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In this photo illustration, a pack of Lunchables is displayed on Wednesday in San Anselmo, Calif. Consumer Reports is asking for the Department of Agriculture to eliminate Lunchables food kits from the National School Lunch Program after finding high levels of lead, sodium and cadmium in tested kits. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

Consumer Reports asks USDA to remove Lunchables from schools' lunch menus

April 10, 2024 • The group found high levels of sodium and the presence of heavy metals in meal kits it tested. A Kraft Heinz spokesperson said all of its products meet strict safety standards.

TOPSHOT - Shadows form on the ground as the moon moves in front of the sun in a rare "ring of fire" solar eclipse in Singapore on December 26, 2019. LOUIS KWOK/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Up First Newsletter

Student loan proposal targets accrued interest; israel and hamas war hits six months.

April 8, 2024 • Biden administration targets accrued interest in latest student loan relief proposal. Israel withdraws troops as the Israel-Hamas war reaches the six month mark.

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona participates in an event at Dartmouth College in January. Steven Senne/AP hide caption

Biden seeks student debt relief for millions

April 8, 2024 • The sweeping new proposals, if enacted, could ease student loan debt for millions of borrowers.

Starting Your Podcast: A Guide For Students

New to podcasting? Don't panic.

A group of children don eclipse glasses to watch the 2017 solar eclipse at Grand Tetons National Park in Wyoming. VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images hide caption

Solar eclipse 2024: Follow the path of totality

A lot of kids got to see the last total eclipse. what they remember may surprise you.

April 6, 2024 • Total solar eclipse chasers say that seeing the moon block out the sun, revealing the corona, is a life-changing experience. Kids, on the other hand, remember eating moon pies.

This year, colleges must choose between fast financial aid offers, or accurate ones

April 5, 2024 • Colleges don't yet trust the FAFSA data the U.S. Education Department is sending them, but there's pressure to get aid offers out to students as soon as possible.

California legislators in 2019 passed the law that requires all the state's 33 public university campuses to provide abortion pills. It took effect in January 2023, but LAist found that basic information for students to obtain the medication is often nonexistent. Jackie Fortiér/LAist hide caption

Shots - Health News

California colleges provide abortion pills but many fail to make students aware.

April 4, 2024 • Despite a law mandating that they offer the pills, many campus health clinics don't publicize that they have them, leaving students struggling to track them down off-campus.

Early in life, Sam (left) and John were much more similar than they may seem today. "They both did not wave, they didn't respond to their name, they both had a lot of repetitive movements," says their mother, Kim Leaird. Jodi Hilton for NPR hide caption

These identical twins both grew up with autism, but took very different paths

April 4, 2024 • Sam and John Fetters are identical twins with autism. But Sam is in college, while John still struggles to form sentences. Their experience may shed light on the disorder's mix of nature and nurture.

Around the country, state legislatures and school districts are looking at ways to keep cellphones from being a distraction in schools. monkeybusinessimages/Getty Images hide caption

Indiana lawmakers ban cellphones in class. Now it's up to schools to figure out how

April 3, 2024 • Many schools — but not all — in the state and around the U.S. already ban phones in class. This requires it now in Indiana.

Oregon schools are struggling to recover academic learning losses, according to a recent study from researchers at Harvard and Stanford. Brian A Jackson/Getty Images hide caption

Why Oregon schools' pandemic recovery lags behind much of the nation

April 1, 2024 • Oregon schools are struggling more than others across the country to recover academic learning losses. Experts say one likely reason is a lack of statewide consistency in tutoring interventions.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore speaks to reporters near the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 27, 2024 in Baltimore, Md. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images hide caption

Baltimore bridge collapse has put the spotlight on Maryland's young Black governor

March 30, 2024 • Since before the political newcomer was inaugurated, there has been speculation that Maryland Gov. Wes Moore wants to run for higher office. The bridge collapse could be his first major test.

The University of Idaho Marching Band, wearing Yale T-shirts, performs at the NCAA Tournament game between Yale and San Diego State in Spokane, Wash., on Sunday. The band has been honored in Connecticut for filling in as Bulldogs. Ted S. Warren/AP hide caption

Why the University of Idaho marching band members are heroes in Connecticut

March 29, 2024 • When Yale's marching band wasn't able to make it to March Madness, the Sound of Idaho stepped in — and went viral. A week later, Connecticut's governor proclaimed a "University of Idaho Day."

Second graders practice using solar eclipse glasses outside Winchester Village Elementary School in Indianapolis. Kaiti Sullivan for NPR hide caption

How an Indianapolis teacher is using the solar eclipse to inspire her students

March 25, 2024 • Indianapolis is one of several U.S. cities in the path of totality. For many students there, it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to witness – and be inspired by – a total solar eclipse.

Student volunteers prepare two balloons for a morning launch in Cumberland, Md., as part of a nationwide project to study the April 8 eclipse. Meredith Rizzo for NPR hide caption

Solar Eclipse

On eclipse day, hundreds of students will send up balloons for science.

March 25, 2024 • The NASA-backed Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project puts students in charge of a bold scientific endeavor to study the April 8 total solar eclipse.

Ed Department error may delay student financial aid further

March 24, 2024 • Students may have to wait even longer for their financial aid award letters due to an Education Department error

Parents wait for news about the kidnapped LEA Primary and Secondary School Kuriga students in Kuriga, Kaduna, Nigeria, on March 9, 2024. Nearly 300 schoolchildren abducted from their school in northwest Nigeria's Kaduna state have been released, the state governor said Sunday, March 24, more than two weeks after the children were seized from their school. Sunday Alamba/AP hide caption

Nearly 300 abducted Nigerian schoolchildren freed after over two weeks in captivity

March 24, 2024 • Nearly 300 kidnapped Nigerian schoolchildren have been released, more than two weeks after the children were seized from their school in the northwestern state of Kaduna and marched into the forests.

Senators meet in the senate chamber at the Statehouse, Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024, in Indianapolis. Darron Cummings/AP hide caption

New Indiana law requires professors to promote 'intellectual diversity' to keep tenure

March 22, 2024 • A new Indiana law requires professors to promote "intellectual diversity" to receive tenure. Critics worry the measure will dissuade academics from staying in the state.

Activists and students protest in front of the Supreme Court during a rally for student debt cancellation in Washington, D.C., in February 2023. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Biden cancels nearly $6 billion in student debt for public service workers

March 21, 2024 • Because of past administrative failures, the some 78,000 affected public service workers such as nurses and teachers never got the relief they were entitled to under the law, Biden said.

This year it's a slow crawl to financial aid packages for students

March 21, 2024 • Colleges are just beginning to receive long-overdue FAFSA data. Meanwhile, students who've been accepted to college still face weeks before they receive aid offers.

