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Tag: Mental health and trauma

  • Infants and toddlers are a growing group among homeless children

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    BOSTON, Mass. — For months, Karian had tried to make it on her own in New York.

    After the birth of her second daughter, she was diagnosed with postpartum depression, major depressive disorder and anxiety. A single mother who had moved from Boston to New York about 13 years ago, she often spent days at a time on the couch, unable to do more than handle the basics for her daughters.

    “I wasn’t taking care of myself,” she said softly on a recent afternoon. “I was not really present.” The Hechinger Report is not publishing her last name to protect her privacy.

    Karian’s mother urged her to move back home to the Boston area and offered to house her and her daughters temporarily. She started working the night shift at a fast food restaurant to save up for her own place while her mother and sister watched her children. 

    But in a city where fast food wages aren’t enough to pay the rent, her efforts felt futile. And then, a month after moving in with her family, her mother’s landlord told her the apartment was overcrowded and she had to leave. Karian and her girls, then 7 years old and 8 months old, moved into a homeless shelter, where her depression and anxiety worsened. 

    “I tried my best, but it’s not their home,” said Karian, now 31.

    Karian’s children had joined the growing ranks of very young children experiencing homelessness. Between 2021 and 2023, the number of homeless infants and toddlers increased in 48 states and the District of Columbia. The most recent estimates found that in 2023 nearly 450,000 infants and toddlers in the United States were in families that lacked a stable place to live. That was a 23 percent increase compared to 2021, according to a report released last year by the nonprofit SchoolHouse Connection in partnership with Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan.  

    The numbers could be even higher, experts worry, because “hidden homeless” children — those who are doubled up in homes with family or friends or living in a hotel — may not be captured in tallies until they start school.

    High prices for diapers and formula, the exorbitant cost of child care, the rising cost of living, and rising maternal mental health challenges all contribute to the growing rate of homelessness among very young children, experts say. In 2024, one-third of infants and toddlers were in families that struggled to make ends meet, according to the nonprofit infant and toddler advocacy organization Zero to Three. 

    “We’re talking about families who have generationally been disadvantaged by circumstance,” said Kate Barrand, president and CEO of Horizons for Homeless Children, a nonprofit that supports homeless families with young children in Massachusetts. “The cost of housing has escalated dramatically. The cost of any kind of program to put a child in, should you have a job, is escalating,” she added. “There are a lot of things that make it really hard for families.”

    Children work on an activity in a Horizons classroom. Teachers at Horizons are trained to work with children who have experienced trauma and instability. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report

    Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.

    Housing instability is dire for anyone, but particularly for young children, whose brains are rapidly growing and developing. Studies show that young children who are homeless often lag behind their peers in language development and literacy and struggle to learn self-regulation skills, like being able to calm themselves when feeling angry or sad or transition calmly to new activities. They also may experience long-term health and learning challenges.

    Early childhood programs could provide a critical source of stability and developmental support for these children. But SchoolHouse Connection found only a fraction of homeless children are enrolled in early learning programs, and the percentage who are has decreased over the past few years.

    “It’s not just incredibly tragic and sad that infants and toddlers are experiencing homelessness,” said Rahil Briggs, national director of the nonprofit Zero to Three’s HealthySteps program, which works with pediatricians to support the health of babies and toddlers. The first few years are also a “disproportionately important” time in a child’s life, she added, because of the brain development that’s happening.

    Karian and her daughters faced new difficulties after they moved into a shelter.

    They shared an apartment with another family. If the other family was using the shared common space, Karian tried to give them privacy, which meant keeping her children in the bedroom the three of them shared.

    Her older daughter had to change schools, and left without getting to say goodbye to many of her friends. At her new school, her grades dropped. The baby developed a skin condition and there was a bedbug infestation at the shelter. Karian didn’t want to put her on the floor for tummy time. She was desperate to find a home.

    “We were in a place where we couldn’t really make noise. I couldn’t really let them be kids,” she said.

    The rise in housing insecurity among young children has created more demand for programs created specifically to meet the unique needs of children who are experiencing instability and trauma. Many of these programs offer support to parents as well, through what is called a “two-generation” approach to support and services.

    Related: A school created a homeless shelter in the gym and it paid off in the classroom

    In 2021, in response to ballooning child homelessness rates, Horizons opened the Edgerley Family Horizons Center, an early learning program that serves children from 2 months to 5 years old. While some families find Horizons on their own, many are referred by shelters around the Boston area. The need is great: Edgerley serves more than 250 children, with a waitlist of 200 more. Karian’s younger child was one of those who got a spot soon after the program opened.

    Inside Horizons’ large, light-filled building on the corner of a busy street in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, every detail is tailored to the needs of children who have experienced instability. Walls are painted in soothing blues and greens. Each classroom has three teachers to maintain a low child-to-staff ratio. Many of the teachers are bilingual. All educators are trained in how to build relationships with families and gently support children who have experienced trauma. 

    In response to growing need, in 2021 the Horizons opened the Edgerley Family Horizons Center, an early learning program that serves homeless children from 2 months to 5 years old. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report

    The starting salary for teachers is $54,200 a year, far more than the national median for childcare workers of $32,050 and the Massachusetts median of about $39,000. That has encouraged more teachers to stay on at the center and provide a sense of security to the children there, said Horizons CEO Barrand.

    In the infant room, teacher Herb Hickey, who has worked at Horizons for 13 years, frequently sees infants who are hyperaware, struggle to fall asleep, can’t be soothed easily or cling desperately to whichever adult they attach to first. The goal for the infant teachers, he said, is to be a trusted, responsive adult who can be relied on.

    Every day, the teachers in the infant room sing the same songs to the babies. “When they hear our voices constantly, they know they’re in a safe space,” Hickey said. “This is calm.” 

    Teachers also follow the same familiar routines. The rooms are decorated simply, organized and filled with natural light. Teachers constantly scan the infants for signs of distress.

    “We have to be even more responsive,” Hickey said. “When the child starts crying, we don’t have the convenience to say, ‘I know you’re hungry, I’ll get to you.’” He said teachers want even the tiniest babies to learn that “we’re not going to leave you crying.’”

    Small nooks throughout the early learning center allow children to retreat into a comfortable setting when they need time to calm big emotions. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report

    Related: A federal definition of ‘homeless’ leaves some kids out in the cold. One state is trying to help

    Other needs arise with Horizons’ youngest children: Infants and toddlers living in homeless shelters often lag in gross motor skills. Many spend time on beds rather than on playmats on the floor, or they are kept in car seats or in strollers to keep them safe or from wandering off. That means they’re missing out on all the skills that come from active movement.  

    Even the arrangement of toys at the center has a purpose. Staff want children to know they can depend on toys being in the same location every day. For many children, those are some of the only items they can play with. Families entering a shelter environment can usually only bring a few bags, with no room for toys or books. A toddler who recently entered a shelter where Horizons runs a playroom came in holding a small empty chip bag, recalled Tara Spalding, Horizons’ chief of advancement and playspace. When a shelter staff member threw it away, the boy was inconsolable. “This is the only toy my child has,” staff recalled the mother saying.

    “This just shows the sheer poverty,” said Spalding. 

    As infant and toddler homelessness has increased, other cities and states have tried to provide more support to affected families and get a better sense of their needs. In Oklahoma, experts say, low wages, a lack of housing and eviction laws that favor landlords have led to rising homelessness rates. State officials are trying to gather better data about homeless families to determine the best use of resources, said Susan Agel, chair of Oklahoma’s Homeless Children and Youth Steering Committee. Their efforts are hampered, however, by the fact that many homeless families fear that their children will be taken away by child protective services because they are homeless. 

    In 2024, to fill that gap in data, the state launched a residency questionnaire given to every K-12 student that includes new questions about homelessness, including if there are younger children in the home who are not students and may not otherwise be counted in homeless populations. Officials say it isn’t a perfect solution, but it’s a start to get a sense of the severity of family homelessness. “We can’t devise a system for dealing with a problem if we don’t know what the problem is,” said Agel.

    In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, city officials have ramped up efforts to coordinate city agencies to respond to an increase in homelessness among infants and toddlers.

    “In general, the families we see more often have younger children. The school offers so much support, and there’s limited daycare access” to get similar support for infants and toddlers, said Tommy Fuston, Community Services and Housing Navigator at Minnehaha County’s Department of Human Services. “If a family has younger children, they’re going to struggle more.” 

    Each week, officials from the city, the Sioux Falls School District, local early childhood programs and shelters hold a “care meeting” to make sure any homeless families, or families at risk of homelessness, are quickly connected to the right resources and receive follow-up. “We don’t have unlimited resources, but I think it maximizes the resources that we do have,” Fuston said. “We’ve tried to create a village of supportive services to wrap around these folks.” The city relies extensively on private and faith-based donations to help. All shelters in town are privately funded, for example. 

    A preschool child paints in a classroom at Horizons. Families enrolled in the program receive child care for their children as well as classes and support for parents. Credit: Jackie Mader/The Hechinger Report

    Related: Shelter offers rare support for homeless families: a child care center

    Karian heard about the child care center run by Horizons from a social worker soon after she and her daughters moved into their Boston-area shelter. In the infant room, her youngest daughter quickly settled into a routine, something Karian said didn’t happen when the baby was watched at night by family members. When staff identified speech and developmental delays, they helped connect Karian to an early intervention program where her daughter could receive therapy. Now 4 years old and in pre-K at Horizons, “she’s thriving,” Karian said. “She’s getting that nourishment.” 

    Karian also received support. Each family at Horizons is assigned a coach to help parents set personal goals and connect with resources. The organization offers classes in computing, financial management and English, all within the early learning building.

    Two months after setting goals with a family coach, Karian earned her GED, with the help of  the child care assistance. A few months later, she graduated from a culinary training program. She now works a steady job as a cafeteria manager for a local school district, where she earns a salary with benefits. 

    After a year in the shelter, her family was approved for subsidized housing and moved into their own apartment. Horizons allows families to stay in its programs for at least two years after they secure housing to make sure they are stable. 

    Now, Karian has her sights set on eventually opening a restaurant. She also has big dreams for her daughters, something that once seemed out of reach. She wants them to have ambition to “work towards something big,” she said. “I want them to have a dream and be able to achieve it.” 

    Experts say there are larger policy changes that could help families like Karian’s: increasing the minimum wage, expanding child care options like Head Start, which saves a portion of seats for homeless children, and offering more affordable housing to low-income families, to start.

    Providing more federal money to the programs that help poor families pay for child care could also help. Those programs require states to prioritize homeless children and give them the first opportunity to access that money. 

    While important, experts argue, these solutions shouldn’t need to exist in the first place.

    “We should be able to come to an agreement as a society that we should prioritize keeping families with infants and toddlers in their homes,” said Melissa Boteach, chief policy officer at Zero to Three. “Babies shouldn’t be homeless.”

    Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562 or mader@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about homeless children was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. 

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  • Eviction sets single mom on a quest to keep her kids in their schools

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    This story was produced by the Associated Press and reprinted with permission.

    ATLANTA — It was the worst summer in years. Sechita McNair’s family took no vacations. Her younger boys didn’t go to camp. Her van was repossessed, and her family nearly got evicted — again.

    But she accomplished the one thing she wanted most. A few weeks before school started, McNair, an out-of-work film industry veteran barely getting by driving for Uber, signed a lease in the right Atlanta neighborhood so her eldest son could stay at his high school.

    As she pulled up outside the school on the first day, Elias, 15, stepped onto the curb in his new basketball shoes and cargo pants. She inspected his face, noticed wax in his ears and grabbed a package of baby wipes from her rental car. She wasn’t about to let her eldest, with his young Denzel Washington looks, go to school looking “gross.”

    He grimaced and broke away.

    “No kiss? No hugs?” she called out.

    Elias waved and kept walking. Just ahead of him, at least for the moment, sat something his mother had fought relentlessly for: a better education.

    The link between where you live and where you learn

    Last year, McNair and her three kids were evicted from their beloved apartment in the rapidly gentrifying Old Fourth Ward neighborhood of Atlanta. Like many evicted families, they went from living in a school district that spends more money on students to one that spends less.

    Thanks to federal laws protecting homeless and evicted students, her kids were able to keep attending their Atlanta schools, even though the only housing available to them was in another county 40 minutes away. They also had the right to free transportation to those schools, but McNair says the district didn’t tell her about that until the school year ended. Their eligibility to remain in those schools expired at the end of last school year.

    Still wounded by the death of his father and multiple housing displacements, Elias failed two classes last year, his freshman year. Switching schools now, McNair fears, would jeopardize any chance he has of recovering his academic life. “I need this child to be stable,” she says.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education.

    With just one week before school started, McNair drove extra Uber hours, borrowed money, secured rental assistance and ignored concerns about the apartment to rent a three-bedroom in the Old Fourth Ward. At $2,200 a month, it was the only “semi-affordable” apartment in the rapidly gentrifying ward that would rent to a single mom with a fresh eviction on her record.

    On Zillow, the second-floor apartment, built in 2005, looked like a middle-class dream with its granite countertops, crown molding and polished wood floors. But up close, the apartment looked abused and held secrets McNair was only beginning to uncover.

    The first sign something was wrong came early. When she first toured the apartment, it felt rushed, like the agent didn’t want her to look too closely. Then, even as they told her she was accepted, the landlord and real estate agent wouldn’t send her a “welcome letter” laying out the agreement, the rent and deposit she would pay. It seemed like they didn’t want to put anything in writing.

    When the lease came, it was full of errors. She signed it anyway. “We’re back in the neighborhood!” she said. Elias could return to Midtown High School.

    But even in their triumph, no one in the family could relax. Too many things were uncertain. And it fell to McNair — and only McNair — to figure it out.

    The first day back

    Midtown is a high school so coveted that school administrators investigate student residency throughout the year to keep out kids from other parts of Atlanta and beyond. For McNair, the day Elias returned to the high school was a momentous one.

    “Freedom!” McNair declared after Elias disappeared into the building. Without child care over the summer, McNair had struggled to find time to work enough to make ends meet. Now that the kids were back in class, McNair could spend school hours making money and resolving some of the unsettled issues with her new apartment.

    McNair, the first person in her family to attend college, studied theater management. Her job rigging stage sets was lucrative until the writers’ and actors’ strike and other changes paralyzed the film industry in 2023. The scarcity of work on movie sets, combined with her tendency to take in family and non-family alike, wrecked her home economy.

    The family was evicted last fall when McNair fell behind on rent because of funeral expenses for her foster daughter. The teen girl died from an epileptic seizure while McNair and everyone else slept. Elias found her body.

    McNair attributes some of Elias’s lack of motivation at school to personal trauma. His father died after a heart attack in 2023, on the sidelines of Elias’s basketball practice.

    Elias Washington talks to a friend on the phone as he walks to Midtown High School in Atlanta. Credit: AP Photo/Brynn Anderson

    On his first day back at school this August, Elias appeared excited but tentative. He watched as the seniors swanned into school wearing gold cardboard crowns, a Midtown back-to-school tradition, and scanned the sidewalk for anyone familiar.

    If Elias had his way, his mom would homeschool him. She’s done it before. But now that he’s a teenager, it’s harder to get Elias to follow her instructions. As the only breadwinner supporting three kids and her disabled uncle, she has to work.

    Elias hid from the crowds and called up a friend: “Where you at?” The friend, another sophomore, was still en route. Over the phone, they compared outfits, traded gossip about who got a new hairdo or transferred. When Elias’s friend declared this would be the year he’d get a girlfriend, Elias laughed.

    When it was time to go in, Elias drifted toward the door with his head down as other students flooded past.

    The after-school pickup

    Hours later, he emerged. Despite everything McNair had done to help it go well — securing the apartment, even spending hundreds of dollars on new clothes for him — Elias slumped into the backseat when she picked him up after class.

    “School was so boring,” he said.

    “What happened?” McNair asked.

    “Nothing, bro. That was the problem,” Elias said. “I thought I was going to be happy when school started, since summer was so horrible.”

    Of all of the classes he was taking — geometry, gym, French, world history, environmental science — only gym interested him. He wished he could take art classes, he said. Elias has acted in some commercials and television programs, but chose a science and math concentration, hoping to study finance someday.

    After dinner at Chick-fil-A, the family visited the city library one block from their new apartment. While McNair spoke to the librarian, the boys explored the children’s section. Malachi, 6, watched a YouTube video on a library computer while Derrick, 7, flipped through a book. Elias sat in a corner, sharing video gaming tips with a stranger he met online.

    Related: Schools confront a new reality: They can’t count on federal money 

    “Those people are learning Japanese,” said McNair, pointing to a group of adults sitting around a cluster of tables. “And this library lets you check out museum passes. This is why we have to be back in the city. Resources!”

    McNair wants her children to go to well-resourced schools. Atlanta spends nearly $20,000 per student a year, $7,000 more than the district they moved to after the eviction. More money in schools means smaller classrooms and more psychologists, guidance counselors and other support.

    But McNair, who grew up in New Jersey near New York City, also sees opportunities in the wider city of Atlanta. She wants to use its libraries, e-scooters, bike paths, hospitals, rental assistance agencies, Buy Nothing groups and food pantries.

    “These are all resources that make it possible to raise a family when you don’t have support,” she said. “Wouldn’t anyone want that?”

    Support is hard to come by

    On the way home, the little boys fall asleep in the back seat. Elias asks, “So, is homeschooling off the table?”

    McNair doesn’t hesitate. “Heck yeah. I’m not homeschooling you,” she says lightly. “Do you see how much of a financial bind I’m in?”’

    McNair pulls into the driveway in Jonesboro, the suburb where the family landed after their eviction. Even though the family wants to live in Atlanta, their stuff is still here. It’s a neighborhood of brick colonials and manicured lawns. She realizes it’s the dream for some families, but not hers. “It’s a support desert.”

    As they get out of the car, Elias takes over as parent-in-charge. “Get all of your things,” he directs Malachi and Derrick, who scowl as Elias seems to relish bossing them around. “Pick up your car seats, your food, those markers. I don’t want to see anything left behind.” Elias would be responsible for making the boys burritos, showering them and putting them to sleep.

    McNair heads out to drive for Uber. That’s what is necessary to pay $450 a week to rent the car and earn enough to pay her rent and bills.

    But while McNair is out, she can’t monitor Elias. And a few days after he starts school, Elias’s all-night gaming habit has already drawn teachers’ attention.

    “I wanted to check in regarding Elias,” his geometry teacher writes during the first week of school. “He fell asleep multiple times during Geometry class this morning.”

    Elias had told the teacher he went to bed around 4 a.m. the night before. “I understand that there may be various reasons for this, and I’d love to work together to support Elias so he can stay focused and successful in class.”

    A few days later, McNair gets a similar email from his French teacher.

    That night, McNair drives around Atlanta, trying to pick up enough Uber trips to keep her account active. But she can’t stop thinking about the emails. “I should be home making sure Elias gets to bed on time,” she says, crying. “But I have to work. I’m the only one paying the bills.”

    Obstacles keep popping up

    Ever since McNair rented the Atlanta apartment, her bills had doubled. She wasn’t sure when she’d feel safe giving up the house she’d been renting in Clayton County, given the problems with the Atlanta apartment. For starters, she was not even sure it was safe to spend the night there.

    A week after school started in August, McNair dropped by the apartment to check whether the landlords had made repairs. At the very least, she wanted more smoke detectors.

    She also wanted them to replace the door, which looked like someone had forced it open with a crowbar. She wanted a working fridge and oven. She wanted them to secure the back door to the adjoining empty apartment, which appeared to be open and made her wonder if there were pests or even people squatting there.

    But on this day, her keys didn’t work.

    She called 911. Had her new landlords deliberately locked her out?

    When the police showed up outside the olive-green, Craftsman-style fourplex, McNair scrolled through her phone to find a copy of her lease. Then McNair and the officer eyed a man walking up to the property. “The building was sold in a short sale two weeks ago,” he told McNair. The police officer directed the man to give the new keys to McNair.

    Related: The new reality with universal school vouchers: Homeschoolers, marketing, pupil churn

    The next day, McNair started getting emails from an agent specializing in foreclosures, suggesting the new owners wanted McNair to leave. “The bank owns the property and now you are no longer a tenant of the previous owner,” she wrote. The new owner “might” offer relocation assistance if McNair agreed to leave.

    McNair consulted attorneys, who reassured her: It might be uncomfortable, but she could stay. She needed to try to pay rent, even if the new owner didn’t accept it.

    So McNair messaged the agent, asking where she should send the rent, and requested the company make necessary repairs. Eventually, the real estate agent stopped responding.

    Some problems go away, but others emerge

    Finally, McNair moved her kids and a few items from the Jonesboro house to the Atlanta apartment. She didn’t allow Elias to bring his video game console to Atlanta. He started going to bed around 11 p.m. most nights. But even as she solved that problem, others emerged.

