When people learn that I have a doctorate in educational psychology and quantitative methods, they often assume that I love math. And the truth is, I do now, although that wasn’t always the case.
Like many Black students, I faced challenges throughout my academic journey, with math tracking being the primary one. Despite high math scores in earlier grades and a passion for the subject, I was placed into lower-level math courses in middle school.
All students deserve to benefit from enriching math learning experiences and the promising future those experiences can unlock.
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When I was in elementary school, my father, a master carpenter and math enthusiast, played a significant role in shaping my love and curiosity for math. He believed that no concept was too complex to learn, and he used carpentry to help me understand the interconnectedness of math and the world around me.
I learned about fractions, angles, precision and spatial awareness using wooden blocks and puzzle pieces I helped my dad create. By the age of 11, I could read a floor plan and calculate the length of a diagonal roofline using the Pythagorean theorem.
My dad taught me that math makes the world better, and that learning math is key to understanding the world.
But in middle school, being tracked into lower-level courses contradicted my math identity and eroded my confidence to the point of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy: I became a lower-level math student, which marked the beginning of a full-blown math identity crisis.
Frequent learning disruptions — a result of the lower-level classes also being used for students with behavioral challenges — combined with a curriculum without meaningful content facilitated a swift shift in my relationship with math.
Tracking also limited my access to advanced high school courses such as statistics and calculus that would have further developed my math skills and opened up numerous postsecondary opportunities.
Sadly, I was learning to hate math, despite my early love for it.
The tracked classes did, however, improve my social skills and popularity. Through regular exchanges of humorous insults with fellow classmates on various topics — such as who was the least intelligent or most economically disadvantaged — I developed a well-curated arsenal of diss material.
The joke-telling also became a great defense mechanism against the stigma of having been placed in lower-level classes. So instead of practicing math during study hall, I worked on refining my repertoire of jokes. I didn’t learn much math, but I did learn how to be funny.
Unfortunately, my story is far too common. Indeed, more than half of U.S. states have recognized that their traditional approaches, including placement policies and limited math course options, often advantage an elite few while overlooking the needs of the broader student population.
While a lack of resources in underserved schools is a real issue, the most damage to students’ math identities and success can be attributed to dated perspectives on the type of math courses that should be offered and systemic racism dictating who they should be offered to.
I was fortunate to discover applied statistics in graduate school. This discovery marked a pivotal turning point in my post-elementary school relationship with math, which had, up until then, been more a “situationship” — a noncommittal and sporadic interest driven by prerequisite requirements.
For the first time since learning with my dad, I was engaged and sufficiently challenged while learning mathematics. Unlike my previous math classes, the statistics courses weren’t focused on rote memorization or problems that lack any relevance to the real world.
And since earning my Ph.D., I’ve used these skills across various professional domains.
I’ve used structural equation modeling to predict STEM access for underserved students and to make recommendations to broaden pathways to STEM. As a United Way director of education, I used statistical methods, such as linear regression, to make investment and funding decisions. During my 2019 run for Congress, my statistical expertise proved invaluable in analyzing trends, guiding campaign messaging and optimizing resource allocation. I felt empowered like never before, having the ability to make more accurate interpretations and informed decisions.
I recently co-authored a report addressing the equity dimensions of math education, delving into past policies and emerging strategies to better engage and prepare students for college and career in a data-driven society.
The report sheds light on the need to enrich students’ math experiences with challenging and relevant content that offers opportunities for deeper learning. This content should provide pathways for students to make connections between theoretical concepts and practical solutions, such as building sustainable communities in underresourced regions.
The most valuable lesson I learned throughout this journey was the inextricable link between math identity and math experiences. In other words, when people say they don’t like math, they really mean that they didn’t like their experiences learning math.
Students learn more than just mathematics in math class; they are affirming their abilities and math identities and discovering that they can have a place in shaping an advanced technological society. We owe it to our students to ensure that they have better math learning experiences than those I received decades ago.
Melodie K. Baker is national policy director for Just Equations, a nonprofit organization reconceptualizing the role of math to ensure educational equity.
This story about math tracking 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.
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The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Sometimes, recreating sensory effects can feel like an extra burden on your lesson planning, or too much effort. In which case, research shows that cutting out one or more of our senses allows us to concentrate more on the senses available to us. Ever turned down the car stereo while searching for a parking spot, or closed your eyes when trying hard to remember something?
This can be a powerful tool in the classroom when there are many distractions, or when it’s easier to obscure senses than target them.
Close Eyes While Listening: Encourage students to close their eyes while listening to a story or an important explanation. This enhances auditory focus and helps students visualize the narrative in their minds.
Turn Out the Lights: When watching a video, turn out the lights or close the blinds to minimize visual distractions and enhance the viewing experience.
Create Silence: Mimic a deserted landscape by creating prolonged, complete silence in the classroom. This exercise can be particularly effective in lessons about space, deserts, or other isolated environments.
The Discovery Education blog is a free resource for educators to find time-saving teaching strategies and compelling content for their daily lessons.
Full of timely tips, high-quality DE resources, and advice from our DEN community, these posts are meant to entertain and inform our users while supporting educators everywhere with new ways to engage their students in and out of the classroom.
BROOKLYN, N.Y. — About one and a half years ago, Isaiah Hickerson woke up in the middle of the night having dreamt he was a coder.
The dream was totally random, as dreams so often are. He didn’t know a thing about coding.
He was 23, and though originally from California, he’d been living with his uncle in Miami. By day, he was answering phones in the grooming department at PetSmart. After hours, he was trying to figure out what to do with his life.
He’d tried social media. And he’d taken some community college classes in business and biology. He was lukewarm on both.
“I just felt empty,” Hickerson said. “I wanted to do something different, but I just didn’t know what it was. I didn’t have a passion for anything. And I didn’t know what passion felt like.”
Isaiah Hickerson, who left Miami to attend the nonprofit Marcy Lab School in Brooklyn, New York, is studying software engineering there. Credit: Olivia Sanchez/The Hechinger Report
He knows how far-fetched it sounds, but seeing himself coding in the dream changed him. Moments after he woke up, he was online trying to figure out what it all meant.
“I remember the whole entire thing and it’s crazy. I can’t make it up,” Hickerson said. “I literally got up right from there, 2 in the morning, probably 2:05. I remember the whole entire timeline because this is what shifted — my dream is what brought me here.”
By “here,” Hickerson means the Marcy Lab School in Brooklyn, New York, where he’s nearly finished with a one-year software engineering fellowship program. It’s not a college or a for-profit tech boot camp, but a nonprofit, tuition-free program designed to help students from historically underrepresented communities — like Hickerson, who is Black — get high-paying jobs in tech.
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Across the country, colleges and universities offer scores of programs designed to help students from underrepresented groups succeed in STEM education and prepare for tech careers. Far less common are independent nonprofits that focus on students who don’t have the resources to go to college, don’t want to go to college or don’t believe they can succeed in a demanding STEM program. These nonprofits offer short-term training programs, for free, and help with job placement.
Two prominent examples, on opposite coasts, are the Marcy Lab School and Hack the Hood, in Oakland, California. Hack the Hood conducts 12-week data science-training programs and has recently partnered with Laney College, a community college in Oakland, to offer students a certificate of achievement in data science.
Each morning at the Marcy Lab School begins with “mindful morning” activities, including prompts for gratitude and self-reflection. Credit: Olivia Sanchez/The Hechinger Report
Achieving better representation means finding ways to get students the academic and financial assistance they need. The financial resources needed for a four-year STEM degree — or even a two-year degree — can be prohibitive. Opening up shorter avenues that are free — or significantly less expensive than for-profit boot camps — can at least put students on the path toward a STEM career. Programs designed with these students in mind give them training so that they have a shot to compete for STEM jobs with salaries that can lead to economic and social mobility. (Both the Marcy Lab School and Hack the Hood are nonprofits funded by donations from philanthropic groups.)
“STEM is a white, cis, heteronormative field,” Weverton Ataide Pinheiro, an assistant professor in the College of Education at Texas Tech University, said. “And these people are the only ones that are being able to get a slice of the pie. Actually, they’re eating the whole pie.”
For Ataide Pinheiro, these free alternative programs have value, regardless of whether they result in a college degree, if they allow people from historically marginalized groups to get just one step further than they would have gotten without the training.
“We are desperate to just try to support these folks because we know money matters,” Ataide Pinheiro said. “We know that they will only be able to compete if they have certain training, and they might not be able to pay [for it].”
Reuben Ogbonna, one of the Marcy Lab School’s co-founders, said his team has worked hard to establish partnerships with tech companies to get software engineering job opportunities for Marcy students when they finish the program. Ogbonna said a team of former educators and salespeople introduces Marcy to companies, hoping to convince them to consider Marcy students for roles that would typically require a bachelor’s degree.
To prevent Marcy students from being “met with a glass ceiling somewhere down the line” because of their nontraditional training, Ogbonna said that Marcy asks the companies to treat its students the way they’d treat anyone else in the job interview process so that they can prove their skills and show employers that they deserve equal treatment as they progress in their careers.
The Marcy Lab School is a nonprofit that offers students from historically disadvantaged groups a non-college pathway to careers in STEM. “We’re trying to reverse a really big problem that’s been around for a long time,” the co-founder said. Credit: Olivia Sanchez/The Hechinger Report
Since the Marcy Lab School opened in 2019, roughly 200 students have completed the program. In the first three years, about 80 percent of them graduated, and about 90 percent of those who graduated landed jobs in STEM with an average salary of $105,000 per year, according to Ogbonna. But in the past two years, during what Ogbonna called a tech recession, it’s been significantly more difficult for these students to get jobs. He said that this year, six months after graduating, about 60 percent of graduates had jobs.
By pursuing an education at Marcy rather than attending a four-year college, students get three extra years to make money, build their savings and accrue wealth, Ogbonna said. And they won’t have student loans to pay off.
“We’re trying to reverse a really big problem that’s been around for a long time,” Ogbonna said. “And part of my theory of change is that if we can get wealth in the hands of our students earlier, it can come out exponentially for the communities that we’re serving.”
Both the Marcy Lab School and Hack the Hood also try to prepare students for what they might experience when they get into the workforce.
Hack the Hood serves students between the ages of 16 and 25 and, in addition to the technical curriculum, teaches students about racial equity, social justice issues and understanding their personal identities, said Samia Zuber, its executive director.
Zuber explained that these parts of the program help prepare students to confront issues such as imposter syndrome and to think critically about the work they are doing. For example, Zuber said, they teach students about racial bias in facial recognition software and the implications it can have for different communities.
This lesson was particularly striking for 24-year-old Lizbet Roblero Arreola, who recalled very little exposure to computer programming when she was in school.
“It really opens your eyes and makes you want to change it,” Roblero Arreola said, concerning the misuse of facial recognition data. “For me personally, I want to be somebody in those companies that doesn’t let that happen.”