High school students taking part in the University of Washington's annual MisInfo Day earlier this month. They are looking at pictures of faces to tell whether the images were created with generative AI tools or authentic. Kim Malcolm/KUOW hide caption

Untangling Disinformation

Ai images and conspiracy theories are driving a push for media literacy education.

March 21, 2024 • One of the nation's best-known media literacy events for high school students is expanding as demand grows for skills to identify deepfake images and online conspiracy theories.

Throughline

The great textbook war.

March 21, 2024 • What is school for? Over a hundred years ago, a man named Harold Rugg published a series of textbooks that encouraged students to confront the thorniest parts of U.S. history: to identify problems, and try and solve them. And it was just as controversial as the fights we're seeing today. In this episode: a media mogul, a textbook author, and a battle over what students should – or shouldn't – learn in school.

Alabama governor signs anti-DEI law

Troy public radio.

March 20, 2024 • Another state has moved to how race can be discussed in schools and universities. Alabama's governor signed a law that would allow school staff to be terminated if they teach "divisive concepts."

Alabama lawmakers approved a bill barring public colleges and other entities from using money to support diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Google Maps/Screenshot by NPR hide caption

Alabama governor signs ban on DEI funds that restricts 'divisive concepts' in schools

March 20, 2024 • "Nothing in this act," the legislation states, ".... May be construed to inhibit or violate the First Amendment rights of any student or employee." But its opponents say it does just that.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images hide caption

Gov. Ron DeSantis' war on 'woke' appears to be losing steam in Florida

March 15, 2024 • A federal court recently blocked most of a key DeSantis measure, the Stop WOKE Act. Courts have ruled against a number of the governor's conservative initiatives.

Cadets salute during the graduation ceremony at the U.S. Military Academy in 2021. A change to West Point's mission statement has sparked outrage among some conservatives online. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP hide caption

West Point axed 'duty, honor, country' from its mission statement. Conservatives fumed

March 14, 2024 • The three iconic words remain the motto of the U.S. military academy. But an update to its mission statement, where the words had appeared for 26 years, has sparked outrage among conservatives online.

Israel-Hamas war

A uc berkeley law professor confronts a pro-palestinian student during a backyard dinner.

Guns in America

Prosecutor explains unusual charge against former virginia school administrator after 6-year-old shot teacher.

College aid officials warn FAFSA mess will delay many grant and loan offers until May

Former educator at Virginia school where 6-year-old shot teacher had 'shocking' lack of response, grand jury finds

Former assistant principal of Virginia school where 6-year-old shot teacher charged with child abuse

Children of migrant workers become college-bound tutors under a successful local program

Racial diversity among college faculty lags behind other professional fields, report finds

Education videos.

Education Secretary Cardona touts new student debt relief plan

Superintendent ‘horrified’ by school bus driver’s alleged assault of Massachusetts student

Exclusive: Inside look at Christian non-profit giving Bible lessons to public school students

Birmingham-Southern College to close after more than 100 years

Tennessee could overhaul reading law after 60% of third graders miss benchmark

Woman shares story of educating herself, escaping Afghanistan and helping others

Washington public schools to begin teaching LGBTQ history by 2025

Alabama governor signs bill that restricts diversity programs at public colleges

Parents are hiring pricey consultants to help kids get into college

How to cut down the high costs of college

Sexual orientation and gender identity can be discussed in Florida schools after lawsuit settlement

SAT exam now completely digital and an hour shorter

Texas students punished for not reporting a classmate with gun

Problems with new federal college aid form delay decisions

Why Connecticut may ban legacy admissions for colleges

A.I. fuels new school bullying outrage

California students accused of sharing AI-generated nudes of classmates

Yale reinstates standardized test requirement

Pennsylvania teacher dresses up as trailblazers for Black History Month

Protesters rally before trial for Black teen's suspension over hairstyle

Latino students make up most of the nation's growth in college degrees

White House

Biden announces new plans to provide student debt relief for millions.

Some students are choosing affordable safety schools over dream colleges after botched FAFSA rollout

Asian America

Wisconsin will now require asian american history to be taught in schools.

Winners of national penmanship contest crowned as handwriting is 'having a moment'

Tennessee lawmakers dismantle HBCU’s board of trustees, to the dismay of students and alumni

Politics News

Bills targeting book bans raise concerns about the penalties libraries could face.

Nearly 170-year-old private college in Alabama says it will close at the end of May

Another FAFSA snafu could delay students’ financial aid even longer

This Georgia charter school focuses on teaching the 'whole child' with a modern approach

Kansas considers fining public universities for diversity programs

Byu now requires incoming students to read controversial 'musket fire' speech, kentucky house votes to defund dei offices at public universities.

Some immigrant families fear missing out on college financial aid

Supreme Court

Supreme court declines to lift ban on texas college campus drag show.

Colleges serving Latino students struggle with infrastructure needs

Book ban attempts reached historic high last year, library association says

Texas superintendent suspended after trans student's removal from ‘Oklahoma!’

Florida teachers can discuss sexual orientation, gender ID under ‘Don’t Say Gay’ settlement

Virginia bans public universities from considering legacy in admissions

NAACP calls on Black student-athletes to boycott Florida public colleges over anti-DEI policy

Bans on diversity, equity and inclusion may halt Latino progress in higher education

SAT will be taken entirely online for the first time in the U.S. this weekend

Transgender Kids

After nex benedict’s death, lgbtq youth group saw 200% rise in crisis contacts from oklahoma.

Liberty University hit with record $14M fine for flouting federal crime reporting laws

America has legislated itself into competing red, blue versions of education

American states passed a blizzard of education laws and policies over the past six years that aim to reshape how K-12 schools and colleges teach and present issues of race, sex and gender to the majority of the nation’s students — with instruction differing sharply by states’ political leanings, according to a Washington Post analysis .

See which states are restricting, requiring education on race and sex

Three-fourths of the nation’s school-aged students are now educated under state-level measures that either require more teaching on issues like race, racism, history, sex and gender, or which sharply limit or fully forbid such lessons, according to a sweeping Post review of thousands of state laws, gubernatorial directives and state school board policies. The restrictive laws alone affect almost half of all Americans aged 5 to 19.

How The Post is tracking education bills

Since 2017, 38 states have adopted 114 such laws, rules or orders, The Post found. The majority of policies are restrictive in nature: 66 percent circumscribe or ban lessons and discussions on some of society’s most sensitive topics, while 34 percent require or expand them. In one example, a 2023 Kentucky law forbids lessons on human sexuality before fifth grade and outlaws all instruction “exploring gender identity.” On the other hand, a 2021 Rhode Island law requires that all students learn “African Heritage and History” before high school graduation.