    It was at Midtown’s back-to-school night in September that McNair learned Elias was behind in most of his classes. Some teachers said maybe Midtown wasn’t the right school for Elias.

    Perhaps they were right, McNair thought. She’d heard similar things before.

    Elias also didn’t want to go to school. He skipped one day, then another. McNair panicked. In Georgia, parents can be sent to jail for truancy when their kids miss five unexcused days.

    McNair started looking into a homeschooling program run by a mother she follows on Facebook. In the meantime, she emailed and called some Midtown staff for advice. She says she didn’t get a response. Finally, seven weeks after the family’s triumphant return to Midtown, McNair filed papers declaring her intention to homeschool Elias.

    It quickly proved challenging. Elias wouldn’t do any schoolwork when he was home alone. And when the homeschooling group met twice a week, she discovered, they required parents to pick up their children afterward instead of allowing them to take public transit or e-scooters. That was untenable.

    Elias wanted to stay at home and offered to take care of McNair’s uncle, who has dementia. “That was literally killing my soul the most,” said McNair. “That’s not a child’s job.”

    Hell, no, she told him — you only get one chance at high school.

    Elias Washington watches a video on his phone as he rests on a bed left by a previous tenant in his family’s new apartment in Atlanta. Credit: AP Photo/Brynn Anderson

    Then, one day, while she was loading the boys’ clothes into the washing machine at the Atlanta apartment, she received a call from an unknown Atlanta number. It was the woman who heads Atlanta Public Schools’ virtual program, telling her the roster was full.

    McNair asked the woman for her opinion on Elias’s situation. Maybe she should abandon the Atlanta apartment and enroll him in the Jonesboro high school.

    Let me stop you right there, the woman said. Is your son an athlete? If he transfers too many times, it can affect his ability to play basketball. And he’d probably lose credits and take longer to graduate. He needs to be in school — preferably Midtown — studying for midterms, she said. You need to put on your “big mama drawers” and take him back, she told McNair.

    The next day, Elias and his mother pulled up to Midtown. Outside the school, Elias asked if he had to go inside. Yes, she told him. This is your fault as much as it’s mine.

    Now, with Elias back in school every day, McNair can deliver food through Uber Eats without worrying about a police officer asking why her kid isn’t in school. If only she had pushed harder, sooner, for help with Elias, she thought. “I should have just gone down to the school and sat in their offices until they talked to me.”

    But it was easy for her to explain why she hadn’t. “I was running around doing so many other things just so we have a place to live, or taking care of my uncle, that I didn’t put enough of my energy there.”

    She wishes she could pay more attention to Elias. But so many things are pulling at her. And as fall marches toward winter, her struggle continues. After failing to keep up with the Jonesboro rent, she’s preparing to leave that house before the landlord sends people to haul her possessions to the curb.

    As an Uber driver, she has picked up a few traumatized mothers with their children after they got evicted. She helped them load the few things they could fit into her van. As they drove off, onlookers scavenged the leftovers.

    She has promised herself she’d never let that happen to her kids.

    Bianca Vázquez Toness is an Associated Press reporter who writes about the continuing impact of the pandemic on young people and their education.

    The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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  • Red school boards in a blue state asked for Trump’s help — and got it

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    MEAD, Wash. — A few weeks after President Donald Trump took office, the conservative school board leaders in this town near the Idaho border made a bet. 

    They would pit one Washington against the other and see what happened.

    For years, Democrats in control of the state had required every school district to have policies on the books that protect transgender students from bullying and prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity. The Mead school board unanimously approved a policy in 2019 to comply with the state guidelines, with little comment. Board members at the time asked only about potential cost and whether the student dress code also needed to change.

    In 2023, lingering frustration with Covid restrictions and a growing backlash to transgender rights helped propel conservatives onto the town’s school board, a dynamic similar to one that had played out in communities across the country. Then, last year, the state education department checked how many school district policies actually complied with Washington’s nondiscrimination laws. State officials found Mead’s needed updating on a few counts, such as staff training and when to use a student’s preferred pronouns.

    The board had 30 days to correct its policy, according to a Feb. 21 notice from the state. Trump by then had already signed a pair of executive orders proclaiming there are only two genders and banning transgender athletes from women’s sports.

    Taking their cue from a clear shift in White House policy, the Mead school board pleaded in a March 11 letter for help from the U.S. secretaries for education and justice.

    “We find ourselves caught between conflicting directives that threaten not only our federal funding but also the rights and values of the families we serve,” the board wrote. “Refusal to comply could prompt state retaliation in the form of withheld state funding, further threatening our ability to serve students in need.”

    It didn’t take long for the board’s gamble to pay off.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter featuring the most important stories in education. 

    The Mead school board’s letter — sent alongside complaints from several other Washington school districts — arrived just as the U.S. departments of Education and Justice prepared to launch a special investigations team to look into complaints of Title IX violations in colleges and schools.

    Title IX, a federal civil rights law from 1972, prohibits sex-based discrimination in education, and some on the right argue that allowing transgender girls to compete in school sports improperly disadvantages and discriminates against cisgender females. (Research to suggest transgender athletes have an advantage in sports is limited and inconclusive.) The joint team would fast-track resolutions and include civil rights attorneys from both departments.

    Their first target: the Office for Superintendent of Public Instruction, which oversees education for Washington state.

    “OSPI has threatened to withhold funding to school districts that refuse to comply with the OSPI policies that violate Title IX and its implementing regulations,” the U.S. Department of Education said in an April 30 letter announcing the investigation. The letter cited complaints from Mead and a half dozen other districts.

    The Hechinger Report, through open records requests, obtained thousands of pages of emails from the accounts of the Mead school board, its superintendent and other Washington school boards involved in the Title IX investigation. Their emails and interviews with conservative activists, elected officials, parents and educators across the state reveal a significant victory for school boards like Mead, which quietly strategized with a statewide network of parents and state Republican officials waiting for a shift in federal power before challenging Washington’s protections for transgender students. 

    The federal probe also underscores the second Trump administration’s intent to leverage federal authority to undermine progressive policies in blue states, even as experts expect the courts to ultimately determine the legality of the administration’s interpretation of Title IX. Already, the administration has launched similar probes into education agencies in California and Maine.

    In Mead, the federal involvement into local school policy alarmed some residents.

    “It is irresponsible and dangerous,” said Alaura Miller, a recent graduate of the Mead School District, which serves a former railway town turned bedroom community of Spokane. She came out as transgender in her late teens. Now she’s in college with plans to become a mental health counselor for LGBTQ+ youth in eastern Washington.

    “The school board’s emboldening the worst in people,” Miller said. “It’s not teaching community.”

    Alaura Miller, a graduate of the Mead school district, has advocated for its school board to support LGBTQ+ youth in her hometown. She plans to work as a mental health counselor in eastern Washington state. Credit: Margaret Albaugh for The Hechinger Report

    Related: Knitting, cheerleading, fishing: This is what a cellphone ban looks like in one school district 

    The escalation of this conflict to Washington, D.C., follows years of simmering tension between local conservatives and the overwhelming number of progressives who run the Evergreen State.

    In 2007, it was the first state to adopt rules that allowed transgender students to participate in school sports and competitions that aligned with their gender identity. Lawmakers three years later explicitly included students in nondiscrimination laws, which count gender identity as a protected class. And in 2012, the state issued formal guidelines that protected locker and restroom access for transgender students.

    Conservatives grumbled along the way. But they focused political attention elsewhere, including some early victories to block mandatory sex education in every grade and every school. Voters eventually established that mandate in a 2020 ballot measure.

    The true firestorm arrived in 2023, with passage of a bill that would allow housing shelters to notify state authorities, not parents, when runaway youth seek refuge and gender-affirming care.

    “That’s what started it all. That put parents’ rights on everyone’s radar, as under attack,” said David Spring, executive director of the Washington Parents Network, a statewide coalition that formed during the pandemic to protest school closures and mask mandates. 

    By then, allies of Trump started to pay attention to Washington state.

    The America First Legal Foundation, started by longtime Trump adviser Stephen Miller, represented a group of parents who sued in 2023 to fight the new protections for transgender youth in crisis. Courts dismissed their lawsuit, but Spring’s coalition — and $16 million in political contributions — built momentum behind a 2024 ballot measure to create a “parents’ bill of rights.” The initiative, among other provisions, required schools to inform parents in advance of any medical services offered to their children. Proponents of the measure argue Democrats gutted it with a pair of student safety bills passed earlier this year.

    A parents’ rights-focused slate of candidates, meanwhile, secured a 4-1 conservative majority in 2023 on the school board in Mead, where student enrollment hovers just above 10,000 students. About 2 in 5 students qualify as low income and nearly 4 in 5 identify as white.

    The new board wasted little time before setting a clear agenda. “Voters made it clear tonight that they want a strong school board that represents parents,” Board President Michael Cannon, who won reelection, told local media at the time.

    The Trump administration launched an investigation into Washington state after the Mead school board and several other communities asked for federal intervention. Credit: Margaret Albaugh for The Hechinger Report

    In February 2024, the board adopted a resolution opposing a state policy that would require curriculum inclusive of “the histories, contributions, and perspectives of historically marginalized groups,” including LGBTQ+ people, saying it subverted local control over education. The board also joined with its counterparts from two dozen other districts in a campaign to prohibit transgender athletes from playing on female sports teams.

    The effort failed, but some residents took notice of a change in their community. One mother with students in Mead schools wrote to the board in December, sharing a statement from the Washington State LGBTQ Commission that condemned the board’s campaign.

    “It sends a very clear message to our children that Mead does NOT support and include all students,” her email reads. Writing from her work email account, she identified herself as a state employee active with the LGBTQ+ resources group for public workers.

    Alan Nolan, one of the new conservatives on the board, responded by notifying the mother’s employer that she may have broken laws against using government resources for personal matters.

    “Are you aware of her activities?” Nolan wrote to her supervisors. Nolan declined interview requests for this story, instead referring The Hechinger Report to the board’s previous statements on the Title IX investigation.

    Alan Nolan, one of the newer conservative members of the Mead school board, speaks during a Sept. 8 board meeting. In 2023, voters elected a parents rights-focused slate of candidates to secure a 4-1 conservative majority on the board. Credit: Margaret Albaugh for The Hechinger Report

    Cannon, the board president, defended Nolan’s decision to contact the parent’s employer: “He was saying, ‘Quit trying to push us around by using your state title.’”

    Cannon also disputed whether the board’s actions made any students or families feel unwelcome at Mead schools.

    “That certainly is not the intention at all,” he said. “We want to make every student feel like they belong as much as any other student.”

    Related: Trump’s actions to dismantle the Department of Education, and more

    By then, Trump had reclaimed the White House — after his campaign and Republicans spent $215 million on anti-transgender advertising, according to tracking firm AdImpact. In the presidential election, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris commanded a nearly 20 percentage point lead in the overall Washington vote; in Spokane County, a slim majority of voters supported Trump.

    Adrien Leavitt, staff attorney with the ACLU of Washington, said the GOP’s focus on transgender issues in the campaign trickled into local politics in places like Mead.

    “When vitriol toward trans people became a nationwide talking point for the right to win the presidency, that invigorated a lot of people to invoke the same harmful rhetoric in their local communities,” Leavitt said. “We think of Washington as a liberal state. Nonetheless, it’s a very diverse state.”

    OSPI, in its statewide civil rights review, required 59 out of 295 school districts in Washington to make corrections to their nondiscrimination policy, and 52 of them did so, according to agency data. Another 93 districts received notices to correct their gender-inclusive schools policy, but only 55 districts had as of earlier this year. 

    After the November election, Spring’s statewide network of parents worked with school boards to prepare for a shift in “the other Washington.” Nearly two dozen boards started a campaign to reverse the state’s policy on transgender athletes, and a growing clash over student pronouns in one district accelerated their efforts. The network’s members met weekly on Zoom, and Spring in early February filed a federal complaint over Title IX before boards like Mead — roughly 30 in total, Spring estimated — soon followed.

    “That’s a tenth of school districts doing this kind of revolt. School boards just want to run their schools,” he said.

    Michael Cannon, president of the Mead school board, was first elected in 2019. The school board was one of many that challenged Washington state’s Covid protocols. Credit: Margaret Albaugh for The Hechinger Report

    In Mead, after the board learned it had 30 days to correct its transgender policy, Nolan shared details of the state’s findings with county and state GOP leaders and the Silent Majority Foundation, a conservative legal nonprofit in eastern Washington. In response to a mother with students in nearby Central Valley schools who asked the board for advice on how to join the fight, Nolan painted an ominous picture of the stakes: “OSPI and the legislature intend to threaten all districts to adopt policies well in excess of what state law requires or face loss of funding.”

    Mead schools collect nearly $9 million in federal funding, or about 5 percent of its total budget; another 80 percent comes from the state. State code grants OSPI the authority to order the termination of funding to districts that violate nondiscrimination laws, but the agency has never withheld funding for noncompliance, according to spokeswoman Katy Payne. Still, the Mead school board cited the risk of losing funding — both state and federal — in its plea for help to the federal Education Department.

    “It shouldn’t be a choice of which funding to lose,” Cannon told The Hechinger Report. “We just don’t want to risk any funding. That just can’t be on the table for us.”

    Superintendent Travis Hanson, who declined several interview requests, said in an email that “culture-war conflicts” — specifically, the political shifts that lead to dramatic changes in local, state and federal education policy — have placed district leaders in an impossible position.

    “The increasingly acrimonious debates on these issues are generally split along partisan lines and represent a complex situation for district leaders: navigating socio-political conflict we did not create but are nonetheless responsible for managing,” wrote Hanson, who joined the district in July 2023, just months before the election of the new slate of board members.

    Related: School clubs for gay students move underground after Kentucky’s anti-LGBTQ law goes into effect

    Superintendent Travis Hanson listens during a Sept. 8 meeting of the Mead school board. He took over as superintendent in July 2023. Credit: Margaret Albaugh for The Hechinger Report

    In late March, the board took another step that further increased tensions: It proposed changes to the transgender policy — but not to comply with the state. Rather, the board would require students to get permission before using their preferred locker room or restroom and would not allow transgender students to room on overnight trips based on their preferred gender. School staff, under the changes, would not need a student’s permission before telling their parents about their gender identity.

    A transgender student at Mead High School wrote to the board urging members considering the issue to be sensitive to students “who may rely on school to be their one safe space.”

    Nolan replied first by stating his appreciation for the student’s willingness to engage in a civil discussion, but then he issued a vague warning to the teenager.

    “I don’t know the source of your gender confusion nor will I pretend I can provide a solution to resolve it,” Nolan told the student. “Fooling yourself to believe you can become that sex is a dangerous lie and those who have bought into it often pay a heavy price.”

    The student’s mother responded within hours.

    She balked at Nolan’s allusion to a “heavy price” and called him presumptuous and patronizing for commenting on her child’s gender identity.

    “We deliberately chose to live within the Mead school district upon recommendation from other family members — a decision I am increasingly questioning,” the mother wrote. “You can’t just wish away kids who are different, and deliberately isolating or driving away families like mine will come with its own heavy price.”

    Nolan shared the emails with Cannon, and later sent the mother an apology.

    “While we may hold different views on the matter, my response should have been more thoughtful in its tone as it is understandably a topic of significant personal importance,” he wrote. 

    Related: A principal lost her job after she came out. Her conservative community rallied around her

    Other residents praised the board, casting it as their ally in a fight against encroaching state mandates.

    One couple with a young daughter wrote: “They have exceeded government outreach for far too long and it is time to take back local control, as the system was designed.”

    In the interview with Hechinger, Cannon agreed. And he argued conservatives in Washington state have only acted on the defense.

    “The irony is that we’re responding to what they’re doing,” he said of Democrats. “They’ve used the Legislature to force school districts to adhere to their political ideology. None of this originated with these conservative school boards that they like to vilify.”

    Trump has continued to wield federal authority over states on Title IX and other issues, even while he has pledged to return control of education to individual states and communities and signed an executive order in March to do so. Later that month, newly confirmed Education Secretary Linda McMahon previewed the investigations to come.

    In a Dear Colleague letter to superintendents, McMahon raised concerns about the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a law that protects the personal records of students, and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), which gives parents the right to review instructional materials. The letter argued that some states and districts had turned “the concept of privacy on its head” and used the laws to prevent parents from knowing if their child started transitioning at school.

    The investigation into Washington state hinges on allowing transgender students to compete in female sports but also potential violations of those student privacy laws. Elizabeth Laird, director of equity in civic technology at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, described the administration’s legal reasoning as going beyond what Congress intended.

    “This investigation looks like the latest instance of the Trump administration weaponizing its ability to withhold federal funds to enforce its ideological agenda,” Laird said.

    In an email, an Education Department spokesperson said only that the investigation into Washington state was ongoing. The Justice Department declined to comment.

    Related: Which schools and colleges are being investigated by the Trump administration?  

    Chris Reykdal, the Washington state schools chief, described the federal government’s use of the privacy provisions as an attempt to mandate discrimination.

    “My office will enforce our current laws as we are required to do until Congress changes the law and/or federal courts invalidate Washington state’s laws,” Reykdal said in a statement. “Unless, and until that happens, we will be following Washington state’s laws, not a president’s political leanings expressed through unlawful orders.”

    Some states and districts have already faced consequences from similar investigations. In Maine, the U.S. Department of Agriculture — in a related Title IX investigation — froze federal money meant to feed children in schools, daycares and after-school programs. The state sued, and won a court-approved settlement to stop the freezing of funds. The Trump administration has initiated similar investigations and funding fights in California and in 10 school districts, in Colorado, Kansas and Virginia.

    Spring, with the statewide parents network in Washington, did not exactly celebrate the federal intervention in so many school districts. He’s a conservative who prefers local control, especially of education, but said state laws and rights can’t supersede federal law at the schoolhouse.

    “We right now have a state ordering school districts around, to break federal law,” Spring said.

    Related: At Moms for Liberty national summit, a singular focus on anti-trans issues 

    Ultimately, courts are likely to continue weighing in on whether these federal actions can be enforced. Conflicting rulings in the federal judiciary, however, make it difficult to predict the outcome. 

    Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which includes Washington state, barred Idaho from enforcing a ban — the first in the nation — on transgender athletes participating in girls’ and women’s sports teams. The 4th Circuit, also last year, ruled that a similar ban in West Virginia violated Title IX. 

    Then, this year, the Supreme Court dealt a significant blow to the transgender rights movement, deciding in a 6-3 split that states can prohibit gender-affirming medical care for minors. A Trump-appointed judge in Tennessee also scrapped a set of Title IX rules that former President Joe Biden’s administration proposed to strengthen protections for LGBTQ+ students. And on its upcoming docket, the Supreme Court will hear two cases on whether bans on transgender women in sports violate the Constitution. 

    “Trump and the alt-right folks want to suggest that civil rights are a zero-sum game,” said Hunter Iannucci, counsel with the National Women’s Law Center, a nonprofit legal group. “They’re trying to position this so Title IX operates only for those students, or only these students can have rights, and that’s just not accurate.”

    Back in Mead, the school board in April paused consideration of its contested updates to the transgender policy. Board members continued to hear from both angry and approving members of the public until deciding, in May, to indefinitely postpone any formal action until the federal departments finish their Title IX investigation. The board meetings and especially portions for public comment have been largely quiet since then.

    But Miller, the recent Mead graduate, still attends the meetings to speak on behalf of transgender students who remain in the district.

    “There are people in the community willing to stand up,” she said. “Even though we’re scared of violence and discrimination, we still have a voice. We still exist.”

    Contact staff writer Neal Morton at 212-678-8247, on Signal at nealmorton.99, or via email at morton@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about Title IX was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    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.

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    Neal Morton

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  • Many children with ADHD miss a crucial step in treatment

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    When pediatricians diagnose preschoolers with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, there are clear steps they are supposed to take.

    Families should first be referred to behavior therapy, which teaches caregivers how to better support their children and manage challenging behaviors that may be related to ADHD. If therapy isn’t making a significant difference, the American Academy of Pediatrics advises, pediatricians can then consider medication.

    Nationwide, this process — behavior therapy, then medication if needed — isn’t being followed as often as it should, according to a study recently released by Stanford Medicine and published in JAMA Network Open. Instead, more than 42 percent of 3- to 5-year-olds with ADHD were prescribed medication within a month of their diagnosis.

    Missing out on behavior therapy has worrisome implications for children and families, said Dr. Yair Bannett, assistant professor of pediatrics at Stanford Medicine and lead author of the study. Behavioral management training for parents over the course of several months has been found to reduce children’s ADHD symptoms and behavioral problems, and improve parent skills and their relationships with their children. 