For Roblero Arreola, a first-generation Mexican American, going to college was never a given. When she became pregnant with her first child shortly after graduating from high school, she decided to keep working in customer service jobs rather than go to college. Last year, after giving birth to her second child, she saw a friend post online about Hack the Hood. She’d been thinking about going back to school, and it seemed Hack the Hood could help ease her transition.
Roblero Arreola said that the Hack the Hood team supported her by helping her understand all the steps she would need to take to enroll at Laney College, including helping her figure out how to apply for financial aid. (Hack the Hood programs are tuition-free, but students who go on to pursue a certificate with Laney have to pay tuition there.)
After she finishes her associate degree in computer programming at Laney, she hopes to transfer to a four-year college and earn a bachelor’s degree. Eventually, she’d like to build a career in the cybersecurity field. She said she’s putting in the work now so that her children will have more opportunities than she did.
These programs also serve students like Nicole Blanchette, an 18-year-old from a rural community in Connecticut, who chose Marcy Lab School over a traditional college experience.
Blanchette’s father has an associate degree, and her mother, who is Filipino, didn’t pursue postsecondary education. Blanchette always dreamed of going to college, and during her senior year of high school, she became intrigued by a career in tech. She hesitated, however, because “the stereotypical computer science student does not look like me.”
But an ad for Marcy Lab on Instagram made Blanchette think a tech career was possible.
She did the math and found that one year of living in New York would be cheaper than attending any of the colleges she’d gotten into, even with financial aid. She convinced her parents to spend the money they’d saved for her education on her living expenses while she attends Marcy.
Ogbonna and Marcy Lab’s other co-founder, Maya Bhattacharjee-Marcantonio, both started out as teachers and recruited the first class of Marcy students from their personal networks and from community organizations in Brooklyn.
Now, roughly 30 to 40 percent of Marcy Lab’s students are coming straight out of high school. Ogbonna said that for some of these students, “academic, economic and social barriers prevent them from being able to access a college that they can verify has strong outcomes.” They often believe they can’t afford any wrong turns. And for those who’ve already had some college, there’s often urgency to get a job because they need to pay back student loans or contribute financially to their households.
“Some of them were thinking about going to the short-term, very expensive coding boot camps,” Ogbunna said, and see a tuition-free program like Marcy Lab as “a less risky option.”
After feeling directionless and uninspired, Hickerson, who first thought about a career in coding after that vivid dream, now says he loves learning, and complex problem-solving tech challenges only make him want to learn more.
Before he started learning to code, he said he never knew what it felt like to be passionate about something. Now, when he talks about coding, what he’s learning in school and the career he hopes to build in software engineering, he doesn’t seem to ever stop smiling.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
The Discovery Education blog is a free resource for educators to find time-saving teaching strategies and compelling content for their daily lessons.
Full of timely tips, high-quality DE resources, and advice from our DEN community, these posts are meant to entertain and inform our users while supporting educators everywhere with new ways to engage their students in and out of the classroom.
There’s something extra special about witnessing awe-inspired students as they eagerly watch their 3D printing creations take shape. With countless opportunities to design creative learning experiences and develop critical thinking skills, 3D printers are an innovative tech tool that can be used to teach just about any subject. But with so many possibilities available in the world of 3D printing, finding ideas that work with your educational objectives can seem overwhelming. Fear not—we’ve got you covered! Read on to discover 80 incredible 3D printing ideas you should try with your students.
3D Printing Ideas
Tinkercad
1. Dragsters Powered by Balloons
Get your students engaged in science by hosting a balloon-powered dragster competition that teaches the principles of forces, motion, and Newton’s third law. This lesson encourages design thinking as students figure out the best size, shape, and weight for their car and wheels to travel the farthest in a straight line.
Say goodbye to the struggles of teaching fractions! These printable math manipulatives are a game-changer for helping students grasp and visualize fractions with ease. By using your own 3D printer, you can conveniently print out as many manipulatives as you need for the classroom.
If you’re looking for fun 3D printing ideas to tackle boredom when it strikes, consider creating a mini catapult. Once fully finished, give it a try and see what kind of mischief you can cause!
Fidget toys have gained popularity for providing comfort and aiding concentration for kids with sensory needs in the classroom. These 3D-printed fidget toys are a great choice for anyone looking for an affordable and effective solution to help students focus.
Why settle for an ordinary tape dispenser when you can make your own T-rex skull tape dispenser? We love 3D printing ideas that include fun and creative ways to incorporate dinosaurs into your lessons.
Attention music and band teachers! If you’re looking for a cost-effective alternative to expensive musical instruments, look no further than this 3D-printed ocarina. Rest assured that it’s not only affordable but also musically accurate—perfect for your classroom needs.
Impress your students with this innovative 3D-printed frog dissection kit. Say goodbye to the mess and unpleasantness that comes with traditional dissection methods.
Why settle for a standard fidget spinner when you can have a poseable seasonal snowman fidget toy? This creative alternative is sure to entertain and calm your students.
In geography class, 3D printing ideas can make topographical maps and other geographic features that involve students in creating mountains, oceans, plains, and more.
To add a vintage touch to your contemporary timepiece, simply gather some 3D-printed pieces, a Google Home Mini, and a few other components to assemble this stand.
Introduce students to the written language of braille and 3D modeling concepts through 3D printing ideas. Use this technology to create custom braille models, from basic blocks to braille signage for different areas of your school.
Get students involved in both toy design and concepts of forces and motion by guiding them in creating spinning tops. After 3D-printing their designs, students can compete to see whose spinning top can spin the longest and then analyze the results to make improvements to their designs.
Make reading and holding a book with one hand a breeze with this nifty tool. Bookworms who enjoy reading for long periods will especially appreciate the convenience it provides.
Students use Tinkercad to create assistive devices like bottle openers for individuals with arthritis or a weak grip. Through the design process, they’ll also learn about simple machines and the principles of levers. This project is a practical way to apply engineering principles while addressing a real-world problem.
Students in a classroom selected influential historical figures without memorials and designed monuments using 3D software and printers. This project allowed them to learn and teach about their chosen figure’s accomplishments in a unique way.
This uncomplicated 3D-printed tool is a lifesaver for classroom settings with struggling readers or students with ADHD. The text isolator aids in helping students concentrate on one line of text at a time while reading, making it an effective tool for improving reading comprehension.
This pencil holder design might surprise you with its ability to liven up an otherwise mundane object. The creator of this model promises that it’s as easy as “print, clip in pencils, admire …”!
Looking for an engaging activity to keep students of all ages entertained for hours? Check out this 3D-printed marble maze! It’s not only a fantastic gift idea from teachers but also a fun present for students to give to others in their lives.
Instead of printing a standard cube, try printing dice. This simple shape is easy to print, and all students need to do is add the dots. Not only can they use it when playing board games, but they’ll also have the satisfaction of telling everyone they made it themselves. Pretty cool, right?
Check out these amazing 3D-printed palettes that fit snugly on your thumb! They’re perfect for wiping down your brush and mixing small amounts of color. Your students are bound to adore them!
The Cali Cat is a popular 3D print option because of its fun and cute nature, often used for calibration and as a benchmark model for beginners. It is also kept as a souvenir by many students as they learn 3D printing ideas.
Let’s tackle planning your day with ease. This printable planner stencil will simplify your to-do list and help you stay on track. With a quick glance, you can confirm which tasks haven’t been checked off yet and tackle them before they pile up.
Before designing a whistle, teach students about sound waves, frequency, and amplitude. This project involves an iterative process where students can analyze and evaluate their creations to improve on their designs.
Say no to the hassle of carrying around keys! Your students will appreciate the opportunity to create a personalized key holder to keep their house keys, car keys, and any other keys organized and easily accessible.
3D-printed doorstops are typically triangular in shape, but they serve an essential function in preventing doors from slamming due to drafts. For a more intricate design, you can experiment with engraving a word onto the stopper using 3D printing software. The possibilities are endless!
Say goodbye to a cluttered whiteboard area with this convenient marker holder. Capable of holding four Expo markers along with a brush and spray, this organizer is the perfect addition to your classroom setup.
Crafting your own drink coaster is a simple process that even students can accomplish. With a little practice, anyone can become a pro at designing custom drink coasters.
Teach students to create unique pen cases using intersecting shapes like pebbles in Tinkercad. In this lesson, they’ll also learn about mathematical linear sequences to determine the number of pebbles needed for a Bic Cristal biro cartridge to fit perfectly in the center.
In today’s world, USB cables reign supreme. If you’re looking to save time and energy by avoiding the tedious task of untangling cords later, this printable organizer is just what you need to keep your space clutter-free.
For students who are new to 3D printing ideas, a low poly ring is an excellent starting point. These rings are small and require minimal material, making them quick to print. Despite their simplicity, the design is still attractive and eye-catching.
My students were deeply affected by this activity—the experience of holding a heart or skull in their own hands really made them contemplate and reflect.
Bring some extra fun to your kindergarten or primary grade class with this delightful custom bubble wand project. Bubbles are always a hit among kids, and this personalized wand will make for an excellent souvenir that children can take home and enjoy over and over again.
Get your hands on a file for a paintable 3D-printed model of the Earth’s cutaway. This model displays the crust, mantle, outer core, and inner core in intricate detail.
Add a touch of beauty to your classroom with this lovely hanging planter. It’s perfect for students to take home and enjoy or even to customize as a thoughtful Mother’s Day gift.
Have students design their own cartouches as a fun way to learn about Egyptian hieroglyphics and monuments. Using a hieroglyphic alphabet, they can personalize their obelisk model by adding their name.
This hands-free design allows you to access GPS maps with ease and receive vocal assistance to guide you along the way. Let’s make learning and exploring stress-free! The design can even easily be modified to fit any type of phone you have.
The options for 3D-printed stamps are endless, giving students the freedom to get as creative as they want. With numerous stamp forms to choose from and the ability to add letters, shapes, inspiring words, and other designs, there’s no limit to what can go on the actual stamp. Let your imagination run wild!
Looking for a fun way to encourage better dental hygiene habits in your students? Look no further than these 3D-printed toothbrush holders! Shaped like a literal tooth, they’re sure to be a hit and make brushing just a bit more enjoyable.
Interested in 3D printing ideas for a classroom instrument? OpenFab PDX offers several options for you to choose from, giving you the opportunity to print your very own four-string fiddle.
To give it a personalized touch, consider adding cool engravings to the sides of this yo-yo. Once complete, all you need is a good string and it’s ready to use.
Visualize the incredible size of a hurricane with a 3D-printed satellite view model. This model showcases the eye and swirling clouds in stunning detail, helping students better understand the phenomenon. Plus, it includes outlines of land to provide a sense of scale.
This sleek controller holder is not only practical, but it’s a smart solution for those who need to maximize space in their living area. Whether you’re setting up your PS5 or Xbox Series X, this accessory adds a stylish touch.