The Post included in its analysis only measures that could directly affect what students learn. Thus, 100 of the laws in The Post’s database apply only to K-12 campuses, where states have much greater power to shape curriculums. At public institutions of higher education — where courts have held that the First Amendment protects professors’ right to teach what they want — the laws instead target programs like student or faculty trainings or welcome sessions.

Tell The Post: How are education laws, restrictions affecting your school?

The divide is sharply partisan. The vast majority of restrictive laws and policies, close to 9o percent, were enacted in states that voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, The Post found. Meanwhile, almost 80 percent of expansive laws and policies were enacted in states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

The explosion of laws regulating school curriculums is unprecedented in U.S. history for its volume and scope, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies education history and policy. Controversy and debate over classroom lessons is nothing new, Zimmermann said, but states have never before stepped in so aggressively to set rules for local schools. School districts have traditionally had wide latitude to shape their lessons.

He said it remains an open question whether all laws will translate to curriculum changes, predicting some schools and teachers may refuse to alter their pedagogy. Still, a nationally representative study from the Rand Corp. released this year found that 65 percent of K-12 teachers report they are limiting instruction on “political and social issues.”

“What the laws show is that we have extremely significant differences over how we imagine America,” Zimmerman said. “State legislatures have now used the power of law to try to inscribe one view, and to prevent another. And so we’re deeply divided in America.”

In practice, these divisions mean that what a child learns about, say, the role slavery played in the nation’s founding — or the possibility of a person identifying as nonbinary — may come to depend on whether they live in a red or blue state.

Legislators advancing restrictive education laws argue they are offering a corrective to what they call a recent left-wing takeover of education. They contend that, in the past decade or so, teachers and professors alike began forcing students to adopt liberal viewpoints on topics ranging from police brutality to whether gender is a binary or a spectrum.

Tennessee state Rep. John Ragan (R), who sponsored or co-sponsored several laws in his state that limit or ban instruction and trainings dealing with race, bias, sexual orientation and gender identity on both K-12 and college campuses, said the legislation he helped pass does not restrict education.

“It is restricting indoctrination,” Ragan said. Under his state’s laws, he said, “the information presented is factually accurate and is in fact something worth knowing.”

Those advancing expansive legislation, by contrast, argue they are fostering conditions in which students from all backgrounds will see themselves reflected in lessons. This will make it easier for every student to learn and be successful, while teaching peers to be tolerant of one another’s differences, said Washington state Sen. Marko Liias (D).

Liias was the architect of a law his state passed last month that requires schools to adopt “inclusive curricula” featuring the histories, contributions and perspectives of the “historically marginalized,” including “people from various racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, people with differing learning needs, people with disabilities [and] LGBTQ people.” He was inspired to propose the bill after hearing from educators who wanted to create more welcoming classrooms and by memories of his own experiences as a queer student in the 1980s and 1990s, when, he said, there were no LGBTQ role models taught or accepted in schools.

“When schools are inclusive broadly of all the identities brought to the classroom, then everybody thrives and does better,” Liias said.

To construct its database of education laws, The Post analyzed more than 2,200 bills, policies, gubernatorial directives and state school board rules introduced since 2017. The Post identified regulations for review by examining state legislative databases, education law trackers maintained by national bipartisan nonprofits and the websites of various advocacy groups that monitor curriculum legislation.

How curriculum policies took hold

Some blue states began enacting expansive education laws in the late 2010s. From 2017 to 2020, 10 states passed legislation or rules that required schools to start teaching about the history of underrepresented groups such as Black Americans, Pacific Islanders or LGBTQ Americans, The Post found .

State and school leaders were drawing on more than a dozen studies published from the 1990s to 2017 that found student performance, attendance and graduate rates rise when children see people like them included in curriculum, said Jennifer Berkshire , a Yale lecturer on education studies.

“They were thinking, ‘You know, our curriculums aren’t representative enough,’” Berkshire said. “The argument was, if we’re going to realize the goal of full rights and civil participation for kids, we need to do things differently.”

Fourteen of these laws, or 36 percent, came in a rush in 2021, the year after the police killing of George Floyd sparked massive demonstrations and a national reckoning over racism. At the time, activists, teachers, parents and high school students across America were urging schools teach more Black history and feature more Black authors.

Of the expansive laws and policies The Post analyzed, the majority — 69 percent — require or expand education on race or racial issues, especially on Black history and ethnic studies. About a quarter add or enhance education on both LGBTQ and racial issues. Just 8 percent focus solely on LGBTQ lives and topics.

But the onslaught of restrictive legislation in red states began in 2021, too, also inspired in many cases by parent concerns over curriculums.

Anxiety first stirred due to coronavirus pandemic-era school shutdowns as some mothers and fathers — granted an unprecedented glimpse into lessons during the era of school-by-laptop — found they did not like or trust what their children were learning.

Soon, some parents were complaining that lessons were biased toward left-leaning views and too focused on what they saw as irrelevant discussions of race, gender and sexuality — laments taken up by conservative pundits and politicians. National groups like Moms for Liberty formed to call out and combat left-leaning teaching in public schools.

Their fears became legislation with speed: Mostly red states passed 26 restrictive education laws and policies in 2021; 19 such laws or policies the next year and 25 more the year after that.

“If you’ve got parents upset at what they’re seeing, they’re going to go to school board meetings and take it up with their legislators,” said Robert Pondiscio , a senior fellow studying education at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “And legislators will do what they do: pass laws.”

How the restrictions and expansions work

The plurality of restrictive laws, 47 percent, target both education on race and sex. About a third solely affect education on gender identity and sexuality, while 21 percent solely affect education on race.

Almost 40 percent of these laws work by granting parents greater control of the curriculum — stipulating that they must be able to review, object to or remove lesson material, as well as opt out of instruction. Schools have long permitted parents to weigh in on education, often informally; but under many of the new laws, parental input has more weight and is mandatory.

Another almost 40 percent of the laws forbid schools from teaching a long list of often-vague concepts related to race, sex or gender.

These outlawed concepts usually include the notion that certain merits, values, beliefs, status or privileges are tied to race or sex; or the theory that students should feel ashamed or guilty due to their race, sex or racial past. One such law, passed in Georgia in 2022, forbids teaching that “an individual, solely by virtue of his or her race, bears individual responsibility for actions committed in the past by other individuals of the same race.”

At the college level, among the measures passed in recent years is a 2021 Oklahoma law that prohibits institutions of higher education from holding “mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling,” as well as any “orientation or requirement that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping.”

By contrast, a 2023 California measure says state community college faculty must employ “teaching, learning and professional practices” that reflect “anti-racist principles.”

Some experts predicted the politically divergent instruction will lead to a more divided society.

“When children are being taught very different stories of what America is, that will lead to adults who have a harder time talking to each other,” said Rachel Rosenberg, a Hartwick College assistant professor of education.