    Without that support, families may be left facing additional challenges. Behavioral training “reduces the chaos in the house and can improve the quality of life for the parents and the child,” Bannett said. 

    There are several reasons families may be missing this intervention. Some pediatricians aren’t familiar with the purpose of behavior therapy, Bannett added, which is specifically aimed at the adults who support children with ADHD, not the children. “It’s really more of an advanced type of parenting course,” he said. Families also may have trouble finding affordable local therapists.

    Bannett said parents should use three key practices to support young children with ADHD. (These strategies also work well for teachers, he added.)

    Focus on building a strong, positive relationship: Having a strong attachment between the child and parent or teacher is an important first step to managing behavior, Bannett said. That means spending quality one-on-one time with the child. “That’s the child’s motivation, they want to please you,” he added. “Without that first piece, none of this will work.”

    Use positive reinforcement: Rather than punishing a child’s negative behavior, Bannett said, parents and teachers will see more success if they praise good behaviors and develop reward systems to encourage them.  

    Adjust the child’s environment: Children with ADHD may thrive with simple environmental changes, such as “visual schedules” — charts that use pictures to show a child daily activities or tasks — and a consistent, structured routine.

    Parents who can’t find in-person therapists can substitute online therapy, Bannett said. The training is also useful for families even after their children are prescribed medication. 

    To make sure more families have access to helpful strategies, Bannett would like to see more education for doctors and clinicians on these best practices. 

    “The pediatricians could also counsel families in the office about these techniques,” Bannett said. “Some written materials and resources could be enough” to at least introduce these practices, he added. “That’s what I’m hoping could make a change.”

    Reading list

    This story about children with ADHD was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    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.

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  • Kids with obesity do worse in school. One reason may be teacher bias  – The Hechinger Report

    Kids with obesity do worse in school. One reason may be teacher bias  – The Hechinger Report

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    Almost every day at the public elementary school she attended in Montgomery County, Maryland, Stephanie heard comments about her weight. Kids in her fifth grade class called her “fatty” instead of her name, she recalled; others whispered, “Do you want a cupcake?” as she walked by. One classmate spread a rumor that she had diabetes. Stephanie was so incensed by his teasing that she hit him and got suspended, she said.

    But nothing the kids did upset her as much as the conduct of her teachers.

    For years teachers ignored her in class, even when she was the only one raising her hand, said Stephanie, whose surname is being withheld to protect her privacy. “I was like, ‘Do you not like me or something?” she recalled.

    She felt invisible. “They would sit me in the back. I couldn’t see the board,” she said. When Stephanie spoke up once in middle school, a teacher told her, “I can’t put you anywhere else because you’re going to block other students.” She burned with embarrassment when her classmates laughed.

    Nearly 20 percent of children in the U.S. — almost 15 million kids — were considered obese as of the 2020 school year, a number that has likely increased since the pandemic (new data is expected next year). The medical conditions associated with obesity, such as asthma, diabetes and sleep apnea, are well known. Children with obesity are also more likely to have depression, anxiety and low self-esteem.

    Far less discussed are the educational outcomes for these children. Research has found that students with obesity are more likely to get lower grades in reading and math and to repeat a grade, and twice as likely to be placed in special education or remedial classes. They are also significantly more likely to miss school and be suspended or receive detention, and less likely than their peers to attend and graduate from college.

    Researchers have suggested different reasons for this “obesity achievement gap,” including biological causes (such as reduced cortical thickness in the brain in children with obesity, which is linked to compromised executive functioning, and higher levels of the hormone cortisol, linked to poorer academic performance). Researchers have also examined indirect causes of poor performance, such as that kids with obesity might miss school more often because of medical appointments or bullying. 

    But a relatively new area of research has shifted attention to educator bias. Studies have found that teachers often perceive children with obesity as emotional, unmotivated, less competent and non-compliant. That can lead to teachers giving these students fewer opportunities to participate in class, less positive feedback and lower grades.

    Weight bias is part of American culture, said Rebecca Puhl,deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health at the University of Connecticut, who has studied childhood obesity and bias. “Teachers are not immune to those attitudes,” she said. While many school districts have tried in the last 20 years to reduce childhood obesity through more nutritious meals and increased exercise, Puhl and other experts say schools also need to train teachers and students to recognize and confront the weight bias they say is hampering the education of an increasing number of children.

    Some advocates argue that childhood obesity, which has steadily risen over the last 40 years, should be seen as an “academic risk factor” because of its lasting effects on educational and economic mobility. “There’s certainly been a big push for racial and ethnic diversity, for gender identity diversity, that’s so important,” said Puhl. “But weight is often left off the radar, it’s often not getting addressed.”

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.

    Stephanie, now 18, has struggled with obesity her whole life. Within her family, being overweight never felt like a problem. But school was different.

    Beginning in kindergarten, her classmates told her she looked like a Teletubby, she said. Even teachers made comments related to her weight. “If someone brought pastries for a birthday, they would ask, ‘Are you sure you want to eat that? Why don’t you try carrots and hummus?’” Stephanie recalled. Once Stephanie listened as an educator told her mother to put her on a diet. She stopped eating lunch at school after that. “When I was home, I ran to food because it was like the only place I would feel comfortable eating,” she said.

    There were a handful of occasions teachers noticed her for something besides her weight. Stephanie smiled as she recalled a time when an English teacher praised an essay she wrote; when she won second place prize in a coding camp; when she was named ‘cadet of the year’ in JROTC during remote school during the pandemic. In elementary school, she received the President’s Award for Educational Achievement, designed to reward students who work hard, often in the face of obstacles to learning.

    Stephanie, 18, holds an old photo of her taken in the sixth grade. Credit: Moriah Ratner for The Hechinger Report

    It wasn’t enough to make her feel like she had educators on her side. “In school, they want you to confide in teachers, they made us believe that we can go to teachers for anything,” she said. “If you have no friends or if there’s no one to trust — you can always find a teacher who you can feel safe with, you can always trust them. So, I would try, but they always pushed me away.”

    One interaction in particular shattered her confidence. Toward the end of seventh grade, Stephanie stayed to ask a question after class. Her teacher asked if she was a new student. “‘How did you not notice I was in your class and the entire year I turned in work?” Stephanie wondered. “That’s when I started to feel like I’m a shadow.” From that point on she stopped caring about getting good grades. 

    Liliana López, a spokesperson for Montgomery County Public Schools, said that teachers are not “expressly trained on weight bias,” but they “elevate all the identities individuals hold as valuable and we work with staff to identify ways they can create spaces full of affirmation, validation and significance for those identities.” Celeste Fernandez, spokesperson for the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, said her organization does not offer specific training or information on weight bias.

    Related: A surprising remedy for teens in mental health crises

    Researchers are increasingly identifying links between poor outcomes for students with obesity and teacher’s attitudes toward kids. In 2015, Erica Kenney, an associate professor of public health nutrition at Harvard University, helped lead a team that analyzed data from a representative sample of children from across the nation. The researchers examined, among other things, whether the kids’ weight gain influenced teachers’ perceptions of their abilities and their standardized test scores.

    Gaining weight didn’t change a child’s test scores, the researchers found, but, based on surveys, it was significantly linked to teachers having lower perceptions of students’ ability, for both girls and boys. In other words, kids who gained weight faced a small but significant“academic penalty” from their teachers, Kenney said.

    A separate study, involving 130 teachers, found that educators were more likely to give lower grades to essays if they believed a child who was obese had written them. For the study, Kristin Finn, a professor in the school of education at Canisius University, in Buffalo, New York, took four essays written at a sixth grade level and paired them with stock photographs of students who looked similar but some had been digitally altered to appear overweight. The overweight students received moderately lower scores.

    As an elementary schooler, Stephanie heard comments about her weight almost every day. Credit: Moriah Ratner for The Hechinger Report

    Finn found that the teachers were more likely to view the students with obesity as academically inferior, “messy” and more likely to need tutoring. In surveys, teachers also predicted that students with obesity weren’t good in other subjects such as math and social studies.

    “To be able to make a judgment about somebody’s mathematical abilities based on a short essay seemed pretty remarkable,” said Finn. Yet, teachers maintained that they were personally unbiased in their evaluations. “They all think that they’re treating these children fairly,” she said.

    Teachers’ perceptions of children’s academic potential matters: Their recommendations can affect not only students’ grades, but also their access to higher level courses, competitive programs, specialized camps and post-secondary opportunities including college.

    Girls are at particular risk of being stigmatized for being obese, research has found. In one study, nearly a third of women who were overweight said they had had a teacher who was biased against them because of their weight. Students who face other barriers including poverty are also more likely to be penalized for being overweight, what is called a “double disadvantage.”

    Related: One state mandates teaching climate change in almost every subject – even PE

    Covid, which hit during the spring of Stephanie’s eighth grade year, was a welcome interruption. She loved learning in the privacy of her home and not being “judged for my body,” she said.

    When schools reopened in the fall of 10th grade, Stephanie couldn’t bear the thought of returning. She had gained weight during remote learning, some 100 pounds. Citing her asthma and her father’s diabetes, she applied for a waiver that would permit her to attend classes virtually. But “the real reason was because I was ashamed of what I look like,” she said.

    She received the waiver and continued her high school studies at home.

    After a 2022 diagnosis of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, which had made her body resistant to insulin, Stephanie decided to undergo bariatric surgery. Following the operation, Stephanie lost more than half her body weight. When she returned to her high school to take exams, people were suddenly nice to her, she said. It frustrated her, she said: “I’m the same person.”

    Negative perceptions of people with obesity start early. In one study, children as young as 3 who were shown drawings of people of varying weights perceived the obese people as “mean” more often than “nice.” In another study, when 5- and 6-year-olds were shown images of children of different body sizes, most said they did not want to invite the heavier children to their birthday party.

    Experts argue that administrators and teachers must become more sensitive to and knowledgeable about the challenges facing children with obesity. Yolandra Hancock, a pediatrician who specializes in patients with obesity and a former teacher, said she frequently intervenes with educators on behalf of her patients with obesity. One 7-year-old boy was often late to class because he found it difficult to climb the three flights of stairs to get there.

    “The assistant principal actually told him if he wasn’t so fat, he would be able to get up the stairs faster,” Hancock said. She explained that the student wasn’t walking slowly because of “laziness” but because obesity can cause a bowing of the leg bones, making it hard to navigate steps. Giving the student more time between classes or arranging for his classes to be on the same floor would have been simple fixes, she said.

    In another case, an elementary school student with obesity was getting into trouble for requesting frequent bathroom breaks, a result of his large abdomen putting pressure on his bladder, similar to what happens during pregnancy. “He came close to having an accident,” Hancock said. “His teachers wouldn’t allow him to go to the restroom and would call his mother to complain that he wasn’t focusing.” She wrote to the school requesting that he be allowed to go to the restroom whenever he needed. “If you don’t allow them to do what it is that their body needs,” Hancock said, “you’re creating more barriers to them being able to learn.”

    Research has found that teachers can play an important “buffering role” in reducing bullying for children with obesity. In one study, children who believed educators would step in to prevent future bullying did better in school than those who didn’t share this conviction.

    But often teachers don’t intervene, said Puhl, the University of Connecticut researcher, because they believe that if students “want the teasing to stop, they need to lose weight.” Yet “body weight is not a simple issue of eating less and exercising more,” she added, but is instead a highly complex condition influenced by genetics, hormones, culture, environment and economics.Bullying and mistreatment don’t motivate people to lose weight, Puhl said, but often contribute to binge eating, reduced physical activity and weight gain.

    One way to help, would be for schools to include body weight in their anti-bullying policies, Puhl said. At present, most schools’ anti-bullying policies protect children on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender identity, disability and religious beliefs, “but very few mention body weight.” That lack is really shocking, she added, “because body weight is one of the most prevalent reasons that kids are bullied today.”

    This spring, Stephanie went back to school to attend her graduation ceremony and receive her diploma. She still struggles with body image but is determined to put her negative experiences behind her and start fresh in college this fall, she says.

    She plans to study psychology. “I want to understand people better, because I didn’t feel heard and there were a lot of things I didn’t speak about,” she said. “I just want to help people.”

    Contact the editor of this story, Caroline Preston, at 212-870-8965 or preston@hechingerreport.org.

    This story about childhood obesity awareness was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    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.

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  • OPINION: If we don’t do more to help homeless students, we will perpetuate an ongoing crisis

    OPINION: If we don’t do more to help homeless students, we will perpetuate an ongoing crisis

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    Young people experiencing family instability and trauma are at increased risk for precarious living situations and interrupted educational experiences. And students who leave school before graduation are considerably more likely to experience homelessness and less likely to enroll in college. 

    By failing to systematically and preemptively address youth homelessness through our schools, we are increasing the chances of hundreds of thousands of young people becoming and remaining homeless. 

    We can change this. 

    Schools are key to intervention. Schools can and should serve as indispensable resources for students who are experiencing unstable housing or outright homelessness. Lamentably, too often, there aren’t enough staff members to carry out existing support programs, much less manage additional programs designed for youth who are at risk for or are already experiencing homelessness.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.

    I saw these issues firsthand when I worked as the chief of staff at Chicago Public Schools, but they are prevalent at schools nationwide. For roughly 700,000 youth ages 13 to 17, not having stable or any housing is top of mind, a recent study found. 

    Here are some suggestions for identifying youth at risk and tackling youth homelessness systemically. 

    Paying more attention to risk factors will increase the chance that at-risk students will be identified earlier and interventions enacted. 

    We’ve learned a lot about risk factors at the independent, nonpartisan policy research center I lead. For example, a family’s income is a strong indicator of risk, so school officials and staff should be hypersensitive in districts where families are struggling financially.

    Yet appearances alone won’t necessarily indicate which students are struggling. Many schools rely on student self-reporting, which students are less likely to do if they don’t know there are resources available or if they are too ashamed to reveal their status. 

    Schools should initiate a universal screening at the beginning of the school year to gauge if students are vulnerable to homelessness. All staff should routinely be trained to look for signs of homelessness and risk factors. 

    Not everyone at a school needs to deeply engage with each student, but they should be aware of signs so they can make referrals to a social worker or the school’s McKinney-Vento liaison if needed.

    The federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act includes a requirement for schools to provide “comparable” transportation for homeless students to get to and from school. And while every school has a McKinney-Vento liaison who administers programs funded by federal dollars, at many schools that assistance boils down to just providing a bus pass for homeless students, nothing more. 

    If their school is only able to provide a bus pass, students’ many other needs — like clothing and mental health care — will not be met. 

    Having more school social workers would also help identify students struggling with housing stability and match them to programs and services that could meet their needs. 

    Another significant risk factor for homelessness is dropping out of school. A truancy officer’s role is critical when students drop out. Administrators should be asking themselves what it takes to get kids back in school to stay. The goal of that position should not be to identify and punish students but to figure out what resources they need to get them back to school and keep them there. 

    Related: Couch surfing, living in cars: Housing insecurity derails foster kids’ college dreams

    One way to ensure that interventions are available and applied would be to mirror the work of the Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse, the place where evidence-based interventions for child welfare are vetted, rated and made eligible for federal reimbursement. 

    The inclusion of an evidence-based clearinghouse in a federal program is a legislative component that has historically enabled bipartisan buy-in. Since schools are already burdened by tight budgets and overworked staff, adding a clearinghouse for homelessness prevention efforts would allow qualified outside agencies to provide — and be reimbursed for — evidence-based intervention services. 

    Two other points not to be overlooked are that youth homelessness is experienced disproportionately by Black, Hispanic and LGBTQ youth, and youth homelessness is a leading pathway into adult homelessness. That’s why supporting young people at risk for or experiencing homelessness — through substantial investments and increased services — is a significant way to address racial inequity and break these cycles. 

    The point of school is to educate and nurture our youth so they can successfully pass on to the next phase of life. If we work together, we can disrupt the brutal cycle of homelessness and give more young people the future they deserve. 

    Bryan Samuels is executive director of Chapin Hall. He previously served as chief of staff at Chicago Public Schools, director of Illinois DCFS, and commissioner of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the first Obama administration.

    This story about homeless students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

    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.

    Join us today.

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  • What to know about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz on education

    What to know about Kamala Harris and Tim Walz on education

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    Education vaulted to the forefront of conversations about the presidential race when Democratic nominee Kamala Harris announced Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz, the governor of Minnesota, worked for roughly two decades in public schools, as a geography teacher and football coach. He has championed investments in public education: For example, in March 2023, he signed a bill to make school meals free to all students in public schools.

    Harris, a former U.S. senator and attorney general in California, has less experience in education than her running mate. But her record suggests that she would back policies to make child care more affordable, protect immigrant and LGBTQ+ students and promote broader access to higher education through free community college and loan forgiveness. Like Walz, she has defended schools and teachers against Republican charges that they are “indoctrinating” young people; she has also spoken about her own experience of being bused in Berkeley, California, as part of a program to desegregate the city’s schools.

    Harris and Walz have been endorsed by both the country’s two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, which tend to support Democratic candidates.

    We will update this guide as the candidates reveal more information about their education plans. You can also read about the Republican ticket’s education ideas.

    Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.

    Early childhood

    Child care

    Harris has been a vocal supporter of child care legislation during her time in the Biden administration, though the proposals have had a mixed record of success.

    During the pandemic, the Biden administration provided $39 billion in child care aid to help keep programs afloat.

    The administration lowered the cost of child care for some military families and supported raising pay for federally funded Head Start teachers to create parity with public school teachers.

    Earlier this year, Harris announced a new federal rule that would reduce lower child care costs for low-income families that receive child care assistance through a federally funded program. That same rule also requires states to pay child care providers on a more reliable basis.

    Walz has also supported child care programs as governor of Minnesota. Earlier this year, he announced a new $6 million child care grant program aimed at expanding child care capacity, which followed a 2023 grant program that cemented pandemic-era support so programs could increase wages for child care workers. — Jackie Mader

    Family leave and tax benefits

    As soon as she became the presumptive Democratic nominee in July, Harris reaffirmed her support for paid family leave, which also was part of the platform she proposed as a candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential contest. Harris provided the tie-breaking Senate vote that temporarily increased the child tax credit during the pandemic and has proposed making that tax credit permanent.

    Walz also was behind Minnesota’s child tax credit increase in 2023, and successfully pushed forward a statewide paid family and medical leave law that takes effect in 2026. — J.M.

    Pre-K

    In 2021, the Biden administration proposed a universal preschool program as part of a multi-trillion-dollar social spending plan called Build Back Better. The plan ultimately failed to win backing from the Senate.

    Earlier this year, Walz signed a package of child-focused bills into law. one of which expands the state’s public pre-K program by 9,000 seats and provides pay for teachers who attend structured literacy training. — J.M.

    K-12

    Artificial intelligence, education technology, cybersecurity

    Harris has played a key role in leading the Biden administration’s AI initiatives, particularly since the launch of ChatGPT. Biden signed an executive order on AI in October 2023, which directed the Education Department to develop within a year resources, policies and guidance on AI and to create an “AI toolkit” for schools.

    While Harris hasn’t specifically addressed education technology, in the Biden administration, the Education Department earlier this year released the National Education Technology Plan to serve as a blueprint for schools on how to implement technology in education, how to address inequities in the use and design of ed tech and how to offer ways to bridge the country’s digital divide.

    In 2023, the current administration announced several new initiatives to tackle cybersecurity threats in K-12 schools, including a three-year pilot program through the Federal Communications Commission that will provide up to $200 million to help school districts that are eligible for FCC’s E-Rate program cover the cost of cybersecurity services and equipment. — Javeria Salman

    Immigrant students

    Harris has vowed to protect those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which delays deportation for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. The Biden administration has also used its bully pulpit to remind states and school districts that all children regardless of immigration status have a constitutional right to a free public education. As a senator in 2018, Harris sponsored legislation designed to reunite migrant families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration, although family separation has continued on a much smaller scale in the Biden administration. In Minnesota, Walz signed legislation that starting next year will provide free public college tuition to undocumented students from low-income families. — Neal Morton

    LGBTQ+ students and Title IX

    Harris and Walz have both expressed support for LGBTQ+ students and teachers. As a senator, Harris supported the Equality Act in 2019, which would have expanded protections in the Civil Rights Act on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in education, among other areas. In a speech to the American Federation of Teachers, Harris decried the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” laws passed by Florida and other states in recent years. Walz has a long history of supporting LGBTQ+ students in Minnesota, where he was the faculty adviser of Mankato West High School’s first Gay-Straight Alliance club in the 1990s. In 2021, Walz signed an executive order restricting insurance coverage for so-called conversion therapy for minors and directing a state agency to investigate potential “discriminatory practice related to conversion therapy.” Walz signed an executive order in 2023 protecting gender-affirming health care. Earlier this year, he signed a law barring libraries from banning books based on ideology; book bans nationwide have largely targeted LGTBQ+-themed books.