Take a look at this adorable turtle and his animal friends, which double as both a convenient smartphone stand and key chain. With this handy gadget, your students can keep their phone upright while on the go and always have their cute companion with them.
3D printing offers the opportunity to create cookie cutters in a variety of shapes. Because they are hollow, students can learn to 3D-print with minimal filament usage.
Encourage students to explore the world of bridges by designing their own or creating 3D-printed models. From suspension and beam to arch, cantilever, truss, and cable-stayed, there are many types of bridges to consider. This project can be linked to specific cities and rivers where these bridges can be found.
Printables
49. Classroom Medals
Honor your students’ accomplishments with these personalized gold medals. These medals are an ideal award for recognizing outstanding achievements throughout the school year, such as Student of the Month or various successes.
Looking for a cute and functional bookmark to help your students keep track of their reading in class? These adorable panda bookmarks are the perfect addition to any novel study or reading activity.
With the ubiquity of digital clocks these days, even my own students struggle to read analog clocks. Luckily, this 3D-printed analog clock model offers a solution for kids learning to tell time on analog clocks.
Students can no longer use the excuse of uncharged technology in class, thanks to this clever desktop cable organizer. Not only does it ensure that cords remain tangle-free and organized, but it can be easily attached to desks at home or in the classroom, preventing cords from getting lost in the abyss.
Make presenting demographic information more exciting and readable with 3D bar charts. Whether it’s population, life expectancy, or other data, these charts provide a unique way to teach students to display information. Consider having students use demographic or survey information from your school to create customized 3D bar charts that showcase school-specific data.
As more students incorporate technology into their classroom studies, it’s now commonplace to see headphones at every desk. Keep your classroom organized with this practical desk-mounted headphone holder, which provides a designated spot for students to store their headphones conveniently.
Tired of constantly misplacing or untangling your earphones? This practical 3D-printed earbud holder is a handy tool that keeps your earphones organized and tangle-free.
Your students will definitely appreciate being able to create wall outlet shelves. These shelves provide a safe and stable spot for their phones to rest while charging.
Bag clips are a must-have in any classroom, especially with students who are always hungry. With these convenient clips, students can easily seal their snacks and avoid spills or messes in their backpacks or on the floor.
Enhance your students’ math skills with these versatile math manipulatives that can be used to create equations. These unique blocks are perfect for honing addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division skills.
These 3D-printed spinners can be customized to include different mathematical operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. As students spin the spinner, they can work on solving the math problems that it lands on.
Here’s another straightforward yet highly practical classroom design. These bag hooks are perfect for keeping student backpacks off the floor and in order. Plus, they can come in handy for hanging purses or bags at restaurants or other public places.
Looking for a quick and easy way to amplify the sound from your smartphone? Meet this little monster! This handy gadget utilizes simple audio engineering to boost the volume of your device. Perfect for when you or your students need to turn up the volume.
A 3D printer can be used to create an educational and engaging model of the water cycle, showcasing each step of the process in intricate detail. This interactive tool helps students understand the importance of sustainability and water conservation, making science education more exciting and hands-on.
3D printing ideas that serve practical purposes are some of our favorites! Take your cooking skills to the next level with this incredible measuring cube that can measure various increments. The best part? You won’t have to wash multiple small spoons anymore.
Add a creative touch to classroom learning with this engaging matching game, made possible by 3D printing ideas. By using the provided templates, you can customize matching quizzes that are both fun and educational for your students to complete.
Create your own replicas of ancient wonders like the Pyramids of Giza, Chichen Itza, the Colosseum in Rome, the Taj Mahal, and the Statue of Liberty with 3D printing. The possibilities are endless!
Introducing a multicolor 3D model of a cell is an excellent way to make science come alive for students who are studying the different parts of a cell. Not only does it engage their curiosity and imagination, but it also allows them to learn about 3D printing in the process.
We all love the T-Rex game on Chrome that we can play when the Wi-Fi is out. Now, imagine having your own flexible version of this lovable character that can be used as a fidget or as a fun toy.
This pint-size organizer can help keep even the tiniest of screws and other objects in their place. It could even be used for those pesky little LEGO parts like Minifigure hands!
We love books here at We Are Teachers so you can bet this is one of our favorite 3D printing ideas. Keep all those beloved books neat and tidy on your shelves with this simple but effective bookend!
This simple project would make a great gift for anyone that loves 3D printing. You can keep it for yourself, too, since if you’re making this key chain, odds are you’re a big 3D printing fan!
This is another sweet idea for a gift. If you run a class or a camp on 3D printing, you could even give this out to all of the enrollees. Or keep it for yourself and wear it with pride!
Let’s shine a little light on this adorable lampshade! This project will take approximately four hours to complete, and we think the time spent is well worth it.
Are these not the most adorable little turtle pals? We especially love that the little legs bounce and the heads can disappear into the shell. Pick your favorite style and get creating a new desk buddy or good-luck charm.
The designer of this spool holder explains that while three different sizes are available, they aren’t necessary. There is an option for a universal spool holder that just won’t look as polished, though it will fit nearly any spool.
This shower head is intended to fit onto a standard 1/2-inch threaded shower pipe. We especially love 3D printing ideas that have a practical purpose, and this one does just that. The best part? You get to see your handiwork every day while getting clean!
This unique project uses captured joints where moving parts are printed together to eliminate the need for assembly. The 14 interlocking pieces work to open and close the flowers around the lamp, adding or reducing the light emitted. Everyone will certainly want to know where you got this lamp!
If you’re on the hunt for 3D printing ideas that are tailored to your grade level or subject matter, be sure to explore the education section on MyMiniFactory. You’ll find a plethora of project ideas and files there that are specifically designed for educators like you.
Title: Embracing Statistics: A Pillar of Modern STEM Education
In today’s rapidly evolving landscape of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), statistics is a pivotal discipline, transcending its traditional role as a mere supporting tool.
As we navigate the digital age, statistics has become a cornerstone in understanding and interpreting the vast data generated across various domains. Let’s quickly explore the profound implications of statistics’ ascent, its interdisciplinary nature, and the imperative of promoting statistical literacy in society.
Gone are the days when statistics languished in the shadow of mathematics, confined to probability and distribution functions. Instead, statistics now stands tall as its own field, equipped with sophisticated methodologies and powerful tools for extracting insights from complex datasets. From social sciences to natural sciences, statistics permeates every facet of inquiry, offering invaluable contributions to fields as diverse as economics, public health, environmental science, and beyond.
At the heart of statistics’ resurgence lies the proliferation of data in the digital era. With the advent of big data and the Internet of Things (IoT), we find ourselves amidst an unprecedented deluge of information. This abundance presents opportunities and challenges, as we grapple with extracting meaningful signals from the noise. However, with statistics as our guiding light, we can confidently navigate this data landscape, discerning patterns, trends, and correlations that elude the untrained eye.
Technological advancements have democratized access to statistical analysis, empowering individuals from all walks of life to engage in data-driven inquiry. User-friendly software packages such as R, Python, and SPSS have made statistical analysis more accessible than ever, enabling researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to harness the power of data in their work.
The most remarkable aspect of statistics might be its interdisciplinary nature. As a universal language, statistics bridges the gap between disparate fields of study, fostering collaboration and innovation. Whether economists analyze macroeconomic trends, epidemiologists track the spread of infectious diseases, or environmental scientists model climate change, statistics provides a common framework for inquiry, enabling researchers to pool their expertise and tackle complex problems.
Furthermore, statistical literacy has never been more critical in an age rife with misinformation and fake news. Understanding basic statistical concepts empowers individuals to evaluate claims critically, interrogate data presented in the media, and make informed decisions in their personal and professional lives. By promoting statistical literacy through education and outreach initiatives, we can equip the next generation with the tools to navigate the data-rich world with confidence and discernment.
Statistics is not merely a tool; it is a pillar of modern STEM education, empowering us to unlock the mysteries of the universe and address the grand challenges of our time. As we embrace statistics as a foundational discipline and promote interdisciplinary collaboration, we harness the power of data to drive innovation, inform policy, and shape a brighter future for all.
Who knew toothpaste could be so fun? While no actual toothpaste is produced, this experiment is an exciting and hands-on way to bring several science lessons to life. You’ll want to use some caution when performing it with kids. Some of the chemicals used can be irritating and the substance produced is hot, so you won’t want to actually brush anyone’s teeth with the foam, as tempting as that may be! Read on to see how to do the Elephant Toothpaste Experiment, and fill out the form on this page to grab your free recording sheet.
How does the Elephant Toothpaste Experiment work?
This experiment works through a chemical reaction that results from a catalyst (potassium iodide, aka yeast) being introduced into a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and dish soap. The hydrogen peroxide is decomposed into water and oxygen and the catalyst speeds up the reaction, forcing the oxygen into the soap bubbles. The resulting effect is the substance quickly pouring up and out of the container.
What does the Elephant Toothpaste Experiment teach?
This experiment is a crowd-pleaser, but it also serves to teach kids a lot. The concept of a catalyst speeding up a reaction is demonstrated in an obvious and exciting way as the introduction of the yeast forces the foam to explode up and out of the bottle. It also teaches kids about exothermic reactions as the foam coming out of the bottle is hot. Additionally, kids get to see a decomposition reaction as the rapid decomposition of hydrogen peroxide results in the release of oxygen gas.
Is there an Elephant Toothpaste Experiment video?
This video from teacher Hilary Statum will give you the step-by-step instructions for making your own Elephant Toothpaste.
1. Place the bottle on a large tray and put on your safety goggles and gloves.
2. Mix 1 tablespoon of yeast into 3 tablespoons of warm water until you achieve a creamy consistency. Place in a small cup and set to the side.
3. Use a funnel or measuring cup to pour half a cup of hydrogen peroxide into the bottle.
4. Add a bit of food coloring. For a solid color, add directly into the bottle. For stripes, squirt it with the pipettes so it trickles down the sides of the inside of the bottle.
5. Add approximately 1 tablespoon of dish soap to the hydrogen peroxide.
6. Use a funnel or measuring cup to add the yeast mixture to the bottle.
Fill out the form on this page to get your worksheets. The first worksheet asks kids to make a prediction about what they think will happen. They can use the provided spaces to draw or write their predictions and observations. The second worksheet lists questions for students to answer about the experiment.
Additional Reflection Questions
We Are Teachers
Why do we add the yeast to the water?
What do you think would happen if we added more dish soap?
What do you think would happen if we added more yeast to the mixture?
What is the liquid that is left in the bottle?
Describe the reaction that occurs. How long does it last?
Can this experiment be done for a science fair?
Yes! If you want to do the Elephant Toothpaste Experiment for a science fair, we recommend switching up some of the variables. For example: Does the type or shape of the container matter? Does the type of dish soap matter? Does adding more yeast change the reaction? Form a hypothesis about how changing the variables will impact the experiment. Good luck!
