
How did you find out you lost your housing?
I was not counting on being suspended. I didn’t know that that was even a possibility. I figured that out when I tried to enter my dorm [that night] – they had my face on a poster in my lobby, with the words ‘ban list’ written on it.
You could only imagine what all could happen in a moment like that in the middle of the night. It’s cold. Some people genuinely had nowhere to go. I was scrambling at 2:30 a.m. to find somewhere to sleep. Luckily, there’s a huge community that was kind of immediately mobilized to help the evicted students.
How do you understand the university’s rationale for the arrests, with concern for student safety?
I don’t think anyone buys the safety narrative. There’s nothing safe ever about evicting students. Barnard is treating us worse than an American court would.
Why is this movement important to you personally?
I think this movement invites a lot of other people to see their own struggles and their own principles in the causes of Palestinian liberation. I’m not a politician. I’m just a student who comes from a background of generations of genocide survivors, and that’s why I’m a part of this.
It’s because I see the struggle of the Palestinians and the struggle of my ancestors as very, very clearly connected. I come from the region. The places I’m from have also been destroyed by war and by empire, and by diaspora and by exile. And so, you know, exile is like a universal experience I think a lot of us can identify with.
No matter what people are saying about us, we will continue to hold our Jewish identity close to our organizing and we will be Jewish even as people continue to deny that.
Is there anything you want people to know that you think isn’t getting covered enough by the media?
It’s horrible what we’ve gone through, and eviction and homelessness of students without due process is unacceptable. But at the same time, we are all going to be okay. The students in Gaza are not going to be okay. There are no universities left in Gaza. And every single bit of media attention we eat up with repeating our same story over and over again – that needs to be that same energy for the people in Gaza. Because the reason that we started all this, the reason that people were willing to get suspended and arrested is because they know that there are no universities left in Gaza, and we do not want to be financially or politically complicit in that.
I.L., a Jewish student from New York City, was arrested at the protest and allowed to return to her dorm that night, but was told she had to leave the next morning.
What happened when you found out you had to leave the dorm?
It was honestly one of really the worst parts about this whole experience. I have two friends who have an apartment off campus. They had an air mattress so they offered it to me and I tried to sleep there, but a lot of students who were suspended and evicted have housing accommodations through our Center for Accessibility Resources and Disability Services. And I’m one of those students.
How do you understand the university’s rationale for the arrests, with concern for the student safety?
It’s absolutely not true. I blame [Columbia President Nemat] Shafik for what’s happening on other campuses with all of these arrests. She normalized calling the cops on her own students. She said that we were a threat when we were just sitting on our campus singing songs [on April 18].
Why is this movement important to you personally?
When October 7 happened, I didn’t really know anything. I went to Hebrew school for 10 years. I was pretty critical when anyone would say anything negative about Israel, because I kind of internalized this conflation between antisemitism and criticizing Israel.
But then I started seeing how Israel responded after October 7th. I basically had another Jewish person swipe up on my [Instagram] story that started the conversation with me. I was like, let me do my research, and I spent a lot of time just reading.
Once I learned, I was like, ‘Whoa, how is any of this about being Jewish?’ I felt like Judaism was being weaponized to somehow support what the State of Israel was doing. I felt like it was absolutely my duty as a Jewish person, and also just an American, because I knew that this was my tax dollars and my family’s tax dollars, that directly funds all of the brutality.
October 7 to me was just a major turning point in the whole rest of my life because I see the struggle of the Palestinians as part of the struggle for liberation of all people, and I become more aware of the other struggles throughout the world.
And so I think that now what’s happening with this encampment is such a beautiful combination of really everything that I believe in. It’s about people coming together.
I continue to bear witness because this is the worst thing that I’ve ever seen in my life. I think how I got here is definitely informed by the fact that I was watching Judaism being kind of twisted to somehow support this. So as an American and a human, that’s why I show up now.
My goal in all of this is a phrase that I’ve really come to in the past seven months. It’s that another world is possible.
Is there anything you want people to know that you think isn’t getting covered enough by the media?
I think overwhelmingly the media doesn’t understand what we’re doing. I’ve been really upset to see the way that the media is focusing on specific individuals who say things that are antisemitic, but they never say anything about the Islamophobia that I see happening every day.
I think that if you actually spend time at the encampments, you’d see that there’s something very beautiful going on. This is about divestment, because it’s the one tangible way that as college students we have the power to change what was happening to Palestinians.
This is because the world does not have to be this way and that other worlds are possible. It’s been the greatest honor of my life to be a part of this.
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.
Every night before going to bed, Antonio would tuck in his three younger siblings. After school, he’d tinker with toy cars, or help his dad, a mechanic, fix things around the house.
“He’s quiet, but he’s caring in his own way,” said his mother, Yanelie Marquez. The Hechinger Report is using her son’s middle name to protect his privacy.
But four years ago, the then-12-year-old Antonio suddenly lost interest in everything and everyone. It started with school: He complained he couldn’t focus or understand the teacher’s instructions. “I’d open up his notebooks and they were completely empty,” Marquez said.
Then Antonio’s behavior began to change, too: He stopped showering and coming downstairs for dinner. Eventually, he refused to leave his room. And whenever Marquez would ask about his day, he would throw a tantrum.
“He’d say, ‘None of the teachers like me, I hate it,’ and then he’d take that anger out on himself,” she said.
Worried that Antonio was struggling with depression, his mother enrolled him in therapy at Yale Child Study Center in New Haven, Connecticut.
The children’s library at the Yale Child Study Center in New Haven, Connecticut. The center houses the first medical-legal partnership focused on children’s behavioral health. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
After ruling out stressors in Antonio’s family environment, the Yale team learned more about the challenges he was facing at school, including severe learning difficulties in the classroom and bullies outside of school. And though the clinicians did everything they could do to help address those behavioral health stressors on their own, they realized they needed another team member to help: a lawyer.
This teamwork comes through Yale Child Study Center’s Medical-Legal Partnership — a collaboration in which health and law professionals team up to address patients’ “health-harming legal needs” from food and housing to public benefits and school supports. Their unique partnership functions as a kind of legal prescription. To treat a child’s behavioral health symptoms, clinicians and lawyers target the root cause, which can sometimes be a school environment where the child’s legally enshrined academic and emotional needs aren’t being met.
Though the concept of medical-legal partnerships has existed since the 1990s, the Yale partnership, launched in November 2020, is the first in the nation focused exclusively on children’s behavioral health. Last year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services invested $1.6 million in the first federally funded demonstration program for medical-legal partnerships, including one at Yale, focused in primary health care.
Kathryn Meyer, left, attorney at the Center for Children’s Advocacy, and Christiana Mills, are part of the Yale Child Student Center in New Haven, Connecticut. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
“When families come in, they tell us about struggles that might be adding stress and impacting their functioning, which could result in anxiety or depression,” said Christy Mills, a licensed clinical social worker and an associate clinical director at the Yale center. Especially since COVID, she says those struggles have increasingly included “school climate issues,” like a student’s experience of bullying and classroom challenges, both of which could lead to school avoidance.
The post-COVID data shows that New Haven is far from alone. One study quoted in a White House report found that the number of chronically absent public school students nearly doubled, from around 15 percent in the 2018-19 school year to around 30 percent in 2021-22.
Another survey focused on students with disabilities experiencing “school refusal” — a behavioral pattern describing problems with attending or staying at school — revealed 57 percent of these students had no symptoms prior to the pandemic. And for students who do attend school, their behavior struggles have increased, too; a national report of public schools in 2021-22 found more than 80 percent agreed that the pandemic negatively affected their students’ socioemotional and behavioral development. A recent study found that depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts in teen girls has reached record highs, and that the number of mental health hospitalizations for children more than doubled between 2016 and 2022.
And teachers want more support, too. A recent survey of U.S. teachers found that 9 in 10 reported they need more resources to care for their students’ mental health.
Kathryn Meyer, an attorney at the Center for Children’s Advocacy at the Yale Child Study Center, said much of her role is explaining to families the legal options that exist to help them. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
“Educators are doing the very best they can, but most of the time, in advocating for our low-income families, the issue cited is due to school district resources,” said Kathryn Meyer, an attorney at the Center for Children’s Advocacy, the legal partner of the Yale center.
That’s where the medical-legal team can help, by letting the school know how a child’s experience is affecting their behavior — and to connect the child’s needs to their legal rights, Meyer said. “Sometimes we’re just trying to get the student an [individualized education program], and then, if we have the IEP, we’re trying to increase the service, or make sure that whatever is on the IEP is actually happening,” she said.
In Antonio’s case, after joining Marquez at school meetings, the medical-legal team pushed for the school to conduct another IEP evaluation, which revealed a key part of his story: Though an earlier evaluation diagnosed Antonio with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, the second evaluation found he had an intellectual disability as well. And once the team made the legal case that the current school couldn’t address the services his IEP mandated, Antonio was placed in a school that could.
“In moving him, our goal was to have his academic needs addressed, emotional support to keep him safe, and a smaller structure so people could really have the time to work with him,” Meyer explained.
Sure enough, that worked. According to his mother, the new school didn’t just help Antonio improve in the classroom; it improved his behavioral health, too. “Being in a place that understood him for his differences relieved a lot of his pressure and stress,” said Mills, the Yale center associate clinical director.
Antonio now spends his days outside of his room, riding bikes with his new friends, or hanging out with his new girlfriend, whom he just took to prom.
“Finally, it’s like, he’s free,” his mother said. “That was the Antonio I wanted to see all these years.”
