The largest union in the country has locked its own workers out of their jobs after they went on strike for three days, escalating an ugly contract dispute that has already involved the White House.
Staffers at the National Education Association said they were told not to report to work at the union’s headquarters in Washington on Monday. Last week, the employees went on strike during the NEA’s annual convention in Philadelphia, prompting President Joe Biden to back out of a planned speech.
The staff union claimed the lockout was retaliation for their Philly walkout, calling it a “dangerous” and “reactionary” move by the NEA. A lockout is a work stoppage initiated by the employer, essentially the opposite of a strike.
“I cannot imagine it lands well that the nation’s largest union is locking out its staff union,” Robin McLean, the staff union’s president, said in a statement alleging “union busting” by the NEA. “What does that mean for a so-called labor union to treat hardworking people like this?”
“I cannot imagine it lands well that the nation’s largest union is locking out its staff union.”
– Robin McLean, president of the NEA staff union
The two sides are trying to negotiate a new three-year contract addressing wages, health coverage and other benefits. And while it’s not unusual for a labor union to have tense negotiations with its own staff, it’s rare that a labor dispute reaches the point of a lockout.
An NEA spokesperson said in an email that the union was bargaining in good faith with staffers, and accused those who went on strike of “abandoning” members by disrupting the Philadelphia assembly. The NEA argues that the staffers’ strike was not protected under the law, a point disputed by the staff union.
“To best protect the interests of our members, the Association, and our staff, we have made the difficult decision to institute a protective lockout,” the spokesperson said.
The plans for the lockout were first reported by Education Week.
A demonstrator chants while picketing in support of the National Education Association Staff Organization outside the Pennsylvania Convention Center, July 5, in Philadelphia.
Matt Slocum via Associated Press
The NEA represents 3 million teachers, support staff employees and other workers at public schools and colleges across the country. It is a major ally of the Democratic Party, and endorsed Biden’s reelection campaign in April, calling his the “most pro-public education and pro-union administration in modern history.”
The standoff broke into public view late last week when the White House said Biden would not be speaking in Philadelphia. Biden, who refers to himself as the most pro-union president in history, did not want to cross a picket line called by the staff union.
The staff union alleges that the NEA is trying to “strongarm” employees into accepting a subpar deal. It recently filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, claiming that managers unilaterally changed their working conditions and retaliated against a staff member.
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — When Natalia Molina began teaching her second grade students word problems earlier this school year, every lesson felt difficult. Most students were stymied by problems such as: “Sally went shopping. She spent $86 on groceries and $39 on clothing. How much more did Sally spend on groceries than on clothing?”
Both Molina, a first-year teacher, and her students had been trained to tackle word problems by zeroing in on key words like “and,” “more” and “total” — a simplistic approach that Molina said too often led her students astray. After recognizing the word “and,” for instance, they might mistakenly assume that they needed to add two nearby numbers together to arrive at an answer.
Some weaker readers, lost in a sea of text, couldn’t recognize any words at all.
“I saw how overwhelmed they would get,” said Molina, who teaches at Segue Institute for Learning, a predominantly Hispanic charter school in this small city just north of Providence.
So, with the help of a trainer doing work in Rhode Island through a state grant, Molina and some of her colleagues revamped their approach to teaching word problems this winter — an effort that they said is already paying off in terms of increased student confidence and ability. “It has been a game changer for them,” Molina said.
Second grade teacher Natalia Molina circulates to help groups of students as they work on word problems. Credit: Phillip Keith for The Hechinger Report
Perhaps no single educational task encompasses as many different skills as the word problem. Between reading, executive functioning, problem solving, computation and vocabulary, there are a lot of ways for students to go wrong. And for that reason, students perform significantly worse overall on word problems compared to questions more narrowly focused on computation or shapes (for example: “Solve 7 + _ = 22” or “What is 64 x 3?”).
If a student excels at word problems, it’s a good sign that they’re generally excelling at school. “Word-problem solving in lower grades is one of the better indicators of overall school success in K-12,” said Lynn Fuchs, a research professor at Vanderbilt University. In a large national survey, for instance, algebra teachers rated word-problem solving as the most important among 15 skills required to excel in the subject.
Teacher takeaways
Don’t instruct students to focus mainly on “key words” in word problems such as “and” or “more”
Mix question types in any lesson so that students don’t assume they just apply the same operation (addition, subtraction) again and again
Teach students the underlying structure — or schema — of the word problem
Yet most experts and many educators agree that too many schools are doing it wrong, particularly in the elementary grades. And in a small but growing number of classrooms, teachers like Molina are working to change that. “With word problems, there are more struggling learners than non-struggling learners” because they are taught so poorly, said Nicole Bucka, who works with teachers throughout Rhode Island to provide strategies for struggling learners.
Too many teachers, particularly in the early grades, rely on key words to introduce math problems. Posters displaying the terms — sum, minus, fewer, etc. — tied to operations including addition and subtraction are a staple in elementary school classrooms across the country.
Key words can be a convenient crutch for both students and teachers, but they become virtually meaningless as the problems become harder, according to researchers. Key words can help first graders figure out whether to add or subtract more than half of the time, but the strategy rarely works for the multi-step problems students encounter starting in second and third grade. “With multi-step problems, key words don’t work 90 percent of the time,” said Sarah Powell, a professor at the University of Texas in Austin who studies word problems and whose research has highlighted the inefficacy of key words. “But the average kindergarten teacher is not thinking about that; they are teaching 5-year-olds, not 9-year-olds.”
Many teachers in the youngest grades hand out worksheets featuring the same type of word problem repeated over and over again. That’s what Molina’s colleague, Cassandra Santiago, did sometimes last year when leading a classroom on her own for the first time. “It was a mistake,” the first grade teacher said. “It’s really important to mix them up. It makes them think more critically about the parts they have to solve.”
A second grader at Segue works through the steps of a word problem. Credit: Phillip Keith for The Hechinger Report
Another flaw with word problem instruction is that the overwhelming majority of questions are divorced from the actual problem-solving a child might have to do outside the classroom in their daily life — or ever, really. “I’ve seen questions about two trains going on the same track,” said William Schmidt, a University Distinguished Professor at Michigan State University. “First, why would they be going on the same track and, second, who cares?”
“That is one of the reasons why children have problems with mathematics,” he said. “They don’t see the connection to the real world … We’re at this point in math right now where we are just teaching students how to manipulate numbers.”
He said a question, aimed at middle schoolers, that does have real world connections and involves more than manipulating numbers, might be: “Shopping at the new store in town includes a 43% discount on all items which are priced the same at $2. The state you live in has a 7% sales tax. You want to buy many things but only have a total of $52 to spend. Describe in words how many things you could buy.”
Schmidt added that relevancy of word problems is one area where few, if any, countries excel. “No one was a shining star leading the way,” he said.
***
In her brightly decorated classroom one Tuesday afternoon, Santiago, the first grade teacher, gave each student a set of animal-shaped objects and a sheet of blue paper (the water) and green (the grass). “We’re going to work on a number story,” she told them. “I want you to use your animals to tell me the story.”
“Once upon a time,” the story began. In this tale, three animals played in the water, and two animals played in the grass. Santiago allowed some time for the ducks, pigs and bears to frolic in the wilds of each student’s desk before she asked the children to write a number sentence that would tell them how many animals they have altogether.
Some of the students relied more on pictorial representations (three dots on one side of a line and two dots on the other) and others on the number sentence (3+2 = 5) but all of them eventually got to five. And Santiago made sure that her next question mixed up the order of operations (so students didn’t incorrectly assume that all they ever have to do is add): “Some more animals came and now there are seven. So how many more came?”
One approach to early elementary word problems that is taking off in some schools, including Segue Institute, has its origins in a special education intervention for struggling math students. Teachers avoid emphasizing key words and ask students instead to identify first the conceptual type of word problem (or schema, as many practitioners and researchers refer to it) they are dealing with: “Total problems,” for instance, involve combining two parts to find a new amount; “change problems” involve increasing or decreasing the amount of something. Total problems do not necessarily involve adding, however.
A first grader at Segue identifies the correct formula to solve a word problem. Credit: Phillip Keith for The Hechinger Report
“The schemas that students learn in kindergarten will continue with them throughout their whole career,” said Powell, the word-problem researcher, who regularly works with districts across the country to help implement the approach.
In Olathe, Kansas — a district inspired by Powell’s work — teachers had struggled for years with word problems, said Kelly Ulmer, a math support specialist whose goal is to assist in closing academic gaps that resulted from lost instruction time during the pandemic. “We’ve all tried these traditional approaches that weren’t working,” she said. “Sometimes you get pushback on new initiatives from veteran teachers and one of the things that showed us how badly this was needed is that the veteran teachers were the most excited and engaged — they have tried so many things” that haven’t worked.
In Rhode Island, many elementary schools initially used the strategy with students who required extra help, including those in special education, but expanded this use to make it part of the core instruction for all, said Bucka. In some respects, it’s similar to the recent, well publicized evolution of reading instruction in which some special education interventions for struggling readers — most notably, a greater reliance on phonics in the early grades — have gone mainstream.