    The Biden administration announced significant rule changes to Title IX in 2024 that undid some of the changes the Trump administration made, including removing a mandate for colleges to have live hearings and cross-examinations when investigating sexual assaults on campus. The current administration also expanded protections for students based on sexual orientation and gender identity, which had been temporarily blocked in more than two dozen states and in schools attended by children of members of Moms for Liberty, Young America’s Foundation and Female Athletes United. — Ariel Gilreath

    Native students

    As vice president, Harris worked in an administration that promised to improve education for Native Americans, including a 10-year plan to revitalize Native languages. The president’s infrastructure bill, passed in 2021, created a $3 billion program to broaden access to high-speed internet on tribal lands — a major barrier for students trying to learn at home during the pandemic. During his time as governor, Walz signed legislation last year to make college tuition-free for Native American students in Minnesota and required K-12 teachers to complete training on Native American history. Walz also required every state agency, including the department of education, to appoint tribal-state liaisons and formally consult with tribal governments.

    Walz spent part of his early career teaching in small rural schools, including on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. — N.M.

    School choice

    Harris, who was endorsed by the nation’s largest public school teachers unions, has voiced support for public schools, but has said little about school vouchers or school choice. Walz does not support private-school vouchers, opposing statewide private-school voucher legislation introduced in 2021 by Republicans in Minnesota. — A.G.

    School meals

    One of Walz’s signature legislative achievements was supporting a bill that provides free school breakfasts and lunches to public and charter school students in Minnesota, regardless of household income. Walz, who signed the law in 2023, made Minnesota one of only eight states to have a universal school meal policy. The new law is expected to cost about $480 million over the next two years.

    The Biden administration also expanded access to free school lunch by making it easier for schools to provide food without collecting eligibility information on every child’s family. — Christina A. Samuels

    School prayer

    The Biden administration has sought to protect students from feeling pressured into praying in schools. Following the 2022 Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton, the federal Education Department published updated guidance saying that while the Constitution permits school employees to pray during the workday, they may not “compel, coerce, persuade, or encourage students to join in the employee’s prayer or other religious activity.” — Caroline Preston

    Special education

    As a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, Harris released a “children’s agenda” in 2019 that, among other provisions, called for a large boost in special education spending.

    When Congress first passed the federal law that is now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, it authorized spending to cover up to 40 percent of the “excess costs” of educating students with disabilities compared to their peers. But Congress has never come close to meeting that goal, and today the federal government distributes only about 15 percent of the total cost of educating students with disabilities. The shortfall is “immoral,” Harris told members of the National Education Association at a 2019 candidates forum.

    The Biden administration also has proposed large increases in special education spending, but proposals for full funding of special education have not made it through Congress. — C.A.S.

    Student mental health, school safety

    As California attorney general, Harris created a Bureau of Children’s Justice to address childhood trauma, among other issues. She has spoken out about the mental health toll of trauma, including from poverty, and the need for more resources and “culturally competent” mental health providers. But a 2011 law she pushed for as attorney general allowing parents of chronically absent students to be criminally charged later drew criticism for its toll on families, particularly those who are Black or Hispanic. Harris has said she regrets the law’s “unintended consequences.”

    The Biden administration’s actions on student mental health includes expanding the pipeline of school psychologists, streamlining payment and delivery of school mental health services and directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to develop new ways of assessing social media’s impact on youth mental health.

    As vice president, Harris leads the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which was created after lobbying by survivors of school shootings to support gun safety regulations. She has touted the administration’s efforts to prevent school shootings, including a grant program that has awarded roughly $500 million to schools for “evidence-based solutions,” including anonymous reporting systems for threats and training for school employees on preventing school violence. 

    In Minnesota, Walz’s 2022 budget called for $210 million in spending to help schools support students experiencing mental health challenges. “As a former classroom teacher, I know that students carry everything that happens outside the classroom into the classroom every day, and this is why it is imperative that our students get the resources they deserve,” he said. — C.P.

    Teachers unions, pandemic recovery

    The Biden administration has close ties to the nations’ largest teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, the latter of which is the largest labor union of any kind in the country. First lady Jill Biden, who teaches community college courses, is a member of the NEA. Walz, a former teacher, is also an NEA member.

    The administration was criticized for discussing with the AFT what kinds of safety measures should accompany the reopening of public schools after the pandemic.

    Since 2021, the Biden administration has poured billions into helping public schools recover from the pandemic in various ways: to pay for more staff and tutors and upgrade facilities to improve air conditioning and ventilation, among other things. However, academic performance has yet to rebound, and the recovery has been uneven, with wealthier white students more likely to have made up ground lost during remote classes and Black and Latino students less likely to have done so.

    The two unions, which had supported reelecting Biden, quickly threw their support to Harris and Walz. “Educators are fired up and united to get out and elect the Harris-Walz ticket,” NEA President Becky Pringle said after Harris named Walz as her running mate. “We know we can count on a continued and real partnership to expand access to free school meals for students, invest in student mental health, ensure no educator has to carry the weight of crushing student debt and do everything possible to keep our communities and schools safe.” — Nirvi Shah

    Teaching about U.S. history and race

    Both Harris and Walz have pushed back against Republican-led attacks on K-12 history instruction and efforts to minimize classroom conversations around slavery and race. Shortly after taking office in January 2021, the Biden administration dissolved President Donald Trump’s 1776 commission. In July 2023, Harris criticized a new history standard in Florida that said the experience of being enslaved had given people skills “for their personal benefit.”

    As governor, Walz released an education plan calling for more “inclusive” instruction that is “reflective of students of color and Indigenous students.” It also called for anti-bias training for school staff, the establishment of an Equity, Diversity and Inclusion center at the Minnesota Department of Education, and the expansion of efforts to recruit Indigenous teachers and teachers of color. Walz also has advocated for educating students about the Holocaust and other genocides; state bans on teaching about “divisive concepts” in some Republican-led states have chilled such instruction. — C.P.

    Title I

    Harris’ 2019 “children’s agenda,” from when she was angling to be the Democratic nominee for president, proposed “significantly increasing” Title I, the federal program aimed at educating children from low-income families. The Biden administration also has proposed major increases to Title I spending, but Congress has not enacted those proposals. — C.A.S.

    Higher Education

    Accreditation

    As California attorney general, Harris urged the federal government in 2016 to revoke federal recognition for the accrediting agency of the for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges, which she had successfully sued for misleading students and using predatory recruiting practices. The accreditor’s recognition ultimately was removed in 2022. 

    As vice president, Harris has said little about the accreditation system, which is independently run and federally regulated and acts as a gatekeeper to billions of dollars in federal student aid. But the Biden administration has sought to require accreditors to create minimum standards on student outcomes such as graduation rates and licensure-exam pass rates. — Sarah Butrymowicz

    Affirmative action

    Harris has long supported affirmative action in college admissions. As California attorney general, she criticized the impact of the state’s 1996 ban at its public colleges. She also filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of the University of Texas’ race-conscious admissions policy when the Supreme Court heard challenges to it in 2012 and 2015.

    Last June, Harris criticized the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmative action the same day it was handed down, calling the decision a “denial of opportunity.” Walz, referring to the decision, wrote on X, “In Minnesota, we know that diversity in our schools and businesses reflects a strong and diverse state.” — Meredith Kolodner

    DEI

    Harris has not shied away from supporting DEI initiatives, even as they became a focus of attack for Republicans. “Extremist so-called leaders are trying to erase America’s history and dare suggest that studying and prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion is a bad thing. They’re wrong,” she wrote on X.

    As governor, Walz has taken steps to increase access to higher education across racial groups, including offering tuition-free enrollment at state colleges for residents who are members of a tribal nation. This spring, Walz signed a budget that increased funding for scholarships for students from underrepresented racial groups to teach in Minnesota schools. — M.K.

    For-profit colleges

    Harris has long been a critic of for-profit colleges. In 2013, as California state attorney general, she sued Corinthian Colleges, Inc., eventually obtaining a more than $1.1 billion settlement against the defunct company. “For years, Corinthian profited off the backs of poor people — now they have to pay,” she said in a press release. As senator, she signed a letter in the summer of 2020 calling for the exclusion of for-profit colleges from Covid-era emergency funding. — M.K.

    Free college

    The Biden administration repeatedly has proposed making community college free for students regardless of family income. The administration also proposed making college free for students whose families make less than $125,000 per year if the students attend a historically Black college, tribal college or another minority-serving institution.

    In 2023, Walz signed a bill that made two- and four-year public colleges in Minnesota free for students whose families make less than $80,000 per year. The North Star Promise Program works by paying the remaining tuition after scholarships and grants have been applied, so that students don’t have to take out loans to pay for school. — Olivia Sanchez

    Free/hate speech

    Following nationwide campus protests against the war in Gaza, Biden said, “There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students. There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, where it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans.” His Education Department is investigating dozens of complaints about antisemitism and Islamophobia on K-12 and college campuses, a number that has spiraled since the start of the war. — O.S.

    Pell grants

    The Pell grant individual maximum award has increased by $900 to $7,395 since the beginning of the Biden administration, part of its goal to double the maximum award by 2029. Education experts say that when the Pell grant program began in the 1970s, it covered roughly 75 percent of the average tuition bill but today covers only about one-third. They say doubling the Pell grant would make it easier for low-income students to earn a degree. The administration tried several times to make Pell grants available to undocumented students who are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, but has been unsuccessful. — O.S.

    Student loan forgiveness

    In 2019, while campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, Harris proposed forgiving loans for Pell grant recipients who operated businesses in disadvantaged communities for a minimum of three years. As vice president, she was reportedly instrumental in pushing Biden to announce a sweeping debt cancelation policy.

    The policy, which would have eliminated up to $20,000 in debt for borrowers under a certain income level, ultimately was blocked by the Supreme Court. Since then, the Biden administration has used other existing programs, including Public Service Loan Forgiveness, to cancel more than $168 billion in federal student debt.

    Harris has regularly championed these moves. In April, for instance, she participated in a round-table discussion on debt relief, touting what the administration had done. “That’s more money in their pocket to pay for things like child care, more money in their pocket to get through the month in terms of rent or a mortgage,” she said of those who had loans forgiven.

    But challenges remain. In August, a federal appeals court issued a stay on a Biden plan, known as the SAVE plan, which aimed to allow enrolled borrowers to cut their monthly payments and have their debts forgiven more quickly than they currently can. — S.B.

    This story about Democrats in education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    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.

    Join us today.

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    Sarah Butrymowicz, Ariel Gilreath, Meredith Kolodner, Jackie Mader, Neal Morton, Caroline Preston, Javeria Salman, Christina A. Samuels, Olivia Sanchez and Nirvi Shah

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  • Day care, baby supplies, counseling: Inside a school for pregnant and parenting teens

    Day care, baby supplies, counseling: Inside a school for pregnant and parenting teens

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    SPOKANE, Wash. — Before giving birth to her daughter, Kaleeya Baldwin, 19, had given up on education.

    She’d dropped out of school as a seventh grader, after behavior problems had banished her to alternative schools. Growing up in foster homes and later landing in juvenile court had convinced her to disappear from every system that claimed responsibility for her.

    “I was just really angry with everything,” said Kaleeya.

    But in early 2020, during what would have been her freshman year in high school, Kaleeya discovered she was pregnant. At her first ultrasound appointment, a nurse handed her a stack of pamphlets. One, advertising a new school for pregnant and parenting teens, caught her attention.

    “Something switched when Akylah got here,” Kaleeya said, referring to her daughter. “I was a whole different person. Now it’s high school that matters. It’s a legacy — and it’s hope for her.”

    Kaleeya Baldwin, 19, holds her daughter,3-and-a-half-year-old Aklyah.

    Four years ago, and two months pregnant, Kaleeya enrolled as one of the first students at Lumen High School. The Spokane charter school — its name, which means a unit of light, was selected by young parents who wished someone had shone a light on education for them — today enrolls about five dozen expectant and parenting teens, including fathers. Inside a three-story office building in the city’s downtown business core, Lumen provides full-day child care, baby supplies, mental health counseling and other support as students work toward graduation based on customized education plans.

    When the Spokane school district authorized the charter school, it acknowledged that these students had been underserved in traditional high schools and that alternatives were needed. Nationwide, only about half of teen mothers receive a high school degree by the age of 22. Researchers say common school policies like strict attendance rules and dress codes often contribute to young parents deciding to drop out. In April, the U.S. Department of Education issued new regulations to strengthen protections for pregnant and parenting students, though it’s unclear whether the revisions, which also include protections for LGBTQ+ youth, will survive legal challenges.

    Lumen High School enrolls about five dozen pregnant and parenting teens, including fathers, at its downtown Spokane campus. Executive assistant Lindsay Ainley works the front desk. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Solutions for these young parents have become even more urgent after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning the constitutional right to an abortion. Lumen is located about 20 miles from the Idaho border, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans. Recently, representatives from a network of charter schools in the state toured Lumen to evaluate whether they might bring a similar program to the Boise area. Researchers have also visited the school to study how educators elsewhere might replicate its supportive services, not only for pregnant students, but those facing crises like substance use.

    “There are some bright spots. Lumen is one,” said Jeannette Pai-Espinosa, president of the Justice + Joy National Collaborative, which advocates for young women, including teen mothers, referring to support in K-12 schools for pregnant and parenting teens. “By and large it’s just not really a priority on the list of many, many things schools are challenged with and facing now.”

    Related: If we see more pregnant students post-Roe, are we prepared to serve them?

    Nationally, teenage birth rates have fallen for the past three decades, reaching an all-time low in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That same year, the decline in teen births skidded to a halt in Texas, one year after the state’s Republican lawmakers had enacted a six-week abortion ban. Experts fear Texas’ change in direction could foreshadow a national uptick in teen pregnancy now that adolescents face more hurdles to abortion access in red states.

    Decades of research have revealed the long-term effects of adolescent pregnancy and childbearing: The CDC reports children of teen mothers tend to have lower performance in school and higher chances of dropping out of high school. They’re more likely to have health problems and give birth as teenagers themselves.

    Shauna Edwards witnessed such outcomes as part of her work with pregnant and parenting teens for a religious nonprofit and in high schools along the Idaho-Washington border. She also learned the limits of trying to shoehorn services for those students into a school’s existing budget. At one campus, where Edwards helped as a counselor, she said the principal assigned just one teacher for all subjects and two classroom aides to handle child care for the babies of 60 students.

    Principal Melissa Pettey, center right, meets with Lumen High School support staff to discuss current student needs. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Frustrated, she tried to convince the superintendent of another school district to offer a similar teen parent program, but with more funding. He couldn’t justify the costs, Edwards said. Instead, he suggested she open her own school.

    “I could serve all of Spokane, ideally, and wouldn’t have the risk of getting shut down by a school district trying to balance its budget,” said Edwards, executive director for Lumen.

    Every morning, students from across Spokane County — at 1,800 square miles, it’s a bit larger than Rhode Island — trek to the Lumen campus downtown. Many take public transit, which is free for youth under 18, and end their rides at a regional bus hub across the street from the school. Once their children reach six months, Lumen students can drop them off at an on-site child care and preschool center, operated by a nonprofit partner, before heading upstairs to start their day. Before then, parents can bring their babies to class.

    The baby boutique at Lumen High School includes shelves stacked with baby formula, diapers, milk bottles, nasal sprays and other donated supplies.

    Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Lumen High School stocks its on-site baby boutique with clothing and personal hygiene products for students and their children. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Funding for small schools in Washington state helps Lumen afford a full teaching staff — one adult each for English, history, math, science and special education. The charter also has a full-time principal, social worker and counselor. Other adults manage student internships or donations to the school’s food bank and “baby boutique,” where students can “shop” for a stroller, formula, diapers and clothes — all free of charge.

    It’s common to see an infant cradled in a teacher’s arm, allowing students to focus on their classwork. On a recent afternoon, two couples traded cradling duties with their newborns during a parenting class on lactation.

    “Delivering is something that happens to you. Not so with nursing. You have to do it,” said Megan Macy, a guest teacher, who introduced herself as “the official milk lady.”

    Megan Macy, a guest teacher and lactation expert, leads a parenting class that students at Lumen High School attend every afternoon. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Kaleeya shared a bit about her daughter Akylah’s delivery: “I was so depleted. I was her chew toy, her crying shoulder, her feeding bag. Once we got home, she wouldn’t latch at all.”

    Her friend Keelah, 17, rocked her newborn in a car seat. (The Hechinger Report is identifying the parents who are minors by first name only to protect their privacy.) “It’s hard, and it’s scary,” she said of the first week home with the baby. “She lost a pound between the hospital and pediatrician.”

    Related: ‘They just tried to scare us’: How anti-abortion centers teach sex ed in public schools

    Lumen contracts with the Shades of Motherhood Network, a Spokane-based nonprofit founded to support Black mothers, to run the parenting classes. The school reserves space for health officials to meet with mothers and babies for routine checkups and government food programs. And founding principal Melissa Pettey has pushed — and paid for — teachers to make home visits with each student.

    For each student, Lumen staff develops an individual graduation plan based on earned and missing credits from previous high schools. The school uses an instructional approach, called mastery-based learning, that allows students to earn credits based on competency in academic skills, often applied in projects. The parenting class, for example, counts as a credit for career and technical education, depending on how the contracted teachers evaluate each student.

    Parenting classes at Lumen High School include lessons on lactation. The classes count as a career and technical education credit. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    The learn-as-you-go approach also allows Lumen to work around the instability in the lives of their students, who are often coping with children’s illnesses, day care challenges, housing insecurity and other issues.

    But the chaos in a young parent’s life can look like inconsistent attendance or even truancy on state accountability reports. Just a tenth of Lumen students attend school regularly, which the state defines as missing no more than two days of class each month.

    Next year, the Spokane school district will review Lumen’s operations and performance to decide whether to renew the school’s charter. State data shows less than a fifth of Lumen’s students graduate on time, while a third dropped out. The state doesn’t publicly report testing data from Lumen, due to its size. But Edwards and Pettey said proficiency on state exams isn’t their main goal.

    “One student attended 16 elementary schools. Six high schools before junior year,” Pettey said. “Think of the learning missed. How do we get that student to an 11th grade level?”

    Payton, a senior, researches historical conflict around gold for her semester-long project with Trevor Bradley, history teacher at Lumen High School. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Added Edwards: “If you can grow them to read baby books to their kids, that’s a success.”

    Lumen’s authorizer, Spokane Public Schools, will modify how it evaluates the charter’s performance to take its nontraditional students into account, according to Kristin Whiteaker, who oversees charter schools for the district.

    She noted that about a third of Lumen’s incoming high schoolers test at an elementary level; another third test at middle school levels. But during the 2022-23 school year, 52 percent of students posted growth in math while at Lumen, and nearly two-thirds performed better on English language arts exams, according to the school. All of the students who make it to graduation have been accepted into college; 95 percent actually enrolled or started working six months after graduation.

    “They’re serving such a unique population,” Whiteaker said. “If you can provide a pathway for students to the next stage of their lives, that’s accomplishing their goals.”

    Lumen High School partners with GLOW Children to provide on-site child care for students on the first floor of the charter school’s three-story campus. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Lumen, she added, removes many of the barriers that pregnant and parenting teens face at Spokane’s traditional high schools. Some struggle to complete make-up work after missing weeks or months of classes for parental leave. Most have no access to child care, and regular schools don’t allow babies in the classroom.

    Ideally, some experts say, expecting and parenting teens could remain in their original schools and receive these supports. That’s rarely the case, though, and the social stigma alone can keep young parents from finishing their education.

    At the national level, a 2010 law that provided funding to help these students expired in 2019. Jessica Harding and Susan Zief, with the research firm Mathematica, studied the effectiveness of those federally-funded programs and found that successful ones work hard to provide flexibility, for excused absences or adding maternity clothes to dress codes. Others get creative, helping students navigate public transportation and modify their work schedules to meet with students after hours.

    “Sometimes,” Harding said, “the solutions are not complicated.”

    Related: Teen pregnancy is still a problem — school districts just stopped paying attention

    In 2022, when the Supreme Court upended abortion care nationwide, Edwards expected students without reproductive choice in Idaho to attempt to enroll in Lumen. A handful have inquired with the school, said Edwards, but to enroll they would have to move across the state border to Washington where housing costs are significantly higher.

    In fact, Lumen recently lost one student whose father found a cheaper home in Idaho. Average rents across Spokane County have risen more than 50 percent over the past five years. And as of March, about half of Lumen students qualified as homeless. One young mother slept outside during winter break while her newborn stayed with a friend. Three students, asked what they would change about Lumen, cited affordable housing or temporary shelter that could help them.