Last April, an email went out to families in the Troy School District outside Detroit. Signed by unnamed “concerned Troy parents,” it said that a district proposal to end “basic” and “honors” math classes for sixth and seventh graders was part of a longer-term district plan to completely abolish honors classes in all of its schools.
Superintendent Richard Machesky and his team were stunned. The district was indeed proposing to merge separate sixth- and seventh-grade math tracks into what it said would be a single, rigorous pathway emphasizing pre-algebra skills. In eighth grade, students could opt for Eighth Grade Math or Algebra I. But the district had no plans for changes to other grades, much less to do away with high school honors classes.
Earlier that month, Machesky and a district team of curriculum specialists and math teachers had unveiled the plan during a series of meetings with parents of current and incoming middle schoolers. Parents had largely expressed support, said Machesky: “We thought we were hitting the mark.”
Boulan Park Middle School math teacher Jordan Baines gives tips to help her students figure out a mathematics problem in Troy, Michigan. Credit: Amanda J. Cain for The Hechinger Report
No matter. The email blast spurred opponents to show up at a board workshop and a town hall, and a petition demanding that the middle-school plan be scrapped got more than 3,000 signatures. At a packed board meeting that May, more than 40 people spoke, nearly all opposed to the plan, and the comments got personal. “Are you all on drugs?” parent Andrew Sosnoski asked the members.
It’s part of the skirmish over “detracking,” or eliminating the sorting of kids by perceived ability into separate math classes. Since the mid-1980s, some education experts have supported such moves, citing researchshowing that tracking primarily serves as a marker of race or class, as Black and Hispanic students, and those from lower-income families, are steered into lower-track classes at disproportionate rates. In the last 15 years, a handful of school districts around the country have eliminated some tracked math classes.
While there’s been ample research on tracking’s negative effects, studies of positive effects resulting from detracking are scant. In perhaps the only attempt to summarize the detracking literature, a 2009 summary of 15 studies from 1972 to 2006 concluded that detracking improved academic outcomes for lower-ability students, but had no effect on average and high-ability students.
Proposals to curtail tracking often draw fiery opposition, sometimes scuttling the efforts. The Portland school district in Oregon planned to compress two levels of middle school math into one starting in 2023, but after criticism, said the issue needed more study. Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, a Republican, won office in 2021 on an education platform that included protecting tracking, after an outcry over a state department of education plan that included language about “improving math equity,” which some interpreted as limiting tracking. The San Francisco Unified School District, which in 2014 detracked math through ninthgrade, recently announced that it’s testing the reintroduction of a tracked system, following a lawsuit from a group of parents who alleged that detracking hurt student achievement.
The pushback, often from parents of high-track students with the time and resources to attend school board meetings, is part of why tracking, especially in math, remains common. In a 2023 survey of middle-school principals by the Rand Corporation, 39 percent said their schools group students into separate classes based on achievement.
But some places have changed their math classes with minimal backlash, and also ensured course rigor and improved academic outcomes. That’s often because they moved slowly.
Math teacher Jordan Baines of Troy, Michigan, with students at Boulan Park Middle School.
Credit: Amanda J. Cain for The Hechinger Report
Evanston Township High School, in Illinois, started detracking in 2010, collapsing several levels in two freshman-year subjects — humanities and biology — into one.
Then, for six years, the school made no other changes. That allowed leaders to work out the kinks and look at the data to make sure there were no negative effects on achievement, said Pete Bavis, the district’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction.
Teachers liked the mixed-ability classes and asked to expand them to other subjects, so in 2017 the school began detracking sophomore and junior English, Geometry and Algebra II.
At South Side Middle School and High School on Long Island, detracking went even slower, taking 17 years to fully roll out. The district started in 1989 with middle-school English and social studies, and progressed to high school math and chemistry by 2006.
The pace let parents see it wasn’t hurting their children’s achievement, said former South Side High Principal Carol Burris. During that period, the proportion of students earning New York’s higher-level Regents diploma climbed from 58 percent in 1989 to 97 percent by 2005. “I always told parents, when we started moving this through the high school, ‘Look, if this isn’t working, I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to hurt your kid,’” she said.
Those slow rollouts contrast with what happened in the Shaker Heights City School District in Ohio in 2020. That summer, school leaders needed to simplify schedules to accommodate a mix of online and onsite students because of the pandemic. They saw an opening to do something that had long been in the district’s strategic plan: end tracking in most fifth- through ninth-grade subjects.
But teachers complained last spring that it had gone too quickly, saying that they didn’t get enough training on teaching mixed classrooms, and that course rigor has suffered. Even supporters of detracking suggested it had happened so fast that the district couldn’t lay the groundwork with parents.
Shaker Heights Superintendent David Glasner said he understands those concerns. But he said he also heard from parents, students and instructional leaders in the district who say they’re glad the district “ripped the Band-Aid off.”
A math class at Boulan Park Middle School in Troy, Michigan, which has detracked some of its math classes. Credit: Amanda J. Cain for The Hechinger Report
In Troy, despite the pushback from parents, the school board ultimately voted 6-1 for the change, noting that the district had spent four years studying options and that teachers and outside experts largely supported the plan.
Machesky said if he had it to do over, he’d communicate with parents earlier. The anonymous email took advantage of an information void: The district had communicated the proposal only to parents of current and upcoming middle schoolers. Most who turned out to oppose it had younger kids and hadn’t been told, he said.
Leaders in Evanston and South Side both say they also framed detracking as a way to create more opportunities for all students. As part of getting rid of tracks, Evanston created an “earned honors” system. All students enroll in the same classes, but they can opt into honors credit — which boosts their class grade by a half-point, akin to extra credit — if they take and do well on additional assessments or complete additional projects.
School leaders in South Side also ensured that detracked classes remained as challenging as the higher-level classes had been previously, Burris said. To make sure students succeeded, the school arranged for teachers to tutor struggling students in a support class held two or three times a week and in a half-hour period before school, changing the bus schedules to make that work. Teachers also created optional activities for each lesson that would push higher-achieving students if they mastered the material being covered.
“You have to make sure you’re not taking something away from anyone,” said Burris.
To prepare for pushback, Evanston also formed a “rapid-response team” that answered parent questions about the new system within 24 hours and developed dozens of pages of frequently updated FAQs. That took the pressure off teachers, letting them focus on the classroom, said math department chair Dale Leibforth. By the end of the first year of detracking, the school had gotten just three complaints, all requests for fixes to narrow technical problems rather than wholesale critiques, said Bavis.
“We imagined a catastrophe,” he said. “We asked, ‘what could go wrong?’” and mapped how to handle each scenario.
In response to continued critiques of its detracking effort, last fall Shaker Heights pioneered another idea: an evening immersion experience that lets parents sit through detracked classes. The four mock sessions — two in literature and two in math — were followed by questions and answers.
Parents were respectful but probing: How do teachers work together to make the new system work? Do kids know when they’re grouped with others who are struggling in a skill? Are the books we worked with really at sixth-grade level? While there’s no data on the session’s effects, Glasner says they “absolutely did move the needle” on community opinion.
Research from the Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, suggests that districts should focus on how detracking helps all students, rather than emphasizing that the efforts are aimed to advance equity and benefit students in lower tracks, said senior fellow Halley Potter. That approach gives parents of higher-track kids the idea that their own child’s academics are being sacrificed to help others.
The Troy district, in Michigan, has moved to end “basic” and “honors” math classes for sixth and seventh graders. Credit: Amanda J. Cain for The Hechinger Report
That fits with what Machesky thinks happened last spring in Troy. “We kind of got caught up with the equity arguments that were raging in districts nationally at the time,” he said.
After last May’s board vote, opponents launched a recall petition against three board members who’d voted in favor of the change. To get on the ballot, it needed 8,000 signatures but got fewer than half that.
Since then, the opposition there has gone silent.
Last fall the district held “math nights” to talk about the new system and let parents ask questions. The students have settled in. “I have received zero negative communication from parents — no emails, no phone calls — zero,” said Machesky.
Whether detracking spreads may depend on the experience of parents and students. Back on Long Island, parent Mindy Roman’s three children graduated from South Side High in 2009, 2012 and 2018, and she said she’s glad they were in classes with diverse groups of students. Her children didn’t have classes with a Black student until middle school because of the way elementary school lines were drawn, she said. And all three did well in the district’s detracked courses.
But Roman said she’s heard from current parents with the opposite experience. “It’s not ‘oh my God, my child is getting access to these unbelievable opportunities,’ but more like, ‘my kid is gonna get a 70 in a class when they could get a 90. I don’t want them to be put under that much pressure.’”
John Murphy, who was principal at South Side High from 2015 to 2023, said he started hearing around 2018 from people worried about the effects of the workload on their children’s mental health, and the school responded by giving less homework. Even so, “students are working way harder than they did 20 years ago,” said Murphy, now an assistant for human resources to Superintendent Matthew Gaven.
Still, academic outcomes at South Side have improved since the district eliminated tracking. In 2021-22, 89 percent of South Side graduates earned the highest-level diploma the state offers — the advanced Regents diploma — compared with 42 percent in New York state as a whole. Another 9 percent earned the Regents diploma.
That said, the district recently made an accommodation. Post-Covid, a small group of parents of middle schoolers told the district they didn’t think their children were ready for Algebra I because of the pandemic-era learning interruptions. So South Side Middle School retracked eighth-grade math starting in the 2023-24 school year, offering parents the choice of Algebra I or a grade-level math course. Gaven said that only around 7 percent of parents of eighth graders asked for that option, and that demand for it might taper as schools return to normal.
It’s an opt-in model far different from those that direct students into lower-level courses because of test scores or teacher recommendations, said Gaven. “We know our kids can handle algebra, but we respect our parents as partners and wanted to give them a voice and an option.”
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.
There has been much talk and concern in recent months about making higher-level math more accessible to high schoolers, particularly low-income students from Black and Hispanic communities. Much of this discussion dwells on what is the best curriculum to use to teach Algebra I and other higher-level math courses.
The right curriculum is important, of course. A high-quality curriculum creates the foundation for success in math. A curriculum that values culturally responsive education enables teachers both to value the many kinds of experiences that students bring to classrooms and to push them academically while engaging them personally.
But properly implementing an Algebra I curriculum is at least as important as the curriculum itself. The core of implementation, meanwhile, is coaching each teacher for the specific challenges they will face in their classrooms. The key to success is ensuring that teachers understand the vision for how to implement the curriculum and are therefore motivated and prepared to use it to help children learn in ways that are relevant to them.
In a way, it’s like photography. The key to creating art with light and time is not the equipment. Although Hasselblad and Leica cameras and a metal case of Nikkor lenses are great in the hands of those who know how to use them, a great tool to create expressive photographic art can also be found in your purse or pocket. As with teaching algebra, the key is not the specific tool, but knowing the right approach and being trained well enough to be confident in using that approach.
I’ve seen a focus on implementation pay off in my own work as director of Algebra Success for the Urban Assembly. One of our coaches at the nonprofit, Latina Khalil-Hairston, encouraged teachers at Harry S Truman High School in the Bronx to tinker with their curriculum to encourage more student involvement.