There is an extensive research base showing that focusing on the different conceptual types of word problems is an effective way of teaching math, although much of the research focuses specifically on students experiencing difficulties in the subject.
Molina has found asking students to identify word problems by type to be a useful tool with nearly all of her second graders; next school year she hopes to introduce the strategy much earlier.
Working in groups, second graders in Natalia Molina’s classroom at Segue tackle a lesson on word problems. Credit: Phillip Keith for The Hechinger Report
One recent afternoon, a lesson on word problems started with everyone standing up and chanting in unison: “Part plus part equals total” (they brought two hands together). “Total minus part equals part” (they took one hand away).
It’s a way to help students remember different conceptual frameworks for word problems. And it’s especially effective for the students who learn well through listening and repeating. For visual learners, the different types of word problems were mapped out on individual dry erase mats.
The real work began when Molina passed out questions, and the students— organized into the Penguin, Flower Bloom, Red Panda and Marshmallow teams — had to figure out which framework they were dealing with on their own and then work toward an answer. A few months ago, many of them would have automatically shut down when they saw the text on the page, Molina said.
For the Red Pandas, the question under scrutiny was: “The clothing store had 47 shirts. They sold 21, how many do they have now?”
“It’s a total problem,” one student said.
“No, it’s not total,” responded another.
“I think it’s about change,” said a third.
None of the students seemed worried about their lack of consensus, however. And neither was Molina. A correct answer is always nice but those come more often now that most of the students have made a crucial leap. “I notice them thinking more and more,” she said, “about what the question is actually asking.”
This story about word problems was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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What happened: The D.C. Council maintained funding for the Early Childhood Educator Pay Equity Fund, the nation’s first publicly funded program intended to raise the pay of child care workers in the district and provide them with free or low-cost health insurance.
The back story: In the face of a $700 million budget shortfall, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser proposed cutting the $87 million program to replenish the city’s diminished reserve fund. The final budget passed by the council in June keeps the $70 million of the funding in place. The budget was unanimously approved by the 13-member council on June 12.
What’s next: Several proposed rule changes are also expected to pass that could save money for the fund, including capping participants at 4,100 and limiting the program to workers with a child development credential or higher, said Adam Barragan-Smith, advocacy manager at Educare DC, which operates two centers in the city. Advocates are pushing to keep the salary increases and health benefits for child care workers in place, but expect to learn more about how the cuts will impact the program by September 3, when a task force is set to present its recommendations.
“We know some things are going to be cut, we just don’t know exactly what. We’re trying to keep it as whole as possible,” said LaDon Love, executive director of SPACEs in Action, a nonprofit organization that supported the fund.
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.
An AI chatbot that walks students through how to solve math problems. An AI instructional coach designed to help English teachers create lesson plans and project ideas. An AI tutor that helps middle and high schoolers become better writers.
These aren’t tools created by education technology companies. They were designed by teachers tasked with using AI to solve a problem their students were experiencing.
Over five weeks this spring, about 300 people – teachers, school and district leaders, higher ed faculty, education consultants and AI researchers – came together to learn how to use AI and develop their own basic AI tools and resources. The professional development opportunity was designed by technology nonprofit Playlab.ai and faculty at the Relay Graduate School of Education.
For many of the educators, the workshop was their first exposure to generative AI models and writing code. Educators say they want opportunities like this one: According to a recent report from nonprofit Educators for Excellence, many teachers say they are hesitant to use AI in the classroom but would feel more comfortable with training about it.
During the workshop, Karen Zutali, an English teacher who works in the Canton City School District in Ohio, created a chatbot to help English teachers design lesson plans and projects that integrate other subjects into lessons.
Using the Playlab platform builder, Zutali started by creating a “background” for her AI chatbot – telling the bot that it was an expert in project and problem-based learning skilled at helping English and language arts teachers create lessons and unit plans. Then she wrote step-by-step directions for the chatbot to follow in conversations with users: For example, if a teacher expressed interest in more detailed lesson plans, the AI would ask which subject the plans should cover.
Most of the apps were designed to help students in specific subjects like math or English, or to provide instant feedback on projects and assignments. Others were meant to lessen teacher workload by helping with lesson planning or project ideas; several were designed to assist English language learners.
Nkomo Morris, a special education teacher at The James Baldwin School, a public school in New York City, said education technology companies often pitch products to schools without a real understanding of what teachers and students need.
“We know our students, we know the capability of the building and the tech we have, and so we can make stuff that is very tailored to the needs that we have,” said Morris, who created an AI chatbot that helps social studies teachers create activities and games to supplement their lessons. With so many AI tools out there, she said it can be difficult to find one that meets exactly what you need, but “it’s so easy to just create your own” with coaching and platforms such as Playlab.ai.
Playlab.ai co-founder Yusuf Ahmad said school districts should provide professional development opportunities for teachers on AI, teaching them to ask tough questions about the technology in their classrooms. The most important question, he said, is: “How does this advance their work and student learning?”
“I think one of the mindset shifts that’s really cool is, actually, you can also create,” he added. “You can bend this technology, you can adapt it to meet your needs.”
This story about AI for teachers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
Related articles
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.
Rates of chronic absenteeism are at record-high levels. More than 1 in 4 students missed 10 percent or more of the 2021-22 school year. That means millions of students missed out on regular instruction, not to mention the social and emotional benefits of interacting with peers and trusted adults.
Moreover, two-thirds of the nation’s students attended a school where chronic absence rates reached at least 20 percent. Such levels disrupt entire school communities, including the students who are regularly attending.
The scope and scale of this absenteeism crisis necessitate the implementation of the next generation of student support.
Fortunately, a recent study suggests a promising path for getting students back in school and back on track to graduation. A group of nearly 50 middle and high schools saw reductions in chronic absenteeism and course failure rates after one year of harnessing the twin powers of data and relationships.
From the 2021-22 to 2022-23 school years, the schools’ chronic absenteeism rates dropped by 5.4 percentage points, and the share of students failing one or more courses went from 25.5 percent to 20.5 percent. In the crucial ninth grade, course failure rates declined by 9.2 percentage points.
These encouraging results come from the first cohort of rural and urban schools and communities partnering with the GRAD Partnership, a collective of nine organizations, to grow the use of “student success systems” into a common practice.
Student success systems take an evidence-based approach to organizing school communities to better support the academic progress and well-being of all students.
They were developed with input from hundreds of educators and build on the successes of earlier student support efforts — like early warning systems and on-track initiatives — to meet students’ post-pandemic needs.
Related: Widen your perspective. Our free biweekly newsletter consults critical voices on innovation in education.
Importantly, student success systems offer schools a way to identify school, grade-level and classroom factors that impact attendance; they then deliver timely supports to meet individual students’ needs. They do this, in part, by explicitly valuing supportive relationships and responding to the insights that students and the adults who know them bring to the table.
Valuable relationships include not only those between students and teachers, and schools and families, but also those among peer groups and within the entire school community. Schools cannot address the attendance crisis without rebuilding and fostering these relationships.
When students feel a sense of connection to school they are more likely to show up.
For some students, this connection comes through extracurricular activities like athletics, robotics or band. For others, it may be a different connection to school.
Schools haven’t always focused on connections in a concrete way, partly because relationships can feel fuzzy and hard to track. We’re much better at tracking things like grades and attendance.
Still, schools in the GRAD Partnership cohort show that it can be done.
These schools established “student success teams” of teachers, counselors and others. The teams meet regularly to look at up-to-date student data and identify and address the root causes of absenteeism with insight and input from families and communities, as well as the students themselves.
The teams often use low-tech relationship-mapping tools to help identify students who are disconnected from activities or mentors. One school’s student success team used these tools to ensure that all students were connected to at least one activity — and even created new clubs for students with unique interests. Their method was one that any school could replicate —collaborating on a Google spreadsheet.
Another school identified students who would benefit from a new student mentoring program focused on building trusting relationships.
Some schools have used surveys of student well-being to gain insight on how students feel about school, themselves and life in general — and have then used the information to develop supports.
And in an example of building supportive community relationships, one of the GRAD Partnership schools worked with local community organizations to host a resource night event at which families were connected on the spot to local providers who could help them overcome obstacles to regular attendance — such as medical and food needs, transportation and housing issues and unemployment.
Turning the tide against our current absenteeism crisis does not have a one-and-done solution — it will involve ongoing collaborative efforts guided by data and grounded in relationships that take time to build.
Without these efforts, the consequences will be severe both for individual students and our country as a whole.
Robert Balfanz is a research professor at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University School of Education, where he is the director of the Everyone Graduates Center.
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.
Discover the power of paradigm shifts in driving individual and societal transformation, from overcoming cognitive dissonance to fueling scientific revolutions.
When’s the last time you changed your mind about something?
Many people are stuck in their beliefs and worldview, especially once we reach a certain age. Our map of reality is shaped most by early life experiences, including lessons we’ve learned from parents, teachers, and friends.