    Across Washington, pregnant and parenting teens account for 12 percent of all unaccompanied youth in the homeless system. But the state has a severe shortage of shelter beds available for youth under 18, with even fewer supportive housing options that allow young families to stay together, according to a February 2024 state report. Edwards, meanwhile, has talked with developers to see if they could reserve affordable units for students or loosen rules that prevent minors from signing a lease.

    Rene, a senior at Lumen High School, holds his newborn son, RJ, during class. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    “We missed a whole month of class. It was a long month,” said Mena, a 17-year-old junior who convinced her boyfriend, Rene, to enroll before their son’s delivery, in January.

    Rene Jr., or RJ, had already lived with the couple in several homes during his first few months. A restraining order with one set of RJ’s grandparents and guardianship battle with the other pushed Mena and Rene to couch-surf with friends.

    “School was the only way we could see each other,” Rene said. “I’m surprised, honestly, they can get me to graduation,” he added, while burping RJ. “He’s going to have a future.”

    Later, as Mena suctioned RJ’s stuffy nose in another classroom, Rene struggled to stay awake in math. He had forgotten what he’d learned in some earlier lessons on graphing linear equations, and retreated into social media on his phone. Another student badgered him to “put in some effort,” but Rene resisted.

    His teacher, Trevor Bradley, intervened. “What’s special about today? Why don’t you want to try?” he said. “You told me you’re tired because the baby’s keeping you up at night.”

    After drawing another set of equations on the whiteboard, Bradley asked Rene and the other student for help with finding the values of x and y. Rene barely whispered his answer.

    “That’s it! You do remember,” Bradley said, as Rene yawned.

    From the start, Lumen’s founders planned to include fathers in the school. Pai-Espinosa, with the National Collaborative, said it’s unusual for K-12 systems to focus on fathers, since mothers often have custodial rights. And at Lumen, the inclusion of “baby daddies” — as students and staff refer to them — sometimes adds teen drama to the mix of emotions and hormones already present at the school.

    Lumen High School’s founder and executive director Shauna Edwards, right, meets with social worker Tracie Fowler. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Lumen’s lack of diversity among adults there has also bothered some students, including Kaleeya. Only 40 percent of her peers identify as white, and all of the school’s teachers and administrators are white. Edwards said it has been difficult to recruit a diverse staff. As a temporary solution the school contracted with the Shades of Motherhood Network for parenting classes.

    “It’s hard being in a white space with no Black teachers,” Kaleeya said.

    Still, she said she liked the school’s emphasis on engaging students in semester-long projects in different subjects and on real-world problems. Last year, confronted with drug-use problems near the downtown campus, students researched and presented options for the city to consider on safe needle disposal in public places. Each student’s individual graduation plan also includes an internship.

    Payton, 17, has wanted to be a school counselor since before giving birth to her daughter in late 2022. Her internship at nearby Sacajawea Middle School convinced her to stay on that career path. Another mother, Alana, started an internship this spring with a local credit union and plans to use the marketing experience to help her advocate for children with disabilities in the future.

    Kaleeya Baldwin and her daughter, Akylah, walk home after school. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Kaleeya recently turned her internship, with a downtown restaurant, into a part-time job. She planned to save for college, but no longer needs to. Gonzaga University notified her in March of a full-ride scholarship to study there this fall.

    “Lumen didn’t change who I was,” Kaleeya said. “I did this for my daughter. I didn’t want to be that low-income family. So I got my ass up, got into this school and I got an education.”

    This story about teen parents was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

    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.

    Join us today.

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    Neal Morton

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  • Q&A: Barnard students share experiences of suspension and eviction during Columbia protests – The Hechinger Report

    Q&A: Barnard students share experiences of suspension and eviction during Columbia protests – The Hechinger Report

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    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.

    Related: OPINION: I teach Renaissance literature at Columbia, but this week’s lessons are about political protests and administrative decisions

    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.

    This story about protests at Columbia University was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

    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.

    Join us today.

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    Meredith Kolodner

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  • As more youth struggle with behavior and traditional supports fall short, clinicians are partnering with lawyers to help – The Hechinger Report

    As more youth struggle with behavior and traditional supports fall short, clinicians are partnering with lawyers to help – The Hechinger Report

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    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.

    RELATED: Low academic expectations and poor support for special education students are ‘hurting their future’

    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.

    Meanwhile, as children’s behavioral health struggles grow, the usual supports can’t keep up. The demand for child and adolescent psychiatrists and behavioral health providers continues to outpace supply, especially for young people already facing inequitable access to care. One estimate found that nationally, there was just one school psychologist for every 1,127 students from kindergarten to 12th grade in the 2021-22 year.

    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.”

    RELATED: Do protocols for school safety infringe on disability rights?

    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.

    RELATED: When your disability gets you sent home from school

    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.

    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.

    Join us today.

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    Julia Hotz

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  • After enrollment slump, Denver-area schools struggle to absorb a surge of migrant and refugee children – The Hechinger Report

    After enrollment slump, Denver-area schools struggle to absorb a surge of migrant and refugee children – The Hechinger Report

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    AURORA, Colo. — Until early this year, Alberto, 11, had never stepped into a classroom.

    The closest school was many miles from his village in Venezuela, and Alberto’s father never allowed him or his mom, Yuliver, to stray far, according to mother and son. The school also charged far more than they could afford.

    “I want to learn to become somebody in life,” Alberto said through an interpreter. “I’m going to be a lawyer or a doctor. I wanted to go school, but dad wouldn’t let me.”

    Yuliver, who has a third-grade education, stepped in as Alberto’s teacher, sharing what she knew about numbers and letters. He loved those lessons, and wanted to know more. (The surnames of Alberto and Yuliver, like those of other migrants in this story, are omitted due to privacy or safety concerns.)

    Last summer, Yuliver and her son left their home country, walking through deserts and jungles across two continents before they arrived in Denver, where Yuliver’s sister lives, six months later. Alberto enrolled in suburban Aurora Public Schools as a fourth grader, and has learned enough English that his teachers hide their smirks when he makes a particularly witty, and inappropriate, pun. In math, however, he’s grades behind and even in Spanish struggles to follow his teacher’s instruction.

    Alberto stepped into his first-ever classroom in January after enrolling at Boston P-8 School in Aurora, Colo. He and his mother, Yuliver, walked for six months to arrive in the U.S. from Venezuela. Credit: Rachel Sulzak for The Hechinger Report

    Alberto is one of approximately 2,800 migrant and refugee children who’ve arrived in Aurora, located just east of Denver, this academic year. The Denver school district — the state’s largest, with a total enrollment of about 88,000 — similarly has enrolled at least 3,700 newcomer students since last summer. In May 2023, Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, started sending immigrant families by the busloads to the Colorado capital, adding it to a destination list of other Democrat-led cities including Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

    Aurora and Denver, like many school systems in Colorado, have long welcomed students new to the United States. In recent years, they have designated specific campuses to serve as resource hubs for migrant and refugee families, offering wraparound supports, integration services and dual-language programs. But the ongoing surge of immigrants — local educators hesitate to call it a crisis — have exposed clear signs of strain: Classrooms don’t have enough seats for students. Teachers are fatigued by large class sizes, discipline issues and new students showing up each day. And state and local leaders are increasingly resistant to helping shoulder the costs.

    The city council in Aurora, for example, recently passed a resolution restricting migrants from receiving local public services, a move that opponents fear will place undocumented residents at risk if they experience a fire, medical emergency or violent crime. But when it comes to schools, requirements under the U.S. Constitution are clear: States are obligated to allow children living in the U.S. without legal documentation to access a basic education. That’s created a new dilemma for schools in communities like Aurora and Denver: The steady arrival of newcomers has all but reversed years of declining enrollment, staving off budget cuts and layoffs, but the costs associated with addressing the new arrivals’ basic needs are steep.

    “It doesn’t matter what your opinion is. You have to serve these kids,” said Julie Sugarman, an associate director for K-12 education research at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “There are civil rights that support these kids, but it does come with real, significant costs.”

    Related: How one district handles the trauma undocumented students bring to school

    Although migration fell at the start of the pandemic in 2020, it rebounded quickly, with the number of migrants encountered along the U.S.-Mexico border by U.S. Border Patrol more than quadrupling in 2021.

    In a typical year, Denver Public Schools enrolls about 500 students who’ve just moved to the country. The district so far this year has been receiving an average of 250 each week, according to Adrienne Endres, the district’s executive director of multilingual education.

    “We have some less-than-ideal circumstances,” she said. “We have some very full classrooms. We hear most from teachers, ‘This is kind of overwhelming. There’s a lot more kids and they all need a lot more from me.’”

    Students raise their hand during Kreesta Vesga’s class for English language development at Boston P-8 School in Aurora. Schools in the Denver area have struggled to hire teachers, especially with bilingual skills, as the newcomer students continue to enroll. Credit: Rachel Sulzak for The Hechinger Report

    The majority of migrant families in Denver have chosen to place their kids in schools with existing bilingual programs, Endres added. But many students who have little, or any, formal experience with education find a better fit in one of the district’s newcomer centers. The city opened its first center back in 1999, in an unused gym at Denver South High School, as a magnet program for refugee children who speak neither Spanish nor English.

    The district has since expanded the program to six campuses, where students learn literacy skills for one to two semesters before gradually moving into general classes.

    On a recent morning at South High’s newcomer center, teacher Karen Vittetoe worked with 14 teenagers from nearly as many countries — including Burundi, El Salvador and Sudan — on how to tell time and describe a daily schedule in English.

    “Marta goes to work at 9:50 in the morning. Is that 9:15 or 9:50? Do you hear the difference?” she asked as two teaching assistants walked in the classroom.

    The adults together speak six different languages, allowing them to help during small group and one-on-one instruction during the 90-minute period. But that’s not nearly enough in Vittetoe’s larger second period, where 31 students speak 11 different languages.

    “Can you imagine?” she said. “I don’t even have enough desks for them all.”

    One of her students, 18-year-old Momena, spoke no English when she first enrolled at South High about eight months ago. Her family left Afghanistan, where the Taliban banned girls from attending school beyond the sixth grade. 

    “I like everything about this school — except the food,” Momena said. “They have a nice curriculum and also kind teachers.”

    Like her older brother, a nurse, Momena hopes to one day work in the medical field.

    “This is very important for me,” she said of getting an education in the U.S. “I want to go to college, go into nursing. I try hard every day.”

    Colorado state lawmakers approved $24 million to help local schools enrolling a higher share of at-risk students, including migrant and refugee children, this academic year. Credit: Rachel Sulzak for The Hechinger Report

    Unlike Momena, most students in Vittetoe’s classes arrived after October 1 — the date on which Colorado determines its annual funding for K-12 schools based on enrollment. Only 10 other states rely on a single count day to allocate funding to districts. And in Denver, that’s required central administrators to draw from cash reserves and other department budgets to make up for the roughly $17.5 million that the district hasn’t received in per-pupil funding despite enrolling so many migrant and refugee children since last fall.

    State lawmakers in February fast-tracked a plan to provide $24 million — to be split among districts across Colorado — to ease the strain on local school budgets. Gov. Jared Polis signed the legislation in early March, but the money has yet to trickle down to local districts.

    “Without action in D.C., it’s up to each state if schools get any support at all,” said Jill Koyama, vice dean of educational leadership and innovation at Arizona State University’s teachers college.

    Related: Convincing parents to send their children to a San Francisco public school

    At Boston P-8 School in Aurora, the first few weeks made for a rough transition for Alberto.

    He failed a vision screening test and received a voucher for an eye exam, but passed it. Teachers eventually determined he had such little schooling that he simply couldn’t identify letters to follow along in class. The school nurse also learned about trauma Alberto had experienced back home and on his journey to this country. School staff would have placed him with a therapist on campus, but no one on the mental health support team speaks Spanish. Many newcomers, including Alberto, have been referred to an online therapy service.

    Danielle Pukansky is one of two English language development teachers who help multilingual students at Boston P-8 School in Aurora, Colo. Credit: Rachel Sulzak for The Hechinger Report

    The school, however, had recently hired Danielle Pukansky, one of two English language development teachers who, in a tiny and cramped room, lead daily 45-minute classes for multilingual learners like Alberto.

    “The trauma showed when he first got here,” Pukansky recalled, noting he had been aggressive toward other students. “How to re-regulate when these big emotions come up in such a little body, that is part of my background — and thank goodness.”

    She said many of her students come to school worried about deportation, insecure housing and simply being misunderstood. “I try to help the kids not feel that fear,” Pukansky said.

    Boston P-8 is one of six community schools in Aurora that provide intensive support services — such as medical care, food, clothing and adult education and language classes — to help stabilize families so kids can focus on academics in class. It’s similar to the community hub model that Denver Public Schools operates at six campuses. And as of 2022, the state has allowed low-performing schools to convert to the model as part of a school’s turnaround plan.

    Nearly 3 in 4 students at Boston P-8 School qualify as English learners. Culturally and linguistically diverse students attend a small-group, 45-minute class each day to support their English language development. Credit: Rachel Sulzak for The Hechinger Report

    Late on a Wednesday afternoon, Yuliver sat in Boston P-8’s community room with her head in her hands. A worsening toothache had kept her awake for days, and made it hard to look for work or an immigration lawyer who might help her. After making a couple calls, a staff member booked her a tooth extraction, free of charge, at a nearby dental clinic.

    “This is the only place I feel supported,” Yuliver said. “Clothes, Wi-Fi, food, shoes — they help with everything.”

    Upstairs, in an afterschool science program, Alberto was learning about the education required to become a dentist.

    Related: PROOF POINTS: Schools’ mission shifted during the pandemic with healthcare, shelter and adult ed

    In Aurora and Denver, which both faced enrollment declines during the pandemic, the influx of migrant students this year presents an ironic silver lining: By contrast, enrollment statewide has continued to fall for two straight years — with the largest decreases in pre-kindergarten through first grade — prompting school closures, budget cuts and potential layoffs.

    In the Denver area, the surge of students from other countries has more than made up the difference.

    So far this year, Ellis Elementary in southeast Denver has absorbed 60 more students than initially expected. Several classes are packed with 35 students — the maximum allowed under the district’s contract with teachers. A week before even more students arrived in late February, Principal Jamie Roybal hired two novice educators. They had only a couple days to convert a teachers lounge and music room into their first classrooms.

    Students at Boston P-8 Schools can work with a mental health team on campus. The school’s mental health therapist has a full load of students, including many newcomers to U.S. schools. Credit: Rachel Sulzak for The Hechinger Report

    Roybal said that on hard days many of her staff members contemplate leaving the profession. “We’re swimming in the deep end,” she said, looking into a classroom. “That’s a first-grade teacher with 35 newcomers. That’s a lot. When she goes home, she’s exhausted.”

    By winter break, Hamilton Middle School in Denver had already absorbed 100 additional students over its projected enrollment. Priscilla Rahn, a Republican candidate for the Douglas County commission who teaches band and orchestra at Hamilton, said it’s been a joy to welcome so many new musicians who have never had an instrument of their own.

    Still, Rahn wondered whether the community’s generosity had been exhausted.

    “We’re cutting city services,” she said, referring to the mayor’s budget. “As a teacher, we can’t ask if you’re legal. It doesn’t matter. I teach all kids. But as a city, we’re pretty much at capacity. We cannot take any more families, because we don’t have the money or the space.”

    At Centro de los Trabajadores, a local labor rights group, executive director Mayra Juárez-Denis has for months fielded calls from recent migrants trying to secure legal work or file complaints about employers who exploited them. Lately, her phone started ringing with rants from teachers overwhelmed with the current crisis.

    Enrollment in public schools has declined across Colorado. But Aurora and Denver schools recorded increases this year, likely due to the influx of migrant families in the metro area. Credit: Rachel Sulzak for The Hechinger Report

    The organization has tried to partner with Denver Public Schools, mostly to host a worker center or hiring fair for hourly jobs. Scott Pribble, a spokesman for the district, said it has looked for parents with legal documentation to work in cafeterias or get licensed to drive a bus.

    “We want to help the district with labor integration for parents,” Juárez-Denis said. “They need not just immigrant teachers who serve Spanish speakers, but every staff position can use someone who is already part of the immigrant community.”

    Related: School support staffers stuck earning poverty level wages

    At some campuses, Denver principals have been able to identify and recruit migrant parents who used to teach in their home countries, but for out-of-country teachers, the checklist of requirements they must meet for eligibility to work in the state long. At Ellis Elementary, for example, a classroom aide from Venezuela finally got her teaching license approved in Colorado — three years after she first applied to teach in the U.S.

    The latest federal bipartisan immigration reform proposal, which collapsed in Congress in February, would have expedited access to work authorization for asylum seekers, potentially allowing people like Yuliver to begin employment before the current six-month waiting period.

    Without a job, Yuliver has struggled to afford an apartment — even one without hot water or central heating — for her and Alberto. She tried to sell household goods to shoppers on the street and would like to work in a beauty shop, doing nails and hair. Already, though, Yuliver has considered making the trek back to Venezuela if she can’t find employment.

    “I wish for him to keep studying,” she said of Alberto. “He’s intelligent. He just wants to learn everything.”

    Alberto, meanwhile, said he misses his friends and swimming at the beach back home. But here he’s learning to ride a bike — provided by the community school program — and has already made five new friends at Boston P-8.

    During a sunny but chilly recess, Alberto drew a heart with wood chips on the ground in his school’s playground. He placed a stray feather in the middle, and said it was for those friends he’d made at his first-ever school.

    This story about Denver migrants was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    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.

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    Neal Morton

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  • COLUMN: Should schools teach climate activism? – The Hechinger Report

    COLUMN: Should schools teach climate activism? – The Hechinger Report

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    Yancy Sanes teaches a unit on the climate crisis at Fannie Lou Hamer High School in the Bronx – not climate change, but the climatecrisis. He is unequivocal that he wants his high school students to be climate activists.

    “I teach from a mindset and lens that I want to make sure my students are becoming activists, and it’s not enough just talking about it,” the science and math teacher said. “I need to take my students outside and have them actually do the work of protesting.”

    The school partners with local environmental justice organizations to advocate for a greener Bronx. Sanes recently took some students to a rally that called for shutting down the jail on Rikers Island and replacing it with a solar energy farm, wastewater treatment plant and battery storage facility.

    Sanes gets a lot of support for this approach from his administration. Social justice is a core value of Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, and the school also belongs to a special assessment consortium, giving it more freedom in what is taught than a typical New York City public high school.

    For Sanes, who grew up in the neighborhood and graduated from Fannie Lou Hamer himself, getting his students involved in activism is a key way to give them agency and protect their mental health as they learn what’s happening to the planet. “This is a topic that is very depressing. I don’t want to just end this unit with ‘things are really bad,’ but ‘what can we do, how are we fighting back’.” Indeed, climate anxiety is widespread among young people, and collective action has been identified as one way to ameliorate it.

    Related: Teaching ‘action civics’ engages kids – and ignites controversy

    Sanes is at the far end of the teaching spectrum when it comes to promoting climate activism, not to mention discussing controversial issues of any kind in his classroom. Conservative activists have already begun branding even basic instruction about climate change as “left-wing indoctrination.” The think tank Rand recently reported in its 2023 State of the American Teacher survey that two-thirds of teachers nationally said they were limiting discussions about political and social issues in class. The authors of the report observed that there seemed to be a spillover effect from states that have passed new laws restricting topics like race and gender, to states where no such laws are on the books. 

    The current level of political polarization is having a chilling effect, making civics education into a third rail, according to Holly Korbey, an education reporter and the author of a 2019 book on civics education, “Building Better Citizens: A New Civics Education for All.” “We are living in this time where there’s increased scrutiny on what schools are telling kids,” she said.

    She said that, as a mom living in deep-red Tennessee, she wouldn’t be happy to have a teacher bringing her kids to protests. “I really don’t want schools to tell my kids to be activists. I think about how I personally feel about issues and flip that around.  Would I be okay with teachers doing that? And the answer is no.”

    Even Sanes has a line he won’t cross. He taught his students about Greta Thunberg and her school strikes, but he stopped short of encouraging his students to do the same. “I specifically cannot tell students, you gotta walk out of school,” he said. “That goes against my union.”

    Yancy Sanes (front left, with green sign) brings his students to rallies to advocate for a greener Bronx. Credit: Image provided by Yancy Sanes

    And yet, there is a broad bipartisan consensus that schools have an obligation to prepare citizens to participate in a democracy. And, emerging best practices in civics education include something called “action civics,” in which teachers in civics and government classes guide kids to take action locally on issues they choose. Nonprofits like Generation Citizen and the Mikva Challenge, Korbey said, cite internal research that these kinds of activist-ish activities improve knowledge, civic skills, and motivation to remain involved in politics or their local community. Others have argued that without a robust understanding of the workings of government, “action civics” provides a “sugar rush” without enough substance.