They created a new lesson structure that focused more on getting students to help each other solve problems than on getting direction from teachers. While doing so, they were mindful of adopting this new structure within the challenging constraint of having only 45 minutes for each lesson. Teachers saw more participation and better results, which has been its own motivation.
Professionals in all fields need coaching and support — why would high school math be any different? We wouldn’t give a basketball playbook to a player and expect them to be LeBron James. Even LeBron James still practices and gets coaching feedback. Even the most accomplished among us need to see a vision of excellence.
Yet I have seen many schools fall into the trap of investing in a curriculum without giving teachers the most useful ways to implement it. Unsurprisingly, these schools fail to achieve the results they hoped for and then abandon one curriculum for another.
But the curriculum is just the camera. Training and coaching, personalized to each teacher, produce the art.
And that coaching should not only help teachers understand their tools, but also help them better understand the backgrounds of their students to ensure that their perspectives are part of the learning process. Knowing the nature of the student body can dramatically enhance understanding, retention and interest in math (or any subject).
I’ve seen the results. Just last year, we saw pass rates on the Algebra I Regents for schools participating in our Algebra Success program rise 13 percent over the previous year. College-readiness math results rose 14 percent.
It is time for schools and districts to abandon the search for the one perfect curriculum — it does not exist. Instead, they should focus on how to better implement the systems they have in an engaging, effective way. They should invest in the training and support of teachers to master the instruction of that curriculum. With these changes, we know students will find success in Algebra I, putting them on the path to higher-level math courses and postsecondary success.
Shantay Mobley is the director of Algebra Success for the Urban Assembly, a nonprofit that promotes social and economic mobility by innovating in public education. She previously was a math teacher, school leader and instructional consultant.
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.
There’s no bus ride required to take your students on awesome field trips—we bring the tours to you! These interactive virtual field trips give your students insight into the careers of the future by hearing from real-life professionals about innovative technology. Your class will love the enthusiastic hosts, engaging videos, and kid-friendly topics!
Hosted on Kahoot!, these free Amazon virtual field trips pause between videos for students to answer trivia questions along the way and spark friendly competition. Plus, each tour comes with a Teacher Toolkit that includes a facilitation guide with student worksheets, certificates, and extension-learning opportunities. Tours are aligned with NGSS, CSTA, and ISTE standards, so they can tie right into your curriculum!
Plus, sign up to be notified when brand-new virtual field trips are released and you’ll be entered to win a $250 Amazon gift card! 😍 Sign up here.
Learn more about the virtual field trips you can start exploring now:
How do songs get from a recording studio to your favorite music app? There’s science behind it all, including software, sound engineering, streaming, machine learning, and so much more. Dive into the Amazon Music: Careers Behind the Beats Tour to discover how computer science and amazing professionals come together to make music possible.
Key learnings: how songs are recorded, music streaming and licensing, engineers and professionals who make music come to life
How did we get from renting movies on VCR video or DVD to instantaneous streaming across multiple devices? Where is “the cloud”? In the AWS Data Center Tour 1: Uncovering Cloud Computing, learn the basics of computers and streaming using the cloud. Plus, tour an AWS data center to find out how they store movies, music, pictures, and so much more.
3. Learn where all of our data is stored and kept secure.
Discover the infrastructure that keeps your information protected while diving into data careers of the future during the AWS Data Center Tour 2: Keeping Data Safe and Sustainable. Phone out of storage space? The cloud is a secure place to upload your photos for safekeeping. Learn how data centers use cooling methods, backup systems, sensors, and more to keep your cloud data secure.
Take a peek into the data center tours:
4. How does Amazon deliver packages at lightning speed?
Take this behind-the-scenes Robotics Fulfillment Center Tour to see how computer science, engineering, and real people work together to make the magic of Amazon deliveries happen. During this interactive virtual field trip, students meet Amazon engineers who explain concepts like algorithms and machine learning.
Key learnings: computer science, robotics, and machine learning as well as hardware and software
Grade levels: Grades K-5 version + Grade 6 and up version
Length: 45 minutes for grades K-5, 1 hour for grades 6 and up
Take a peek at the experimental technology that flew aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft during the Callisto: Space Innovation Tour. Learn about the Artemis I mission and discover how special space technology experiments could change future space travel forever! Experiments on board include testing how a modern-day tablet can run flight software, making high-quality video communication possible in space, and more.
Key learnings: how a spacecraft gets to the moon, deep space communication, AI voice technology, space engineering career paths
Science experiments and hands-on activities are perennial classroom favorites, and they’re a fundamental part of high school lab sciences. Before you start, though, you’ll want to make sure you have the right lab safety equipment ready to go. We’ve rounded up some of the most important items your lab might need, available at trusted science lab equipment suppliers.
Tip: Teaching students lab safety really is vital. To ensure your classes get thorough training on the subject, try a safety course like the ones designed by Flinn Scientific. They have courses for teachers too, including those needed for certifications.
Fisher Scientific
Amazon
Disposable Gloves
You can buy disposable gloves in a variety of places, but you’ll want to make sure they’re both latex-free and chemical-resistant. Consider keeping several sizes on hand to ensure a good fit for all students.
Most classrooms are already equipped with a fire extinguisher, but it’s also smart to keep a fire blanket on hand. Mount this lab safety equipment to the wall in an easily accessible location, so all students know where to find it.
It’s important for students to tie back and secure long hair when they’re working in the lab. Plain rubber bands can get stuck, so keep a supply of these basic bulk hair ties on hand for students who don’t have their own.
High school science labs should strongly consider installing pull-down safety showers, in case of a spill or other hazardous exposure. This model comes in two versions, wall-mounted and ceiling-mounted.
Keep one of these around for times when you’re performing a demo with hazardous vapors or other materials. This one is NIOSH-approved, with replaceable filters.
Various spilled substances call for different controls. This kit includes sand, acid neutralizer, and a super-absorbent material to help handle most science lab spills.
Keep dangerous chemicals safe with locking storage cabinets. Put together a set that makes the most sense for your science lab, with options for both flammable and corrosive liquids.
Add something exciting to your April lessons with new, engaging resources from Discovery Education! Find ideas for Financial Literacy Month, explore behind-the-scenes with the NBA, and more! Pop of Professional Learning What’s New Trending Topics Magic Moment Pop of Professional Learning Virtual Field Trips take your students beyond the classroom walls and into some of […]
The STEM pipeline – a metaphor for the development of future scientists, engineers and other high tech workers – likely starts with a narrower funnel in the post-pandemic era. Credit: CSA Images via Getty Images
Universities, philanthropies, and even the U.S. government are all trying to encourage more young Americans to pursue careers in STEM, an acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Many business sectors, from high tech to manufacturing, are plagued with shortages of workers with technical skills. In New York City, where I live, the subway is frequently plastered with advertisements carrying the message that STEM fields pay well. But studying STEM requires more than an interest in science or a desire to make good money. Students also need adequate training, even in elementary and middle school.
That’s why it’s concerning that high-achieving students, who’ve received less public attention than lower achieving students, were also set back by remote learning and pandemic uncertainty. Fewer students with math skills shrinks the pool of people who are likely to cultivate an expertise in science, engineering and technology a decade from now. In other words, the STEM pipeline – a metaphor for the development of future scientists, engineers and other high tech workers – likely starts with a narrower funnel in the post-pandemic era.
The stakes are high not only for Gen Z, as they age out of school and enter the workforce, but also for the future of the U.S. economy, which needs skilled scientists and engineers to grow.
The leading indicators of STEM troubles ahead are apparent within the 2022 scores from a national test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The immediate headlines from that first post-pandemic test focused on the fact that two decades of academic progress had been suddenly erased. Low-achieving children, who tend to be poor, had lost the most ground. An alarming number of American children – as high as 38 percent of eighth graders – were functioning below the “basic” level in math, meaning that they didn’t have even the most rudimentary math skills.
Statisticians at the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) have continued to dig into the 2022 data, and they’ve been also turning their attention to students at the top. These children are on grade level, but the eighth grade NAEP assessment shows that far fewer of them are hitting an advanced performance level, or even a proficient one. Math scores among top performers dropped as steeply as scores did among low performers. Even the scores of students at Catholic schools, who otherwise weathered the pandemic well, plummeted in eighth grade math.
We don’t have data for other private schools because they have refused to participate in NAEP testing, but the eighth grade math declines among both high-achieving public school and Catholic school students are not good signs.
NAEP tests reading and math in both fourth and eighth grades every two years in order to track educational progress. It’s one of the only tests that can be used for comparisons across states and generations. More than 400,000 students are specially selected to represent the regions and demographic characteristics of the nation.
Among the four NAEP tests, eighth grade math showed the sharpest pandemic drop. Math took a bigger hit than reading because kids can still read at home, while math is something that students primarily learn at school. If you didn’t read “The Hobbit” in your seventh grade English class because you were out sick with Covid, you can still be a good lifelong reader But not getting enough practice with rates, ratios and percentages in middle school can derail someone who might have otherwise excelled.
Why eighth grade math was hit harder than fourth grade math is a bit less obvious. One explanation is that the concepts that students need to learn are more difficult. Square roots and exponents are possibly more challenging to master than multiplication and division. And fewer parents are able to assist with homework as the math increases in complexity.
Yet another explanation is a psychological one. These eighth graders were in sixth grade when the pandemic erupted in the spring of 2020. This is a critical time in adolescent development when children are figuring out who they are and where they belong. A lot of this development occurs through social interaction. The isolation may have stunted psychological development and that ultimately affected motivation, study skills and the ability to delay gratification – all necessary to excel in math.
Let’s walk through the numbers together.
Highest achieving students lost ground in eighth grade math
Source: NAEP Report Card Mathematics 2022
This chart shows that the highest performing students, those at the top 10 percent and the top 25 percent, lost as much as low-achieving students at the bottom in eighth grade math. These eighth graders were in the spring of sixth grade when the pandemic hit in 2020, and it’s possible that they didn’t master important prerequisite skills, such as rates and ratios. These kids at the top are performing at grade level, but not as high performing as past eighth graders.
Fewer eighth grade students hit advanced and proficient levels
Source: NAEP Report Card Mathematics 2022
This bar chart shows that before the pandemic 10 percent of the nation’s eighth graders were performing at an advanced level in math. That fell to 7 percent. And the number of students deemed proficient in eighth grade math fell even more, from 24 percent to 20 percent. Before the pandemic, arguably, 34 percent of the eighth grade population was on track to pursue advanced math in high school and a future STEM career if they wanted one. After the pandemic in 2022, only 27 percent were well prepared.
Students at Catholic schools are generally much higher performing than students at public schools. In large part, that’s because of family income; wealthier students tend to have higher test scores than poorer students. Catholic school students tend to be wealthier; their families can afford private school tuition. In recent years, the Catholic Church has closed hundreds of schools that catered to low-income families, leaving a higher income population in its remaining classrooms.