But Pondiscio said there is always tension in American society between the public interest in education and parents’ interest in determining the values transmitted to their children. The conflict veers from acute to chronic, he said, and currently it’s in an acute phase. “But I don’t find it inappropriate. I think it is a natural part of democratic governance and oversight,” Pondiscio said.

He added, “One man’s ‘chilling effect’ is another man’s appropriate circumspections.”

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Remote learning turned spotlight on gaps in resources, funding, and tech — but also offered hints on reform

“Unequal” is a multipart series highlighting the work of Harvard faculty, staff, students, alumni, and researchers on issues of race and inequality across the U.S. This part looks at how the pandemic called attention to issues surrounding the racial achievement gap in America.

The pandemic has disrupted education nationwide, turning a spotlight on existing racial and economic disparities, and creating the potential for a lost generation. Even before the outbreak, students in vulnerable communities — particularly predominately Black, Indigenous, and other majority-minority areas — were already facing inequality in everything from resources (ranging from books to counselors) to student-teacher ratios and extracurriculars.

The additional stressors of systemic racism and the trauma induced by poverty and violence, both cited as aggravating health and wellness as at a Weatherhead Institute panel , pose serious obstacles to learning as well. “Before the pandemic, children and families who are marginalized were living under such challenging conditions that it made it difficult for them to get a high-quality education,” said Paul Reville, founder and director of the Education Redesign Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (GSE).

Educators hope that the may triggers a broader conversation about reform and renewed efforts to narrow the longstanding racial achievement gap. They say that research shows virtually all of the nation’s schoolchildren have fallen behind, with students of color having lost the most ground, particularly in math. They also note that the full-time reopening of schools presents opportunities to introduce changes and that some of the lessons from remote learning, particularly in the area of technology, can be put to use to help students catch up from the pandemic as well as to begin to level the playing field.

The disparities laid bare by the COVID-19 outbreak became apparent from the first shutdowns. “The good news, of course, is that many schools were very fast in finding all kinds of ways to try to reach kids,” said Fernando M. Reimers , Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice in International Education and director of GSE’s Global Education Innovation Initiative and International Education Policy Program. He cautioned, however, that “those arrangements don’t begin to compare with what we’re able to do when kids could come to school, and they are particularly deficient at reaching the most vulnerable kids.” In addition, it turned out that many students simply lacked access.

“We’re beginning to understand that technology is a basic right. You cannot participate in society in the 21st century without access to it,” says Fernando Reimers of the Graduate School of Education.

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard file photo

The rate of limited digital access for households was at 42 percent during last spring’s shutdowns, before drifting down to about 31 percent this fall, suggesting that school districts improved their adaptation to remote learning, according to an analysis by the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge of U.S. Census data. (Indeed, Education Week and other sources reported that school districts around the nation rushed to hand out millions of laptops, tablets, and Chromebooks in the months after going remote.)

The report also makes clear the degree of racial and economic digital inequality. Black and Hispanic households with school-aged children were 1.3 to 1.4 times as likely as white ones to face limited access to computers and the internet, and more than two in five low-income households had only limited access. It’s a problem that could have far-reaching consequences given that young students of color are much more likely to live in remote-only districts.

“We’re beginning to understand that technology is a basic right,” said Reimers. “You cannot participate in society in the 21st century without access to it.” Too many students, he said, “have no connectivity. They have no devices, or they have no home circumstances that provide them support.”

The issues extend beyond the technology. “There is something wonderful in being in contact with other humans, having a human who tells you, ‘It’s great to see you. How are things going at home?’” Reimers said. “I’ve done 35 case studies of innovative practices around the world. They all prioritize social, emotional well-being. Checking in with the kids. Making sure there is a touchpoint every day between a teacher and a student.”

The difference, said Reville, is apparent when comparing students from different economic circumstances. Students whose parents “could afford to hire a tutor … can compensate,” he said. “Those kids are going to do pretty well at keeping up. Whereas, if you’re in a single-parent family and mom is working two or three jobs to put food on the table, she can’t be home. It’s impossible for her to keep up and keep her kids connected.

“If you lose the connection, you lose the kid.”

“COVID just revealed how serious those inequities are,” said GSE Dean Bridget Long , the Saris Professor of Education and Economics. “It has disproportionately hurt low-income students, students with special needs, and school systems that are under-resourced.”

This disruption carries throughout the education process, from elementary school students (some of whom have simply stopped logging on to their online classes) through declining participation in higher education. Community colleges, for example, have “traditionally been a gateway for low-income students” into the professional classes, said Long, whose research focuses on issues of affordability and access. “COVID has just made all of those issues 10 times worse,” she said. “That’s where enrollment has fallen the most.”

In addition to highlighting such disparities, these losses underline a structural issue in public education. Many schools are under-resourced, and the major reason involves sources of school funding. A 2019 study found that predominantly white districts got $23 billion more than their non-white counterparts serving about the same number of students. The discrepancy is because property taxes are the primary source of funding for schools, and white districts tend to be wealthier than those of color.

The problem of resources extends beyond teachers, aides, equipment, and supplies, as schools have been tasked with an increasing number of responsibilities, from the basics of education to feeding and caring for the mental health of both students and their families.

“You think about schools and academics, but what COVID really made clear was that schools do so much more than that,” said Long. A child’s school, she stressed “is social, emotional support. It’s safety. It’s the food system. It is health care.”

“You think about schools and academics” … but a child’s school “is social, emotional support. It’s safety. It’s the food system. It is health care,” stressed GSE Dean Bridget Long.

Rose Lincoln/Harvard file photo

This safety net has been shredded just as more students need it. “We have 400,000 deaths and those are disproportionately affecting communities of color,” said Long. “So you can imagine the kids that are in those households. Are they able to come to school and learn when they’re dealing with this trauma?”

The damage is felt by the whole families. In an upcoming paper, focusing on parents of children ages 5 to 7, Cindy H. Liu, director of Harvard Medical School’s Developmental Risk and Cultural Disparities Laboratory , looks at the effects of COVID-related stress on parent’ mental health. This stress — from both health risks and grief — “likely has ramifications for those groups who are disadvantaged, particularly in getting support, as it exacerbates existing disparities in obtaining resources,” she said via email. “The unfortunate reality is that the pandemic is limiting the tangible supports [like childcare] that parents might actually need.”

Educators are overwhelmed as well. “Teachers are doing a phenomenal job connecting with students,” Long said about their performance online. “But they’ve lost the whole system — access to counselors, access to additional staff members and support. They’ve lost access to information. One clue is that the reporting of child abuse going down. It’s not that we think that child abuse is actually going down, but because you don’t have a set of adults watching and being with kids, it’s not being reported.”