A worldview can be hard to break out of on a purely psychological level.
Once we are set in a view, we seek new information that continues to confirm these beliefs by only looking at sources that already agree with us. When new information contradicts these beliefs, we can easily ignore it or distort it to keep our map of reality intact.
Accepting that we are wrong about something can be hurtful to our ego and pride, and in many ways our brains are designed to protect ourselves from this discomfort by simply ignoring contradictory information unless it has a real world effect on our lives. As Philip K. Dick once said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
The average person isn’t primarily driven by a search for truth, they just need a map of reality that is good enough to navigate their lives effectively and not get themselves into too much trouble, which includes social pressures to conform to certain beliefs or stay silent about others.
People can go through radical changes in beliefs though. Young adults and teenagers may go through “phases” as they come-of-age, where they question what they’ve been taught, rebel against orthodoxy, and search for their own meaning or purpose in life. These transformative years can lead to paradigm shifts that last a lifetime, such as adherence to new political, religious, or philosophical ideologies. Many may still return to their old beliefs later in life, but with a fresh new perspective.
Learning about a new worldview, ideology, or philosophy doesn’t mean you need to adopt it – and it doesn’t necessarily lead to a paradigm shift. Often times learning about radically different belief systems can give us a firmer understanding of our current beliefs. There’s wisdom in learning about worldviews you find wrong, mistaken, or incorrect; at the very least, it will give you a better understanding of where other people are coming from.
Paradigm shifts aren’t just new or updated knowledge, they represent a complete change in your perspective that makes you see and interpret old knowledge in a different way.
This shift in perspective can be jolting and uncomfortable at first. We depend on worldviews to make sense of reality, so deep changes in perspective can often make reality feel more confusing or unstable at first.
We often need to re-evaluate old knowledge and experiences through a new lens, and re-integrate them into a new and better map of reality. This is a mental shift that can sometimes take months or years before it is fully developed.
My Paradigm Shifts
My mind has changed a lot over the past decade, which hopefully is a sign that I’m learning and growing. When I first started this website over 15 years ago, my worldview was very different than what it is today.
A few ways my mindset has changed:
Less Individualistic – During my college years, I explored a lot of libertarian philosophy that emphasized the individual over the collective. This is a common starting point in many “self help” circles too, which have an ethos of “take responsibility” and “pull yourself up by your boot straps.” While I still believe strongly in individual responsibility and initiative, I’ve grown to recognize the “no man is an island” mantra and focus more on the importance of social support, community-mindedness, and asking for help. This understanding has led to changes in my political and economic views too.
Less Materialistic and Money-Focused – It’s a bit embarrassing looking back on it, but I used to want to be rich and famous. I think a lot of it is just part of America’s narcissistic culture, where everyone strives to become some type of celebrity. As I get older, I’ve discovered new core values that have helped me focus on the more important things in life. I’ve also learned that a lot of my drive for money was really a drive for independence, and those aren’t the same thing. A person can make a lot of money and be trapped in their career to sustain their luxurious lifestyle, but a person of more modest fortune, who can be happy with less, often has more independence because they can then focus on other things in life. That was a counter-intuitive idea for me that took awhile to process.
Focus on Social and Cultural Forces – When I was younger, and likely a product of my libertarian days, I used to focus more on the importance of economics rather than culture. Generally, I saw things like music, art, and film as just a peripheral aspect of society, but now I’m beginning to understand their central importance. Every culture reflects and propagates a certain set of values, and a culture that promotes harmful and destructive values will lead to a harmful and destructive society. When I look at today’s world, I see a lot of cultural forces going in the wrong direction. I’m not pro-censorship in anyway, but I find many aspects of our culture need to be analyzed, criticized, and abandoned if they are hurting the happiness and health of a people.
This is how my mindset has shifted over the years – and my mind will likely keep changing as long as I stay open to new information, new knowledge, and new experiences. At this point, most of my learning has happened outside of school and that’s a path I will continue on for the rest of my life.
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
One of the most popular discussions on the topic of paradigm shifts is Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Kuhn describes that scientific progress isn’t just an accumulation of facts, which he calls “normal science,” but also periods of “revolutionary science,” where anomalies are discovered that force scientists to look at a field in a completely new way.
Common examples of paradigm shifts in science include:
The Copernican Revolution in the 16th century, where there was a change from geocentrism (“earth is the center of the universe”) to heliocentrism (“sun is the center of the solar system”)
Newtonian Physics in the 17th century, where classical mechanics discovered by Isaac Newton replaced previous models of Aristotelian physics.
Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection in the 19th century, which changed how humans viewed themselves in relation to animals and nature.
Often there is initial resistance to accept new paradigms, which can go through heated periods of controversy and criticism among contemporary scientists and laymen.
However, once these new paradigms were adopted, they allowed for research and discoveries into new phenomenon which ultimately expanded the boundaries of science and learning.
New paradigms completely change how a scientific field is looked at. Thomas Kuhn used the example of the duck-rabbit optical illusion to demonstrate how new paradigms can change how we see old information:
A duck or rabbit? It depends on your perspective.
New paradigms can take awhile to be fully adopted. Old facts need to be looked at through a new lens. New books, research, studies, lectures, and textbooks need to be re-written from this new perspective, leading to a type of cognitive restructuring of society. The philosopher Immanuel Kant referred to the advancements of Greek mathematics and Newtonian physics as “revolutions in thinking,” and they take time to process.
Generally, new scientific paradigms are better than old ones because they have more explanatory power over understanding natural phenomenon and predicting future outcomes.
The best measure of scientific truth is its predictive power: if a new paradigm fails to better explain or predict a natural occurrence over a previous paradigm, then there’s no real point in replacing the old model (from a scientific perspective).
Paradigm Shifts: An Antidote to Cognitive Dissonance
Paradigm shifts are spurred on when new facts don’t fit into old worldviews. This leads to feelings of cognitive dissonance which is when someone is forced to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time.
Often the only way to reconcile this disconnect between facts vs. experience is to find a completely new paradigm that accounts for all old and new knowledge. This may require recognizing wrong or mistaken beliefs from your past, or cultivating a worldview with more complexity and nuance.
Cognitive dissonance is a painful experience that most people choose to ignore or avoid. Many people double-down on wrong beliefs when they are passionately invested in them, which leads to excessive confirmation bias and conspiracy theories when beliefs continue to be held unchecked.
At the same time, cognitive dissonance can be a catalyst for change – it’s a signal that we need to adjust our understanding of reality. This can become a real avenue for transformative thinking as long as you are honest with yourself, seek out diverse sources of information, and open-minded enough to see things in a new light.
Conclusion
Paradigm shifts are a part of learning and growing on both an individual and societal level. They are necessary for both radical self-improvement and radical scientific progress.
While it’s important not to “change your mind just for the sake of changing your mind,” honest searches for knowledge and truth inevitably come up against walls that require a paradigm shift to get over and move onto the next stage.
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The Prince William Education Association, the union representing over 11,000 Prince William County public school teachers, finalized their negotiations for a historic collective bargaining agreement Thursday with the county school district.
The Prince William Education Association, the union representing over 11,000 Prince William County public school teachers, finalized their negotiations for a historic collective bargaining agreement Thursday with the county school district.
The finalized negotiations include more flexibility for staff leave, more support for staff transitioning to different grade levels and more compensation for staff acting as club leaders.
“This is beneficial to all our students, enhances employee morale, and facilitates the retention of valued employees in our schools,” union president Maggie Hansford said in a statement.
The union announced Tuesday that the deal includes 12 weeks of paid leave for the “birthing parent” in a new short-term disability leave program, the organization said in a statement. The “non-birthing parent” can also receive six weeks paid leave that can be taken whenever they choose.
The union called it a “historic” employee leave policy that will give new parents up to six weeks of paid parental leave.
“It expands to parents who are choosing to adopt, you get that six weeks paid as well,” Hansford told WTOP.
The program will also guarantee that educators’ jobs will be secure during their parental leave so they can easily return back to their school positions.
“These benefits will forever change the quality of life for educations and support professionals who wish to expand their families without being financially burdened and professionally impacted,” the union said in a statement.
Hansford said that the new, first-of-its-kind deal will allow teachers and staff to devote more “time and energy to their students and families.”
“There are many school divisions within Virginia that previously have not offered a parental leave package,” she said. “Our younger colleagues could not be more grateful.”
The parental leave program goes into effect on July 1.
The only terms missing from the partial agreement dealt with a wage proposal. InsideNova reported that an increase in wages was one of the biggest sticking points during last year’s negotiations.
The school district was offering a 6% average salary increase throughout the collective bargaining process, which was included in the district’s passed 2025 budget. The union’s bargaining team initially proposed a 17% wage increase, with multiple counter proposals afterward.
The newly finalized negotiations do not include an overall wage increase.
SPOKANE, Wash. — Before giving birth to her daughter, Kaleeya Baldwin, 19, had given up on education.