Catholic schools outperformed public schools but also dropped
Source: NAEP Report Card Mathematics 2022
This chart shows that Catholic school students, depicted by the diamonds, outperformed public school students, depicted by the circles, in eighth grade math. But it was still a sharp five-point decline in eighth grade math performance for Catholic school students, almost as large as the eight-point decline for public school students. Scores of white students at Catholic schools declined five points; scores of students at Catholic schools in the suburbs declined seven points. Almost a quarter of Catholic school students are now functioning below a basic level in math for their grade.
Despite the good academic reputation of Catholic schools and the praise Catholic schools received for resuming in-person instruction sooner, math scores suggest a problem. And it’s a problem that potentially extends to the whole private school universe, where 9 percent of students are enrolled, according to the most recently available data from 2019.
I talked with Ron Reynolds, the executive director of the California Association of Private School Organizations, who explained that not just Catholic schools, but also many other private schools suffered even if they hadn’t been closed for long. Reynolds said that private schools were still hit by illnesses, deaths and absences and that might have affected instruction.
“Private schools are tightly knit communities in which teachers tend to be more intertwined in the lives of the children and families they serve,” he said. “When you have a crisis, and so many people experiencing stress and loss, that can certainly impact the teacher in some significant ways.”
Unfortunately, we don’t know exactly how other private schools fared during the pandemic because they have refused to participate in the NAEP tests for the past decade. Reynolds, who serves on the governing board that oversees the NAEP exam, has been trying to lobby more private schools to participate, but so far, to no avail.
Together private schools, selective public schools and affluent suburban schools have been important training grounds for the nation’s future scientists and engineers. Of course, it is possible that these high achieving students, now 10th graders, will catch up. Many of them are from wealthier families who can afford tutors, or attend well-resourced schools. But I am not seeing much evidence that schools have had the ability to think about the pipeline of advanced students when many students are so needy. And with post-pandemic grade inflation, students and parents may not be getting the signals they need to seek extra help independently.
The administration of the 2024 NAEP test wrapped up in March, but results won’t be known for many months. I’ll be keeping an eye on eighth grade math and on SAT, ACT and Advanced Placement scores in the years to come.
This story aboutmath scores 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.
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The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
COLOGNE, Germany — Neriman Raim, a 16-year-old student in this northwestern German city, thought that after finishing school she’d want to work in an office.
But two years ago, she did a two-week internship in an architect’s bureau, and it was tedious. Later, a placement working with kindergarteners led her to consider a career as a teacher — but not of kids this young. The next school year, she spent three weeks supervising older children as they did their homework.
Neriman now plans to become an educator working with grade-school children. After finishing school this summer, she’ll participate in a year-long placement to confirm that teaching is the right career for her before going to a technical college. Her internships offered a glimpse of what working life could look like, she said: “I could see what a day is like with kids.”
Neriman Raim, 16, thought she wanted to work in an office but changed her mind when a work placement at an architect’s bureau proved tedious. Credit: Patricia Kühfuss for The Hechinger Report
Neriman is taking part in Kein Abschluss ohne Anschluss (KAoA) — or “no graduation without connection” — a program that has been rolled out across the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia to help students better plan for their futures. Young people get support with resumes and job applications; in ninth grade, they participate in short internships with local businesses and have the option of doing a year-long, one-day-a week work placements in grade 10.
“You don’t learn about a job in school,” said Sonja Gryzik, who teaches English, math and career orientation at the school Neriman attends, Ursula Kuhr Schule. “You have to experience it.”
Germany and other Western European countries have long directed students into career paths at earlier ages than in the U.S., often placing kids onto university tracks or vocational education starting at age 10. Students in Germany can embark on apprenticeships directly after finishinggeneral education at age 16 in grade 10, attendingvocational schools that offer theoretical study, alongside practical training at a company. College-bound kids stay in school for three more years, ending with an entry exam for university.
The apprenticeship system, which is credited with keeping youth unemployment low, has drawn strong interest in the U.S. amid growing disenchantment with university education. Youth apprenticeships have begun topop up in several U.S. states, and career exposure programs areexpanding. “Many of the best jobs our country has to offer don’t require a college education,” wrote workforce training advocate Ryan Craig in his recent book “Apprentice Nation: How the ‘Earn and Learn’ Alternative to Higher Education Will Create a Stronger and Fairer America.”
But in Germany, the hundreds-year-old vocational system has faced headwinds. There is longstanding criticism that low-income students and those from immigrant backgrounds are channeled into vocational fields and away from more academic ones. More recently, despite thehigh demand for workers in the trades, students and their parents are increasingly hesitant about vocational education. Germany’s labor market has become digitized, and young people are keeping their options open before settling on a career path. Meanwhile, the pandemic had an outsized impact on vocational training, forcing many programs to close for long periods. And recent immigrants may be unaware of voc-ed’s high standing.
Small class sizes at Ursula Kuhr Schule allow teachers to offer guidance and support. Credit: Patricia Kühfuss for The Hechinger Report
All this has led more students to choose to attend university. Yet many drop out: According to recent data, up to 28 percent of students fail to complete a degree. The figure for students in humanities and natural sciences is even higher, up to 50 percent.
This high failure rate, coupled with labor market needs, has led policymakers to tweak traditional vocational models to make themmore flexible. Students in the academic track increasingly have access to both apprenticeships and university, and some students who complete vocational qualifications can still go on to attend a university, where options for combining practical experience with academic studies are growing.
The program Neriman participates in, KAoA, is part of a wave of efforts to engage all students, not just those bound for vocational programs, in workforce preparation. All ninth and 10th grade students in North Rhine-Westphalia must do a three-week-long practical internship. Those on a vocational track begin apprenticeships after completing 10th grade, while students hoping to go to university attend academic high school for three additional years. The program encourages students from all backgrounds to think about their futures in concrete terms, said Bernhard Meyer, a teacher at Ursula Kuhr who coordinates KAoA in 11 towns across the Northwestern region.
“We have every type of possibility,” Meyer said. “And there’s not only apprenticeship or university, there are some studies in between.”
AtUrsula Kuhr Schule, students in the school’s woodworking lab build birdhouses and toy cars. A state-of-the-art kitchen lets students develop their culinary skills. Anextensive garden, full of herbs, and boasting a hen house, offers an opportunity to test out horticultural skills.
Students take field trips to learn about different jobs. For example, on a trip to the airport they learn about positions such as flight attendant, fire service, security or aircraft mechanic. Employees from Ford, which has a plant in Cologne, visit the school to talk about their work with students and parents.
While university is free in Germany, students who study vocational fields can achieve financial security earlier on.
Students can test their horticultural skills in the school’s garden. Credit: Patricia Kühfuss for The Hechinger ReportWoodwork supplies at Ursula Kuhr Schule, a school in Cologne, Germany. Credit: Patricia Kühfuss for The Hechinger Report
Businesses in Germany seem keen to participate in vocational training. Chambers of commerce and industry support company-school partnerships and help smaller businesses train their interns. Students are even represented in unions, said Julian Uehlecke, a representative of the youth wing of Germany’s largest trade union alliance.
The goal of apprenticeships is to offer training in the classroom and in the workplace. The system gives students “a pretty good chance of finding a well-paid stable job,” said Leonard Geyer, a researcher at the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research.
Lukas Graf, head of the Swiss Observatory for Vocational Education and Training described the “basic principle” of Germany’s program as providing all-around training: “in the classroom, in the seminar room, and training in the workplace.”
Mile Glisic, a 15-year-old student at Ursula Kuhr Schule, is doing a long-term work placement at a hardware store and considering an apprenticeship in sales. Earning money while training for a career will help him understand financial planning, and prepare him for a future in which he has a house and family, he said. “I think it’s better because you start to learn what to do with your money when you’re younger,” said Mile.
While the KAoA program has rolled out across all 2,000 schools in this region of Germany, including those that focus on university preparation, Ursula Kuhr Schule prioritizes practical education. Students, more than half of whom come from minority backgrounds, begin career orientation when they are just 12 or 13.
Backers of vocational training say it supports social inclusion by giving young people training that allows them to secure well-paid, stable jobs. But, as in the United States, many argue it limits the prospects of students from marginalized backgrounds and reproduces generational inequalities. This is “a huge debate,” said Graf, of the Swiss Observatory.
To Graf, the value of either a university degree or practical study depends on the particular courses chosen. A university graduate in a field like philosophy, for example, might end up with fewer well-paid opportunities than someone with vocational education training, he said.
Frank Rasche teaches woodwork and technical education at Ursula Kuhr Schule. Credit: Patricia Kühfuss for The Hechinger Report
The pandemic deepened many parents’ ambivalence about vocational training. While university teaching continued through online platforms, on-the-job training came to a stop when companies had to shut down, said Hubert Ertl, vice president and director of research at Germany’s Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training and professor of vocational education research at the University of Paderborn.
Parents have a big influence: Research by Ertl’s institute shows that when students express interest in a vocational program, their parents often talk them out of it and push them toward higher ed instead. “That’s often not doing the young people any favors,” he said.
His organization works with schools and parents to tackle preconceived ideas about vocational education. “We’ve started to engage with parents quite directly because parents often don’t know about the vocational programs at all, and they don’t know what opportunities they afford.”
Tim Becker, 20, is doing anIT apprenticeship after completing the university entry exam at his academically oriented high school in Cologne. At first, his parents, who worked for CocaCola, were uneasy. German parents usually want their children to go to university, “especially if they go to a gymnasium,” Becker wrote in an email, referring to academic high schools.
But in school, his career classes urged students to compare the benefits of university to a practical qualification. For Becker, who’d always loved computers, hands-on training beat out academic theory. “I am just not that guy that likes to sit all day in any lectures at some university,” he said. Some of his old classmates have already dropped out of college and are pursuing internships, he added.
Parents at Ursula Kuhr attend meetings, called “future conferences,” with their kids several times a year. Mile’s parents, who moved to Germany from Serbia when he was 9, have met his teachers frequently. “I know that they were very happy with it,” he said, referring to his career path. “They had some questions about it. But I think they’re thinking good about it because, I mean, it’s only doing good for us.”
Neriman’s mother, who is a nanny, “loved the idea” that her daughter would teach in grade-school, Neriman said. The teachers and staff at Ursula Kuhr help students gain confidence about their futures, she said. “The teachers do everything for us — they don’t want anyone to finish school and have nothing.”
Other European countries are seeing similar labor market needs. Denmark, whose minister for education trainedas a bricklayer, is facing a significant skills shortage in vocational fields, said Camilla Hutters, head of the National Center for Vocational Education, a Danish research organization.
In the 1960s, practical and project-based learning was common in Danish schools, Hutters said. That changed in the 1990s, when Denmark scored poorly on international rankings like the Program for International Student Assessment. Now, economic needs are causing a swing back to vocational and career education.