As word of the medical-legal partnership model spreads in Connecticut, educators are taking note, too. “As a former Bridgeport public school superintendent, I know just how valuable educational advocates can be for our families,” said Fran Rabinowitz, the executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents. “Despite districts doing our best with the limited resources we have, it’s important that we continue to elevate the voice of families, and advocacy can provide a vehicle for that voice.”
Dr. Barry Zuckerman, who created the first medical-legal partnership in Boston more than 30 years ago, saw the need for family advocacy first hand during his childhood, in the 1950s. He grew up with a younger brother with “significant disabilities.” But 60 years ago, Barry says, there were virtually no laws, resources or community services that could support him. His brother was eventually placed in an institution.
“Imagine a parent sending away their 8-year-old who’s never been on his own,” Zuckerman said. “It was extraordinarily traumatic for all of us.”
By the 1970s, the United States passed laws requiring schools to identify and evaluate students with disabilities, and provide them with “free, appropriate public education” tailored to their needs through individualized education programs. But Zuckerman, by then a pediatrician, realized that vulnerable families also needed support to enforce these protective laws.
In 1993, he discovered that need on the job, at Boston Medical Center, through a group of asthmatic patients. When the patients kept returning to the hospital with no improvement, Dr. Zuckerman learned that all of their homes had mold, which can trigger asthma attacks. The landlords didn’t respond to the families or to Dr. Zuckerman when they asked for mold remediation. But they did remove the mold after a lawyer friend of Dr. Zuckerman’s called.
A woman enters a building housing the offices of the Yale Child Study Center. Credit: Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report
That case would become the first of many medical-legal partnership success stories, in a model that’s expanded to over 450 health care organizations around the nation. One randomized trial found that families referred to legal support through the partnership had fewer emergency room visits six months later. Another found that patients given legal interventions had less asthma symptom severity and took fewer medications. A more recent study of a hospital in Cincinnati found that the medical-legal partnership reduced all-cause hospitalizations of children by 38 percent over five years.
Most evidence around medical-legal partnerships comes from models in primary health care. But those models have demonstrated behavioral health benefits, too. “When parents have concerns about their children’s mental health, the first place they turn is their pediatrician,” said Josh Greenberg, one of the founding medical-legal partnership lawyers in Boston.
One of Greenberg’s earliest success stories came while shadowing a 7-year-old boy during a well checkup. He learned that the boy had been out of school for six months, suspended after pushing his teacher. “The school just sent the child home and then never followed up, and never offered anything in the way of their legal rights around expulsions,” he said.
By “prescribing” legal support the same way they prescribe other kinds of medicine, health workers can see the benefits in their patients just the same. “When you have a life that’s full of stress, you can only do a few things as a doctor, but the lawyer was helping them achieve something they needed,” Dr. Zuckerman said. It also helps to level the playing field. Before, “if a child wasn’t getting their developmental needs met, many schools would blow them off, and well-to-do people got their own lawyers,” he said.
But even with the new federal funding and nationwide expansion, the number of patients who need legal support far outnumbers the supply of lawyers who can provide it, Greenberg cautioned.
That’s one reason why legal professionals are also spreading their knowledge through training and educational resources, and are reserving formal representation for extreme cases. Through the Yale partnership, for instance, of 120 patient referrals made in the program’s first year, just 20 cases went to full representation.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services invested $1.6 million in 2023 for a medical-legal partnership demonstration program.
Instead, most of the Yale legal team’s work is focused on educating clinicians, psychiatrists, social workers and families about legal options that exist for children, and that they can access on their own. “Sometimes it’s just like, ‘Go to this place,’ or ‘Call this hotline’ — it’s really as simple as that,” Meyer said.
Through those trainings, clinicians can ask the legal professionals questions, too. “Sometimes we need help knowing, is this a fair legal ask? Does a family or child actually have a right to this expectation, or do we need to think about this in a different lens?” said Mills, the Yale associate clinical director.
Outside of the formal medical-legal partnership model, other organizations, like the Council for Parent Attorneys and Advocates — a national nonprofit working to protect the legal and civil rights of students with disabilities — have been similarly addressing families about their options. Selene Almazan, their legal director, said that these kinds of trainings can help prevent behavioral health struggles before they develop, especially when a student has more than one disability.
“The more information you have, the more that you know how to take care of yourself and advocate for yourself in a school setting,” Almazan said.
In her organization’s work, training parents and students on their rights has been “transformative” for students’ mental health and self-esteem. And in cases where students would otherwise be punished, Almazan says, the advocacy can completely change the trajectory of a child’s health and life.
“When kids are traumatized by exclusionary discipline or restraint and seclusion in schools, that can cause them to act out and can exacerbate any kind of mental health issues that they may already have,” she said. “Getting students what they need in school can break a pattern of family trauma and generational trauma and prevent the school-to-prison pipeline.”
This story about medical-legal partnerships was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
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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.
JOHNSBURG, Ill. — A group of fifth grade boys trailed into the conference room in the front office of Johnsburg Elementary School and sat at the table, their feet dangling from the chairs.
“It was brought to my attention yesterday that there was an incident at football,” Principal Bridget Belcastro said to the group.
The students tried to explain: One boy pushed a kid, another jumped on the ball, and yet another jumped on the boy on the ball. It depended on who you asked.
“I tripped — if I did jump on him, I didn’t mean to,” one student said. “Then I got up and turned around and these two were going at each other.”
Belcastro, listening closely, had the unenviable job of making sense of the accounts and deciding on consequences.
In elementary schools across the country, an incident as common as a playground fracas over a football could result in kids being suspended.
A Hechinger analysis of school discipline data from 20 states found widespread use of suspensions for students of all ages for ill-defined, subjective categories of misbehavior, such as disorderly conduct, defiance and insubordination. From 2017 to 2022, state reports cited these categories as a reason for suspension or expulsion more than 2.8 million times.
Signage throughout Johnsburg Elementary School in Illinois encourages students to regulate their emotions. The school primarily uses social emotional learning interventions instead of exclusionary discipline. Credit: Ariel Gilreath/The Hechinger Report
In many cases, young students were removed from their classes for behavior that is common for kids their age, according to additional discipline records from half a dozen school districts obtained through public records requests.
In Montana, students in K-5 made up almost 4,000 suspensions for disorderly conduct. In New Mexico, it was nearly 2,700.
Elementary school students are often punished for conduct that experts say is developmentally typical of children who are still learning how to behave and appropriately express themselves in school. Even severe behaviors, like kicking or punching peers and teachers, can be a function of young children still figuring out how to regulate their emotions.
In many other cases, the behavior does not appear serious. In Washington, a kindergarten student was suspended from school for two days for pulling his pants down at recess. A second grader in Rhode Island was suspended when he got mad and ran out of the school building. In Maryland, a third grader was suspended because she yelled when she wasn’t allowed to have cookies, disrupting class.
At Johnsburg Elementary School, which serves about 350 third through fifth grade students on the northern outskirts of Chicago’s suburbs, administrators are trying to limit the use of suspensions. Student conferences, like the one after the fight during football, are just one piece of a much larger effort aimed at preventing and addressing misbehavior. In the end, the boys didn’t lose time in the classroom, but they were no longer allowed to play football at recess.
Belcastro’s decision not to suspend the boys was based on research that consistently shows suspending students makes it more difficult for them to succeed academically and more likely they will enter the criminal justice system as adults.
Suspension can be particularly damaging when doled out to younger students, said Iheoma Iruka, a professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Being kicked out of the classroom can fracture kids’ trust in their teachers and the institution early on. Those early impressions can stay with students and cause long-lasting harm, Iruka said, particularly to students for whom school is the most consistent part of their lives.
“Over time, it erodes children’s sense of safety. It erodes their relationship with teachers,” said Iruka, who is also the founding director of the Equity Research Action Coalition at UNC, a group that researches and develops policies to address bias in the classroom.
Classroom posters and signs emphasize how students should behave at Johnsburg Elementary School in Illinois. Credit: Ariel Gilreath/The Hechinger Report
In part because of concerns like these, advocates and policymakers across the country often focus on the early grades when pushing for discipline reform. At least 17 states and D.C. have passed laws to limit the use of suspension and expulsion for younger children, typically students in pre-K through third or fifth grade. In Illinois, where Johnsburg Elementary School is located, schools are allowed to suspend young students, but legislators passed a law in 2015 that encourages using suspension as a last resort.
Child development experts say that, ideally, suspensions should be used only in extremely rare circumstances, especially in elementary school.
Suspended for…what?
Students miss hundreds of thousands of school days each year for subjective infractions like defiance and disorderly conduct, a Hechinger investigation revealed.
Misbehavior at any age is often a symptom of deeper issues, experts say, but young children, especially, struggle to identify those issues and communicate them effectively. Students in the early grades are also still trying to figure out how to function in a school environment.
“We can hold older students accountable to know the rules of behavior in their schools,” said Maurice Elias, a professor of psychology who researches social emotional learning at Rutgers University. “We certainly can’t expect younger children to know all of those things and to anticipate the consequences of all their actions.”
And young students need to be specifically taught how to manage their emotions, added Sara Rimm-Kaufman, a professor of education at the University of Virginia.
“Helping kids understand what’s OK at home might not be OK at school, or making kids feel appreciated, respected, understood — that’s a really important issue and it keeps kids engaged,” she said.
Teachers at Johnsburg Elementary are trying to do just that.
The school adopted a new program this year called Character Strong, which is aimed at helping students with coping, emotional regulation, self-management and relationships. A few weeks into the school year, teachers filled out a screener to identify students struggling in those areas.
A booklet is flipped to a cartoon creature depicting “frustration,” the emotion of the day in school social worker Dawn Mendralla’s office at Johnsburg Elementary School in Illinois. Credit: Ariel Gilreath/The Hechinger Report
On a Thursday morning in November, four third graders left class to meet with social worker Dawn Mendralla. Twinkling lights lined the ceiling of her office; a small flip book depicting various emotions was opened to a page with a purple creature gritting its teeth and holding up its fists in frustration. A poster on the cabinet said: All feelings are welcome here.