She’d dropped out of school as a seventh grader, after behavior problems had banished her to alternative schools. Growing up in foster homes and later landing in juvenile court had convinced her to disappear from every system that claimed responsibility for her.
“I was just really angry with everything,” said Kaleeya.
But in early 2020, during what would have been her freshman year in high school, Kaleeya discovered she was pregnant. At her first ultrasound appointment, a nurse handed her a stack of pamphlets. One, advertising a new school for pregnant and parenting teens, caught her attention.
“Something switched when Akylah got here,” Kaleeya said, referring to her daughter. “I was a whole different person. Now it’s high school that matters. It’s a legacy — and it’s hope for her.”
Kaleeya Baldwin, 19, holds her daughter,3-and-a-half-year-old Aklyah.
Four years ago, and two months pregnant, Kaleeya enrolled as one of the first students at Lumen High School. The Spokane charter school — its name, which means a unit of light, was selected by young parents who wished someone had shone a light on education for them — today enrolls about five dozen expectant and parenting teens, including fathers. Inside a three-story office building in the city’s downtown business core, Lumen provides full-day child care, baby supplies, mental health counseling and other support as students work toward graduation based on customized education plans.
When the Spokane school district authorized the charter school, it acknowledged that these students had been underserved in traditional high schools and that alternatives were needed. Nationwide, only about half of teen mothers receive a high school degree by the age of 22. Researchers say common school policies like strict attendance rules and dress codes often contribute to young parents deciding to drop out. In April, the U.S. Department of Education issued new regulations to strengthen protections for pregnant and parenting students, though it’s unclear whether the revisions, which also include protections for LGBTQ+ youth, will survive legal challenges.
Lumen High School enrolls about five dozen pregnant and parenting teens, including fathers, at its downtown Spokane campus. Executive assistant Lindsay Ainley works the front desk. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
Solutions for these young parents have become even more urgent after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning the constitutional right to an abortion. Lumen is located about 20 miles from the Idaho border, which has one of the country’s strictest abortion bans. Recently, representatives from a network of charter schools in the state toured Lumen to evaluate whether they might bring a similar program to the Boise area. Researchers have also visited the school to study how educators elsewhere might replicate its supportive services, not only for pregnant students, but those facing crises like substance use.
“There are some bright spots. Lumen is one,” said Jeannette Pai-Espinosa, president of the Justice + Joy National Collaborative, which advocates for young women, including teen mothers, referring to support in K-12 schools for pregnant and parenting teens. “By and large it’s just not really a priority on the list of many, many things schools are challenged with and facing now.”
Nationally, teenage birth rates have fallen for the past three decades, reaching an all-time low in 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That same year, the decline in teen births skidded to a halt in Texas, one year after the state’s Republican lawmakers had enacted a six-week abortion ban. Experts fear Texas’ change in direction could foreshadow a national uptick in teen pregnancy now that adolescents face more hurdles to abortion access in red states.
Decades of research have revealed the long-term effects of adolescent pregnancy and childbearing: The CDC reports children of teen mothers tend to have lower performance in school and higher chances of dropping out of high school. They’re more likely to have health problems and give birth as teenagers themselves.
Shauna Edwards witnessed such outcomes as part of her work with pregnant and parenting teens for a religious nonprofit and in high schools along the Idaho-Washington border. She also learned the limits of trying to shoehorn services for those students into a school’s existing budget. At one campus, where Edwards helped as a counselor, she said the principal assigned just one teacher for all subjects and two classroom aides to handle child care for the babies of 60 students.
Principal Melissa Pettey, center right, meets with Lumen High School support staff to discuss current student needs. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
Frustrated, she tried to convince the superintendent of another school district to offer a similar teen parent program, but with more funding. He couldn’t justify the costs, Edwards said. Instead, he suggested she open her own school.
“I could serve all of Spokane, ideally, and wouldn’t have the risk of getting shut down by a school district trying to balance its budget,” said Edwards, executive director for Lumen.
Every morning, students from across Spokane County — at 1,800 square miles, it’s a bit larger than Rhode Island — trek to the Lumen campus downtown. Many take public transit, which is free for youth under 18, and end their rides at a regional bus hub across the street from the school. Once their children reach six months, Lumen students can drop them off at an on-site child care and preschool center, operated by a nonprofit partner, before heading upstairs to start their day. Before then, parents can bring their babies to class.
The baby boutique at Lumen High School includes shelves stacked with baby formula, diapers, milk bottles, nasal sprays and other donated supplies.
Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
Lumen High School stocks its on-site baby boutique with clothing and personal hygiene products for students and their children. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
Funding for small schools in Washington state helps Lumen afford a full teaching staff — one adult each for English, history, math, science and special education. The charter also has a full-time principal, social worker and counselor. Other adults manage student internships or donations to the school’s food bank and “baby boutique,” where students can “shop” for a stroller, formula, diapers and clothes — all free of charge.
It’s common to see an infant cradled in a teacher’s arm, allowing students to focus on their classwork. On a recent afternoon, two couples traded cradling duties with their newborns during a parenting class on lactation.
“Delivering is something that happens to you. Not so with nursing. You have to do it,” said Megan Macy, a guest teacher, who introduced herself as “the official milk lady.”
Megan Macy, a guest teacher and lactation expert, leads a parenting class that students at Lumen High School attend every afternoon. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
Kaleeya shared a bit about her daughter Akylah’s delivery: “I was so depleted. I was her chew toy, her crying shoulder, her feeding bag. Once we got home, she wouldn’t latch at all.”
Her friend Keelah, 17, rocked her newborn in a car seat. (The Hechinger Report is identifying the parents who are minors by first name only to protect their privacy.) “It’s hard, and it’s scary,” she said of the first week home with the baby. “She lost a pound between the hospital and pediatrician.”
Lumen contracts with the Shades of Motherhood Network, a Spokane-based nonprofit founded to support Black mothers, to run the parenting classes. The school reserves space for health officials to meet with mothers and babies for routine checkups and government food programs. And founding principal Melissa Pettey has pushed — and paid for — teachers to make home visits with each student.
For each student, Lumen staff develops an individual graduation plan based on earned and missing credits from previous high schools. The school uses an instructional approach, called mastery-based learning, that allows students to earn credits based on competency in academic skills, often applied in projects. The parenting class, for example, counts as a credit for career and technical education, depending on how the contracted teachers evaluate each student.
Parenting classes at Lumen High School include lessons on lactation. The classes count as a career and technical education credit. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
The learn-as-you-go approach also allows Lumen to work around the instability in the lives of their students, who are often coping with children’s illnesses, day care challenges, housing insecurity and other issues.
But the chaos in a young parent’s life can look like inconsistent attendance or even truancy on state accountability reports. Just a tenth of Lumen students attend school regularly, which the state defines as missing no more than two days of class each month.
Next year, the Spokane school district will review Lumen’s operations and performance to decide whether to renew the school’s charter. State data shows less than a fifth of Lumen’s students graduate on time, while a third dropped out. The state doesn’t publicly report testing data from Lumen, due to its size. But Edwards and Pettey said proficiency on state exams isn’t their main goal.
“One student attended 16 elementary schools. Six high schools before junior year,” Pettey said. “Think of the learning missed. How do we get that student to an 11th grade level?”
Payton, a senior, researches historical conflict around gold for her semester-long project with Trevor Bradley, history teacher at Lumen High School. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
Added Edwards: “If you can grow them to read baby books to their kids, that’s a success.”
Lumen’s authorizer, Spokane Public Schools, will modify how it evaluates the charter’s performance to take its nontraditional students into account, according to Kristin Whiteaker, who oversees charter schools for the district.
She noted that about a third of Lumen’s incoming high schoolers test at an elementary level; another third test at middle school levels. But during the 2022-23 school year, 52 percent of students posted growth in math while at Lumen, and nearly two-thirds performed better on English language arts exams, according to the school. All of the students who make it to graduation have been accepted into college; 95 percent actually enrolled or started working six months after graduation.
“They’re serving such a unique population,” Whiteaker said. “If you can provide a pathway for students to the next stage of their lives, that’s accomplishing their goals.”
Lumen High School partners with GLOW Children to provide on-site child care for students on the first floor of the charter school’s three-story campus. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
Lumen, she added, removes many of the barriers that pregnant and parenting teens face at Spokane’s traditional high schools. Some struggle to complete make-up work after missing weeks or months of classes for parental leave. Most have no access to child care, and regular schools don’t allow babies in the classroom.
Ideally, some experts say, expecting and parenting teens could remain in their original schools and receive these supports. That’s rarely the case, though, and the social stigma alone can keep young parents from finishing their education.
At the national level, a 2010 law that provided funding to help these students expired in 2019. Jessica Harding and Susan Zief, with the research firm Mathematica, studied the effectiveness of those federally-funded programs and found that successful ones work hard to provide flexibility, for excused absences or adding maternity clothes to dress codes. Others get creative, helping students navigate public transportation and modify their work schedules to meet with students after hours.