Students are encouraged to think about their futures. “We always talk about different jobs that might be suitable for them,” said Sonja Gryzik, who teaches English, math and career orientation at Ursula Kuhr Schule. Credit: Patricia Kühfuss for The Hechinger Report
Today, Danish students as young as 6 might visit a workplace or spend a week learning about a particular career, she said, and discussions are under way to further integrate practical learning in primary school. Danish leaders also want to improve collaboration with business across the education system, including at the university level, Hutters said, where an increasing number of courses are likely to involve working with a company. Political leaders are discussing reforms that would “improve practical learning in the whole system,” she said.
But a tension between on-the-job training and academia persists in Danish thinking, she added. Although policymakers want to expand the practical element across all levels of education, university still remains the goal for many students and their parents. “This is a little bit of a mixed tendency at the same time, right now in Denmark,” she said.
Back in Germany, Becker will finish his internship in September 2024 with expertise in IT services and network security. Throughout his training, he has earned money — and will get up to €1,260 (roughly $1,360) per month in his final year — which has meant he could avoid taking on part-time work as some of his college friends have done. “You don’t need to sit all day in university and go to work in the evening to pay your bills,” he said.
And it suits him. He grew up surrounded by computers, tinkering alongside his dad, and that love of technology persisted through his teens. He likes working with his hands and doing, “something where I can learn practical things,” he said.
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.
Northshore Regional STEM Center, led by Southeastern Louisiana University and LaSTEM, to assist in a broad initiative to enhance STEM education and career development opportunities statewide starting in March-June.
HAMMOND, La., March 8, 2024 (Newswire.com)
– The Louisiana Department of Education has awarded a $1.67 million contract to the Northshore Regional STEM Center, led by Southeastern Louisiana University and LaSTEM, to assist in a broad initiative to enhance STEM education and career development opportunities statewide. The project is led by Northshore Regional LaSTEM Center Director Wendy Conarro, Southeastern Interim Computer Science Department Head Bonnie Achee, and Dean of the College of Education Paula Summers Calderon.
The Energize Project provides funding for the development and delivery of 40 hours of computer science Praxis exam training and provides a $350 stipend to teachers who successfully complete the training program. Additional support may be available from the school districts to cover Praxis exam fee waiver, time, and expenses. Multiple cohorts are being offered to allow up to 1,000 sixth- through 12th-grade public school and public charter school educators to earn computer science teaching certification. Over 500 teachers from across the state have registered to “energize” computer science education in their schools and districts.
As part of the LDOE action plan to support education and industry through a multi-pronged “Ignite, Inspire, and Energize” STEM learning initiative across Louisiana, training sessions are being held virtually in March-May, with a hybrid cohort to follow in June.
“In Louisiana, the fastest growing industry is professional, scientific, and technical services, which is composed of much of the technology industry,” said Conarro. “Software developers and network administrators are among the 10 fastest growing occupations in the state requiring a college education, yet the state is producing fewer than half of the graduates needed to fill computer science-related jobs.”
According to the Louisiana Legislature Computer Science Education Advisory Commission and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, the public would benefit from a comprehensive computer science education initiative that can ensure that Louisiana citizens have the expertise needed to perform the technological skills embedded in most professions and that the state can meet ever-increasing workforce demands in the technology sector. Accomplishing these goals will provide the people of Louisiana with a greater capacity to grow with the industry and capitalize on future technological advances.
Susana Schowen, Secretary of the Louisiana Workforce Commission, explained, “If we can provide opportunities for our Louisiana people, we can lift people out of poverty into economic stability. We can ensure ongoing economic stability for those who enjoy it now, and we can create jobs for our children and grandchildren in the future. This is how we make Louisiana better.”
For more information about training opportunities available through the Energize Project, visit northshorestem.org/energize.
Move into March with new, engaging resources from Discovery Education! Commemorate Women’s History Month, explore literacy topics, and find content to help you make your mark with exciting March lessons! Pop of Professional Learning What’s New Trending Topics Magic Moment Pop of Professional Learning Every teacher has thought, “How can I make this lesson more exciting […]
OXNARD, Calif. — On a Wednesday morning this December, Dale Perizzolo’s math class at Adolfo Camarillo High School is anything but quiet. Students chat about the data analysis they’ve performed on their cellphone usage over a week, while Perizzolo walks around the room fielding their questions.
The students came up with the project themselves and designed a Google form to track their phone time, including which apps they used most. They also determined the research questions they’d ask of the data — such as whether social media use during class reduces comprehension and retention.
“It’s more real-world math,” said Nicolas Garcia, a senior in Perizzolo’s class. “We have the chance and freedom to choose what we’re doing our datasets on, and he teaches us how we’re going to work and complement it [in] our daily lives.”
Nicolas Garcia, a senior at Adolfo Camarillo High School, analyzes data that he gathered on his cellphone use during the school day. He said he plans to use the skills he learned in the class when in college. Credit: Javeria Salman/The Hechinger Report
Across town, students in Ruben Jacquez’s class at Rio Mesa High School use coding software to compile and clean data they’ve collected on student stress levels. A few miles away at Channel Islands High School, Miguel Hernandez’s students use pie and bar charts to analyze a dataset about how social media influences people’s shopping habits.
Perizzolo, Jacquez and Hernandez are among the eight math teachers of an increasingly popular data science course offered at most schools in the Oxnard Union High School district, an economically diverse school system northwest of Los Angeles, where 80 percent of students identify as Hispanic. The district rolled out the class in fall 2020, in an attempt to offer an alternative math course to students who might struggle in traditional junior and senior math courses such as Algebra II, Pre-Calculus and Calculus.
California has been at the center of a heated debate over what math knowledge students really need to succeed in college and careers. With math scores falling nationwide, some educators have argued that the standard algebra-intensive math pathway is outdated and needs a revamp, both to engage more students and to help them develop relevant skills in a world increasingly reliant on data. At least 17 states now offer data science (an interdisciplinary field that combines computer programming, math and statistics) as a high school math option, according to the group Data Science for Everyone. Two states — Oregon and Ohio — offer it as an alternative to Algebra II.
But other math educators have decried a move away from Algebra II, which they argue remains core to math instruction and necessary for students to succeed in STEM careers and beyond. In California, that disagreement erupted in October 2020, after the group that sets admission requirements for the state’s public university system (known as A-G) announced it would allow students to substitute data science for Algebra II to help more students qualify for college. Math professors, advocates and even some high school educators argued that the state was watering down standards and setting students up for failure in college.
Then, in July last year, the group reversed its earlier decision, and in February released new recommendations reiterating that data science courses (and, to the surprise of some experts, even long-approved statistics classes) cannot be used as an alternative to Algebra II. It remains unclear how the decision will reshape college admissions; additional guidance is expected in May.
Ruben Jacquez helps his students in a data science class at Rio Mesa High School as they work on their project on student stress levels. Credit: Javeria Salman/The Hechinger Report
In Oxnard, educators say they have been left in the dark about how these decisions affect course offerings for their students. They argue that, more than ever, students need real-world math to help them succeed in the subject, and that the expansion of data science — some 500 Oxnard district students have taken it to date — has reoriented teachers’ and students’ approach to math.
“Data science is changing their view of math,” said Jay Sorensen, Oxnard’s educational technology coordinator, who helped design the class. “It changed their perspective, or their view of what math is, because they maybe didn’t enjoy math or were frustrated with math or hated math before.”
Many kids in Oxnard stop taking any math after junior year of high school and the district has been trying to fix this for almost a decade. In 2015, Tom McCoy, then the assistant superintendent of education services, jokingly asked Sonny Sajor, the district’s math instructional specialist, “Can I get some math for poets?”
That started a conversation on what math classes might benefit and engage high schoolers who struggled in the subject and who didn’t plan to pursue science or math fields or attend a four-year college, said McCoy, who became Oxnard’s superintendent in 2020.
Stefanie Davison, the district’s first teacher to teach data science, helps senior Emma-Dai Valenzuela (left) at Pacific High School. Credit: Javeria Salman/The Hechinger Report
“Too many kids that dislike math would stop taking math the minute they could,” said Sajor, who co-designed the course at Oxnard. In the year before the district launched Data Science, only about 45 percent of students who took Math I in ninth grade made it to Math III by their junior year.
Inspired by a University of California, Los Angeles, seminar they attended on data science for high schoolers, Sajor and Sorensen designed the new course and partnered on it with the ed tech vendor Bootstrap World. Oxnard’s first data science classes generated enough student interest that the district expanded the course to more schools, and its popularity has continued to grow. Perizzolo’s class, for example, was meant to have 30 students but enrolls 39; he says he won’t turn away a student who signs up for a math class.
But not all educators in Oxnard were on board. Some math teachers, for example, questioned whether the Data Science course — which had been approved as an advanced statistics course equivalent to Advanced Placement statistics courses — was really equivalent to an advanced math course. They noted that the statistics content in the course was at a ninth-grade level, Sajor said.
Oxnard Union’s data science teachers, though, say they’ve seen benefits.
“It’s giving kids exposure to really practical math, and it’s also creative,” said Allison Ottie Halstead, who teaches Data Science along with Honors Pre-Calculus and A.P. Statistics at Rancho Campana High School.
Alicia Bettencourt, a data science teacher at Hueneme High School, walks her students through a Bootstrap World workbook lesson on functions. Bettencourt says teaching the course has made her rethink how she teaches her other math classes, including Algebra II. Credit: Javeria Salman/The Hechinger Report
Alicia Bettencourt, who teaches Data Science at Hueneme High School, said the course has helped her to “incorporate more real-world problems, more authentic assessments, when I’m teaching” other math classes including Algebra II.
Most of Oxnard’s Data Science classes enroll a mix of students who are using the course to fulfill their required third year of math and those who’ve already taken Algebra II. According to district data, students who took Data Science as juniors in the 2022-2023 year were more likely to sign up for a math class their senior year. (Only about 10 percent of those students enrolled in Math III, an integrated math class that’s equivalent to Algebra II; larger shares enrolled in Statistics, Math for Finance Literacy and other classes). Meanwhile, the share of students receiving a D or F in Math III has dropped slightly since the Data Science course was introduced in 2020, the district said.
Nizcialey Dimapilis, a senior in Hernandez’s class at Channel Islands High School, said she is taking Data Science and A.P. Calculus simultaneously to prepare for computer engineering courses in college. “I thought this class would be more useful because it involves coding, which is completely kind of new to me,” Dimapilis said. The course has helped her understand graphs and create and read data in her other classes as well, she said.
Aaron Lira, a senior at Hueneme High School, said he finds data science interesting because he is learning skills that many companies use. Credit: Javeria Salman/The Hechinger Report
Some students said it helped them grasp math concepts they’d been introduced to in past classes and made them more interested in pursuing math in the future. Jaya Richardson, a senior taking Data Science at Oxnard High School, said she doesn’t consider herself “a math person.” As a junior, she took Math III and barely passed with a D.