The repercussions are chilling. “As we resume in-person education on a normal basis, we’re dealing with enormous gaps,” said Reville. “Some kids will come back with such educational deficits that unless their schools have a very well thought-out and effective program to help them catch up, they will never catch up. They may actually drop out of school. The immediate consequences of learning loss and disengagement are going to be a generation of people who will be less educated.”

There is hope, however. Just as the lockdown forced teachers to improvise, accelerating forms of online learning, so too may the recovery offer options for educational reform.

The solutions, say Reville, “are going to come from our community. This is a civic problem.” He applauded one example, the Somerville, Mass., public library program of outdoor Wi-Fi “pop ups,” which allow 24/7 access either through their own or library Chromebooks. “That’s the kind of imagination we need,” he said.

On a national level, he points to the creation of so-called “Children’s Cabinets.” Already in place in 30 states, these nonpartisan groups bring together leaders at the city, town, and state levels to address children’s needs through schools, libraries, and health centers. A July 2019 “ Children’s Cabinet Toolkit ” on the Education Redesign Lab site offers guidance for communities looking to form their own, with sample mission statements from Denver, Minneapolis, and Fairfax, Va.

Already the Education Redesign Lab is working on even more wide-reaching approaches. In Tennessee, for example, the Metro Nashville Public Schools has launched an innovative program, designed to provide each student with a personalized education plan. By pairing these students with school “navigators” — including teachers, librarians, and instructional coaches — the program aims to address each student’s particular needs.

“This is a chance to change the system,” said Reville. “By and large, our school systems are organized around a factory model, a one-size-fits-all approach. That wasn’t working very well before, and it’s working less well now.”

“Students have different needs,” agreed Long. “We just have to get a better understanding of what we need to prioritize and where students are” in all aspects of their home and school lives.

“By and large, our school systems are organized around a factory model, a one-size-fits-all approach. That wasn’t working very well before, and it’s working less well now,” says Paul Reville of the GSE.

Already, educators are discussing possible responses. Long and GSE helped create The Principals’ Network as one forum for sharing ideas, for example. With about 1,000 members, and multiple subgroups to address shared community issues, some viable answers have begun to emerge.

“We are going to need to expand learning time,” said Long. Some school systems, notably Texas’, already have begun discussing extending the school year, she said. In addition, Long, an internationally recognized economist who is a member of the  National Academy of Education and the  MDRC board, noted that educators are exploring innovative ways to utilize new tools like Zoom, even when classrooms reopen.

“This is an area where technology can help supplement what students are learning, giving them extra time — learning time, even tutoring time,” Long said.

Reimers, who serves on the UNESCO Commission on the Future of Education, has been brainstorming solutions that can be applied both here and abroad. These include urging wealthier countries to forgive loans, so that poorer countries do not have to cut back on basics such as education, and urging all countries to keep education a priority. The commission and its members are also helping to identify good practices and share them — globally.

Innovative uses of existing technology can also reach beyond traditional schooling. Reimers cites the work of a few former students who, working with Harvard Global Education Innovation Initiative,   HundrED , the  OECD Directorate for Education and Skills , and the  World Bank Group Education Global Practice, focused on podcasts to reach poor students in Colombia.

They began airing their math and Spanish lessons via the WhatsApp app, which was widely accessible. “They were so humorous that within a week, everyone was listening,” said Reimers. Soon, radio stations and other platforms began airing the 10-minute lessons, reaching not only children who were not in school, but also their adult relatives.

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How technology is reinventing education

Stanford Graduate School of Education Dean Dan Schwartz and other education scholars weigh in on what's next for some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom.

Image credit: Claire Scully

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

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What public k-12 teachers want americans to know about teaching.

Illustrations by Hokyoung Kim

At a time when most teachers are feeling stressed and overwhelmed in their jobs, we asked 2,531 public K-12 teachers this open-ended question:

If there’s one thing you’d want the public to know about teachers, what would it be?

We also asked Americans what they think about teachers to compare with teachers’ perceptions of how the public views them.

Related: What’s It Like To Be a Teacher in America Today?

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to better understand what public K-12 teachers would like Americans to know about their profession. We also wanted to learn how the public thinks about teachers.

For the open-end question, we surveyed 2,531 U.S. public K-12 teachers from Oct. 17 to Nov. 14, 2023. The teachers surveyed are members of RAND’s American Teacher Panel, a nationally representative panel of public K-12 school teachers recruited through MDR Education. Survey data is weighted to state and national teacher characteristics to account for differences in sampling and response to ensure they are representative of the target population.

Overall, 96% of surveyed teachers provided an answer to the open-ended question. Center researchers developed a coding scheme categorizing the responses, coded all responses, and then grouped them into the six themes explored in the data essay.

For the questions for the general public, we surveyed 5,029 U.S. adults from Nov. 9 to Nov. 16, 2023. The adults surveyed are members of the Ipsos KnowledgePanel, a nationally representative online survey panel. Panel members are randomly recruited through probability-based sampling, and households are provided with access to the Internet and hardware if needed. To ensure that the results of this survey reflect a balanced cross section of the nation, the data is weighted to match the U.S. adult population by gender, age, education, race and ethnicity and other categories.

Here are the questions used for this analysis , along with responses, the teacher survey methodology and the general public survey methodology .

Most of the responses to the open-ended question fell into one of these six themes:

Teaching is a hard job

About half of teachers (51%) said they want the public to know that teaching is a difficult job and that teachers are hardworking. Within this share, many mentioned that they have roles and responsibilities in the classroom besides teaching, which makes the job stressful. Many also talked about working long hours, beyond those they’re contracted for.

“Teachers serve multiple roles other than being responsible for teaching curriculum. We are counselors, behavioral specialists and parents for students who need us to fill those roles. We sacrifice a lot to give all of ourselves to the role as teacher.”

– Elementary school teacher

“The amount of extra hours that teachers have to put in beyond the contractual time is ridiculous. Arriving 30 minutes before and leaving an hour after is just the tip of the iceberg. … And as far as ‘having summers off,’ most of August is taken up with preparing materials for the upcoming school year or attending three, four, seven days’ worth of unpaid development training.”

– High school teacher

Teachers care about their students

The next most common theme: 22% of teachers brought up how fulfilling teaching is and how much teachers care about their students. Many gave examples of the hardships of teaching but reaffirmed that they do their job because they love the kids and helping them succeed. 

“We are passionate about what we do. Every child we teach is important to us and we look out for them like they are our own.”

– Middle school teacher

“We are in it for the kids, and the most incredible moments are when children make connections with learning.”

Teachers are undervalued and disrespected

Some 17% of teachers want the public to know that they feel undervalued and disrespected, and that they need more public support. Some mentioned that they are well-educated professionals but are not treated as such. And many teachers in this category responded with a general plea for support from the public, which they don’t feel they’re getting now.