“Sometimes,” Harding said, “the solutions are not complicated.”
In 2022, when the Supreme Court upended abortion care nationwide, Edwards expected students without reproductive choice in Idaho to attempt to enroll in Lumen. A handful have inquired with the school, said Edwards, but to enroll they would have to move across the state border to Washington where housing costs are significantly higher.
In fact, Lumen recently lost one student whose father found a cheaper home in Idaho. Average rents across Spokane County have risen more than 50 percent over the past five years. And as of March, about half of Lumen students qualified as homeless. One young mother slept outside during winter break while her newborn stayed with a friend. Three students, asked what they would change about Lumen, cited affordable housing or temporary shelter that could help them.
Across Washington, pregnant and parenting teens account for 12 percent of all unaccompanied youth in the homeless system. But the state has a severe shortage of shelter beds available for youth under 18, with even fewer supportive housing options that allow young families to stay together, according to a February 2024 state report. Edwards, meanwhile, has talked with developers to see if they could reserve affordable units for students or loosen rules that prevent minors from signing a lease.
Rene, a senior at Lumen High School, holds his newborn son, RJ, during class. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
“We missed a whole month of class. It was a long month,” said Mena, a 17-year-old junior who convinced her boyfriend, Rene, to enroll before their son’s delivery, in January.
Rene Jr., or RJ, had already lived with the couple in several homes during his first few months. A restraining order with one set of RJ’s grandparents and guardianship battle with the other pushed Mena and Rene to couch-surf with friends.
“School was the only way we could see each other,” Rene said. “I’m surprised, honestly, they can get me to graduation,” he added, while burping RJ. “He’s going to have a future.”
Later, as Mena suctioned RJ’s stuffy nose in another classroom, Rene struggled to stay awake in math. He had forgotten what he’d learned in some earlier lessons on graphing linear equations, and retreated into social media on his phone. Another student badgered him to “put in some effort,” but Rene resisted.
His teacher, Trevor Bradley, intervened. “What’s special about today? Why don’t you want to try?” he said. “You told me you’re tired because the baby’s keeping you up at night.”
After drawing another set of equations on the whiteboard, Bradley asked Rene and the other student for help with finding the values of x and y. Rene barely whispered his answer.
“That’s it! You do remember,” Bradley said, as Rene yawned.
From the start, Lumen’s founders planned to include fathers in the school. Pai-Espinosa, with the National Collaborative, said it’s unusual for K-12 systems to focus on fathers, since mothers often have custodial rights. And at Lumen, the inclusion of “baby daddies” — as students and staff refer to them — sometimes adds teen drama to the mix of emotions and hormones already present at the school.
Lumen High School’s founder and executive director Shauna Edwards, right, meets with social worker Tracie Fowler. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
Lumen’s lack of diversity among adults there has also bothered some students, including Kaleeya. Only 40 percent of her peers identify as white, and all of the school’s teachers and administrators are white. Edwards said it has been difficult to recruit a diverse staff. As a temporary solution the school contracted with the Shades of Motherhood Network for parenting classes.
“It’s hard being in a white space with no Black teachers,” Kaleeya said.
Still, she said she liked the school’s emphasis on engaging students in semester-long projects in different subjects and on real-world problems. Last year, confronted with drug-use problems near the downtown campus, students researched and presented options for the city to consider on safe needle disposal in public places. Each student’s individual graduation plan also includes an internship.
Payton, 17, has wanted to be a school counselor since before giving birth to her daughter in late 2022. Her internship at nearby Sacajawea Middle School convinced her to stay on that career path. Another mother, Alana, started an internship this spring with a local credit union and plans to use the marketing experience to help her advocate for children with disabilities in the future.
Kaleeya Baldwin and her daughter, Akylah, walk home after school. Credit: Camilla Forte/The Hechinger Report
Kaleeya recently turned her internship, with a downtown restaurant, into a part-time job. She planned to save for college, but no longer needs to. Gonzaga University notified her in March of a full-ride scholarship to study there this fall.
“Lumen didn’t change who I was,” Kaleeya said. “I did this for my daughter. I didn’t want to be that low-income family. So I got my ass up, got into this school and I got an education.”
This story about teen parents was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
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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.
On Tuesday evening, Education Minnesota Lakeville announced teachers voted 88% in favor of the contract. Earlier this month, teachers and the school district reached a tentative two-year agreement, avoiding a strike.
The contract includes a 2.25% raise for the first year and a 4.75% raise in the second year. The starting salary will also be increased to attract new teachers.
Also included in the contract is a retention bonus starting in the sixth year of employment.
“I’m proud of the work that we did as a collective, standing strong and standing together for the future of our educators, students and schools,” said Carrie Popp, president of Education Minnesota Lakeville. “Our community values teachers and sees the essential role we play in creating excellent public schools for their children.”
According to Lakeville Area Schools, a tentative agreement was reached in February but was voted down by union membership. A spokesperson for the district said the key issues revolved around wage increases and assignment language.
The union said teachers rejected the district’s push for “right of assignment” contract change, saying it would have allowed the district to “unilaterally transfer teachers between buildings, subject areas and grade levels.” There was no change in the tentative agreement on this issue.
The school board will need to ratify the contract before it goes into effect.
Cole Premo is the digital manager at WCCO.com. For more than a decade, he’s been covering breaking news and weather, daily topics, stories from the Native community and more in Minnesota.
In one widely shared video, a high school English instructor who goes by @stillateacher on TikTok says that her formerly Drake-devoted students are convinced that Lamar has won the dramatic, weekslong lyrical feud.
“They were ready to throw down for Kendrick,” the teacher says in the clip. “I have students who hate reading who are doing the most meticulous close reading of these lyrics that I have ever seen. They’re finding subtle quadruple-entendres [in Lamar’s work] and explaining them eloquently to their peers.”
(To be fair, Lamar has a leg up; in 2018, the Compton, California, rapper ― known for his dynamic wordplay and thematically rich albums ― became the first artist from a genre other than jazz or classical to earn a Pulitzer Prize for music.)
In southern Georgia, Kaitlyn Lee’s ninth grade class in English language arts, or ELA, is also highly plugged into the Drake-Lamar rap beef.
“We have a fairly informal classroom culture, and I encourage discussion about current topics so that we can see how ELA applies to them,” Lee told HuffPost. “They’ve had some strong opinions on how both artists have approached each other, as well as the allegations about Drake’s personal life.”
A quick study, Lee has tried to squeeze some literary lessons out of her student’s enthusiasm. For example, the class recently dissected one particular lyric from Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us.”
“Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor” is a triple-entendre, Lee explained to her class, playing on musical theory and Drake’s biracial background ― the key of A minor has no sharps or flats, meaning it’s comprised of only white piano keys and no black ones ― while also referencing the allegations that Drake had inappropriate relationships with underage girls, which he denied on a track of his own.
Prince Williams/Rick Kern/Getty Images
Kim Randolph, a seventh grade honors English teacher in Denton, Texas, said that her class is very into the beef between Drake and Lamar. “Middle schoolers love drama, so this is right up their alley,” she joked.
“This is bringing poetry to life in a way that my students can relate and connect to,” Lee said.
Of course, the English teacher has one caveat and a reminder for her students when they discuss the feud: Violence and confrontation are never the best options, and “some of this rap battle is probably for clout and publicity.”
Still, she said, a good teaching moment is a good teaching moment.
Other English instructors have seized on their Swiftie students’ excitement over “The Tortured Poets Department,” an album that leans into its literariness with references to Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and songwriter-poet Patti Smith.
Kim Randolph, a seventh grade honors English teacher in Denton, Texas, is a Swiftie through and through, as are many of her students. On release day for “The Tortured Poets Department,” she let her class listen to the album as they worked independently.
“The boys immediately latched on to ‘Fortnight,’ but only because they were thinking of Fortnite the game,” Randolph said. “But that led us into a fun conversation about the word ‘fortnight’ and where they might encounter it in the real world.”
They’ve also used the album to explore examples of figurative language: the metaphors in “Fortnight” (“All my mornings are Mondays stuck in an endless February”), similes in the album’s title track (“I scratch your head, you fall asleep, like a tattooed golden retriever”), and imagery in “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” (“I’m queen of sandcastles he destroys”).
Randolph’s class is into the beef between Lamar and Drake, too. “Middle schoolers love drama, so this is right up their alley,” she joked.
Katherine Mummert teaches ELA for grades nine through 12 at an alternative high school in Marshalltown, Iowa. Two years ago, she started teaching a seminar course for 12th grade students titled “Taylor Swift and 19th Century Literature: A Comparison of Themes.” In the class, they treat Swift’s discography as poetry and find parallels in her lyrics with Victorian-era poets like Robert Browning.
“We watch her live performances and music videos and read through the lyrics line by line,” Mummert told HuffPost. “Once we have a grasp on what Swift’s intended message is, we look at a piece of literature from the 19th century that discusses the same thematic topics.”
Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
Swift — pictured here delivering a 2022 commencement address at New York University — writes lyrics that are great teaching tools for lessons on figurative language, educators say.
A real crowd favorite is the song “No Body, No Crime” and the accompanying text “Porphyria’s Lover” by Browning.
Mummert thinks teens have been deep-diving into the lyrics of their favorite pop songs since the dawn of the genre; it’s only now that teachers and professors are beginning to “give credibility” to the pastime.
Today, there are even college classes devoted to the study of Swift’s lyrics. One of Harvard’s latest English courses, Taylor Swift and Her World, is taught by professor Stephanie Burt, a literary critic, poet and massive Swiftie.
Burt told HuffPost that she’s excited to see music fans getting so obsessive and nerdy about some of the more absorptive pop works of late: deciphering Lamar’s Drake takedowns line by line on the website Genius, for instance, or looking for Easter eggs and allusions to past work in Swift’s growing catalog. Podcasts like “Dissect” and “Song Exploder” pick apart lyrics and artists’ oeuvres just like an advanced college English class would.
“I recommend close-reading songs; otherwise we’re not doing the songs justice,” Burt told HuffPost. “‘Close reading’ is really just a name for sustained attention to a work of art that uses words.”
Lamar and Swift — pictured here at the 2016 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles — have been discussed heavily in middle school and high school English classes throughout the country.
Brian Mooney is an assistant professor of education at Fairleigh Dickinson University, but he used to teach English at High Tech High School in North Bergen, New Jersey.
Back in 2015, when Lamar released “To Pimp a Butterfly,” Mooney’s freshman English class explored the album as a text in conversation with Toni Morrison’s novel “The Bluest Eye.”
Mooney and his class considered the “Black is beautiful” cultural movement of the 1970s while making contemporary connections to Lamar’s album in a way that he says deepened their study of both.
“My students were surprised at the thematic similarities, including ideas about mental health, white beauty standards, racism and internalized oppression,” Mooney told HuffPost.
“In some ways, my students weren’t surprised that we studied a hip-hop album because it was really no different than studying Shakespeare,” he said. “It was just as complex, provocative and intellectually rigorous, but in a way that affirmed their cultures, identities and lived experiences.”
Mooney put his students’ essays, as well as their Lamar- and Morrison-inspired art, on a blog that made its way to the rapper’s camp, which led Lamar to drop by Mooney’s classroom. NPR made a short doc about his visit that’s well worth a watch.
“When Kendrick visited our classroom, he really came to learn from my students,” the professor said. “He listened closely to their writing, responded thoughtfully to their ideas and became part of our learning community.”
Not surprisingly, the kids were bowled over by Lamar’s appearance and how much he took away from them.
“I remember one student reflecting on the visit who said that if a random person walked into my classroom that day, they wouldn’t have been able to tell who was the teacher, who were the students and who was the Grammy award-winning rapper,” Mooney said. “It broke down those walls, which is what great teaching often does.”
Ultimately, Mooney believes that educators have a responsibility to keep up with youth culture because it’s where their students are deeply immersed. He’s happy to see so many teachers and professors finding fresh and interesting ways to center pop music, especially when it comes to hip-hop — arguably the largest youth culture movement of the past 50 years.
“We have to remember that we don’t just teach content. We teach human beings within social, cultural and political contexts,” Mooney said. “I believe that in order for students to learn, they need to know their teachers care about them, their lives, their interests and their passions.”
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LEXINGTON, Ky. —Why do rural students have to “beat the odds” in order to get to college?
That’s the question Jim Shelton asked his fellow panelists during last week’s sixth annual Rural Summit, a gathering focused on addressing the needs of rural students. Shelton is president of the philanthropic group Blue Meridian Partners and deputy secretary of the Department of Education during the Obama administration.
While rural students graduate from high school at higher rates than their urban and suburban peers, only about 55 percent go directly to college. Those who do drop out at high rates due to financial barriers, transportation, internet connectivity and family responsibilities, noted speakers at the summit.
While acknowledging the differences among and the diversity of rural communities in places like Oklahoma, Kentucky, Hawaii and Pennsylvania, speakers made the case that these communities all have the knowledge, talent and systems to help their students succeed academically in college and beyond — they just need the resources.
Education leaders and advocates say one answer is “place-based partnerships,” collaborations among local organizations working together to improve outcomes for students and families.
“Schools are only part of the solution,” said Russell Booker, CEO of the Spartanburg Academic Movement, a place-based partnership in the South Carolina city. He said it takes community partnerships that include the school system, housing, healthcare, the criminal justice system and local government to improve outcomes for rural students.
The summit was hosted by Appalachian Kentucky-based nonprofit Partners for Rural Impact. Dreama Gentry, the group’s president and CEO, said the goal is to bring together people working in pre-K, K-12 and higher ed to discuss the opportunities students need from “the cradle to career spectrum.”
Too often, Gentry said, educators focus on a single indicator — kindergarten readiness, for example — without considering how that relates to student preparedness and success at each stage of their education. “It’s actually taking that holistic look to make sure we’re supporting them at every step,” she said.
Here are a few of the initiatives highlighted at the three-day summit:
The Community Colleges of Appalachia launched a Rural Educator Academy in fall 2022 to train faculty and staff to better understand and meet the needs of students in rural Appalachia, particularly those from low-income and underrepresented backgrounds.
The six community colleges in the first cohort worked to identify and alleviate a specific issue facing students on their campuses. For example, Tri-County Technical College, in Pendleton, South Carolina, focused on educating faculty and staff about the barriers preventing students in poverty from succeeding in college, while Mountain Empire Community College, in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, developed a mentorship program to create a sense of belonging among first-generation as well as all incoming college students.
The Hawaii-based nonprofit organization Kinai ʻEha launched in 2017 with the goal of disrupting the state’s school-to-prison pipeline, primarily for native Hawaiian and Micronesian youth. It runs a trauma-informed program, rooted in Hawaiian culture and language, that works with high schoolers who’ve dropped out of high school, as well as those who’ve experienced homelessness, poverty, incarceration or drug use. Students live and work on a farm, receive food and clothing, attend classes to complete their GED or HISET, and participate in work-based learning or vocational programs. In 2019, Kinai ʻEha helped to secure a state law requiring the creation of a task force to implement a system for evaluating and supporting kids who are struggling with trauma, behavioral or mental health problems and chronic absenteeism.
Rural alliances in states including Indiana and Texas are providing high schoolers with career and technical education, part of an effort to expand access to post-secondary pathways in rural areas and combat rural shortages of skilled workers. For example, the nonprofit Rural Schools Innovation Zone launched in South Texas in 2019 to bring together five rural districts, five higher ed institutions and workforce groups to create more opportunities for students to access college and careers that are prevalent in their regions. The collaboration has established five career and tech academies at each high school focused on sectors like health and sciences, the military or skilled trade jobs; as of the 2022-23 school year, 54 percent of RSIZ students had received a certification in an industry of their choice. In 2023, the Texas legislature passed a bill to expand the program to other parts of Texas.
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.
When Christina Zimmerman returned to teaching last year after maternity leave, she grappled with postpartum depression that she says could have led to quitting her job.
But her school’s onsite day care made all the difference, as she knew her daughter was just a few classrooms away.
“I can be mom and teacher in the same breath,” said Zimmerman, who teaches fourth grade at Endeavor Elementary in Nampa, Idaho. “I’ve dreamed of teaching since second grade. Truthfully, it’s all I’ve wanted to do, but I also want to be there for my child.”
In states such as Idaho and Texas, where funding for early childhood education is limited, some schools are spearheading initiatives to provide quality, affordable child care. It’s a teacher retention tool as much as it is a way to ensure youngsters are prepared when they enter kindergarten.
Caregiver Aline Assis plays with children outside at Little Mustangs Child Learning Academy, in Richardson, Texas. Credit: Elías Valverde II /The Dallas Morning News
Fixing the Child Care Crisis
This story is part of a series on how the child care crisis affects working parents — with a focus on solutions. It was produced by the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms that includes AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times.
Some districts are transforming donated spaces — a former recycling center or house — into day cares for staff and, in some cases, for first responders in the area as well. Others are incorporating child care on their campuses.
The schools hope parenting teachers don’t have to choose between career and motherhood, as the education workforce remains predominantly female.
Dropping out of the workforce can be an attractive option for educators with young children, which adds to retention challenges already facing schools.
“If we’re going to support our community, … we need the very best teachers in the classroom,” said Tabitha Branum, superintendent of Richardson schools, north of Dallas. Her district runs two day cares, with goals of opening more.
“This is one of the strategies that we have in place to attract and retain the very best of the best,” Branum said.
Richardson school district superintendent Tabitha Branum sings “Baby Shark” with children at Little Mustangs Child Learning Academy, in Richardson, Texas. Credit: Elías Valverde II /The Dallas Morning News
In 2022, district leaders nationwide reported increased staff vacancies; most administrators — 63 percent — cited the pandemic as a cause. Last school year, nearly 1 in 4 teachers said they were likely to quit their job due to stress, disillusionment, low salaries and heavy workloads, according to a RAND survey.