Richardson considered repeating the class for a higher grade, but her counselor suggested Data Science instead. She said she’s happy with the decision, and even plans to pursue a degree in biology at a UC or CSU.
“This is way better,” she said of the Data Science course. “It’s still stressful, it’s still hard, but it’s more beneficial. We still do math in here, but it breaks it down in a way where I’m able to understand it without being overwhelmed.”
But many STEM professors are worried about the consequences of experiments like Oxnard’s.
Jelani Nelson, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, argues that most data science courses offered in high schools are low level and don’t comply with UC and CSU college admission criteria that alternatives to Algebra II build on students’ earlier math coursework.
Without an understanding of what he calls “foundational math” — Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II — he says students won’t succeed in college courses in computer science, math, technology, economics and even art (perspective drawing, for example, uses geometry and algebra). Introductory college classes in data science also build on those math concepts, he said, so students who’ve taken data science in high school but not Algebra II are unlikely to succeed in the subject.
Using what’s known as the “question formulation technique,” or QFT, students wrote inquiry-based questions at the start of their data analysis project in Dale Perizzolo’s data science class at Adolfo Camarillo High School. Credit: Javeria Salman/The Hechinger Report
Many four-year colleges don’t teach Algebra II, Nelson said, so there’s little opportunity to make up that work later. “If you want to get back on track,” he said, “how are you going to do it?”
Adrian Mims, founder of the Calculus Project, a nonprofit that works to increase the number of Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and low-income students in advanced mathematics, said swapping out data science for Algebra II has unintended consequences.
Standardized tests including the SAT and college math placement exams cover Algebra II, he said. He said he worries that students who opt for data science instead will be stuck in remedial math courses “not because they can’t learn the math, but because they made decisions in high school that deprive them of the opportunity to learn the content for them to do well.”
Rather than replacing Algebra II, data science concepts could be infused into Algebra II courses, and data science courses that include some Algebra II and geometry could be offered as electives to students who’ve already completed Algebra II, Nelson and others argue.
Others, though, don’t share those concerns. Pamela Burdman, founder of Just Equations, a nonprofit rethinking the role of traditional math pathways in high school, points to data showing that many students who take Algebra II in high school struggle through the subject and learn little. She said emerging research suggests that courses like data science could have “more potential for bringing students into STEM” than the traditional preparatory math courses.
Despite the recent focus on the UC admissions requirements, only about 400 applicants out of roughly 206,000 in the last admissions cycle listed that they’d taken data science or statistics in lieu of Algebra II, she noted.
“I do worry that the debate over data science versus Algebra II is sort of a distraction,” she said.
Zarek Drozda, director of Data Science for Everyone, the national initiative based at the University of Chicago, agreed. “In the 21st century, if we can’t find opportunities to teach students about data, data science and AI basics, that is a huge problem,” he said.
Teachers and school guidance counselors in Oxnard are wary of wading into the math debate with their higher ed peers. But they aren’t afraid to voice their discontent with what they view as a disconnect between students’ needs and higher education.
“They’ve always moved the goal posts and I don’t know if they ever think about the students,” Hugo Tapia, a guidance counselor at Adolfo Camarillo High School, said about the state’s A-G university system.
Hugo Tapia is a guidance counselor at Adolfo Camarillo High School. “They’ve always moved the goal posts and I don’t know if they ever think about the students,” he said about the state’s four-year university system. Credit: Javeria Salman/The Hechinger Report
Daniel Cook, a learning, instruction and technology coach at Camarillo, said that students come into high school behind in math and that the pandemic only made the problem worse. Yet colleges still expect students to have mastered Algebra II concepts and shut the door on those who haven’t.
“If one A-G math is the only reason why a kid doesn’t get into college, we’re robbing those kids,” he said.
Cook said that at Camarillo High School, some 44 percent of sophomores are not on track to be A-G eligible because of math, so they’re getting a message early on that they’re not college material. By senior year, the figure is about 25 percent.
Traditional math curriculum “is essentially focused on preparing students for STEM pathways in college,” Cook said. The July vote and subsequent policy recommendations to nix data science as an option for college applicants, he said, are a “slap in the face to students who have interests that are not STEM related.”
Educators in Oxnard are trying to cope with the uncertainty created by the state’s higher education system. With data science no longer counting toward college admission, Oxnard will eventually limit the course to students who’ve already taken, or are taking, Algebra II, according to Sajor. The district is also considering a pilot course that would integrate Algebra II and Data Science.
Such a course might ultimately be better for the district, Sajor said, because it would help more students engage with Algebra II concepts while also introducing them to coding and data science. “It’s maybe a step back, but it also might be two steps forward,” he said.
Still, current data science students, like Emma-Dai Valenzuela, say the class in its current form has been invaluable. A senior in teacher Stefanie Davison’s class at Pacifica High School, Valenzuela said it has allowed her to fulfill her graduation requirements while actually succeeding in a math class.
She transferred into the class after struggling in Math III, the integrated Algebra II course, she said. Valenzuela plans to join the Navy before attending college, and said her recruiters told her this course would offer a basic understanding of coding and math she can build on later.
“This is more hands-on,” she said. “We’re constantly doing new things.”
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.
K-12 computer science is essential, not just for students who may pursue computer science or STEM fields in college or the workforce. Computer science principles give students critical computational thinking skills that will serve them in any career field or professional endeavor.
Let’s take a look at K-12 computer science trends and where computer science education is heading across the country:
Computer science is a rapidly advancing field; educators have to make those changes if they are going to prepare their students for the modern world. Trying to teach a subject that’s ever-changing might feel a little intimidating to some teachers, especially if they don’t have a background in the field. Fortunately, the skills students learn in a K-12 computer science framework are evergreen, and many of the changes within the field are manageable for the educators involved. Here are three keys to preparing to teach this dynamic subject without feeling like the ground is constantly shifting under your feet.
Computer science practices offer simple opportunities to differentiate instruction–edtech can make these concepts even more accessible to students. Computer science is more important than ever. In the age of artificial intelligence, the study of computers and computational systems—including their theory, design, development, and application–represents a new frontier in science. New fields in computer science seem to emerge each day and now include computer systems and networks, security, database systems, human computer interaction, vision and graphics, numerical analysis, programming languages, software engineering, bioinformatics, and theory of computing. Here are some of those topics and the edtech tools I use to make these concepts even more accessible to students.
What are the essential components of computer science?
In analyzing computer science core concepts and to shift the culture in computer science classrooms, educators not only need to emphasize the value of the subject, but also need to show how computer science can be a “tool for solving problems and issues in your own community and for social justice.” That also requires educators to think more “holistically” about computer science and embed it across disciplines, she said. Teacher training has remained a roadblock. While the CS4All initiative aims to reach 5,000 teachers through a two-week summer professional development session, more substantive courses have been sparse. Here’s how teachers can address equity issues in K-12 computer science.
Laura Ascione is the Editorial Director at eSchool Media. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland’s prestigious Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
Samantha, 11, asks her seventh grade teacher’s permission to leave the classroom each time the subject of climate change comes up.
Samantha, from a small town in Massachusetts, sees stories about climate change on social media and in the news. She has asked her family about it, and while not wanting to scare her, they acknowledge the disastrous impact that climate change is increasingly having on our planet, including the connection between Earth’s rising temperatures and the increase in extreme storms and wildfires.
It is because Samantha knows all of this that the mere mention of climate change triggers her anxiety. Samantha’s parents are at a loss about how to help her. Unfortunately, a growing number of children and their parents are grappling with similar emotions.
Mental health clinicians and researchers have begun to notice and document what they call climate anxiety or eco-anxiety, which is defined as chronic stress caused by concern over the effects of climate change. According to an international group of researchers, specific symptoms of this phenomenon among children and young adults include intense feelings of sadness, anger, powerlessness, helplessness and guilt — all of which can fuel more general and severe anxiety or depression. Therefore, while combatting climate change itself, we must also address the anxiety that it is causing.
Another study confirms the finding that depression, general and severe anxiety and “extreme emotions such as sadness, anger and fear” are all mental health outcomes associated with eco-anxiety. These mental health challenges are not pathological, but considered to be normal human responses to a rapidly changing world.
Meanwhile, they can contribute to inaction: A national survey found that nearly 50 percent of Americans age 18 and over are fatalistic when it comes to climate change, believing that individual actions make no difference in changing its course. Yet actions are, of course, vital.
Is the solution to climate change to hide its harms from children to protect their mental health? Of course not. Climate change is a real threat, one that needs immediate solutions involving people across the globe working together. In fact, the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change cites climate educationas a key component of the global campaign to address this issue.
One solution is to teach about climate change by focusing on strategies to address its consequences. The goal of climate education should not only be to teach students the scientific basis of climate change but also to empower them to address it — not thrust them into a state of despair.
To this end, we need a climate education framework that provides facts about the problem, describes mitigation and adaptation strategies and fosters the resilience youth need to navigate their changing world and act. Below, we sketch out what this framework looks like.
Solution-focused instructional design
The framework’s academic content must include science classes that encourage students to explore the science of climate restoration and environmental protection — not just the impact of climate change. It must also include civics lessons about the role students can play, now and in the future, in influencing government policy related to climate adaptation and mitigation. Project-based learning, citizen science learning — such as NASA’s GLOBE program — and service-learning are positive, solution-oriented approaches that can be drawn on to inspire youth and prepare them to be tomorrow’s environmental stewards.
Deeply integrated social and emotional learning
But such academic content alone is not enough, even when focused on solutions. It is also essential to include social and emotional learning (SEL) in all aspects of climate change education.
SEL is a much-discussed, research-based approach to helping students build emotional intelligence, acquire emotional agility and foster meaningful relationships. These emotional skills are key to young people’s success in school and in a rapidly changing world and include nonacademic skills such as regulating emotions, perspective-taking and setting and achieving goals.
Some of SEL’s core social-emotional competencies can help students manage their climate change-related stress and prepare them to act. For example, SEL helps build capacity to manage emotions amid adversity; fosters social awareness skills, such as understanding group behaviors and influences; develops relationship skills, such as communicating effectively and collaborating with others; and nurtures self-management skills, such as channeling strong emotions into productive behaviors. Weaving SEL approaches into instruction could help bring a sense of agency to the many young people who are feeling anxiety and concern.
We need to develop this climate education framework today, and we need to roll out curricula quickly and widely. There is no time to waste.
Around the world, kids like Samantha are sitting in class, haunted by images of a disintegrating planet. We can and must provide them with a sense of purpose — a known driver of positive youth development and a protective factor against mental health struggles. We can and must prepare them to be capable climate restoration champions who know how to preserve both our planet and their own mental health.
Shai Fuxman is a behavioral health expert and senior research scientist at Education Development Center, where he leads initiatives promoting the positive development of youth.
Chelsey Goddard is an expert in prevention science and vice president at Education Development Center, where she leads the organization’s U.S.-based health, mental health and behavioral health work.
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