    Related: The climate change lesson plans teachers need and don’t have

    Even at the college level, it’s rare for students to study climate activism in particular, or political activism more generally. And this leads to a broader lack of knowledge about how power works in society, say some experts.

    “Having visited many, many departments in many schools over the years, I’m shocked at how few places, particularly policy schools, teach social movements,” said sociologist Dana Fisher. Fisher is currently teaching a graduate course called “Global Environmental Politics: Activism and the Environment,” and she also has a new book out about climate activism,“Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action.”She’s taught about social movements for two decades at American University in Washington, D.C., and the University of Maryland-College Park.

    “It’s crazy to me that, given that the civil society sector is such a huge part of democracy, there would not be a focus on that,” she added.

    When she got to college, Jayda Walden discovered urban forestry and climate activism. “I am a tree girl,” she said. “The impact that they have is very important.” Credit: Image provided by Jada Walden

    Through empirical research, Fisher’s work counters stereotypes and misconceptions about climate activism. For example, she’s found that disruptive forms of protest like blocking a road or throwing soup on a masterpiece are effective even when they’re unpopular. ”It doesn’t draw support for the disruption. It draws support for more moderate parts of the movement,” she said. “And so it helps to expand the base.”

    As an illustration of the ignorance about disruptive action and civil disobedience in particular, Fisher noted K-12 students rarely hear about the topic unless studying the 1960s era, and “a very sanitized version. They don’t remember that the Civil Rights Movement was really unpopular and had a very active radical flank that was doing sit-ins and marches.”

    In 12 years of public school in Shreveport, Louisiana, for example, Jada Walden learned very little about activism, including environmental activism. She learned a bit in school about the Civil Rights Movement, although most of what she remembers about it are “the things your grandmother teaches you.”

    Related: How do we teach Black history in polarized times?

    Walden didn’t hear much about climate change either until she got to Southern University and A&M College, in Baton Rouge. “When I got to college, there’s activism everywhere for all types of stuff,” she said.

    She’d enrolled with the intention of becoming a veterinarian. “When I first got there. I just wanted to hit my books, get my degree,” she recalled. “But my advisors, they pushed for so much more.” She became passionate about climate justice and the human impact on the environment, and ended up majoring in urban forestry. She was a student member of This Is Planet Ed’s Higher Education Climate Action Task Force (where, full disclosure, I’m an advisor.) 

    If it were up to her, Walden would require all college students to study the climate crisis, and do independent research to learn how it will affect them personally. “Make it personal for them. Help them connect. It will make a world of difference.”

    Korbey, the “Building Better Citizens” author, would agree with that approach. “Schools exist to give students knowledge, not to create activists,” she said. “The thing we’re doing very poorly is give kids the knowledge they need to become good citizens.”

    This column about teaching climate activism was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

    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.

    Join us today.

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    Anya Kamenetz

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  • An unexpected way to fight chronic absenteeism – The Hechinger Report

    An unexpected way to fight chronic absenteeism – The Hechinger Report

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    Editor’s note: This story led off this week’s Future of Learning newsletter, which is delivered free to subscribers’ inboxes every other Wednesday with trends and top stories about education innovation.

    Students at Bessemer Elementary School don’t have to go far to see a doctor. If they’re feeling sick, they can walk in to the school’s health clinic, log on to a computer, and connect with a pediatrician or a family medicine provider. After the doctor prescribes treatment, students can in many cases go straight back to class – instead of having to go home.

    The telemedicine program was launched in fall 2021 by Guilford County Public Schools, North Carolina’s third largest school district, as a way to combat chronic absenteeism. The number of students missing 10 or more days of school soared in the district – and nationally – during the pandemic, and remains high in many places.

    Piloted at Bessemer, the program has gradually expanded to 15 of the district’s Title I schools, high-poverty schools where families may lack access to health care. Along with other efforts aimed at stemming chronic absenteeism, the telemedicine program is helping, said Superintendent Whitney Oakley. The chronic absenteeism rate at Bessemer fell from 49 percent in 2021-2022 to 37 percent last school year, an improvement though still higher than the district would like.   

    “It really doesn’t matter how great a teacher is or how strong instruction is, if kids aren’t in school, we can’t do our job,” she said.

    Oakley said district administrators focused on health care access because they were seeing parents pull all their children out of school if one was sick and had to visit the doctor. Rates of chronic absenteeism were also higher in areas where families historically lacked access to routine medical care and had to turn to the emergency room for non-emergency health care needs.

    The telemedicine clinic is also a way to relieve the burden on working parents, Oakley said: Many parents in the district’s Title I schools work hourly wage jobs and rely on public transportation, making it difficult to pick up a sick child at school quickly.

    Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit that combats chronic absenteeism, said that early research indicates that telehealth can improve attendance. According to one study of three rural districts in North Carolina that was released in January, school-based telemedicine clinics reduced the likelihood that a student was absent by 29 percent, and the number of days absent by 10 percent.

    Some districts are also turning to virtual teletherapy services to fight chronic absenteeism. Stephanie Taylor, a former school psychologist who is now vice president of clinical innovation at teletherapy provider Presence, says the company’s work has expanded from 1,600 schools to more than 4,000 in recent years as the need for mental health services grows. Therapy can help kids cope with emotional issues that might keep them from attending school, she said, and virtual services give students more choice of counselors and a greater chance of finding someone with whom they mesh.  

    At Guilford County Public Schools, the district plans to expand its existing mental health services to eventually include teletherapy, according to Bessemer Elementary Principal Johnathan Brooks. The district is also planning to roll out its telemedicine clinics to all of 50 of its Title I schools, said Oakley.

    The clinic is staffed by a school nurse who helps the physician remotely examine the student and ensures that prescriptions are quickly filled. The program is funded through a partnership between the district, local government and healthcare providers and nonprofits, which allows for uninsured families to still access treatment and medicine, Brooks said.

    The biggest challenge in launching the clinic was getting parents’ buy-in, he said. The district held meetings with parents, particularly with those who don’t speak English as a first language, to communicate how it would help their kids. To access the program, parents must opt in at the beginning of the school year.

    Of the 300 students who received care at Bessemer’s clinic last year, 240 returned to class the same day, said Oakley. Without the program, she said, “all 300 would have just been sent home sick.”

    She added: “School is often a trusted place within the community and so it helps to bridge some of those gaps with medical providers. It puts the resources where they already are.”

    This story about telemedicine in schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    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.

    Join us today.

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    Javeria Salman

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  • The climate change lessons teachers are missing       

    The climate change lessons teachers are missing       

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    “Mom, are there any more Earths?”

    Angelique Hammack, a teacher in California, creates lesson plans about climate change for the website SubjectToClimate. She often starts from a question posed by one of her four children.

    Her 7-year-old, who has autism, has been really interested in space lately. “He was asking me questions about the solar system and about black holes, and I started pulling out all these books I had on outer space,” she said. “He’s got a telescope for his birthday, he’s been looking at the moon.”

    When he asked the question about whether there were more Earths, Hammack saw the opening to create a climate-related lesson that explains how Earth is a “Goldilocks planet,” with just-right conditions for life to thrive.

    New York state is currently considering several climate education bills. If the proposed policies become law, the state will join California and New Jersey in mandating that climate topics be introduced across grade levels and subjects, not just confined to science class. A wide range of science and environmental groups such as the National Wildlife Federation and Earthday.org back this interdisciplinary approach to climate education.

    But as the movement for teaching climate grows, thanks to new standards and increasing student curiosity, teachers are on the hunt for materials and lessons they can rely on. “I think there’s a big disconnect,” said Lauren Madden, professor of elementary science education at The College of New Jersey. “Teachers really need materials that they can use tomorrow.”

    For the last few years, Madden has been researching the experiences of teachers who are tackling this topic. She shared some of her results with The Hechinger Report. SubjectToClimate, a large free repository of climate change lessons, also shared some data on its most popular lessons and materials.

    Madden said that what teachers need most are clear strategies that allow them to plug climate lessons into existing curricula, so that climate can be interwoven with existing requirements, rather than wedged into an already-packed schedule. “Teachers want and need straightforward starting points in terms of instructional materials,” she said.

    Yen-Yen Chiu, director of content creation for SubjectToClimate, agreed. In response to demand, she said, the organization is beginning to create teacher pacing guides, like a middle school math pacing guide that maps specific climate resources from their database to math standards.

    Here’s an overview of more key findings from Madden, and from Hammack and Chiu at SubjectToClimate.

    • Younger learners have big questions: At SubjectToClimate, the most-searched lessons are for grades K-5; and there is unmet demand for grades 3-5. Hammack said it can be tough to find materials that are simple enough for the youngest students. “I created a unit on energy — I intended it for K-2 but we ended up changing it to 3-4,” she said. “Energy is so abstract for a K-2nd audience.” 
    • Energy, extreme weather and humanities: Energy is the most popular topic on SubjectToClimate. There’s also growing interest in lessons related to extreme weather, and lessons that relate to non-science subjects, such as writing and public speaking. One art lesson — on “Energy and Art” is among the top 10 most popular on the site.
    • Facts and evidence: Madden finds teachers (especially new ones) want to gain familiarity with facts they might not have learned in a general education curriculum. They also need to be able to clearly and simply attribute scientific findings to specific data: i.e., how we know that atmospheric carbon is rising, or that storms are getting bigger. This presents a bigger challenge, requiring the development of scientific literacy, Madden said: “I think it’s important that we explain what counts as evidence.”
    • Debate, but not doubt: In the United States, climate change is still a highly politicized topic. Teachers need help to present debates in an evolving field of research without losing sight of the overwhelming scientific consensus. This also includes lessons that directly combat misinformation or disinformation that students might bring in from outside the classroom. “Teachers want to know where scientific debate is appropriate. For example, wind vs. solar is a topic that can yield productive discussion, while whether climate change is exacerbated by human activity is not,” said Madden. The New York Times recently reported that a Republican state representative wants to amend standards in Connecticut in a way that would obscure that consensus in the name of open debate.  
    • Climate brings up feelings: While a lot of introduction of climate topics is happening in response to new state standards, Madden said students are also bringing up the topic, for example, in response to extreme or unseasonable weather. And that’s making some teachers nervous. “Teachers worry that they are not knowledgeable enough about the science of climate change to answer students’ questions appropriately,” she said. “There is also concern about inciting dread and anxiety in children, especially at the lower grade levels.” Hammack said that she finds herself wondering how deep to go: “Some of the videos I’ve been watching are scaring me and I’m 44!” And Madden said those climate emotions are, if anything, stronger among kids in higher grades. “In my experience, it’s preteens and teenagers who have that sense of understanding the scope of these problems,” she said. “They are very concerned.”
    • English Language Learners: There’s a gap in resources for these learners. Madden points out that in Spanish, “clima” is the word for both “weather” and “climate,” which can at times cause confusion. SubjectToClimate lists 93 resources suitable for Spanish speakers and/or Spanish classes.
    • Focus on solutions: Related to concerns about climate anxiety, is a clear desire for lessons that deal with solutions. Among the SubjectToClimate top 10 most-trafficked lesson plans are two that deal with renewable energy, one about conservation, one about reducing, reusing and recycling, and one about green transportation. Underscoring the demand, This Is Planet Ed (where, full disclosure, I’m an advisor) and The Nature Conservancy are currently collaborating on an initiative to create more short-form content for children focused on hope and solutions.

    “I have to say that the message that comes across loud and clear to me has been — telling the truth is really important, and focusing on areas for solutions and optimism,” said Madden. “There are really great things happening at the edges of what humans are capable of right now.”

    This column about climate change lessons was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    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.

    Join us today.

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    Anya Kamenetz

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  • The worst of the pandemic is behind us. College students’ mental health needs are not – The Hechinger Report

    The worst of the pandemic is behind us. College students’ mental health needs are not – The Hechinger Report

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    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.

    Dear Reader, 

    If my newsletter landed in your inbox, you care about college students. If you’re a person in the world, you know that mental health challenges are real. If you had any doubts, the response to Elmo’s “How is everyone doing?” should have cleared those right up.

    So, I think I can safely conclude that we agree – college student mental health matters. Now what?

    We’ve been writing about student mental health since the early days of The Hechinger Report, and more recently we’ve done our best to document the challenges students and educators faced throughout the pandemic.

    We wrote about the anxiety and despair students felt in early Covid isolation. We wrote about college students facing increased symptoms of burnout. Although people of all backgrounds deal with mental health issues, we wrote about how students from marginalized racial and ethnic groups, religious communities, and the LGBTQ+ community faced particular challenges and often lacked access to culturally responsive counseling. We wrote about the pricey mental health recovery programs students often turn to when they take mental health leaves of absence from college. We wrote about how overscheduling kids can lead to depression and anxiety. We wrote about folks trying to answer the question: Is mental health care a job for schools?  

    Our colleagues across education journalism are pushing the conversation forward, too. The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote last week about tech companies attempting to fill the void of student need that can’t be met by college counseling centers. EdSource wrote about the way some colleges are taking advantage of their outdoor space to support student mental health. Inside Higher Ed has reported on college counseling centers facing increased demand for trauma counseling.  

    A recent story in The New York Times offered a haunting portrait of how faculty and staff at Worcester Polytechnic Institute are responding to the campus mental health crisis.

    Clearly, stories of complex personal and community suffering are still out there, well beyond the worst of the pandemic years, and we think these stories are worth telling.

    Data shows that current college students are struggling — roughly 40 percent of them experience some level of depression, and 36 percent screened positive for anxiety disorders, according to the 2022-2023 Healthy Minds Study, a study on college student mental health from the University of Michigan. Nearly half of the college students surveyed reported they had been diagnosed with a mental health disorder at some point in their lifetime. 

    And mental health concerns could act as an obstacle for students currently considering college. A new survey from the education consulting firm EAB found that 28 percent of high school students said that mental health concerns are a key reason they might postpone enrolling or opt out of college altogether. These concerns are more pronounced for students in certain underrepresented groups: More than half of transgender and nonbinary students reported feeling this way, one third of Black students, and 30 percent of Native American students.

    Among the 6,330 high school students surveyed, 48 percent said that “stress and anxiety overshadow their college search and planning.”

    The mental health needs of college students are clearly immense. They may also be changing. How is the world of higher education adapting to meet these needs?

    Help us decide what to write about next. Under the broad umbrella of college students’ mental health, what are you curious about? What worries you? What gives you hope? Email me and share your thoughts. 

    I can’t wait to hear from you. Thank you,

    Olivia

    If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline 988 and the Crisis Text Line — text HOME to 741741 — are free, 24-hour services that can provide support, information and resources.

    This story about college student mental health crisis was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

    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.

    Join us today.

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    Olivia Sanchez

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  • PROOF POINTS: Overscheduling kids’ lives causes depression and anxiety, study finds

    PROOF POINTS: Overscheduling kids’ lives causes depression and anxiety, study finds

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    Psychologists have long warned that children’s lives are overscheduled, which undermines their ability to develop non-academic skills that they’ll need in adulthood, from coping with setbacks to building strong relationships. Now a trio of economists say they’ve been able to calculate some of these psychological costs.

    In a new data analysis published in the February 2024 issue of the Economics of Education Review, three economists from the University of Georgia and the Federal Reserve Board found that students are assigned so much homework and signed up for so many extracurricular activities that the “last hour” was no longer helping to build their academic skills. Instead, the activities were actually harming their mental well-being, making students more anxious, depressed or angry. 

    “We’re not saying that all these activities are bad, but that the total is bad,” said Carolina Caetano, one of the study’s authors and an assistant professor of economics at the University of Georgia. Homework and scheduled activities, she said, were eating away at time for sleep and socializing, which are also important. 

    The downsides of homework and scheduled activities were most pronounced during the high school years, when students are feeling pressure to earn high grades and load up on extracurriculars for their college applications, the researchers found.

    Unfortunately, the researchers weren’t able to put a precise number on how many hours is too much, and Caetano explained to me that the number might not be the same for everyone.

    Parents who worry that their children might be overscheduled should ask themselves whether they feel their days are so busy that their children don’t even have time for spontaneous play dates, Caetano said. “If you feel stretched, you’re probably on the too-much side of this,” she said.

    Caetano and her research team analyzed the time diaries of 4,300 children and teens, from kindergarten through 12th grade. The diaries had been collected over the years, dating back to 1997, as part of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), a large nationally representative household survey overseen by the University of Michigan. Children, parents and survey workers kept track of a random weekday and a random weekend day for each child, allowing the researchers to see how children spent every minute.

    The researchers described a wide assortment of activities intended to improve children’s skills as “enrichment.” Homework was the largest component, adding up to two thirds of the total enrichment hours. The remainder of the enrichment time was occupied by reading (14 percent of the enrichment time), followed by before- and after-school programs (7 percent). In the diaries, relatively little time was spent being read to by parents, tutoring and other academic lessons, and on non-academic lessons, such as piano, soccer or driver’s ed. On average, children spent 45 minutes a day on all of them, ranging from zero to four hours a day.

    The researchers then compared time spent on these enrichment activities with academic test scores along with non-cognitive psychological measures, which were based on parent surveys of their children’s behaviors, such as being withdrawn, anxious or angry. 

    At first, there seemed to be a strong association between time spent on enrichment and academic skills and positive behaviors. That is, students who were more scheduled also had higher test scores and better behaviors. 

    But scheduled students also tend to be wealthier. Their families have the resources for tutors, after-school activities, or nannies who enforce homework time. It’s hard to tell how much the activities were responsible for boosting students’ skills or whether these highly resourced children would have done just as well on the tests and non-cognitive measures without the activities. After adjusting for family income and other demographic characteristics, some of these benefits melted away. Still, some association between scheduled activities and academic skills remained. In other words, even between two children with the same demographics and family income, the one that was more scheduled and spent more time on homework scored higher.

    However, these scheduled children of the same income and demographics still differ from each other in important ways. Some are more motivated or conscientious. Some have photographic memories or are hard working. Some have a gift for math or music. The children who choose to do more homework and participate in after-school activities are exactly the ones who are more likely to score higher anyway. It’s a thorny knot to disentangle how much the homework and scheduled activities are driving the improvement in skills.

    In this study, the researchers used a new statistical technique for large datasets to disentangle it. And once they adjusted for the effects of the students’ unobservable or inner differences, all the academic benefits melted away, and well-being turned negative. That is, the final or marginal hour of homework and activities didn’t raise a student’s test scores at all and lowered a child’s non-cognitive behaviors.

    The researchers also noticed a dilemma in the data. The psychological downsides of overscheduling hit before students’ cognitive skills were maximized. There’s a point where a child could still boost his academic skills by doing another hour of homework or tutoring, for example, but it would come at the expense of mental well-being. With more time spent on these activities, the academic returns eventually fall to zero, but by that time, there’s been a considerable hit to well-being.

    A lot more research is needed to understand if some activities are harming students more than others. One question Caetano has concerns timing. She wonders what would happen if little kids were less scheduled in elementary school. Would they then have more resilience to deal with the time pressures in high school? 

    The statistical techniques in this study are new and researchers debate about how and when to use them. Josh Goodman, an education economist at Boston University who was not involved in the study, commented that the causal claims between overscheduling and academic skills and mental well-being aren’t “perfect,” but called them “good enough.”  He said on X (formerly Twitter) that “the paper raises some very uncomfortable questions (including about my own parenting decisions!)” 

    Of course, parents aren’t entirely to blame. Schools assign the homework and their children’s grades will suffer if it isn’t done. College admissions departments value applicants with high grades and activities. Caetano sympathizes with parents who find it hard to individually push back against the current system.

    It’s similarly difficult for one school to unilaterally change homework policies when colleges could penalize their students. Indeed, schools that have tried reducing the pressure have sometimes felt the wrath of parents who are worried that less homework will cause their children to fall behind the competition. Ultimately, Caetano says that education policymakers on the state or federal level need to set policies to ratchet down the pressure for all.

    This story about extracurricular activities was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Proof Points newsletter.

    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.

    Join us today.

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    Jill Barshay

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  • Las necesidades de salud mental de las niñas afroamericanas e hispanas a menudo no se satisfacen. Este grupo busca brindar apoyo. – The Hechinger Report

    Las necesidades de salud mental de las niñas afroamericanas e hispanas a menudo no se satisfacen. Este grupo busca brindar apoyo. – The Hechinger Report

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    TRANSLATED BY CESAR SERGOVIA

    WAUKEGAN, Illinois — En una soleada pero animada tarde de noviembre dentro de la escuela secundaria Robert Abbott, seis niñas de octavo grado rápidamente entraron en un salón de clases pequeño pero colorido y se sientan en un círculo.

    Yuli Paez-Naranjo, consejera de Working on Womanhood (WOW), tenía una camiseta violeta de WOW mientras dirigía al grupo en una discusión sobre cómo los valores pueden informar las decisiones.