“We feel undervalued. The public and many parents of my students treat me and my peers as if we do not know as much as they do, as if we are uneducated.”

“The public attitudes toward teachers have been degrading, and it is making it impossible for well-qualified teachers to be found. People are simply not wanting to go into the profession because of public sentiments.”

Teachers are underpaid

A similar share of teachers (15%) want the public to know that teachers are underpaid. Many teachers said their salary doesn’t account for the effort and care they put into their students’ education and believe that their pay should reflect this.

“We are sorely underpaid for the amount of hours we work and the education level we have attained.”

Teachers need support and resources from government and administrators

About one-in-ten teachers (9%) said they need more support from the government, their administrators and other key stakeholders. Many mentioned working in understaffed schools, not having enough funding and paying for supplies out of pocket. Some teachers also expressed that they have little control over the curriculum that they teach.

“The world-class education we used to be proud of does not exist because of all the red tape we are constantly navigating. If you want to see real change in the classroom, advocate for smaller class sizes for your child, push your district to cap class sizes at a reasonable level and have real, authentic conversations with your child’s teacher about what is going on in the classroom if you’re curious.”

Teachers need more support from parents

Roughly the same share of teachers (8%) want the public to know that teachers need more support from parents, emphasizing that the parent-teacher relationship is strained. Many view parents as partners in their child’s education and believe that a strong relationship improves kids’ overall social and emotional development.

“Teachers help students to reach their potential. However, that job is near impossible if parents/guardians do not take an active part in their student’s education.”

How the U.S. public views teachers

While the top response from teachers in the open-ended question is that they want the public to know that teaching is a hard job, most Americans already see it that way. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say being a public K-12 teacher is harder than most other jobs, with 33% saying it’s a lot harder.

And about three-quarters of Americans (74%) say teachers should be paid more than they are now, including 39% who say teachers should be paid a lot more.

Americans are about evenly divided on whether the public generally looks up to (32%) or down on (30%) public K-12 teachers. Some 37% say Americans neither look up to or down on public K-12 teachers.

In addition to the open-ended question about what they want the public to know about them, we asked teachers how much they think most Americans trust public K-12 teachers to do their job well. We also asked the public how much they trust teachers. Answers differ considerably.

Nearly half of public K-12 teachers (47%) say most Americans don’t trust teachers much or at all. A third say most Americans trust teachers some, and 18% say the public trusts teachers a great deal or a fair amount.

In contrast, a majority of Americans (57%) say they do trust public K-12 teachers to do their job well a great deal or a fair amount. About a quarter (26%) say they trust teachers some, and 17% say they don’t trust teachers much or at all.

Related: About half of Americans say public K-12 education is going in the wrong direction

How the public’s views differ by party

There are sizable party differences in Americans’ views of teachers. In particular, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say:

• They trust teachers to do their job well a great deal or a fair amount (70% vs. 44%)
• Teaching is a lot or somewhat harder when compared with most other jobs (77% vs. 59%)
• Teachers should be paid a lot or somewhat more than they are now (86% vs. 63%)

In their own words

Below, we have a selection of quotes that describe what teachers want the public to know about them and their profession.

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Some state lawmakers want school chaplains as part of a ‘rescue mission’ for public education

Eric Johnson, director of spiritual care at UnityPoint Health’s Des Moines, Iowa-area hospitals, sits for a portrait on March 11, 2024. He has served as a chaplain in hospitals for 15 years. Chaplains, traditionally a clergyperson ministering outside of a congregation, have long served in the U.S., but some conservatives are hoping to introduce the role in public schools. (AP Photo/Hannah Fingerhut)

Eric Johnson, center, director of spiritual care at UnityPoint Health’s Des Moines, Iowa-area hospitals, talks with other chaplains serving under his direction, on March 11, 2024. Chaplains, traditionally a clergyperson ministering outside of a congregation, have long served in the U.S., but some conservatives are hoping to introduce the role in public schools. (AP Photo/Hannah Fingerhut)

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DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Lawmakers in more than a dozen states have proposed legislation to allow spiritual chaplains in public schools, a move that proponents say will ease a youth mental health crisis , bolster staff retention and offer spiritual care to students who can’t afford or access religious schools.

Conservatives also argue religious foundations will act as a “rescue mission” for what they say are public schools’ declining values, a topic that has galvanized Republican-controlled Legislatures to fight for issues such as parental oversight of curriculum, restrictions on books and instruction on gender identity and state-funded tuition assistance for private and religious schools.

But many chaplains and interfaith organizations oppose the chaplaincy campaign, calling the motivation offensive and describing the dangers of introducing a position of authority to children without clear standards or boundaries.

“They are going to be engaging students, sometimes when they’re at their most vulnerable, and there’s not going to be any checks on whether they’re able to proselytize, what they’re able to say to kids grappling with really difficult issues,” said Maureen O’Leary, organizing director at Interfaith Alliance.

The organization has shared concerns with lawmakers and school boards, saying schools should be “neutral spaces where students can come as their full selves,” O’Leary said.

“This isn’t a matter of being pro- religion and anti-religion,” she said. “This is a matter of the appropriate role of religion as it applies to public schools.”

Texas kicks off a national campaign

Texas became the first state to allow school chaplains under a law passed in 2023.

The National School Chaplain Association, which identifies itself as a Christian chaplain ministry, says on its website it was “instrumental” in spearheading the Texas law. The organization is a subsidiary of Mission Generation, which was established in 1999 to bring Jesus to classrooms worldwide. In a December 2023 newsletter, NSCA celebrated Texas for starting a “national movement placing God back in public education.”

NSCA chaplains “deliver holistic care, guidance, and safety to all people, all the time regardless of their personal beliefs, or non-beliefs” and the organization’s statement of faith is typical of endorsing bodies, an association representative said in an email.

After the bill passed, dozens of Texas chaplains representing different faiths and denominations collectively wrote to school boards, warning the law doesn’t require that “chaplains refrain from proselytizing while at schools or that they serve students from different religious backgrounds.”

The law ordered more than 1,200 school districts to decide by March 1 whether they would allow chaplains as employees or volunteers. Many of the largest opted out.

Houston and Austin said volunteers’ roles and responsibilities were unchanged so a volunteer wouldn’t be providing chaplain services. Dallas’ school board said chaplains should not be employees or volunteers at this time.

In the meantime, varying school chaplain bills have been introduced in many Southern and Midwestern states, with mixed success.

A school chaplain bill passed both chambers of the Florida Legislature and awaits Gov. Ron DeSantis’s signature. School policy must describe the services of a volunteer chaplain and require parental consent.