“Regulation means we’re controlling ourselves, we’re controlling our behaviors, we’re controlling our emotions,” Mendralla said to the students. “Do we have trouble sometimes controlling our behaviors in class? Sometimes we have the urge to talk to our neighbor, or we have the urge to look out the window, or to not pay attention or to fidget with something?”
Once a week, the identified students attend a group session with Mendralla focused on improving those skills. Children who need more help also briefly check in with Mendralla, individually, every day. Students who misbehave, like the group of boys who got into a fight at recess, are also sent to Belcastro’s office.
Like other schools throughout the country, Johnsburg Elementary has been dealing with the ongoing impact of the pandemic on children’s behavior.
“There’s an increase in emotional outbursts, frustration, and they don’t know how to manage their emotions effectively,” Belcastro said. “Secondly, would be social interaction changes, because they weren’t around other kids and other people for so long, they didn’t have that and now they’ve forgotten how or never learned how to make friends.”
During the 2022-23 school year, Johnsburg Elementary had 687 referrals, or disciplinary write-ups, involving a student misbehaving, up from 222 referrals in 2021-22 and 276 referrals in 2018-19.
Even with the rise in behavior challenges, the school has tried to limit student suspensions; Through February of this school year, only three students had been given an in-school suspension and one had been sent home.
Elsewhere, though, the post-pandemic rise in misbehavior has caused some states to backtrack on policies limiting exclusionary discipline and instead made it easier for schools to kick students out of class.
In Nevada last year, legislators lowered the age at which students can be suspended or expelled from 11 to 6 and made it easier for schools to suspend or expel students.
In 2023, Kentucky lawmakers gave principals the ability to permanently kick students out of school if they believe the student will “chronically disrupt the education process for other students” and if they have been removed from class three times for being disruptive.
“There’s just been more and more discipline problems across the nation, and definitely across the state. We’ve just gotta get things under control,” said Rep. Steve Rawlings, who was among the legislation’s sponsors. “We have to prioritize the safety of teachers in the classroom and fellow students so that the focus can be on academics and not be distracted by issues of discipline.”
Elias and other experts say suspension should act more as a rare safety measure in extreme cases, rather than a disciplinary measure.
A fourth grade student cuts out a paper turkey he colored in class at Johnsburg Elementary School in Illinois. Students at the school are almost never sent home from school for misbehavior. Credit: Ariel Gilreath/The Hechinger Report
In the discipline records The Hechinger Report obtained, some school districts reported suspending young children under disruptive conduct for punching peers or throwing items at teachers.
In such cases, suspension may make sense, experts say, while allowing educators time to develop a longer-term response to the misconduct. But schools should not expect that removing kids from class will magically improve their behavior.
“When a child comes back into a classroom after a situation like this, it’s often that there’s just going to be a continuation of what was happening before, unless the child is brought back into the community in a way that changes the direction and nature of the relationships between the child and the people around them,” Rimm-Kaufman said
That’s something Belcastro has argued as well. Occasionally, there are tensions with parents who want to see other students punished when their own child has been harmed in some way. Belcastro doesn’t’t think that’s an effective approach.
“Punishments do not change behavior. No kid at this age level considers what the potential consequences might be before they do an action,” Belcastro recalled telling one parent who was upset about a student at the school. “So it really serves no purpose, it’s not helpful. But instead, working to prevent the behavior is what we need to do, so it doesn’t’t happen again.”
In Mendralla’s room, a small group of fourth grade boys showed up for a group session one day in November. The goal of this weekly session is for students to learn how to better regulate their emotions.
“What happens when we keep things all to ourselves, things build up, and we keep things bottled up inside us?” Mendralla asked.
“Then you explode,” a student said. “With emotions.”
Mendralla asked the students to think of rules they would like to have for these group sessions. A couple of students threw out suggestions: no running around the room, no interrupting, no blaming others, nobody is better than anybody else.
Another fourth grader raised his hand.
“If there’s another person making fun of another person because of the way they look and act, don’t join in,” he said. “We don’t know what they’re going through.”
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.
The cursing came loud and fast from a nearby room, followed by a slamming sound. This was a few years back, and I immediately suspected the culprit: the dreaded FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid, with all its glitches and complexities.
My husband was losing his cool while attempting to fill it out for the second time in two years. Across America right now, so are millions of parents, students and counselors, frustrated by a failed promise to finally streamline this unwieldy gatekeeper to college dreams.
It’s a terrible time for anyone who counted on that U.S. Department of Education promise, and many are calling for an urgent push for help, including through legislation and a marshalling of resources from institutions like libraries and groups such as AmeriCorps.
“I don’t think we’ve seen a full court press about FASFA completion yet,” said Bill DeBaun, a senior director at the National College Attainment Network. “This is an emergency. We need all-hands on deck: governors, state departments, agencies, influencers at the White House. We are kind of at the point where we need to stop nibbling and take a big bite.”
Anyone who has dealt with the FAFSA knows how needlessly complicated and unreliable it can be: In the midst of back-to-back college application season for my two kids, the site kept kicking us out, then losing the previous information we’d painstakingly provided.
Don’t worry, parents were told over and over, it will get easier, it’s being fixed. A bipartisan law passed in 2020 initiated a complete overhaul of the FAFSA. But after a problematic soft launch on Dec. 30, glitches and delays are inflicting pain on undocumented students, first-generation college goers and others who can’t decide how and if attending college will be possible without offers and aid packages.
The so-called shorter, simpler form so far has been anything but, although DeBaun said many families have submitted it swiftly without problems. Still, as of March 8, there have been roughly 33 percent fewer submissions by high school seniors than last year, NCAN data show.
The finger-pointing and blaming right now is understandable, but not helpful: It threatens years of efforts to get more Americans to and through college at a time when higher education faces both enrollment declines and a crisis of public confidence, in part due to spiraling prices.
This year’s FAFSA rollout is frustrating sudents, parents and counselors and prompting calls for immediate help. Credit: Mariam Zuhaib/ Associated Press
Fewer than 1 in 3 adults now say a degree is worth the cost, a survey by the Strada Education Network found, and many fear FASFA snafus could lead to more disillusionment about college.
“FAFSA is such a massive hurdle, and if they [students and parents] can’t get this first step done, they may say it’s too complicated, maybe college isn’t for me,” said Scott Del Rossi, vice president of college and career success at College Possible, which helps low-income students and those from underrepresented backgrounds go to and through college.
Del Rossi wonders why the form wasn’t user-tested before being rolled out, and is among those calling for urgent solutions, beyond band-aid fixes that are literally keeping Department of Education staffers up all night.
“As much staff as government has, it’s not enough for students right now,” said Yolanda Watson Spiva, president of the national advocacy group Complete College America. She wants colleges to do more to directly help applicants still struggling to fill out the forms.
“They should be sharing webinars and workshops and talking about what’s happening and how [students] can begin in spite of the problems,” Watson Spiva said. “If we don’t have those conversations, parents will say this [college] isn’t worth it, and they will look for other opportunities and options.”
Even before the FAFSA fiasco, that’s been happening. In 2021, the proportion of high school graduates going directly to college fell to 62 percent from a high of 70 percent in 2016, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. At the same time, costs have more than doubled in the last 40 years, even when adjusted for inflation.
The task ahead is daunting: The Department of Education only started sending batches of student records this week to colleges that will determine aid offers, and about 200 have already extended the traditional May 1st deadline for students to accept offers.
No wonder parents and students are “stressing out and overwhelmed,” said Deborah Yanez, parent programs manager at TeenSHARP, a nonprofit that prepares students from underrepresented backgrounds for higher education.
“This is a special time for them; they have dreamed about sending their kids off to college, but now they are being held in this place of limbo, not knowing what the numbers are,” Yanez told me.
More colleges should extend deadlines for student decisions, Del Rossi said. Counselors that College Possible works with usually say it take at least three interactions, or sessions, with parents to conquer the FAFSA, but many are now reporting the recent form requires more than six – and many are still unsuccessful, Del Rossi said.
“We have to continue to encourage them not to give up and not to lose hope,” Del Rossi said. “We tell them it is not their fault, these are just glitches, but it’s a little heartbreaking.”
But turning to college counselors for help is not always a viable option for public school students, where public school counselors handle an average caseload of 430 students, well above the 1:250 ratio the American School Counselor Association suggests.
And this admissions year has the added complication of being the first since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision barring colleges from considering race as a factor in admissions, along with being a time of rapidly changing rules around whether standardized test scores is required for admission.
That’s why the message about the importance of a college education must continue, and students must be told not to give up. Still, if they can’t fill out the form and the government can’t turn the forms over to schools in time, it’s game over.
This story about the FASFA was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our weekly newsletters.
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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.
Editor’s note: This story led off this week’s Higher Education newsletter, which is delivered free to subscribers’ inboxes every other Thursday with trends and top stories about higher education.
Erika Turner and her husband have 11 children between them. Four of them are already in college, two are graduating from high school this spring, and her husband has gone back to school in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree.
“I have seven people depending on the results of their FAFSAs coming back,” said Turner, who lives in Cohutta, Georgia, near the Tennessee border. “That’s a lot of tuition to pay for – you know, financial aid never fully covers everything. You’ve got other expenses, like books, food and room and board and just things that come up during the year. So, as we think about budgeting for this next school year… I don’t like the unknown.”
The Education Department says that last year about 17.5 million people (both high schoolers and older students) completed the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA; so far this year, only about four million have successfully done so.