    “¿Alguna vez has sentido como si dos angelitos estuvieran sentados sobre cada uno de tus hombros, uno susurrándote cosas buenas y el otro susurrándote cosas malas?” preguntó Paez-Naranjo a las niñas. Las estudiantes asintieron y se rieron.

    Durante la sesión de WOW de 50 minutos, las niñas tienen la oportunidad de dejar de lado las presiones del día en la escuela, reírse, escucharse unas a otras y resolver problemas personales. La reunión semanal es la pieza central de la terapia individual y grupal que WOW ofrece durante todo el año escolar a niñas afroamericanas e hispanas —y a estudiantes de todas las razas que se identifican como mujeres o no binarias— en los grados 6 al 12.

    Creado en 2011 por trabajadores sociales negros e hispanos de la organización sin fines de lucro Youth Guidance, el objetivo de WOW es desarrollar un sentido saludable de autoconciencia, confianza y resiliencia en una población que a menudo no cuenta con programas de salud mental.

    Youth Guidance ofrece WOW a unas 350 estudiantes en el Distrito Escolar 60 de la Unidad Comunitaria de Waukegan, que presta servicios a una ciudad industrial de unos 88,000 habitantes, situada a unas 30 millas al norte de Chicago. Un poco más del 93 por ciento de los 13,600 estudiantes del distrito son negros o hispanos, y alrededor del 67 por ciento provienen de familias clasificadas como de bajos ingresos.

    El programa también atiende a estudiantes en Chicago, Boston, Kansas City y Dallas. Los consejeros de WOW trabajan con equipos de salud conductual, administradores y maestros de las escuelas para identificar a estudiantes con altos niveles de estrés que podrían beneficiarse del programa.

    Investigaciones recientes muestran que WOW funciona, en un momento en el cual la salud mental de las adolescentes está en crisis, un ensayo de control aleatorio del Education Lab de la Universidad de Chicago realizado en 2023 encontró que WOW redujo los síntomas de trastorno de estrés postraumático (PTSD) entre las participantes de las escuelas públicas de Chicago en un 22 por ciento y disminuyó su ansiedad y depresión.

    El programa Working on Womanhood opera en Waukegan, Illinois y en varios otros distritos escolares de todo el país. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Sin embargo, múltiples obstáculos como la financiación, el agotamiento de los consejeros y la desconfianza en los programas de salud mental, se interponen en el camino para hacer que WOW llegue a más estudiantes. Una forma en que el programa supera los impedimentos es llevándolo al lugar donde los estudiantes pasan la mayor parte de su tiempo: la escuela.

    Paez-Naranjo es tan querida entre los estudiantes de Abbott, que incluso los niños que no están en el programa la buscan, le planteó una pregunta al grupo de estaudiantes.

    “Hablemos de las consecuencias positivas y negativas de determinadas decisiones. ¿Qué tal pelear?” preguntó. “

    El único resultado positivo es que descubrirás lo fuerte que eres”, dijo Deanna Palacio, una de las niñas.

    “¿Por qué pelear cuando puedes hablarlo?” preguntó otra estudiante, Ka’Neya Lehn.

    “¿Sí? ¿Cuál es el punto?” dijo una tercera niña, Ana Ortiz.

    Yuli Paez-Naranjo, consejera de Working on Womanhood de la escuela secundaria Robert Abbott en Waukegan, Illinois, dijo que ha visto una disminución en la rabia y las peleas entre las niñas que participan en el programa de apoyo de salud mental. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Nacole Milbrook, directora del programa de Orientación Juvenil, dijo que WOW fue desarrollado para abordar necesidades que a menudo se pasan por alto entre las niñas hispanas y afroamericanas. “Las niñas han quedado excluidas [de las iniciativas de apoyo a la salud mental], principalmente porque no causan problemas”, afirmó.

    Un estudio de referencia de más de 2,000 niñas en las escuelas públicas de Chicago, realizado por el equipo del Education Lab de la Universidad de Chicago, encontró tasas “asombrosamente altas” de exposición al trauma: casi un tercio de las mujeres jóvenes participantes habían sido testigos de cómo alguien era agredido o asesinado violentamente; y casi la mitad perdió a alguien cercano por muerte violenta o súbita. Alrededor del 38 por ciento de las niñas de este grupo mostraron signos de trastorno de estrés postraumático, el doble de la tasa de los miembros del servicio que regresaban de Irak y Afganistán.

    Paez-Naranjo y su compañera consejera de WOW, Te’Ericka Kimbrough —quien trabaja en el Centro Educativo Opcional/Alternativo de Waukegan— han apoyado a estudiantes que han sufrido agresión sexual. Algunos participantes en sus círculos son padres adolescentes. Otros están tratando de resistir la presión negativa de sus compañeros. Otros pertenecen a familias que tienen dificultades económicas.

    En comparación con otros, los estudiantes negros e hispanos tienen más dificultades para obtener apoyo de salud mental en la escuela. El apoyo escolar a la salud mental dirigido a las niñas, especialmente los programas sostenidos y basados en evidencia como WOW, es escaso o inexistente en muchas escuelas públicas.

    Aún más escaso es el apoyo a la salud mental por parte de proveedores que puedan brindar una atención culturalmente receptiva. Sólo el 5 por ciento de los proveedores de salud mental en Estados Unidos son hispanos. Sólo el 4 por ciento son negros.

    Ana Ortiz, estudiante de octavo grado en la escuela secundaria Robert Abbott, dijo que el programa Working on Womanhood “me ayuda a comprenderme mejor a mí misma”. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Sally Nuamah, profesora asociada de política urbana en desarrollo humano y política social en la Universidad Northwestern, dijo que la tendencia de los adultos a ver a los jóvenes negros como más adultos que sus pares blancos, puede ocultar las necesidades de salud mental de los niños negros. Además, el propio comportamiento positivo de las niñas puede enmascarar sus necesidades: en un estudio del programa WOW se encontró que las participantes tenían una buena asistencia a la escuela y al menos un promedio de B, incluso cuando más de un tercio mostraba signos de trastorno de estrés postraumático.

    “Se les percibe como resilientes y con valor”, dijo Nuamah. “Esto oscurece las necesidades reales de salud mental de los estudiantes de color y perpetúa las políticas institucionalmente racistas porque no se percibe que estos estudiantes necesiten los mismos recursos”.

    Servir a los estudiantes donde están físicamente presentes casi 200 días al año es una forma de satisfacer la necesidad de apoyo que con demasiada frecuencia no se satisface, dijo Nuamah.

    “WOW es la única organización [escolar] que hace lo que hace en la medida en que lo hace”, dijo. “La mayoría de los servicios [de salud mental] se ofrecen fuera de la escuela”.

    Laurel Crown, gerente senior de investigación y evaluación de Youth Guidance, dijo que la organización sin fines de lucro está trabajando para determinar qué partes del programa funcionan mejor. Las encuestas a las participantes al final del año escolar, que utilizan medidas similares a las utilizadas en el estudio del Education Lab, sugieren que las relaciones desarrolladas entre los consejeros de WOW y las participantes son una razón clave por la que el programa es efectivo.

    “Nuestra teoría del cambio es que WOW funciona porque… [las estudiantes] asisten a este grupo de apoyo increíblemente poderoso todas las semanas y esta persona de apoyo está allí todos los días en la escuela para ellos”, dijo Crown.

    Los consejeros de WOW están “comprometidos sistémicamente” en las escuelas donde trabajan, dijo Fabiola Rosiles-Duran, supervisora del programa WOW de Waukegan. Ellas se mantienen informados sobre la dinámica de toda la escuela al ser parte del equipo de salud conductual y de las reuniones de todo el personal.

    Los consejeros Kimbrough y Paez-Naranjo agregaron que el acceso diario a los maestros y al personal brinda apoyo integral a sus estudiantes. La presencia de los consejeros también les ayuda a responder inmediatamente a situaciones agudas y hacer un seguimiento del progreso de las estudiantes cada día de escuela.

    “Si necesito ayuda adicional con una estudiante, puedo apoyarme en el equipo de salud conductual de la escuela”, dijo Kimbrough. Ella agrega que si tiene una estudiante en crisis, poder verla regularmente la ayuda a saber si sus intervenciones están funcionando.

    Brindar apoyo intensivo a las estudiantes todos los días de escuela puede ser emocionalmente agotador para los consejeros de WOW. Youth Guidance proporciona capacitación grupal y apoyo individual para ayudar a los consejeros a mantener su propia salud emocional.

    Durante su primer año en el trabajo, los consejeros participan en tres horas de capacitación curricular cada mes más tres días de cursos de actualización. Muchas actividades de formación reflejan las que los consejeros utilizarán más adelante con sus alumnos.

    Los líderes de WOW también se registran todos los días de la semana para ofrecer apoyo a los consejeros. Los nuevos en WOW también asisten a un retiro de dos días y tres noches que “ayuda a los consejeros y al personal a descubrir lo que está sucediendo dentro de nosotros mismos”, dijo Ngozi Harris, directora de programas y desarrollo del personal de Youth Guidance, “para que tengamos el combustible para hacer este trabajo”.

    Un estudio encontró que los múltiples niveles de apoyo que WOW ofrece a las estudiantes y al personal, a un costo de aproximadamente $2,300 por participante, son rentables. Aún así, eso puede representar una parte importante del presupuesto anual de un distrito o escuela.

    Pero Jason Nault, superintendente asociado de equidad, innovación y responsabilidad de Waukegan CUSD 60, dijo que WOW bien vale el costo. A principios de este año, la Junta de Educación del distrito aprobó una extensión de dos años de su contrato con WOW y su contraparte para estudiantes varones, Becoming a Man (Convirtiéndose en un Hombre), a un costo de $4,2 millones.

    Nault dijo que los datos que Youth Guidance recopila al final de cada año escolar muestran que las estudiantes de WOW están menos deprimidas y ansiosas, más seguras de sí mismas y tienen menos estrés postraumático.

    Una vez a la semana, las niñas de la escuela secundaria Robert Abbott y otras escuelas en el área de Waukegan, Illinois, se reúnen con sus compañeros y un consejero para resolver problemas personales. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Sin embargo, existen múltiples desafíos de implementación para WOW y otros programas de apoyo estudiantil en las escuelas. Una es que el trabajo de los consejeros es aislante y puede provocar agotamiento psicológico, dijo Inger Burnett-Zeigler, profesora asociada de psicología en la Facultad de Medicina Feinberg de Northwestern.

    “Existe un estrés significativo, crónico y traumático que experimentan los consejeros de WOW”, dijo. Burnett-Zeigler está trabajando con WOW para desarrollar y probar una intervención de mindfulness basada en evidencia para apoyar a los consejeros.

    “El bienestar del consejero es importante en sí mismo”, dijo Burnett-Zeigler. También puede respaldar los resultados de los jóvenes, afirmó.

    Otra barrera que enfrentan programas como WOW es que, según algunas investigaciones, las familias hispanas y afroamericanas son más reacias a buscar apoyo y tratamiento de salud mental que otros grupos étnicos y raciales. El programa WOW trabaja para generar confianza no sólo con los estudiantes, sino con sus padres y familiares.

    “Las familias de color tienden a no nombrar los problemas de salud mental como problemas de salud mental”, dijo Milbrook, directora de programas de la organización que supervisa WOW. “Buscar tratamiento sigue siendo un estigma, incluso para los niños”.

    Milbrook dijo que el entorno escolar es clave para desestigmatizar tanto las afecciones como el tratamiento de salud mental.

    Al estar integrados en escuelas como la secundaria Robert Abbott en Waukegan, Illinois, los consejeros de Working on Womanhood dicen que pueden construir vínculos más profundos con las estudiantes en su programa de apoyo de salud mental. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    “Estar en la escuela y participar en los grupos con otros estudiantes, comprender que no eres la única persona que enfrenta estos mismos problemas y hablar de ellos de maneras que no se parecen a su idea de terapia tradicional”, todo esto ayuda, dijo.

    También es esencial, añadió Milbrook, fomentar el sentido de pertenencia. “Les damos a las participantes camisetas WOW y ahora pueden caminar por la escuela identificándose como niñas de Working on Womanhood”, dijo. “De repente, nadie se avergüenza de estar en este grupo”.

    Deanna, alumna de octavo grado de Abbott, añadió que el sentido de pertenencia que fomenta WOW la ha ayudado a sentirse menos sola.

    “Aquí te sientes escuchada y comprendida”, dijo.

    Aunque el entorno escolar presenta ventajas para WOW, también puede implicar desafíos de implementación. Harris, de Youth Guidance, dijo que tanto el personal de WOW como el personal de la escuela quieren resultados positivos para las estudiantes de WOW, pero el enfoque centrado en la curación de WOW podría entrar en conflicto con la política disciplinaria de una escuela. Por lo tanto, el personal de la escuela podría inicialmente desconfiar del personal del programa y de los consejeros.

    Las escuelas a veces también subestiman la experiencia de los consejeros y otras a veces incluso les piden que asuman tareas como hacer seguimiento de la cafetería, que no son su responsabilidad.

    “Se necesita un año para construir relaciones y ser realmente intencional sobre cómo colaborar con la escuela”, dijo Harris. “Hasta que se genere esa confianza, eres un outsider”.

    Pagar el programa es otro desafío. Aunque Waukegan CUSD 60 cubre todos los costos de WOW, la mayoría de los distritos no lo hacen. Youth Guidance depende principalmente del apoyo filantrópico para pagar sus programas.

    Es menos probable que Youth Guidance aproveche fuentes de financiación pública como Medicaid porque los engorrosos procesos del programa de asistencia pública pueden generar costos más altos e incluso amenazar la confianza que WOW genera con los estudiantes y sus familias.

    Por ejemplo, los consejeros de WOW suelen hacer numerosas llamadas telefónicas a los padres o visitarlos en casa. Es tiempo bien empleado, dijo Milbrook, pero no es financieramente productivo. Los consejeros sólo pueden facturar su tiempo a Medicaid después de que uno de los padres firme un formulario de consentimiento.

    Deanna Palacio, estudiante de octavo grado de la escuela secundaria Robert Abbott en Waukegan, Illinois, dijo que se siente “escuchada y comprendida” por sus compañeras y su consejera en el programa Working on Womanhood. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    A pesar de algunos de estos desafíos de implementación, los líderes y consejeros de WOW consideran que el programa WOW de Waukegan es un éxito.

    “Como un todo [en el grupo], he visto una disminución en la rabia y las peleas”, dijo Páez-Naranjo, consejera de Abbott Middle WOW.

    Las lecciones de mindfulness durante los círculos WOW en la escuela secundaria Abbott han ayudado a Ana Ortiz a desarrollar confianza en su identidad emergente como mujer joven. Ella, al igual que sus otras compañeras del programa, regresó por segundo año después de comenzar WOW como estudiantes de séptimo grado.

    “Antes de venir aquí, no me encontraba a mí misma en absoluto”, dijo Ana. “Quería saber ¿cómo es ser mujer? Quería saber cuáles eran las opiniones y perspectivas de otras chicas”.

    Páez-Naranjo dijo que ha visto el crecimiento de Ana desde el año escolar pasado.

    “Ana ha salido mucho más de su zona de confort. Se siente más segura para compartir detalles íntimos de su vida y está dispuesta a apoyar a cualquiera que lo necesite”, dijo Páez-Naranjo.

    “Y está mucho más sonriente”, añadió Páez-Naranjo. “Se puede ver su sonrisa a una milla de distancia”.

    Más tarde, al salir del círculo WOW de Abbott del miércoles, Ana volvió para ofrecer una visión final sobre cómo WOW la ha ayudado.

    “Me hace sentir libre aquí”, dijo, mostrando una de esas sonrisas. “Me entiendo mejor a mí misma”.

    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.

    Join us today.

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    Kathleen Hayes

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  • OPINION: Our college students are struggling emotionally. We need to understand how to help them – The Hechinger Report

    OPINION: Our college students are struggling emotionally. We need to understand how to help them – The Hechinger Report

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    Our students are struggling. As a college president and a clinical psychologist, I know this well.

    Recent headlines tell a distressing story about the mental health of college students. While the news articles are alarming, it is worth noting that much of the data they cite comes from self-reporting by students.

    This self-reporting gives us important insights into how our students are feeling, but it is not equivalent to clinical diagnoses. By equating self-reporting with diagnoses, we risk applying the wrong interventions.

    I’ve spent much of my career overseeing clinical services and other student supports, and I know the importance of clinical interventions. They are intended to be matched to specific diagnoses and can involve a variety of treatments, including individual or group and outpatient or inpatient, by licensed mental health professionals.

    But I believe we must shift how we support students’ emotional needs. Clinical interventions are not the only way — and often not the most appropriate or effective way — to support young people who may be temporarily struggling with feelings that do not meet the full psychological definition of mental illness.

    Rather than needing a clinical intervention, many students may benefit most from support that builds their resilience if they are feeling sad, worried, overwhelmed or anxious. Resilient students are better positioned to cope with temporary periods of heightened emotional stress.

    In the past, teaching these skills was usually not seen as central to the mission of a college or university, yet learning how to cope emotionally may be among our students’ most vital and integral lessons.

    It is something that will serve them throughout — and well beyond — their time on our campuses.

    Related: Congress is starting to tackle student mental health

    Data drawn from student self-reporting provides important insights into their needs. Some 44 percent of students reported that they experienced symptoms of depression during the 2021-22 academic year, a Healthy Minds survey of 96,000 U.S. college students shows; 37 percent said they experienced anxiety.

    In addition, two out of five undergraduates said that they “frequently” experience emotional stress, results from a Gallup-Lumina Foundation report found, while 36 percent of students pursuing bachelor’s degrees reported that they had considered “stopping out” in the last six months. The most commonly cited reasons were “emotional stress” (69 percent) and “personal mental health reasons” (59 percent).

    Researchers have hypothesized that at least some of these self-reported crises may be due to an increased awareness and normalization of mental health conditions.

    This awareness is something we should regard as positive and beneficial because it reduces the stigma and isolation that have long impeded students from getting support. But we also must recognize an unintentional, negative impact of this increased awareness: overinterpretation.

    Young people experiencing negative emotions and facing normal developmental challenges may be particularly vulnerable to misidentifying those experiences as actual illnesses.

    This is not to suggest that the mental health crisis is not real, or that we should not support our students or validate their experiences. Students are struggling every day on my campus and on campuses across the country. Mental illness often first appears or worsens in young adulthood, and for these students, accessing appropriate clinical intervention is critical.

    But for many students, what will be most appropriate and effective are supports to develop their resilience and coping strategies and the confidence to rebound from setbacks.

    Being a young adult today is not easy. In addition to facing typical challenges, such as forming an identity and developing life skills, they have grown up with pressures from social media, isolation brought on by the global pandemic and the economic and political uncertainties of the twenty-first century.

    Rising college costs have also raised the stakes for many students. College is a huge commitment both monetarily and emotionally, and our students know it.

    They inevitably face obstacles when they move into the college environment, such as not knowing where they fit in and encountering more challenging coursework than they had previously. Believing they are an outlier, rather than the norm, may undermine their resilience.

    That’s why at Lewis & Clark we incorporate resilience-building practices, using research-based belonging exercises as well as intentional peer-to-peer support.

    Two of our psychology professors, Jerusha Detweiler-Bedell and Brian Detweiler-Bedell, spearheaded our participation in a multiyear Stanford-led study that aimed to foster a deeper sense of belonging among our incoming first-year students, with the goal of helping them understand that their struggles are normal — and that things will get better over time.

    The exercises in the study incorporated stories of obstacles faced by other students and how they overcame them. While the original study’s sample size was small, we saw an increase in retention rates and GPAs, especially among students from underrepresented groups. The results were so compelling that all incoming Lewis & Clark undergraduates now participate in the social belonging intervention.

    Related: OPINION: One college president uses board games, bedtime stories, horses and ice-cream sundaes to help students cope

    We also initiated a peer mentoring program specifically serving first-year students. The mentors reach out to incoming first-year students and introduce them to campus life with information about academic advising, navigating health and wellness services and various campus clubs and social options. The mentoring relationship begins during orientation and continues throughout the semester. Just as important as what the peer mentors do is how they model resilience.

    Of course, approaches like these should be offered with an understanding of what other interventions some students may need. Clinical depression and anxiety disorders do require clinical support. Higher education institutions must continue to expand our capacity to provide such support for those students who need it.

    But we must also prioritize programs that bolster resilience. These efforts can reassure and help students (and their families) who may be misidentifying their feelings based on popular rather than clinical understandings of depression and anxiety.

    When it comes to setting students up for success in their professional and personal lives, resilience may be the most important skill we can encourage them to develop.

    Robin H. Holmes-Sullivan is president of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. She has maintained a private clinical psychology and consulting practice for more than three decades.