Indiana’s proposal, which passed one chamber but failed in the other, specified chaplains would provide secular services unless student and parents consent to nonsecular services. Some lawmakers questioned where that line would be drawn and how a student would know.

In Utah, Rep. Keven Stratton told his colleagues recent Supreme Court decisions on religious freedom provide an opportunity for school chaplains and a return to the tradition of acknowledging God in public institutions.

John Johnson, his counterpart in the Utah Senate, where the proposal ultimately failed without full GOP support, said he observed an “outright disdain for religious principles within our schools” during committee meetings. He said that would have consequences such as more families choosing alternatives to public school.

“It would be helpful and much easier if my colleagues would take our efforts here not as an attack but as a rescue mission,” he said on the Senate floor.

Increasingly, proposals from then- President Donald Trump to state governing bodies have intended to crack the firewall between church and public schools, an effort that civil liberties groups say undermines equal treatment of all faiths and threatens religious minorities.

Public schools have been barred from leading students in classroom prayer since 1962, when the Supreme Court ruled it was a violation of the First Amendment clause forbidding the establishment of a government religion.

The Supreme Court case brought by a coach fired for praying on the field addressed the balance between the religious and free speech rights of teachers and staff and the rights of students not to feel coerced into religious practices. The decision to back a praying football coach aligned with a series of rulings in favor of religious plaintiffs .

Concept of chaplains is ‘very gray’

Chaplains, traditionally a clergyperson ministering outside of a congregation, have long served in the U.S. But the modern role is “very gray,” said Wendy Cadge, director of the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, in that it’s not uniform or universally understood.

Chaplains serve in the U.S. Congress, military, and correctional facilities, and each has rigorous requirements for hiring and service. Hospitals, police and fire departments, colleges and private companies also hire chaplains with wide-ranging standards.

Many chaplains have seminary or ministry training in and the endorsement of a particular faith. But chaplains serving in multicultural places also may be required to bring professional, supervised training called clinical pastoral education.

Major hospitals are especially likely to employ chaplains with, and offer training in, clinical pastoral education.

Patients and their families are regularly experiencing existential crises and are vulnerable, said Eric Johnson, director of spiritual care at UnityPoint Health’s Des Moines-area hospitals.

The training helps chaplains learn how to serve untethered to their faith so “transference or reactivity doesn’t get in the way of really attending to people’s needs,” Johnson said.

April 3, 2024

New Law Allowing Religion into Science Classrooms Is Dangerous for Everyone

It is imperative that we protect science education from “intelligent design” and other alternative “theories”

By Amanda L. Townley

Win McNamee/Getty Images

I grew up a creationist in the rural southeastern U.S. I am now a scientist, educator, wife, mother and person of faith. Regardless of whether you practice religion, you should fight to prohibit the teaching of nonscientific alternative ideas in science classrooms and use your vote and your voice to prevent the inclusion of religious beliefs in public education. A recently signed law in West Virginia illustrates why.

I often hear lamentations about the removal of God from public schools. These sentiments are based on a misinterpretation of the principle of the separation of church and state. In the U.S., religious beliefs and practices are protected and situated in their rightful place within people’s homes and communities so that individuals can choose what to teach their children regarding religion. Kids can still pray whenever they wish, gather with their peers, create faith-based groups or even nondisruptively practice their faith in school. Separating state and church means young people cannot be compelled to engage in religious actions by someone in a position of power, such as a teacher, administrator or lawmaker. Separation of church and state is as critical to people of faith as it is to those who do not practice faith traditions. The protection of personal religious freedoms was a vital component of the foundation of our nation.

On March 22 West Virginia governor Jim Justice signed a bill that purports to protect the ability of the state’s public school educators to teach scientific theories. There is no actual problem that the new law would solve, however; none of its supporters produced a teacher who plausibly claimed to have been oppressed. But the legislative history of the bill, known as Senate Bill 280, makes it clear that its real aim is to encourage educators to teach religiously motivated “alternatives” to evolution. As introduced, SB 280 would have expressly allowed the teaching of “ intelligent design ” in West Virginia’s public schools.

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The National Center for Science Education (NCSE), of which I am the executive director, monitors attempts to undermine the accurate and robust teaching of science education in K–12 public school classrooms. Most often, these attempts die in committee or fail to pass in state legislatures to become a law. This particular West Virginia bill appeared in a prior session and passed the state’s Senate in February 2023 before dying in the House Education Committee. This session, the Senate Education Committee adjusted the wording to remove the term “intelligent design” in favor of “scientific theories,” conspicuously failing to explain what that term does and does not include. During the floor discussion of Senate Bill 280, however, its sponsor, Amy Grady (Republican, District 4), declared that even as amended, the bill would protect the teaching of “intelligent design” in West Virginia’s public schools.

It’s been 19 years since a federal court in neighboring Pennsylvania took up the issue of whether “intelligent design,” like its predecessor “creation science,” can be constitutionally taught in public schools. Presiding over the case Kitzmiller v. Dover , Judge John E. Jones III, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, found that it cannot be. There was no appeal of his meticulous decision, and no court has ruled otherwise.

The policy makers in West Virginia would have done well to consult the decision in Kitzmiller . They would have learned about the legal perils awaiting any teacher or district unwise enough to invoke the protection of the newly enacted law in defense of teaching “intelligent design”; in Pennsylvania, the Dover Area School Board ended up paying more than $1 million of the plaintiffs’ legal fees. They might also have realized that their motivations rested on some common misconceptions.

The first misconception is that learning about evolution threatens students’ faith. Evolutionary biology, like any area of modern science, is simply a body of knowledge about the natural world and a set of methods and procedures for attaining, refining and testing that knowledge. Nothing in evolutionary biology denies the existence of God or places constraints on divine activity. Evolutionary biologists include people of many faiths and of none, and evolutionary biology is routinely taught in institutions of higher education, whether public or private, secular or sectarian, as the well-established area of modern science that it is.

A second misconception is that exposing students to “intelligent design” promotes religious freedom. (The proponents of “intelligent design” often claim their views have no religious motivation, but frame it otherwise when it suits their purposes.) On the contrary, because “intelligent design” reflects a narrow sectarian rejection of evolution, teaching it in school actually harms religious freedom.

The division of church and state is crucial for the religious freedom of everyone in the U.S. Yet some people hope for the undoing of this separation of religion and political power, mainly because they expect that those in power will share their particular religious beliefs. They should stop and think very carefully about the possible consequences of temporarily having their way.

In particular, with Senate Bill 280 now on the books, West Virginia educators are free to teach whatever “scientific theories” they please. With no definition of "scientific theories" in the law, a few misguided educators may present creationism—either old-fashioned “creation science” or newfangled and equally unscientific “intelligent design”—as a result. But the sky’s the limit. Why not geocentrism or flat-Earthery? Why not crystal healing? Why not racist views claiming that white people and Black people have separate ancestry? All of these notions, which stem from religious beliefs, not science, have been held up by their proponents as scientific theories, and West Virginia’s legislature and governor just opened the public classroom door to them.