Turner and her family filled out the new version of the FAFSA in one marathon session in January. Because of the government’s delays in launching and in processing the forms, Turner’s family is among the many still waiting for their applications to be processed. Turner works as the head of human resources for a flooring manufacturer and her husband works as an environmental health and safety manager for a field turf company.
She hopes the returning college students in her family will eventually receive similar aid packages as they have in years past and will be able to persist uninterrupted. For the two children filling out the FAFSA for the first time, she is less certain. One son plans to attend a private liberal arts college in Georgia, Turner said, and the other is likely headed to technical school.
“Obviously, that’s not as much of a financial burden on us as a family, but it’s still money I don’t necessarily have set aside to pay for that,” Turner said. “We’re depending on Pell Grants and things like that to help close that gap.”
Turner’s family will also rely heavily on outside scholarships. That’s how she first got to know Stephanie Young, the director of scholarships at the Community Foundation of Greater Chattanooga.
Young focuses on helping students and families figure out how to pay for college. That’s a tough job in normal years, but it’s required a near-herculean lift this year because of the delays and the domino effect they are having on the rest of the process.
Colleges use the FAFSA to determine which grants and scholarships students are eligible for, but they won’t get that information until at least March, so award letters likely won’t go out until sometime in April. Colleges typically require students to confirm their enrollment by May 1, but because they will be so delayed in sending financial aid award information, scores of colleges are extending that deadline. Some are even devising their own forms to ask students directly for financial need data, hoping to give them at least some estimate of what aid to expect.
Students often rely partly on outside scholarships, but these scholarships, too, are often awarded based on student need, which is typically determined using the FAFSA.
Young manages many such scholarships and has had to quickly pivot from her normal timelines and procedures to meet the needs of scrambling students and families. Because of the delay in FAFSA forms becoming available, the application figures on some scholarships that require FAFSA information are down significantly.
One such scholarship that typically has about 100 applications by mid-February, this year had 12, Young said. She could see that about 200 applications for it were in the midst of being drafted, but she thinks students haven’t been able to submit them yet because their FAFSAs haven’t been processed yet. This scholarship typically opens its application process in November and closes it at the end of January. This year, it didn’t open until January, and it will remain open until at least March 2, Young said.
The delays could result in students walking across the stage at high school graduation (which in the South can be as early as the second week in May) not knowing whether they will be able to afford to attend the colleges they were admitted to.
“My concern is either students will make a snap decision, go to a school and then not be able to fully enroll because they don’t have enough finances to meet the need, or they may wait too late to decide and lose a spot,” Young said. “Will they be at the ones that are the right fit, that are the most affordable to them?”
Young is especially concerned about first-generation students and students from low-income families. Those parents, she said, “may not have the wherewithal to walk through this process with them. So a lot of it falls back on the schools trying to do that or myself in any way that I can jump in and help.”
Yolanda Watson Spiva, president of the advocacy group Complete College America, said she’s worried that the “domino effect” started by the delayed FAFSA is going to eventually affect college completion rates.
“The FAFSA has already been a very intimidating form and the process,” she said. “Even with FAFSA simplification efforts, we’re now seeing that the simplification is not all that simple.”
Because of the delays and glitches, fewer students have been filling out the FAFSA, Watson Spiva said. If fewer students apply for aid, fewer students have the opportunity to compare offers and select the best college for them, and, she suspects, fewer students will go to college.
She said that she’s been hearing from prospective college students that it just doesn’t seem worth the trouble, that waiting a year might be a better decision. But delaying college or taking a gap year makes people less likely to attend college, she said.
Advocates for higher education are perpetually trying to “convince folks that there is a value proposition to go into college,” she said, “This actually doesn’t help us to make our case, unfortunately.”
And there’s a risk for students who are already enrolled, too. Many students leave college because they can’t afford it, and if they can’t get timely information about their financial aid, she thinks it could prevent them from re-enrolling.
“Regardless of whether you’re a prospective student or a current student, college is not easily affordable,” Watson Spiva said. And for many families, “getting the financial aid award letter saying that you’ll have resources is really make or break.”
The pressure to figure it all out is weighing on Chattanooga native Maurquez Thompson, a first-year student at Stanford University.
Thompson, a first-generation college student, said he pays his tuition using a combination of grants and scholarships. He said he’s overwhelmed trying to keep up with all the requests for extra documentation from scholarship providers that are trying to sidestep the need for FAFSA data to determine awards for students. He knows Stanford meets full financial aid for its students, but the extra processes still add stress.
“If the first year of college was just like it is right now for the FAFSA, I think I’d be crying. It’s too much,” Thompson said. “I think the FAFSA right now is the hardest thing people are dealing with.”
This story about FAFSA changes was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
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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.
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.
If you worry about your own screen time, just think about the young people in your life.
The amount of time they spend consuming media and scrolling through content might alarm you. Teens are glued to screens for more than eight hours a day, reports show. So much screen time could pose risks for adolescents — including exposure to toxic misinformation.
With millions of Americans voting in federal, state and local elections this year, misinformation poses grave challenges to our democratic processes.
Standards-based news organizations carefully fact-check information with an eye toward fairness and a dedication to accuracy. Yet much of what populates our social media feeds is user-generated, unvetted and of varying reliability.
Too often, it’s difficult to separate fact from fiction in the onslaught of information we face. Many students — our next generation of voters — have no idea how to tell the difference between what’s meant to inform them and what’s meant to entertain them, sell them something or even mislead them. Luckily, a growing number of states are tackling this problem by helping students become more media literate. More states must follow.
In 2023 alone, New Jersey and California passed laws requiring that students be taught media literacy skills. Those states join others, including Delaware, Illinois and Texas, that led the way for mandating such requirements.
Media literacy teaches students how to access and evaluate all types of communication. News literacy falls under the umbrella of media literacy, and is focused on helping students understand the importance of a free press in a democracy and on developing the ability to determine the credibility of news.
News literacy teaches students how to think, not what to think. It develops a healthy skepticism — not cynicism — about the news.
Students who learn news literacy skills, for example, are more likely to notice when a social media post does not present credible evidence, assessments show. Studies have shown that “prebunking” — preemptively teaching people the common tactics used to spread false and misleading information — can effectively teach people to resist it. At a time of historically low levels of trust in news organizations, news and media literacy builds appreciation of and demand for quality journalism, a cornerstone of our democracy, and prepares students to be informed participants in our civic life.
States have taken different approaches to helping students find credible information: In Illinois, students must receive at least one unit of news literacy instruction before graduation. New Jersey has gone even further, requiring students in every grade to learn “information literacy,” an umbrella term that includes the ability to navigate all forms of information.
Legislation to require media literacy instruction is a powerful part of the solution to misinformation, but it won’t solve the problem alone. Doing so will also require help from social media and technology companies, media organizations, civic organizations and the philanthropic community.
We need to do away with the myth of the “digital native.” Just because young people have grown up with technology does not mean that they instinctively know how to navigate the challenges of our information landscape. A recent report showed that teens receive more than 200 alerts on their phones a day. It’s important that we teach young people how to recognize the different types and quality of information they’re bombarded with, or we will leave them vulnerable to information that is unreliable or even intentionally misleading.
Most Americans are concerned about misinformation. As we head into an election cycle with AI technologies becoming more widely available and social media companies scaling back moderation efforts, it’s more important than ever to make sure everyone knows where to turn for accurate information about where, how and when to vote. This is especially true for our students who are just becoming old enough to cast their ballots for the first time.
By ensuring that more people are news literate, we can build a stronger, more inclusive democracy.
In 2024, let’s expand this work in schools and at home.
Ebonee Otoo is senior vice president of educator engagement at the News Literacy Project, a nonpartisan nonprofit that teaches people how to identify credible sources of news and information.
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.
I’m principal of a high school with a well-known name, only because it’s the site of one of the most devastating school shootings in recent American history: Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
I’m also a mother, a neighbor and a witness to the enduring scars left by gun violence in our schools.
I offered my assistance and my plea for something that is desperately needed in our country: concrete solutions to fight school shootings. Urgent, comprehensive action must be taken to prevent such tragedies and adequately support those who have already suffered through them.
Even as I advocate for change, the recent shooting in Perry, Iowa, and the death of the principal who tried to save children’s lives serve as stark reminders that our nation continues to grapple with the devastating toll of gun violence.
Almost six years ago, our school community in Parkland, Florida, was shattered. Seventeen lives were tragically cut short, with 17 others injured.
That horrific nightmare is my reality. At the time, I was a principal in a nearby school; my son was in eighth grade in Parkland. As I received the harrowing text from him about a “code red” at his school, I was engulfed in a terror that no parent, educator or student should ever experience.
It’s a fear that still lingers in the halls of Stoneman Douglas and in the hearts of our community.
In the aftermath of this national tragedy, I was tasked to take over leadership at Stoneman Douglas to guide the school in its recovery. Shortly after being appointed, I was contacted by and subsequently became a part of the Principal Recovery Network (PRN), consisting of educators who have faced school shootings. Our mission is to help schools through the healing process, a path we are still navigating at Stoneman Douglas.
The harsh reality is that school shootings have become alarmingly routine. As of mid-January, we’ve already had three school shooting deaths in 2024. The number of incidents has been rising dramatically since 2015. Last year alone, there were 136 incidents of gunfire on school grounds, with 66 students and educators killed and 158 more injured.
These numbers are not just statistics; they represent communities torn apart, futures lost and a growing need for resources to aid in recovery.
There are steps we can take right now to help. Federal programs like Project SERV, which provides critical support to schools affected by violence, are a lifeline. However, with a mere $5 million allocated last year amidst myriad shootings and other disasters, Project SERV’s funding is grossly insufficient.