School-sponsored child care can mitigate that stress.
The devastating feeling of dropping off her three-month-old daughter, Gracee, with a caregiver each day still haunts Heather Yarbrough, even 14 years later.
She cried every day for weeks, but didn’t have the option to quit her job as an elementary reading specialist in Nampa.
Yarbrough and her husband, both educators, needed two incomes to get by financially. Over time, she realized having a career was healthy for her and her family.
That brought her to a eureka moment: “Why do we have to choose? There’s got to be a better way,” she said.
Heather Yarbrough, the principal at Endeavor Elementary, in Nampa, Idaho, started an onsite daycare at the school to help retain teachers. Four years in, she says it’s working. Credit: Carly Flandro/Idaho Education News
Now Endeavor’s principal, she spearheaded an on-campus day care. Funded through a combination of grants and parent fees, the program is in its fourth year. It’s become a recruitment and retention tool for the district, which doesn’t pay teachers as much as neighboring districts.
A dozen of the school’s 30 teachers use the day care.
Child care for school employees has trickle-down benefits for students, said Van-Kim Lin, an early childhood development researcher at nonprofit Child Trends.
The kids can build stronger relationships with educators, counselors or other staff members because turnover is minimized and children are on campus at younger ages.
“This is a great strategy by which you can … support both children, families and then also on the flip side, districts and their workforce,” she said.
As Molly Hillier, an instructional coach at Endeavor and mother of a child in the day care, put it: “It benefits students because if you have happier teachers, … they can pour that into the kids.”
Molly Hillier, an instructional coach at Endeavor Elementary, in Nampa, Idaho, greets her son Riggins, 4. Hillier is able to pop in to the onsite daycare and check on him throughout the day. Hillier said the daycare ultimately benefits students because “if you have happier teachers … they can pour that into the kids.” Credit: Carly Flandro/Idaho Education News
The school’s teaching staff is predominantly young and female, and it had become routine for teachers to drop out of the workforce to care for their infants or to move on to less stressful or higher-paying jobs. In Nampa, teachers start out earning about $44,000 and top out at about $69,000, compared with a range of about $47,000 to $86,000 in the nearby Boise School District.
But now, “Nampa School District right now can offer me something nobody else can,” Zimmerman said. “That time with my child is invaluable — it’s worth its weight in gold.”
When Texas school counselor Kelly Mountjoy decided she wanted to start a family, she wondered if she could handle working and being a mother.
Three children later, she and her husband considered expanding their family by one more. However, the costs would add up: She was already paying more than $1,200 a month to send one of her kids to day care. So they hesitated.
“It’s just so impossible to pay child care with that many kiddos,” said Mountjoy, who works at Parkhill Junior High in Richardson.
Ashlie Monroe stops in at Endeavor’s onsite daycare during her lunch hour to see daughter Carlie, 3. Monroe teaches second grade. Credit: Carly Flandro/Idaho Education News
Texas school officials, frustrated with failed legislative attempts to fund teachers raises, recently began unfolding strategies to recruit and retain teachers. Large districts with bigger budgets offered higher pay, while others experimented with four-day school weeks or other benefits to sweeten the job.
“We may not be able to pay every teacher what we should be able to,” said Branum, the Richardson superintendent. “But what if we could create a compensation package that took a little stress off of them?”
A row of cubbies hold backpacks for children at Little Mustangs Child Learning Academy, in Richardson, Texas. Credit: Elías Valverde II /The Dallas Morning News
Richardson has a starting salary of $60,000 — above the state average of about $53,300 — but is also in the highly competitive Dallas-area market. So now RISD offers employees a health clinic for acute care with a $10 copay, no insurance required, and free counseling — plus the help with child care.
The district runs two child learning academies, Little Eagles and Little Mustangs, that serve more than 120 children starting at 6 weeks old until age 3, when they become eligible for the district’s pre-K program.
With more than 134 children on the district’s wait list as of the end of April, Branum said they’re considering at least one more center that could open as soon as next year.
A volunteer at Endeavor Elementary’s onsite daycare plays with an infant, whose mom teaches second grade, in Nampa, Idaho. Credit: Carly Flandro/Idaho Education News
Mountjoy said the perk gives her peace of mind because she knows her children receive high-quality attention.
“I know that my kids are taken care of really well,” Mountjoy said. “They know the kids individually and know their strengths and where they struggle.”
This story was written by Carly Flandro of Idaho Education News and Valeria Olivares of the Dallas Morning News. Idaho Education News data analyst Randy Schrader contributed to the story.
This story is part of a series on how the child care crisis affects working parents — with a focus on solutions. It was produced by the Education Reporting Collaborative, a coalition of eight newsrooms that includes AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina, and The Seattle Times.
Related articles
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.
SALT LAKE CITY, May 1, 2024 (Newswire.com)
– As a token of appreciation for their tireless dedication to shaping young minds, Slapfish Coastal Seafood Kitchen is delighted to announce its special promotion: “Teachers Eat Free in May.”
Throughout the month of May, educators can enjoy a complimentary meal at any Slapfish Coastal Seafood Kitchen location across the nation. This offer extends to teachers from all educational institutions, including schools, colleges, and universities.
Slapfish Coastal Seafood Kitchen recognizes the invaluable contributions of teachers in nurturing and educating future generations. This initiative aims to express gratitude for their unwavering commitment, especially during challenging times.
“We believe in the power of education and the profound impact teachers have on our communities,” said Lacey Martin, Vice President of Marketing at Slapfish Coastal Seafood Kitchen. “By offering free meals to teachers throughout May, we hope to show our appreciation and support for their hard work and dedication.”
To redeem their complimentary meal, teachers simply need to present a valid educator ID or proof of employment at any Slapfish Coastal Seafood Kitchen location during operating hours. Whether they crave a mouthwatering crispy cod sandwich, a flavorful fish taco, or a fresh seafood salad, teachers can indulge in a delicious meal on the house. Slapfish Coastal Seafood Kitchen invites teachers to relax, unwind, and savor the flavors of the sea as a small token of gratitude for their invaluable contributions to education.
For more information about the “Teachers Eat Free in May” promotion and to find the nearest Slapfish Coastal Seafood Kitchen location, visit slapfishrestaurant.com
About Slapfish Slapfish is a food truck turned brick-and-mortar, fast-casual seafood restaurant that consists of 15 locations across the U.S. Slapfish has received many awards for culinary innovation and sustainability efforts across the concept, including MenuMaster’s Trendsetter Award (2016), Sustainable Operator of the Year from The Buyer’s Edge (2022) and Future 50: Emerging Brands by Restaurant Business (2022). Slapfish is headquartered at Mac Haik Enterprises (MHE) in Houston, Texas. To learn more about Slapfish, please visit www.slapfishrestaurant.com.
About Mac Haik Enterprises LTD (MHE) Mac Haik Restaurant Group (MHRG) is a division of Mac Haik Enterprises LTD (MHE), a diversified holding company based in Houston, TX. MHE is a major investor in three rapidly growing fast-casual restaurant brands, Original ChopShop, Slapfish and Due Cucina, and one of the largest franchisees of First Watch Restaurants. MHE also owns Mac Haik Outdoor Media, Mac Haik Hospitality, and Mac Haik Automotive Group which encompasses 23 car dealerships. The 11 affiliated companies of MHE have engaged in the development, ownership and management of commercial real estate and healthcare facilities, asset acquisition and disposition, facilities management, property management, leasing, project management, construction plus janitorial services, as well as hotel ownership. Overall, MHE companies employ over 3,000 employees. To learn more about MHRG, please visit www.machaik-enterprises.com.
ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) -Adjunct faculty and staff at the College of Saint Rose are demanding severance pay when the College shuts down. Some professors tell NEWS10’s Anthony Krolikowski there is currently no help to be given to them after the spring semester and summer classes end.
According to the College’s website, more than half of the faculty at Saint Rose is part-time, or adjunct. Laura Hartmann and Kelly Bird said after graduation, they eventually became adjunct professors. After years of dedication, they say it’s time the College shows support for its employees who sacrifice the most.
A union representing a portion of the 134 part-time employees at Saint Rose is advocating for what they say is “a little more than the cost of a class” for severance pay. That’s why over a week ago, the union sent out an email to the school community.
“It was the first I had heard about it. When I read the email, I got thinking about what a great idea that is,” described Adjunct Faculty Member of the Music Industry Program, Laura Hartmann.
Hartmann and Bird bring real-world experience into their classrooms, but say having part-time jobs comes with drawbacks. “So many people have kept the College running for so long without health insurance, without any other employee benefits, and an equal salary… We’re still here,” stated Senior Teaching Artist, Kelly Bird.
The two faculty members hope Saint Rose will provide the financial support they feel they’ve earned.
“They’re having to give incentives to the upper administrative people that are going to be sticking around as far as I can tell to be on-site real estate agents, if you will,” said Bird. “And they were the stewards of this school and they didn’t steward it well. That’s the part that really burns,” added Hartmann.