    This story about college students and resilience was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

    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.

    Join us today.

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    Robin H. Holmes-Sullivan

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  • The mental health needs of Black and Hispanic girls often go unmet. This group wraps them in support – The Hechinger Report

    The mental health needs of Black and Hispanic girls often go unmet. This group wraps them in support – The Hechinger Report

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    WAUKEGAN, Ill. — On a sunny but brisk November afternoon inside Robert Abbott Middle School, six eighth grade girls quickly filed into a small but colorful classroom and seated themselves in a circle.

    Yuli Paez-Naranjo, a Working on Womanhood counselor, sported a purple WOW T-shirt as she led the group in a discussion about how values can inform decisions.

    “Do you ever feel like two little angels are sitting on each of your shoulders, one whispering good things to you, the other whispering bad things?” Paez-Naranjo asked the girls. The students nodded and giggled.

    At the 50-minute WOW circle, girls have a chance to set aside the pressures of the school day, laugh with and listen to one another, and work through personal problems. The weekly meeting is the centerpiece of individual and group therapy that WOW offers throughout the school year to Black and Hispanic girls, and to students of all races who identify as female or nonbinary, in grades 6 to 12.

    The Working on Womanhood program operates in Waukegan, Illinois, and several other school districts around the country. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Created in 2011 by Black and Hispanic social workers at the nonprofit organization Youth Guidance, WOW’s goal is to build a healthy sense of self-awareness, confidence and resilience in a population that is often underserved by mental health programs.

    Youth Guidance offers WOW to about 350 students in Waukegan Community Unit School District 60, which serves an industrial town of about 88,000 located about 30 miles north of Chicago. Just over 93 percent of the district’s 13,600 students are Black or Hispanic, and about 67 percent come from families classified as low income.

    The program also serves students in Chicago, Boston, Kansas City and Dallas. WOW counselors work with school-based behavioral health teams, administrators and teachers to identify students with high stress levels who might benefit from the program.

    Recent research shows that WOW works: At a time when teen girls’ mental health is in crisis, a 2023 University of Chicago Education Lab randomized control trial found that WOW reduced PTSD symptoms among Chicago Public Schools participants by 22 percent and decreased their anxiety and depression.

    Multiple hurdles, including funding, counselor burnout and distrust of mental health programs stand in the way of getting WOW to more students. But one way the program overcomes impediments is by bringing the program to the place students spend most of their time — school.

    Yuli Paez-Naranjo, the Working on Womanhood counselor based at Robert Abbott Middle School in Waukegan, Illinois, said she’s seen a decrease in anger and fights among the girls participating in the mental health support program. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Paez-Naranjo, who is so well-liked among Abbott students that even kids who aren’t in the program seek her out, posed a question to the group.

    “Let’s talk about positive and negative consequences of certain decisions. How about fighting?” she asked.

    “The only positive outcome is you may find out how strong you are,” said Deanna Palacio, one of the girls.

    “Why fight when you can talk it out?” asked another student, Ka’Neya Lehn.

    “Right? What’s the point?” said a third girl, Ana Ortiz.

    Related: A surprising remedy for teens in mental health crises

    Nacole Milbrook, Youth Guidance chief program officer, said WOW was developed to address often overlooked needs among Hispanic and Black girls. “Girls have been left out [of mental health support initiatives], mainly because they are not making trouble,” she said.

    A baseline study of over 2,000 girls in Chicago’s public schools, conducted by the University of Chicago Education Lab team, found “staggeringly high” rates of trauma exposure: Nearly one third of the participating young women had witnessed someone being violently assaulted or killed, and almost half lost someone close to them through violent or sudden death. Some 38 percent of girls in this group showed signs of PTSD, double the rate of service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Once a week, girls at Robert Abbott Middle School and other schools in the Waukegan, Illinois, area meet with their peers and a counselor to work through personal problems. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Paez-Naranjo and fellow WOW counselor Te’Ericka Kimbrough, who works at Waukegan Alternative/Optional Educational Center, have supported students who have suffered sexual assault. Some participants in their circles are teen parents. Others are trying to resist negative peer pressure. Still others are in families that are struggling financially.

    Compared to other students, Black and Hispanic students have a harder time getting mental health support in school. In-school mental health support targeted to girls, especially evidence-based, sustained programs like WOW, is scarce or nonexistent in many public schools.

    Even scarcer is mental health support from providers who can give culturally responsive care. Only 5 percent of U.S. mental health providers are Hispanic. Just 4 percent are Black.

    Ana Ortiz, an eighth grader at Robert Abbott Middle School, said the Working on Womanhood program “helps me understand better about myself.” Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Sally Nuamah, associate professor of urban politics in human development and social policy at Northwestern University, said the tendency of adults to view Black youth as more adult-like than their white peers can shroud the mental health needs of Black children. In addition, the girls’ own positive behavior can mask their needs: In a study of the WOW program, participants were found to have strong school attendance and at least a B average, even as more than a third showed signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.

    “They are perceived as resilient and possessing grit,” Nuamah said. “This obscures the real mental health needs of students of color and perpetuates institutionally racist policies because these students are not perceived as needing the same resources.”

    Serving students where they are physically present nearly 200 days per year is one way to fill the too-often unmet need for support, Nuamah said.

    “WOW is the only [school-based] organization that does what it does to the extent that it does,” she said. “Most [mental health] services are offered out of school.”

    “Before I came here, I was not finding myself at all.”

    Ana Ortiz, student, Robert Abbott Middle School

    Laurel Crown, Youth Guidance senior research and evaluation manager, said the nonprofit is working to figure out just what parts of the program work best. End-of-school-year participant surveys, which use measures similar to those used in the Education Lab study, suggest that the relationships developed between WOW counselors and participants are a key reason the program is effective.

    “Our theory of change is that WOW works because … [students] are attending this incredibly powerful support group every week and this support person is there every day in the school for them,” Crown said.

    WOW counselors are “systemically engaged” in the schools where they are based, said Fabiola Rosiles-Duran, WOW program supervisor for Waukegan. They stay informed about whole-school dynamics by being part of behavioral health team and all-staff meetings.

    Counselors Kimbrough and Paez-Naranjo added that daily access to teachers and staff provides wraparound support for their students. The counselors’ presence also helps them respond to acute situations immediately and follow up on student progress each school day.

    “If I need extra support with a student, I can lean on the school behavioral health team,” Kimbrough said. She added that if she has a student in crisis, being able to see that student
    regularly helps her know if their interventions are working.

    RELATED: Another tool to improve student mental health? Kids talking to kids

    Providing intensive support to students every school day can be emotionally taxing for WOW counselors. Youth Guidance provides group training and individual support to help counselors maintain their own emotional health.

    During their first year on the job, counselors participate in three hours of curriculum training each month plus three days of refresher courses. Many training activities mirror those the counselors will later use with their students.

    WOW leaders also check in every weekday to offer support to the counselors. Those new to WOW also attend a two-day, three-night retreat that “helps counselors and staff figure out what’s happening within ourselves,” said Ngozi Harris, Youth Guidance director of program and staff development, “so we have the fuel to do this work.”

    A baseline study of over 2,000 girls in the Chicago school district, which is served by WOW, found that 38 percent of girls in grades 9 to 11 exhibited signs of PTSD.

    One study found that the multiple layers of support WOW offers students and staff, at a cost of about $2,300 per participant, are cost-effective. Still, that can amount to a significant portion of a district’s or school’s annual budget.

    But Jason Nault, Waukegan CUSD 60’s associate superintendent of equity, innovation and accountability, said WOW is well worth the cost. Earlier this year, the district’s Board of Education approved a two-year extension of its contract with WOW and its counterpart for male students, Becoming a Man, at a cost of $4.2 million.

    Nault said data Youth Guidance collects at the end of each school year shows WOW students are less depressed and anxious, more self-confident and have less post-traumatic stress.

    Deanna Palacio, an eighth grader at Robert Abbott Middle School in Waukegan, Illinois, said she feels “heard and understood” by her peers and counselor in the Working on Womanhood program. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Yet multiple implementation challenges exist for WOW and other school-based student support programs. One is that the work of counselors is isolating and can lead to psychological burnout, said Inger Burnett-Zeigler, associate professor of psychology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

    “There is significant and chronic and traumatic stress the WOW counselors experience,” she said. Burnett-Zeigler is working with WOW to develop and test an evidence-based mindfulness intervention to support counselors.

    “Counselor well-being is important in and of itself,” said Burnett-Zeigler. It also can support youth outcomes, she said.

    Another barrier experienced by programs like WOW is that, according to research, Hispanic and Black families are more reluctant to seek out mental health support and treatment than other ethnic and racial groups. The WOW program works to build trust not only with the students, but
    with their parents and family members.

    “You feel heard and understood here.”

    Deanna Palacio, student, Robert Abbott Middle School

    “Families of color have a tendency to not name mental health issues as mental health issues,” said Milbrook, the chief program officer for the organization that oversees WOW. “Seeking treatment still has a stigma, even for children.”

    Milbrook said the school-based setting is key for destigmatizing both mental health conditions and treatment.

    “Being in school and participating in the groups with other students, understanding that you’re not the only person dealing with these same problems, and talking about them in ways that don’t feel like their idea of traditional therapy” all help, she said.

    Also essential, Milbrook added, is fostering a sense of belonging. “We give the participants WOW T-shirts, and now they can walk around the school identifying as Working on Womanhood girls,” she said. “All of a sudden, nobody is ashamed to be in this group.”

    Deanna, the Abbott eighth grader, added that the sense of belonging WOW fosters has helped her feel less lonely.

    “You feel heard and understood here,” she said.

    RELATED: Nation’s skeletal school mental health program will be severely tested

    Although the school setting presents advantages for WOW, it can also involve implementation challenges. Youth Guidance’s Harris said that both WOW staff and school staff want positive outcomes for WOW students, but WOW’s healing-centered approach might conflict with a school’s discipline policy. So, school staff might initially be wary of program staff and counselors.

    Schools also sometimes underestimate the expertise of the counselors, and sometimes even ask them to take on tasks like cafeteria monitoring that are not their responsibility.

    “It takes a year of building relationships, really being intentional about how to collaborate with the school,” said Harris. “Until that trust is built, you are an outsider.”

    Paying for the program is another challenge. Although Waukegan CUSD 60 covers all program costs, most districts do not. Youth Guidance relies primarily on philanthropic support to pay for its programs.

    Youth Guidance is less likely to tap into public funding sources like Medicaid because the public assistance program’s cumbersome processes can lead to higher program costs and even threaten the trust WOW builds with students and their families.

    For example, WOW counselors often make numerous phone calls to parents, or visit them at home. It’s time well spent, Milbrook said, but it’s not financially productive. Counselors can only bill their time to Medicaid after a parent signs a consent form.

    By being embedded in the schools such as Robert Abbott Middle School in Waukegan, Illinois, Working on Womanhood counselors say they can build deeper bonds with the students in their mental health support program. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report

    Despite some of these implementation challenges, WOW leaders and counselors consider the Waukegan WOW program a success.

    “As a whole [group], I’ve seen a decrease in anger and fights,” said Paez-Naranjo, the Abbott Middle WOW counselor.

    The lessons on mindfulness during WOW Circles at Abbott Middle School have helped Ana Ortiz build confidence in her emerging identity as a young woman. She, like her other classmates in the program, returned for a second year after starting WOW as seventh graders.

    “Before I came here, I was not finding myself at all,” Ana said. “I wanted to know, how is it, being a woman? I wanted to know what other girls’ opinions and perspectives were.”

    Paez-Naranjo said she has seen Ana’s growth since last school year.

    “Ana has stepped out of her comfort zone a lot more. She feels more confident to share intimate details about her life and is willing to support anyone in need,” said Paez-Naranjo.

    “And she is so much more smiley,” Paez-Naranjo added. “You can see her smile from a mile away.”

    Later, on her way out of the Wednesday Abbott WOW circle, Ana turned back to offer a final take on how WOW has helped her.

    “It makes me feel free in here,” she said, flashing one of those smiles. “I understand better about myself.”

    This story about Working on Womanhood was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

    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.

    Join us today.

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    Kathleen Hayes

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  • Fewer kids are enrolling in kindergarten as pandemic fallout lingers

    Fewer kids are enrolling in kindergarten as pandemic fallout lingers

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    This story was produced by The Associated Press and EdSource and republished with permission.

    CONCORD, Calif. – Aylah Levy had some catching up to do this fall when she started first grade.

    After spending her kindergarten year at an alternative program that met exclusively outdoors, Aylah, 6, had to adjust to being inside a classroom. She knew only a handful of numbers and was not printing her letters clearly. To help her along, the teacher at her Bay Area elementary school has been showing her the right way to hold a pencil.

    “It’s harder. Way, way harder,” Aylah said of the new grip.

    Still, her mother, Hannah Levy, says it was the right decision to skip kindergarten. She wanted Aylah to enjoy being a kid. There is plenty of time, she reasoned, for her daughter to develop study skills.

    Hannah Levy holds her daughter Aylah, 6, in Albany, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023. Credit: (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

    The number of kindergartners in public school plunged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerned about the virus or wanting to avoid online school, hundreds of thousands of families delayed the start of school for their young children. Most have returned to schooling of some kind, but even three years after the pandemic school closures, kindergarten enrollment has continued to lag.

    Some parents like Levy don’t see much value in traditional kindergarten. For others, it’s a matter of keeping children in other child care arrangements that better fit their lifestyles. And for many, kindergarten simply is no longer the assumed first step in a child’s formal education, another sign of the way the pandemic and online learning upended the U.S. school system. 

    Kindergarten enrollment remained down 5.2 percent in the 2022-2023 school year compared with the 2019-2020 school year, according to an Associated Press analysis of state-level data. Public school enrollment across all grades fell 2.2 percent. 

    Kindergarten is considered a crucial year for children to learn to follow directions, regulate behavior and get accustomed to learning. Missing that year of school can put kids at a disadvantage, especially those from low-income families and families whose first language is not English, said Deborah Stipek, a former dean of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Those children are sometimes behind in recognizing letters and counting to 10 even before starting school, she said.

    But to some parents, that foundation seems less urgent post-pandemic. For many, kindergarten just doesn’t seem to work for their lives.

    Related: We know how to help young kids cope with the trauma of the last year – but will we do it?

    Students who disengaged during the pandemic school closures have been making their way back to schools. But kindergarten enrollment remained down 5.2 percent in the 2022-2023 school year compared with the 2019-2020 school year, according to an Associated Press analysis of state-level data. Public school enrollment across all grades fell 2.2 percent. 

    Kindergarten means a seismic change in some families’ lifestyles. After years of all-day child care, they suddenly must manage afternoon pickups with limited and expensive options for after-school care. Some worry their child isn’t ready for the structure and behavioral expectations of a public school classroom. And many think whatever their child misses at school can be quickly learned in first grade. 

    • Christina Engram holds daughter, Neveah, left, 6, and son, Choncey, 4, while spending time together at home in Oakland, Calif., on Friday Nov. 24, 2023. Credit: (AP Photo/Loren Elliott)
    • Neveah, 6, makes art at home in Oakland, Calif., on Friday Nov. 24, 2023. Credit: (AP Photo/Loren Elliott)
    • Neveah, 6, makes art at home in Oakland, Calif., on Friday Nov. 24, 2023. Credit: (AP Photo/Loren Elliott)
    • Neveah, 6, pets her pet bearded dragon lizard, named Gizmo, at home in Oakland, Calif., on Friday Nov. 24, 2023. Credit: (AP Photo/Loren Elliott)

    Christina Engram was set to send her daughter Nevaeh to kindergarten this fall at her neighborhood school in Oakland, until she learned her daughter would not have a spot in the after-school program there. That meant she would need to be picked up at 2:30 most afternoons.

    “If I put her in public school, I would have to cut my hours, and I basically wouldn’t have a good income for me and my kids,” said Engram, a preschool teacher and a mother of two. 

    Engram decided to keep Nevaeh in a child care center for another year. Engram receives a state child care subsidy that helps her pay for full-time child care or preschool until her child is 6 and must enroll in first grade.

    “If I put her in public school, I would have to cut my hours, and I basically wouldn’t have a good income for me and my kids.”

    Christina Engram, a preschool teacher and a mother of two

    Compared with kindergarten, she believed her daughter would be more likely to receive extra attention at the child care center, which has more adult staff per child. 

    “She knows her numbers. She knows her ABC’s. She knows how to spell her name,” Engram said. “But when she feels frustrated that she can’t do something, her frustration overtakes her. She needs extra attention and care. She has some shyness about her when she thinks she’s going to give the wrong answer.”

    Related: Luring Covid-cautious parents back to school

    In California, where kindergarten is not mandatory, enrollment for that grade fell 10.1 percent from the 2019-20 to 2021-22 school year. Enrollment seemed to rebound in the next school year, growing by over 5 percent in fall 2022, but that may have been inflated by the state’s expansion of transitional kindergarten — a grade before kindergarten that is available to older 4-year-olds. The state Department of Education has not disclosed how many children last school year were regular kindergartners as opposed to transitional students. 

    Many would-be kindergartners are among the tens of thousands of families that have turned to homeschooling.

    Some parents say they came to homeschooling almost accidentally. Convinced their family wasn’t ready for “school,” they kept their 5-year-old home, then found they needed more structure. They purchased some activities or a curriculum — and homeschooling stuck.

    Hannah Levy, rear, follows with her daughter, Aylah, 6, at Codornices Park, a location Aylah attended as a Berkeley Forest School student, during an interview in Berkeley, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023. Credit: (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

    Others chose homeschooling for kindergartners after watching older children in traditional school. Jenny Almazan is homeschooling Ezra, 6, after pulling his sister Emma, 9, from a school in Chino, California. 

    “She would rush home from school, eat dinner, do an hour or two of schoolwork, shower and go to bed. She wasn’t given time to be a kid,” Almazan said. Almazan also worried about school shootings and pressures her kids might face at school to act or dress a certain way.

    To make it all work, Almazan quit her job as a preschool teacher. Most days, the children’s learning happens outside of the home, when they are playing at the park, visiting museums or even doing math while grocery shopping.

    “She would rush home from school, eat dinner, do an hour or two of schoolwork, shower and go to bed. She wasn’t given time to be a kid.”

    Jenny Almazan, who is homeschooling Ezra, 6, after pulling his sister Emma, 9, from a school in Chino, California

    “My kids are not missing anything by not being in public school,” she said. “Every child has different needs. I’m not saying public school is bad. It’s not. But for us, this fits.”

    Kindergarten is important for all children, but especially those who do not attend preschool or who haven’t had much exposure to math, reading and other subjects, said Steve Barnett, co-director for the National Institute for Early Education Research and a professor at Rutgers University.

    “The question actually is: If you didn’t go to kindergarten, what did you do instead?” he said.

    Related: Millions of kids are missing weeks of school as attendance tanks across the US

    Hannah Levy chose the Berkeley Forest School to start her daughter’s education, in part because she valued how teachers infused subjects like science with lessons on nature. She pictured traditional kindergarten as a place where children sit inside at desks, do worksheets and have few play-based experiences.

    “I learned about nature. We learned in a different way,” daughter Aylah said.

    But the appeal of a suburban school system had brought the family from San Francisco, and when it came time for first grade, Aylah enrolled at Cornell Elementary in Albany.

    Aylah Levy, 6, walks on rocks in a creek at Codornices Park, a location she attended as a Berkeley Forest School student, during an interview with her mother, Hannah, in Berkeley, Calif., Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023. Credit: (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

    Early this fall, Levy recalled Aylah coming home with a project where every first grader had a page in a book to write about who they were. Some pages had only scribbles and others had legible print. She said Aylah fell somewhere in the middle.

    “It was interesting to me because it was the moment I thought, ‘What would it be like if she was in kindergarten?’” she said.

    In a conference with Levy, Aylah’s teacher said she was working with the girl on her writing, but there were no other concerns. “She said anything Aylah was behind on, she has caught up to the point that she would never differentiate that Aylah didn’t go to Cornell for kindergarten as well,” Levy said.

    Levy said she feels good about Aylah’s attitude toward school, though she misses knowing she was outside interacting with nature.

    So does Aylah.

    “I miss my friends and being outside,” she said. “I also miss my favorite teacher.”

    Lurye reported from New Orleans and Stavely reported from Oakland. Daniel J. Willis of EdSource contributed from Concord.

    This article was produced by The Associated Press and. EdSource is a nonprofit newsroom based in California that covers equity in education with in-depth analysis and data-driven journalism.

    The Associated Press receives support from the Overdeck Family Foundation for reporting focused on early learning. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

    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.

    Join us today.

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    CHEYANNE MUMPHREY, Sharon Lurye and Zaidee Stavely

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