An increase in these resources is imperative, not just for the immediate aftermath of violence but for the long-term healing and security of our schools.
The presence of school resource officers (SROs) trained specifically to work in educational environments is also crucial. At Stoneman Douglas, our SROs have been pivotal in both preventive measures and in aiding our recovery efforts.
SROs provide more than just security; they offer stability and guidance in an environment rife with threats and trauma.
Yet, as discussions in Congress on fiscal year 2024 appropriations unfold, it’s disheartening to witness proposals for drastic cuts in federal education funding. The House’s suggestion to slash that funding by 28 percent is not just disconcerting, it’s dangerous.
Such reductions would cripple our education system, exacerbate already alarming teacher shortages and compromise school safety. It’s crucial to maintain, if not increase, funding for programs that are vital for professional development, mental health support and school safety.
My ask to the members of Congress and to all stakeholders in our children’s futures is straightforward: prioritize the safety and well-being of our students and educators.
We must work together to ensure that no more school communities experience the horror that we did at Stoneman Douglas.
That means we must enact policies that prevent gun violence in schools and provide adequate resources for addressing trauma and fostering recovery and resilience.
As we continue to rebuild and strengthen our school community, we look to our leaders for action. The safety of our schools, our educators and the children who are the future of our nation depend on it.
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.
Since the Supreme Court abolished affirmative action last June, selective colleges and universities have had to dismantle their most effective tools for pursuing racially and ethnically diverse student bodies.
Some institutions have even preemptively eliminated race-based scholarships and special academic programs for historically marginalized groups, fearing litigation.
It’s no surprise that advocates of equity feel profoundly pessimistic. Yet if we broaden our focus, there are myriad more impactful ways to promote educational equity than adjusting the admissions practices of elite colleges.
Just a small subset of the 4,000 degree-granting institutions in the United States have ever practiced race-conscious admissions, and only a tiny fraction of all Black, Latino and Native American students attend those schools.
Widespread improvements in educational equity and economic mobility will happen only when minority-serving and broad-access institutions receive our respect and support.
Here are some ways we can help:
1. Invest in the schools doing the bulk of equity work. Far greater numbers of Black, Latino and Native American students are enrolled at public and private schools with moderately selective to open admission practices than at elite colleges. These more accessible institutions have higher economic mobility ratings than their Ivy peers due to the larger number of students from low-income backgrounds that they serve. Initiatives that increase affordability and make big publics feel more like small privates directly contribute to their positive outcomes.
2. Redirect philanthropic dollars from prestige-school endowments to minority-serving institutions. Chronic underfunding and inadequate endowments limit the opportunities that minority-serving institutions can provide. Historically Black colleges and universities and community colleges, in particular, have been neglected by philanthropy for decades.
These institutions are being asked to carry the responsibility of changing lives and creating regional workforces but are not reliably given the fiscal means to do so. Redirecting even a small percentage of philanthropic dollars to these schools would be transformative. The recent $100 million gift to Spelman College, three-quarters of which will go to scholarships, embodies this mandate.
3.Address the needs of the fast-growing community of “some college, no credential”—an estimated 40.4 million former students as of 2021. Black, Latino and Native American students comprise greater proportions of this demographic than they do of total undergraduates.
This large number is unsurprising when you consider the actual cost of college attendance. In New York, a student enrolled at a public four-year university who qualifies for full federal and state aid will still face a gap of $15,000 to $20,000 to cover total educational expenses. (This gap increases if the student is among the more than one in five undergraduates who is a parent and if child care costs are considered.)
Nationwide, Black students have the greatest unmet need; many take on debt to graduate, while others drop out.
Several states have launched efforts to reenroll potential-completers, including some of the 2.9 million former students who have at least two years’ worth of credits. Other programs, like ASAP and ACE, have helped to significantly improve degree completion at associate and baccalaureate colleges.
Supporting and expanding these initiatives through advocacy and philanthropy would directly benefit the completion rates of historically marginalized students.
4. Elite graduate schools, firms and training programs need to expand the circle of schools from which they recruit. If they do not, the Supreme Court ruling risks impeding the pipeline of underrepresented groups into prestigious career tracks and leadership positions, many of which rely on a specific recruiting network and academic pedigree.
For example, internships enhance a college student’s ability to secure a job after graduation, but a recent survey found that “male students, white students, students who are not first generation, and students who are not Pell Grant recipients were more likely to participate in internships than other groups of students.” A study of CUNY, a minority-serving system, reported that only 10 percent of students participated in paid internships during college.
There are remedies to this problem. For more than a dozen years, the philanthropy I work for in New York City has supported paid internships for women with financial need. The students choose internships that best serve their career interests, and we provide a stipend and cover transportation expenses.
On the national level, organizations like Braven partner with schools to supplement campus career services with mentoring, internship and job application assistance and a career development curriculum. There are many other opportunities and innovations; what is needed is investment to pilot and scale these programs and appropriate funding to help less selective schools prepare students for them.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action, feelings of distress are warranted. But the bigger question, asked recently by Jonathan Koppell, president of Montclair State University, a Hispanic-serving institution, is, “How do we create more opportunities for more people, regardless of their race or ethnicity, so that it doesn’t feel like the stakes of getting into one of these tiny, tiny institutions is so life-altering?”
The answer: shift our attention and dollars to the colleges, universities and student success organizations pursuing a vision of abundant opportunity.
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.
Harvard University President Claudine Gay’s resignation ends the shortest tenure in the university’s history — six months. It’s not a coincidence that the record is set by the school’s first Black woman president. We were headed for this moment since she started in July.
Some pundits are blaming antisemitism and plagiarism, ignoring the white supremacist politics at the center of her ouster: the same politics shaping higher education at schools like Harvard since the creation of higher education in the United States.
Less than a month before Gay’s resignation, these politics were on display as Ivy League early admissions decisions sparked the annual accusations of reverse racism, with non-Black students and parents blaming Black students for stealing their spots in the class of 2028.
Such accusations are perpetual fallacies in a long narrative about Black people that claims we undeservedly get jobs, opportunities and admittance to the country’s most selective colleges and universities that “should” go to white people.
Gay’s appointment was both applauded as a sign of Harvard’s racial progress and derided as a “diversity hire.”
However, in December, Gay’s controversial testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s hearing on antisemitism on college campuses and, in particular, her repeated defense of free speech on campus, opened the door to calls for her removal. Widely reported accusations of plagiarism against her led to additional scrutiny which facilitated her resignation. On closer inspection, that alleged plagiarism amounted to a relatively small number of “citation errors” in her 1997 dissertation and a few other academic papers. Similar comments on free speech also felled University of Pennsylvania President M. Elizabeth Magill, yet she managed to resign without the racialized questioning of her entire professional career that Gay has had to face.
After her resignation, Gay noted that she was a victim of a campaign against Black faculty, one that “recycled tired racial stereotypes about Black talent and temperament.”
It is not a coincidence that Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT were targeted for those House Committee hearing. They are representative of the cultural zeitgeist at many prestigious institutions — and a political battleground for those seeking control over American ideology.
Harvard, in particular, has been at the center of these battleground narratives — one about “unqualified” Black leadership and the other by students who believe below-average Blacks have taken their spots.
Established in 1636, Harvard is an institution that prides itself on its lack of access. Initially, Harvard, and schools fashioned after it, were institutions for upper-class white men only; it has always existed at the nexus of white supremacy in the United States.
The goalposts for Black people to display merit keep changing; seemingly no matter our credentials, we are perceived as gaming entrance where we don’t belong.
Harvard’s mission has facilitated the creation of a constant supply of wealthy white politicians and businessmen from the so-called right families and with the “right” education to lead this country. It would be over 300 years until Black people were regularly admitted — and another 70 years before a Black woman would be appointed president of the university.
This was by design. As discussed in my book, “Black Women, Ivory Tower,” Ivy League schools are meant to be exclusionary. Attending Harvard has always been a dream to strive for, a way to perpetuate race and class-based hierarchies — to effectively define who belongs at the “top” of society and who doesn’t.
As a symbol of a well-working meritocracy, though, Harvard fails. Instead, the goalposts for Black people to display merit keep changing; seemingly, no matter our credentials, we are perceived as gaming entrance where we don’t belong.
Gay’s resignation signals the embeddedness of racism at these prestigious schools. She had to go because she didn’t belong. And the political pressure that was used to get her to resign without just cause provides another opportunity to show Black people they don’t belong, regardless of their professional achievements, and to keep schools like Harvard white. The Supreme Court’s affirmative action ban effectively ensures that they will stay that way.
All of this tells us that the presence of any Black people in prestigious institutions is still a problem for many people. Even when affirmative action was in place, Black students made up less than 7 percent of Harvard’s overall campus population. Harvard accepts less than 4 percent of all applicants.
With those numbers, it is empirically impossible to claim that Black people are inundating Harvard and schools like it; yet there’s still this clear illogic focused squarely on us to explain Harvard’s elusiveness to white people more broadly.
Without Black people to blame, the more than 96 percent of applicants who are not admitted must face the reality of higher ed in America — that schools like Harvard were never likely to admit them, because these schools are meant to perpetuate not only whiteness but also wealth and power.
Admissions offices at Harvard, Princeton and Yale were created in response to concerns about high percentages of Jewish students starting in the 1910s. New admissions policies set quotas on Jewish students in a given class and created checklists of desirable characteristics, including racial and ethnic identities, to more specifically shape the makeup of the student body.
Admissions policies became even more important in the 1940s when the potential for Black student applicants returning from war to use the GI bill to cover tuition again threatened the white wealth culture these schools had established.
Hierarchical ranking systems and the introduction of the “Ivy League” in 1954 further stratified schools by race and class.