As far as the next steps, Bird and Hartmann are pressuring the College to do what they call the right thing in a follow-up letter to the union’s first email. “So far, they have ignored what the Union has requested. They said they will get back to us. We’ve heard nothing. So, we are waiting to see what they’re going to say.”
NEWS10 reached out to the College on where severance pay for the adjunct professors and faculty currently stands and is awaiting a response.
Two years ago, when I visited Westwood High School in Mesa, a suburb of Phoenix, every incoming freshman started the year in a very unusual way.
Back when my mom attended Westwood in the early 80s, students made the typical walk from class to class, learning from one teacher in math and another for English or history or science. (My mom was one of two girls in Westwood’s woodworking class.) Flash forward a few decades, and in 2022, I observed four teachers and 135 freshmen – all in one classroom.
The model, known as team teaching, isn’t new. It dates back to the 1960s. But Arizona State University resurrected the approach, in which teachers share large groups of students, as a way to rebrand the teaching profession and make it more appealing to prospective educators.
Now, team teaching has expanded nationally, and particularly in the American West. The number of students assigned to a team of teachers tops 20,000 kids – an estimate from ASU that doubled from fall 2022. Mesa Unified, the school district that runs Westwood and the largest in Arizona, has committed to using the approach in half of its schools. And the national superintendents association last year launched a learning cohort for K-12 leaders interested in the idea.
Brent Maddin oversees the Next Education Workforce Initiative at ASU’s teachers college, which partners with school districts trying to move away from the “one teacher, one classroom” model of education.
“Unambiguously, we have started to put a dent in that,” Maddin said.
The Next Education Workforce Initiative today works with 28 districts in a dozen states, where 241 teams of teachers use the ASU model. It will expand further in the next two years: A mixture of public and philanthropic funding will support team teaching in dozens of new schools in California, Colorado, Michigan and North Dakota.
ASU has also gathered more data and research that suggest its approach has made an impact: In Mesa, teachers working on a team leave their profession at lower rates, receive higher evaluations and are more likely to recommend teaching to a friend.
Early research also indicates students assigned to educator teams made more growth in reading and passed Algebra I at higher rates than their peers.
“Educators working in these models — their feeling of isolation is lower,” Maddin said. “Special educators in particular are way more satisfied. They feel like they’re having a greater impact.”
Last year, the consulting group Education First shared its findings from a national scan of schools using different models to staff classrooms like team teaching. Among other groups, their report highlighted Public Impact, which places teams of teachers with experienced educators as coaches and has reached 800 schools and 5,400 teachers. Education First itself works with districts in California to use a team structure with paid teacher residents and higher pay for expert mentor teachers.
In North Dakota, team teaching has caught the attention of Kirsten Baesler, the state superintendent of public instruction. Her office recently sent a group of lawmakers, educators and other policymakers to Arizona to learn about the model. Later this fall, Fargo Public Schools will open a new middle school where students will learn entirely from one combined team of teachers.
Team teaching has expanded in Mesa, Arizona’s largest school district, and around the country. Here, more than 130 freshmen at Mesa’s Westwood High School learn in one giant classroom overseen by four teachers. Credit: Matt York/ Associated Press
Jennifer Soupir-Fremstad, assistant director of human capital for the Fargo school district, recalled Mesa teachers telling her how much more supported they feel – by administrators and their fellow teammates. “That was a game changer,” she said.
The district’s new middle school will include a competency-based model where students can learn and work through content at their own pace. Five core teachers, whom the district refers to as mentors, will split responsibility for students in all three grades. Enrollment will be capped at 100 students for the first year, with plans to add more teams and serve up to 400 students in the future.
When my mom read my Hechinger Report story about what’s happening at her high school now, she questioned whether teachers could stay on top of 100-plus teenagers who just want to socialize. But she loved the idea of seeing her classmates more.
“I would have loved to be with my friends more,” she said. “We were separated for most of our classes. I think it’s awesome.”
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.
Teachers are in short supply in the U.S., and researchers say there’s declining job satisfaction among those who remain. CBS News reporter Bo Erickson examines what’s behind the problems.
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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.
Imagine interacting with an avatar that dissolves into tears – and being assessed on how intelligently and empathetically you respond to its emotional display.
Or taking a math test that is created for you on the spot, the questions written to be responsive to the strengths and weaknesses you’ve displayed in prior answers. Picture being evaluated on your scientific knowledge and getting instantaneous feedback on your answers, in ways that help you better understand and respond to other questions.
These are just a few of the types of scenarios that could become reality as generative artificial intelligence advances, according to Mario Piacentini, a senior analyst of innovative assessments with the Programme for International Student Assessment, known as PISA.
He and others argue that AI has the potential to shake up the student testing industry, which has evolved little for decades and which critics say too often falls short of evaluating students’ true knowledge. But they also warn that the use of AI in assessments carries risks.
“AI is going to eat assessments for lunch,” said Ulrich Boser, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he co-authored a research series on the future of assessments. He said that standardized testing may one day become a thing of the past, because AI has the potential to personalize testing to individual students.
PISA, the influential international test, expects to integrate AI into the design of its 2029 test. Piacentini said the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which runs PISA, is exploring the possible use of AI in several realms.
It plans to evaluate students on their ability to use AI tools and to recognize AI-generated information.
It’s evaluating whether AI could help write test questions, which could potentially be a major money and time saver for test creators. (Big test makers like Pearson are already doing this, he said.)
It’s considering whether AI could score tests. According to Piacentini, there’s promising evidence that AI can accurately and effectively score even relatively complex student work.
Perhaps most significantly, the organization is exploring how AI could help create tests that are “much more interesting and much more authentic,” as Piacentini puts it.
When it comes to using AI to design tests, there are all sorts of opportunities. Career and tech students could be assessed on their practical skills via AI-driven simulations: For example, automotive students could participate in a simulation testing their ability to fix a car, Piacentini said.
Right now those hands-on tests are incredibly intensive and costly – “it’s almost like shooting a movie,” Piacentini said. But AI could help put such tests within reach for students and schools around the world.
AI-driven tests could also do a better job of assessing students’ problem-solving abilities and other skills, he said. It might prompt students when they’d made a mistake and nudge them toward a better way of approaching a problem. AI-powered tests could evaluate students on their ability to craft an argument and persuade a chatbot. And they could help tailor tests to a student’s specific cultural and educational context.
“One of the biggest problems that PISA has is when we’re testing students in Singapore, in sub-Saharan Africa, it’s a completely different universe. It’s very hard to build a single test that actually works for those two very different populations,” said Piacentini. But AI opens the door to “construct tests that are really made specifically for every single student.”
That said, the technology isn’t there yet, and educators and test designers need to tread carefully, experts warn. During a recent panel Javeria moderated, Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution, said any conversation about AI’s role in assessments must first acknowledge disparities in access to these new tools.
Many schools still use paper products and struggle with spotty broadband and limited digital tools, she said: The digital divide is “very much part of this conversation.” Before schools begin to use AI for assessments, teachers will need professional development on how to use AI effectively and wisely, Turner Lee said.
There’s also the issue of bias embedded in many AI tools. AI is often sold as if it’s “magic,” Amelia Kelly, chief technology officer at SoapBox Labs, a software company that develops AI voice technology, said during the panel. But it’s really “a set of decisions made by human beings, and unfortunately human beings have their own biases and they have their own cultural norms that are inbuilt.”
With AI at the moment, she added, you’ll get “a different answer depending on the color of your skin, or depending on the wealth of your neighbors, or depending on the native language of your parents.”
But the potential benefits for students and learning excite experts such as Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates, where she helps develop online assessments. Huff, who also spoke on the panel, said AI tools could eventually not only improve testing but also “accelerate learning” in areas like early literacy, phonemic awareness and early numeracy skills. Huff said that teachers could integrate AI-driven assessments, especially AI voice tools, into their instruction in ways that are seamless and even “invisible,” allowing educators to continually update their understanding of where students are struggling and how to provide accurate feedback.
PISA’s Piacentini said that while we’re just beginning to see the impact of AI on testing, the potential is great and the risks can be managed.
“I am very optimistic that it is more an opportunity than a risk,” said Piacentini. “There’s always this risk of bias, but I think we can quantify it, we can analyze it, in a better way than we can analyze bias in humans.”
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.
This podcast, Sold a Story, was produced by APM Reports and reprinted with permission.
There’s an idea about how children learn to read that’s held sway in schools for more than a generation – even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this new American Public Media podcast, host Emily Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It’s an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn’t true and are now reckoning with the consequences – children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.
Episode 9: The Aftermath
Schools around the country are changing the way they teach reading. And that is having major consequences for people who sold the flawed theory we investigated in Sold a Story. But Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell are fighting back — and fighting to stay relevant. And so are organizations that promoted their work: The Reading Recovery Council of North America and the publisher, Heinemann.
This podcast, Sold a Story, was produced by APM Reports and reprinted with permission.
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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.