Affirmative action policies that came later only slightly increased the percentage of Black students at these schools in any given year.
A similar fate to Gay’s will likely befall the next Black woman Harvard president, should it ever appoint another, just as every year, nameless, faceless Black students are erroneously accused of taking the spot of “more deserving” white students to assuage those white students’ feelings of failure.
Ivy League schools, the most important gatekeepers of higher education, are institutionally racist. And Harvard is the blueprint.
Black people will never belong there because we weren’t meant to — not then, not now, not ever.
Jasmine Harris, is the author of “Black Women, Ivory Tower,” and an associate professor of African American Studies and coordinator of the African American Studies program at the Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
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.
Elected officials are pushing university presidents to categorically silence student speech on salient political issues. This runs afoul of the values of academic freedom and free speech.
In the case of public institutions, giving in to such pressure is unconstitutional.
Free speech is a vital liberty that the American Civil Liberties Union has fought to protect at all levels of government, on campuses and across society for over 100 years.
With the rest of the world, we’ve been anxiously watching the catastrophe unfolding in Israel and Palestine. These events have caused inconceivable pain to many and will have untold effects on our collective future.
It is precisely in moments of crisis and fear like this one that free speech is most important.
While the ACLU does not take positions on international conflicts, we must take positions when the rights of Americans to speak out about these crises are endangered.
Universities are supposed to be spaces where people develop, communicate and debate ideas, including the most topical, difficult and controversial ones.
Students, professors and others on campus must have the freedom to publicly speak about and debate matters of public concern — regardless of how radical or offensive their views are.
For that to work, school leaders must resist pressure to conflate protected political speech with prohibited harassment; making that mistake today will not only impact students now but for decades to come. Yet, troublingly, we’re seeing politicians and school administrators seeking to punish and censor students rather than ensure that all students are able to safely and freely speak their mind.
And the leaders aren’t just taking this problematic approach about speech pertaining to the conflict in the Middle East. For many years now, school administrators have sought to censor controversial speech, whether that’s canceling a book talk by right-wing Milo Yiannopoulos or removing artwork about reproductive health care from a campus exhibit.
The consequences for students are not hypothetical. In late October, the State University System of Florida’s chancellor, Ray Rodrigues, in consultation with Gov. Ron DeSantis, ordered state universities to deactivate the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters, based on nothing more than the national SJP organization’s political advocacy — which is protected political speech. That is a clear violation of the student groups’ rights to free speech and association, which is why we, ACLU of Florida, and Palestine Legal are now representing the University of Florida chapter of SJP in its legal challenge against Florida officials.
Today, some in Congress seem to think there is, or should be, a “controversial speech” exception to the First Amendment.
Once it becomes acceptable to silence one form of political speech, the rights of everyone to speak and dissent are at risk.
But, if we learned anything from the experiences of our country’s universities during the McCarthy era and more recently in the years since 9/11, it’s that viewpoint-based efforts to police speech on campuses destroy the foundations on which academic communities are built.
Throughout U.S. history, people in power have attempted to silence students when they say things that the leaders find unpopular or offensive. During the Vietnam War, for example, universities tried to stop students on their campuses from creating chapters of the antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society by refusing to recognize them as a campus organization. This dispute went all the way up to the Supreme Court, which reaffirmed the group’s First Amendment rights.
That case, Healy v. James, is not an outlier. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that students have a right to associate and speak out on matters of public concern, with Chief Justice Earl Warren famously stating 60 years ago that either “teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate” or “our civilization will stagnate and die.”
Therefore, schools should not punish students, as some leaders have proposed, for chanting phrases like “From the River to the Sea,” “No Ceasefire,” “Make America Great Again” and “No Justice, No Peace,” regardless of how much they offend others.
To be clear: Antisemitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab hate must be condemned and combatted. True threats and incitement are not protected speech. And colleges and universities have a moral and legal obligation to address harassment committed by, or directed at, members of their communities.
Nonetheless, students have a First Amendment right to use controversial slogans and to have differing opinions about what those slogans mean.
Congress cannot expect university administrators to be in the business of deciding which ideas and beliefs are acceptable for students to express and which should be silenced.
To do so would undermine the values of learning and expression on which all academic institutions are built. And while one group is at the center of such affronts today, other students, groups and speech could face similar attacks tomorrow.
Universities must defend against bad actors who conflate suppression of speech with safety, because once it becomes acceptable to silence one form of political speech, the rights of everyone to speak and dissent are at risk.
Drawing the line between protected political speech and targeted harassment isn’t always easy, but the lines our leaders draw today are the ones that will apply across issues, views and debates for years to come.
Jenna Leventoff is senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.
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.
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.
Since the introduction of ChatGPT, educators have been considering the impact of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) on education. Different approaches to AI codes of conduct are emerging, based on geography, school size and administrators’ willingness to embrace new technology.
With ChatGPT barely one year old and generative AI developing rapidly, a universally accepted approach to integrating AI has not yet emerged.
Still, the rise of GAI is offering a rare glimpse of hope and promise amid K-12’s historic achievement lows and unprecedented teacher shortages. That’s why many educators are contemplating how to manage and monitor student AI use. You can see a wide range of opinions, including some who would like to see AI tools outright banned.
There is a fine line between “using AI as a tool” and “using AI to cheat,” and many educators are still determining where that line is.
In my view, banning tech that will become a critical part of everyday life is not the answer. AI tools can be valuable classroom companions, and educators should write their codes of conduct in a way that encourages learners to adapt.
Administrators should respect teachers’ hesitation about adopting AI, but also create policies that allow tech-forward educators and students to experiment.
A number of districts have publicly discussed their approaches to AI. Early policies seem to fall into three camps:
Zero Tolerance: Some schools have instructed their students that use of AI tools will not be tolerated. For example, Oklahoma’s Tomball ISD updated its code of conduct to include a brief sentence on AI-enhanced work, stating that any work submitted by a student that has been completed using AI “will be considered plagiarism” and penalized as such.
Active Encouragement: Some schools encourage teachers to use AI tools in their classrooms. Michigan’s Hemlock Public School District provides its teachers with a list of AI tools and suggests that teachers explore which tools work best with their existing curriculum and lessons.
Wait-and-See: Many schools are taking a wait-and-see approach to drafting policies. In the meantime, they are allowing teachers and students to freely explore the capabilities and applications of the current crop of tools and providing guidance as issues and questions arise. They will use the data collected during this time to inform policies drafted in the future.
A recent Brookings report highlighted the confusion around policies for these new tools. For example, Los Angeles Public Schools blocked ChatGPT from all school computers while simultaneously rolling out an AI companion for parents. Because there isn’t yet clear guidance on how AI tools should be used, educators are receiving conflicting advice on both how to use AI themselves and how to guide their students’ use.
New York City public schools banned ChatGPT, then rolled back the ban, noting that their initial decision was hasty, based on “knee-jerk fear,” and didn’t take into account the good that AI tools could do in supporting teachers and students. They also noted that students will need to function and work in a world in which AI tools are a part of daily life and banning them outright could be doing students a disservice. They’ve since vowed to provide educators with “resources and real-life examples” of how AI tools have been successfully implemented in schools to support a variety of tasks across the spectrum of planning, instruction and analysis.
AI codes of conduct that encourage both smart and responsible use of these tools will be in the best interest of teachers and students.
This response is a good indication that the “Zero Tolerance” approach is waning in larger districts as notable guiding bodies, such asISTE, actively promote AI exploration.
In addition, the federal government’sOffice of Educational Technology is working on policies to ensure safe and effective AI use, noting that “Everyone in education has a responsibility to harness the good to serve educational priorities” while safeguarding against potential risks.
Educators must understand how to use these tools, and how they can help students be better equipped to navigate both the digital and real world.
Already, teachers and entrepreneurs are experimenting with ways that GAI can make an impact on teacher practice and training, from lesson planning and instructional coaching to personalized feedback.
District leaders must consider that AI can assist teachers in crafting activity-specific handouts, customizing reading materials and formulating assessment, assignment and in-class discussion questions. They should also note how AI can deter cheating by generating unique assessments for each test-taker.
As with many educational innovations, it’s fair to assume that the emergence of student conduct cases within higher education will help guide the development of GAI use policy generally.
All this underscores both the importance and the complication of drafting such GAI policies, leading districts to ask, “Should we create guidelines just for students or for students and teachers?”
Earlier this year, Stanford’s Board on Conduct Affairs addressed the issue and its policies, clarifying that generative AI cannot be used to “substantially” complete an assignment and that its use must be disclosed.
But Stanford also gave individual instructors the latitude to provide guidelines on the acceptable use of GAI in their coursework. Given the relative murkiness of that policy, I predict clearer guidelines are still to come and will have an impact on those being drafted for K-12 districts.
Ultimately, AI codes of conduct that encourage both smart and responsible use of these tools will be in the best interest of teachers and students.
It will, however, not be enough for schools just to write codes of conduct for AI tools. They’ll need to think through how the presence of AI technology changes the way students are assessed, use problem-solving skills and develop competencies.
Questions like “How did you creatively leverage this new technology?” can become part of the rubric.
Their exploration will help identify best practices and debunk myths, championing AI’s responsible use. Developing AI policies for K-12 schools is an ongoing conversation.
Embracing experimentation, raising awareness and reforming assessments can help schools ensure that GAI becomes a positive force in supporting student learning responsibly.
Ted Mo Chen is vice president of globalization for the education technology company ClassIn.
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.
As a former public-school teacher, I know that my students sometimes acted out when they didn’t receive the additional educational supports they needed. Too often they then faced a choice: Get your licks or go home.
“Licks” meant an assistant principal beat their backsides with a paddle. “Go home” meant suspension. Those who chose the former would come back to class dejected, disengaged and depressed.
Many people may assume that what I saw is an outlier, but the latest Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) shows that at least 19,395 students experienced corporal punishment during the 2020-21 school year. Every time the CRDC data is released, I am reminded that corporal punishment continues in our schools today, and I am convinced it can be put to an end tomorrow.
To make this change, advocates must demand that their education leaders end this inhumane practice.
Corporal punishment has been banned in a majority of states since the mid 1990s. Nevertheless, during the 2017-18 school year, the CRDC reported, 69,492 students received corporal punishment, on top of 92,479 students in 2015-16. The most recent number is much lower mainly because in-person instruction and data reporting were disrupted during the pandemic.
Corporal punishment remains expressly legal in 16 states. Banning the practice in just 10 of those states, including the one I taught in, Alabama, along with Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas, would reduce the number of schools using corporal punishment by over 99 percent. Despite the small number of cases in the remaining six states where it is legal — Arizona, Idaho, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina and Wyoming — it is still important to ban corporal punishment there to prevent individual schools from continuing the practice.
Additionally, explicitly prohibiting corporal punishment in states that have not yet done so (Connecticut, Kansas, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire, and South Dakota) would protect future generations.
Corporal punishment needs to end because there is no evidence that retaining it decreases misbehavior. In other words, in the states that allow it, corporal punishment is not helping students control their behavior.
Instead, corporal punishment is associated with unintended negative consequences. These include higher rates of mental health problems, more negative parent-child relationships, lower cognitive ability, lower academic achievement, lower self-esteem and higher risk for physical abuse.
While practicing corporal punishment has never made sense, it makes even less sense now.
Ending corporal punishment is also a civil rights issue: It is disproportionately used against Black students, students with disabilities and male students. News reports have highlighted that Black students receive physical punishment at twice the rate of white students nationwide; research shows that educators’ perceptions of student behavior are based on the students’ race — rather than the actual behavior — and that these perceptions contribute to the disproportionate rates in school discipline.
While practicing corporal punishment has never made sense, it makes even less sense now that millions of students have not returned or are continuing to miss school since pandemic-based disruptions.
While states revisit their discipline policies, they should also reduce the “go home” exclusionary discipline practices (suspensions and expulsions), which can undermine children’s attachment to school. Such harsh punishments increase the chances of students dropping out and feed the school-to-prison pipeline. In addition to those punishments increasing the number of school days students miss, research shows that exclusionary discipline can decrease students’ likelihood of accumulating course credits, reduce their likelihood of graduating and lower their chances of earning a postsecondary credential.
In my experience observing its impacts, corporal punishment has a similar distancing effect on students as suspensions and expulsions — making school feel like a place where they do not belong.
Schools still need to address misbehavior, of course, but there are better ways to do this. They can replace corporal punishment with evidence-based practices that help create safe and inclusive learning environments for all students. Such practices — including advisory systems, in which students meet regularly with a staff member about academic challenges, and “looping,” in which students have the same teacher for multiple years — build positive school-student relationships. These positive relationships can help prevent physical violence and bullying.
Restorative practices, also backed by research, typically foster dialogue in “circles” or “conferences” in which educators help students listen to each other and to teachers in order to resolve conflict and build community. For me, this often meant chatting with students in a hallway about why they acted out, giving them a chance to share their side of the story, regroup and refocus on school.
Recent research shows that investing in student supports, including social and emotional learning and mental health, is a better way to make schools truly safe, along with professional development for teachers and school staff. States should act quickly to make these alternatives more widely available and make schools less like prisons and more like everywhere else.
Corporal punishment is prohibited in almost every facet of life in the U.S. except schools. It is banned in military training centers, child care centers and juvenile detention facilities, and cannot be carried out as a sentence for a juvenile crime. The vast majority of children (76 percent) across the globe are protected by law from corporal punishment. Let’s use this current round of CRDC data to spur action to give our students better choices than the one my students faced.
Stephen Kostyo is an Impact Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. Before working in education policy, Kostyo taught middle and high school math and science — and was recognized as a high school Teacher of the Year by his peers in 2015.
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.
New York state lawmakers will unveil legislation on Tuesday that would eliminate enormous property tax breaks for Columbia University and New York University, which have expanded to become among New York City’s top 10 largest private property owners.
The bills would require the private universities to start paying full annual property taxes and for that money to be redistributed to the City University of New York, the largest urban public university system in the country.
Columbia and N.Y.U. collectively saved $327 million on property taxes this year. The amount the schools save annually has soared in recent decades as the two have bought more properties, and the value of their properties has also increased.
Repealing the tax breaks would face substantial obstacles. The exemptions — which apply to universities, museums and other nonprofits — are nearly 200 years old and part of the state constitution. Overriding them would mean lawmakers would have to adopt the changes in consecutive legislative sessions. Then, voters would have to approve them on a statewide ballot.
“When the constitution of the state was written, there was no idea that such an exemption could apply to two of the top landlords in New York City,” said Assemblyman Zohran K. Mamdani, a Queens Democrat who is introducing the bill in the Assembly. “This bill seeks to address universities that have so blatantly gone beyond primarily operating as institutions of higher education and are instead acting as landlords and developers.”
The proposed constitutional amendment follows an investigation by The Hechinger Report and The New York Times in September that revealed that the city’s wealthiest universities were bigger and richer than ever before, with vast real estate portfolios that have drained the city budget – and that as Columbia has grown to become the city’s largest private landowner, it has enrolled fewer students from New York City.
A Columbia spokeswoman said university officials were reviewing the legislation. But she added that Columbia was a driver of the city’s economy through its research, faculty and students, and its capital projects, including $100 million in upgrades to local infrastructure since 2009.
A spokesman for N.Y.U. said that repealing the tax exemptions would be “extraordinarily disruptive” and that the university “would be forced to rethink much of the way we operate.”
“To choose two charitable, nonprofit organizations out of the thousands in the state and compel them to be treated like for-profits certainly strikes us as misguided and unfair,” the spokesman, John Beckman, said in a statement. “We are deeply appreciative of those policies, which have been in place for two centuries, but we also take some modest pride in the many, many ways, small and large, that N.Y.U. contributes to the city’s well-being and its economy.”
All 50 states offer property tax exemptions for private, nonprofit entities, which supporters argue are crucial so that these organizations can provide social, economic and cultural benefits to their communities. But in some cities, officials have pressured private universities to make voluntary payments, known as payments in lieu of taxes, or similar annual donations. Private universities often have billion-dollar endowments and charge annual tuition in the high five figures.
The legislation would only apply to Columbia and N.Y.U. and not other large private universities that own significant land, such as Cornell University in Ithaca. Lawmakers said that other universities would be excluded because their tax breaks are far lower than those of Columbia and N.Y.U.; the annual real estate tax exemption threshold would be $100 million.
“This bill seeks to address universities that have so blatantly gone beyond primarily operating as institutions of higher education and are instead acting as landlords and developers.”
Assemblyman Zohran K. Mamdani, a Queens Democrat who is introducing the bill in the Assembly.
“I don’t fault these institutions for pursuing their tax breaks and using the tax breaks to greatly expand their empires,” said State Senator John C. Liu, a Queens Democrat who is introducing the legislation in the Senate. “But this is a point where we have to look where all revenues are coming from and where all revenues are leaking. We have to stop those leaks.”
CUNY, which is made up of 25 campuses throughout the city and which serves 225,000 students, has also been eyed for city cuts. Most of the university’s $4.3 billion budget is provided by the state, but earlier this year, the mayor proposed a 3 percent cut to the funding the city provides.
If the constitutional amendment were approved, the property tax payments would be directed every year to CUNY. That would make a significant difference in the quality of education students receive, said James C. Davis, the president of the Professional Staff Congress, which represents 30,000 CUNY faculty and staff.
“Would an additional infusion of operating funding affect retention and graduation rates?” Mr. Davis said. “Clearly the answer is yes. Even a relatively small amount of money would make a big difference.”
He noted that 80 percent of first-year CUNY students are graduates of New York City public schools, and a majority are students of color. Half come from families with incomes under $30,000 a year.
“If you’re talking about the city making a commitment to economic equity and social mobility,” Mr. Davis added, “there really is not a wiser investment than CUNY.”
This story was produced in collaboration with The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit news outlet that covers education. Hechinger is an independent unit at Teachers College, Columbia University.
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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.
WILMINGTON, Del. — Striding into a packed community center filled with high school seniors, Atnre Alleyne has a few words of advice for the crowd, members of the first class of college applicants to be shaped by June’s Supreme Court ruling striking down race-conscious admissions.
“You have to get good grades, you have to find a way to do the academics, but also become leaders,” said Alleyne, the energetic co-founder and CEO of TeenSHARP, a nonprofit that prepares students from underrepresented backgrounds for higher education. “In your schools, do something! Fight for social justice.”
Many of the TeenSHARP participants gathered here, who are predominantly Black or Hispanic, worry that their chances of getting into top-tier schools have diminished with the court’s decision. They wonder what to say in their admissions essays and how comfortable they’ll feel on campuses that could become increasingly less diverse.
Tariah Hyland joins fellow TeenSHARP alums Alphina Kamara and William Garcia to meet with and advise TeenSHARP co-founder Atnre Alleyne in Wilmington Delaware. Credit: Liz Willen/The Hechinger Report
On this autumn night, Alleyne and his team are fielding questions from the dozens of students they advise, on everything from early decision deadlines to which schools are most likely to give generous financial aid and scholarships. The changed admissions landscape has only increased the team’s determination to develop a new generation of leaders, students who will fight to have their voices represented on campuses and later on in the workplace.
“I want them to kick the door open to these places, so they will go back and open more doors,” Alleyne said.
That goal is shared by successful alumni of the program Alleyne and his wife, Tatiana Poladko, started in a church basement 14 years ago. Several are on hand tonight recounting their own educational journeys, culminating in full scholarships to schools such as the University of Chicago and Wesleyan University, where annual estimated costs approach $90,000.
Before the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, highly selective colleges served as a beacon of hope and economic mobility for students like those TeenSHARP advise. Many are first in their families to attend college and lack legacy connections or access to the private counselors who’ve long given a boost to wealthier students.
But even before the high court ruling, Black and Latino students were poorly represented at these institutions, while the college degree gap between Black and white Americans was getting worse. For some students, the court decision sends a message that they do not belong, and if they get in, they worry they’ll stand out even more.
“I felt really upset about it,” Jamel Powell, a high school junior from Belle Mead, New Jersey, who participates in TeenSHARP, said about the affirmative action ruling. “This system has helped many underrepresented minorities get into these Ivy League schools and excel.”
While the full impact of the ruling on student demographics remains unknown, representatives of 33 colleges wrote in an amicus brief filed in the case that the share of Black students on their campuses would drop from roughly 7.1 percent to 2.1 percent if affirmative action were banned.
The uncertainty of what the decision means is taking a toll on students and school counselors nationally, said Mandy Savitz-Romer, a senior lecturer at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. As colleges sort through how they can meet commitments to diversity while complying with the law, students wonder if mentioning race in their essays will help or hurt them.
TeenSHARP alums Taria Hyland and Alphina Kamara reconnect in Wilmington, Delaware, to share advice on navigating college admissions and financial aid. Credit: Liz Willen/The Hechinger Report
In his majority decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that race could be invoked only within the context of the applicant’s life story, making essays the one opportunity for students to discuss their race and ethnicity. But since then, Edward Blum, the conservative activist who helped bring the case before the court, has threatened more lawsuits, promising to challenge any essay topic that is “nothing more than a back-channel subterfuge for divulging a student’s race.”
The Department of Education has published guidelines saying that while schools cannot put a thumb on the scale for students based on their race, they “remain free” to consider characteristics tied to individual students’ life experiences, including race. The National Association of College Admission Counseling issued similar guidance, while the Common App introduced new essay prompts that include one about students’ “identity” and “background.”
Because of the uncertainty,school counselors need specific training on crafting essays and how or whether to talk about race, Savitz-Romer said during a Harvard webinar last month on college admissions after affirmative action. “We need counselors and teachers to make students understand that college is still for them,” she said.
It’s a tall order: On average, public school counselors serve more than 400 students each, which offers little time for one-on-one advising.
That reality is why nonprofit advising groups like TeenSHARP toil alongside students, guiding them through an increasingly confounding admissions system. TeenSHARP’s team of three advisers works intensively with roughly 140 students at a time, including 50 seniors who often apply to as many as 20 colleges to maximize their chances.
That’s a fraction of those who need help, another reason why the group’s leaders rely on their network of more than 500 “Sharpies,” as alums are known.
Emily Rodriguez, a TeenSHARP senior who attends Conrad Schools of Science in Wilmington, decided to address race head on in her college essays: She wrote about her determination that she would not “play the role of the poor submissive Mexican woman.”
“Admissions officers assure us that their commitment to diversity hasn’t changed. But we will have to see. We’ve explained to families and students that this year is a learning year.”
Tatiana Poladko, co-founder, TeenSHARP
Hamza Parker, a senior at Delaware’s Smyrna High School who moved to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia as a sixth grader, said he was against writing about his identity at first. “I feel like it puts you in a position where you have to have a sob story for your essay instead of talking about something good, like, that happened in your life,” he told Alleyne and Poladko during a counseling session over Zoom.
But in the session Alleyne and Poladko encouraged him to draw from his own story, one they know something about from working with his older sister Hasana, now a junior at Pomona College. The family had a difficult move from Saudi Arabia to New York City and later Delaware, where Hamza joined the Delaware Black Student Coalition.
Hamza decided to revise his essay from one focused on linguistics to describe experiencing racism and then embracing his Muslim heritage.
“I am my normal social self and my Muslim faith and garb are widely known and respected at my school,” he wrote. “My school even now has a dedicated space for prayer during Ramadan.”
Alleyne and Poladko typically work with students who are beginning their first year of high school, so the pair can guide the entire college application process, much as some pricey private counselors do — although TeenSHARP’s services are free; as a nonprofit it relies on an array of donors for support.
Neither Poladko nor Alleyn attended elite schools. They met as graduate students at Rutgers University and became committed to starting TeenSHARP after helping Alleyne’s niece apply to colleges from a large New York City public high school.
Astonished by how complicated and inaccessible college admissions could be, the two decided to make it their life’s work, writing grants and getting donations from local banks and foundations so they could serve more students.
“I felt really upset about it. This system has helped many underrepresented minorities get into these Ivy League schools and excel.”
Jamel Powell, a high school junior from Belle Mead, New Jersey, who participates in TeenSHARP, about the affirmative action ruling.
Their work is now largely remote: During the pandemic, the couple relocated from Wilmington to Poladko’s native Ukraine to be closer to her family, leading to a dramatic escape to Poland with their three young children when war broke out. Poladko is taking a sabbatical from TeenSHARP this year, although she still helps some students via Zoom. Alleyne flies from Warsaw to Wilmington to meet with students in person, often at the community center downtown that once housed their offices.
They also rely on relationships they’ve built over the years with college presidents and admissions officers at schools like Boston College, Pomona College and Wesleyan, along with both Carleton and Macalester Colleges in Minnesota, many of whom have welcomed TeenSHARP applicants.
“We need more ‘Sharpies’ on our campus,” said Suzanne Rivera, president of Macalester College, in Minnesota, and a member of TeenSHARP’s advisory board. “Their questions are always so smart and so insightful.”
Sharpies also tend to become campus leaders, in part because TeenSHARP requires that its students develop leadership skills. That’s something William Garcia, who graduated from the University of Chicago last spring, told seniors in Wilmington.
“If Black high school seniors no longer feel like they are welcomed on predominantly white campuses, they are less likely to apply and even less likely to enroll even if they are offered admission.”
Chelsea Holley, director of admissions at Spelman College in Atlanta
At first, he felt isolated in Chicago, reticent to talk about his experiences as a Hispanic man. “I was in your shoes five years ago,” Garcia said. He later realized his background could be an asset, and drew on it to turn an ingredient for one of Mexico’s most popular liquors into a business venture for his own agave beverage company.
“Embrace your story; tell your story,” Garcia said. “I would tell my story and people would be really interested and would start to help me.”
Alphina Kamara, a 2022 graduate of Wesleyan University, urged seniors to aim high and look beyond state schools and local community colleges that have lower graduation rates and fewer resources — campuses she might have ended up at it not for TeenSHARP.
“I would have never have known that schools like Wesleyan existed, and that I, as a first-generation Black woman, had a place in them,” said Kamara, the child of immigrant parents from Sierra Leone.
Still, there will always be some TeenSHARP students who don’t want to be on campuses that had terrible track records for diversity, even before the court’s decision.
Tariah Hyland, who in high school co-founded the Delaware Black Student Coalition, knew she’d be more comfortable at one of the country’s more than 100 historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs. She told the Delaware audience that she’s thriving in her junior year at Howard University, where she is studying political science.
Powell, the New Jersey junior, is eyeing both Howard and Atlanta’s Morehouse College and said he’ll likely only apply to HBCUs.
“When I was in public school, I was the only Black boy in my classes,” said Powell, who now attends Acelus Academy, an online school. “I was always the minority, and so by going to an HBCU, I would likely see more people who look like me.”
That’s no surprise to Chelsea Holley, director of admissions at Spelman College in Atlanta, who said she’s expecting “more interest from Black and Brown students, now that the Supreme Court has made what I believe to be a regressive political decision.”
HBCUs like Spelman — whose graduates include Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman and author Alice Walker — are already seeing more applications and are becoming even more competitive.
“If Black high school seniors no longer feel like they are welcomed on predominantly white campuses, they are less likely to apply and even less likely to enroll, even if they are offered admission,” Holley said, adding that students may be worried about further assaults on diversity and inclusion on college campuses and believe they will be more comfortable at an HBCU.
Still, not everyone predicts the court ruling will precipitate a permanent drop in Black and Hispanic students at predominantly white, selective colleges. Richard Kahlenberg, an author and scholar at Georgetown University predicts the drop will be temporary, and that the affirmative action ban will eventually lead to a fairer landscape for low-income students of all races.
Kahlenberg, who served as an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions, said he wants to see an end to legacy preferences as well as athletic recruiting, so that colleges can give “a meaningful boost” to “disadvantaged students of all races” and “you can get racial diversity without racial preferences.” Challenges to legacy admissions are mounting: The Education Department has opened an investigation into Harvard’s use of the practice, and a recent bipartisan bill calls for colleges to end it.
As mid-December approaches, Alleyne and Poladko are anxiously waiting to see how the handful of TeenSHARP students who applied for early decision will fare.
“Admissions officers assure us that their commitment to diversity hasn’t changed,” Poladko said. “But we will have to see. We’ve explained to families and students that this year is a learning year.”
Until that time, both Poladko and Alleyne will continue pushing students to help those who come after them.
“Our goal is to figure out the game of admissions and give our students an advantage,” Alleyne said. “And our job is to teach them how to play the game.”
This story about TeenSHARP is the first in a series of articles, produced by The Hechinger Reportin partnership with Soledad O’Brien Productions, about the impact of the Supreme Court ruling on race-based affirmative action. Stay tuned for an upcoming documentary and part II.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.