West Virginia is only one state, but others—Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee—have similar laws on the books. As the nation continues to polarize along religious and political lines, more states may follow, compromising both science education and religious freedom.

For these reasons, people of all faiths and none should unite in fighting for religious freedom, including by ensuring that religiously motivated but unscientific “alternatives” to science are not allowed in public school classrooms. Failure to maintain the separation of church and state, and to instead favor a particular sectarian view, opens a door that, one day, people will wish could be closed.

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

The Ongoing Challenges, and Possible Solutions, to Improving Educational Equity

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Schools across the country were already facing major equity challenges before the pandemic, but the disruptions it caused exacerbated them.

After students came back to school buildings after more than a year of hybrid schooling, districts were dealing with discipline challenges and re-segregating schools. In a national EdWeek Research Center survey from October, 65 percent of the 824 teachers, and school and district leaders surveyed said they were more concerned now than before the pandemic about closing academic opportunity gaps that impact learning for students of different races, socioeconomic levels, disability categories, and English-learner statuses.

But educators trying to prioritize equity have an uphill battle to overcome these challenges, especially in the face of legislation and school policies attempting to fight equity initiatives across the country.

The pandemic and the 2020 murder of George Floyd drove many districts to recognize longstanding racial disparities in academics, discipline, and access to resources and commit to addressing them. But in 2021, a backlash to such equity initiatives accelerated, and has now resulted in 18 states passing laws restricting lessons on race and racism, and many also passing laws restricting the rights and well-being of LGBTQ students.

This slew of Republican-driven legislation presents a new hurdle for districts looking to address racial and other inequities in public schools.

During an Education Week K-12 Essentials forum last week, journalists, educators, and researchers talked about these challenges, and possible solutions to improving equity in education.

Takeru Nagayoshi, who was the Massachusetts teacher of the year in 2020, and one of the speakers at the forum, said he never felt represented as a gay, Asian kid in public school until he read about the Stonewall Riots, the Civil Rights Movement, and the full history of marginalized groups working together to change systems of oppression.

“Those are the learning experiences that inspired me to be a teacher and to commit to a life of making our country better for everyone,” he said.

“Our students really benefit the most when they learn about themselves and the world that they’re in. They’re in a safe space with teachers who provide them with an honest education and accurate history.”

Here are some takeaways from the discussion:

Schools are still heavily segregated

Almost 70 years after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, most students attend schools where they see a majority of other students of their racial demographics .

Black students, who accounted for 15 percent of public school enrollment in 2019, attended schools where Black students made up an average of 47 percent of enrollment, according to a UCLA report.

They attended schools with a combined Black and Latinx enrollment averaging 67 percent, while Latinx students attended schools with a combined Black and Latinx enrollment averaging 66 percent.

Overall, the proportion of schools where the majority of students are not white increased from 14.8 percent of schools in 2003 to 18.2 percent in 2016.

“Predominantly minority schools [get] fewer resources, and that’s one problem, but there’s another problem too, and it’s a sort of a problem for democracy,” said John Borkowski, education lawyer at Husch Blackwell.

“I think it’s much better for a multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy, when people have opportunities to interact with one another, to learn together, you know, and you see all of the problems we’ve had in recent years with the rising of white supremacy, and white supremacist groups.”

School discipline issues were exacerbated because of student trauma

In the absence of national data on school discipline, anecdotal evidence and expert interviews suggest that suspensions—both in and out of school—and expulsions, declined when students went remote.

In 2021, the number of incidents increased again when most students were back in school buildings, but were still lower than pre-pandemic levels , according to research by Richard Welsh, an associate professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education.

But forum attendees, who were mostly district and school leaders as well as teachers, disagreed, with 66 percent saying that the pandemic made school incidents warranting discipline worse. That’s likely because of heightened student trauma from the pandemic. Eighty-three percent of forum attendees who responded to a spot survey said they had noticed an increase in behavioral issues since resuming in-person school.

Restorative justice in education is gaining popularity

One reason Welsh thought discipline incidents did not yet surpass pre-pandemic levels despite heightened student trauma is the adoption of restorative justice practices, which focus on conflict resolution, understanding the causes of students’ disruptive behavior, and addressing the reason behind it instead of handing out punishments.

Kansas City Public Schools is one example of a district that has had improvement with restorative justice, with about two thirds of the district’s 35 schools seeing a decrease in suspensions and expulsions in 2021 compared with 2019.

Forum attendees echoed the need for or success of restorative justice, with 36 percent of those who answered a poll within the forum saying restorative justice works in their district or school, and 27 percent saying they wished their district would implement some of its tenets.

However, 12 percent of poll respondents also said that restorative justice had not worked for them. Racial disparities in school discipline also still persist, despite restorative justice being implemented, which indicates that those practices might not be ideal for addressing the over-disciplining of Black, Latinx, and other historically marginalized students.

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Rich Schools, Poor Schools and a Biden Plan

The way U.S. education is funded can widen disparities. A proposed $20 billion program seeks to even things out.

By Kevin Carey

Can President Biden fix America’s inequitable public school funding?

The administration’s latest budget proposal suggests he’s going to try. The plan includes a $20 billion program for high-poverty school districts. States would get additional funding if they “address longstanding funding disparities” between rich and poor districts.

If it works, the program would benefit districts like Hampton City Schools, near Norfolk in southeastern Virginia. Most public school students in Hampton City are Black or from low-income households. The district receives about $10,500 per student annually in state and local funding, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Contrast Hampton City with the school district in Arlington County, Va., a wealthy liberal enclave across the Potomac River from Washington. Because Virginia allows districts to fund themselves with local property tax revenue — Arlington is full of expensive houses and office buildings for lobbyists and defense contractors — the annual funding per student there is more than $22,000.

Hampton City is on the upswing. Graduation rates are increasing, more students are taking college-level courses, and the district leader, Jeffery Smith, was named the 2020 Virginia superintendent of the year . But Hampton City has less than half the per-person funding of an affluent district that has fewer at-risk students.

The whole American public education system works this way. Students are divided among a patchwork of 16,000 school districts, many of which were created to hoard resources in majority-white areas. The nonprofit group EdBuild found that districts where more than 75 percent of students are white receive $23 billion more per year than districts where more than 75 percent of students are not white — even though there are more students in predominantly nonwhite districts.

Zahava Stadler, a former policy director at EdBuild who currently focuses on education funding at the civil rights organization The Education Trust, said the new funding in the Biden plan “wouldn’t just add money where it’s needed; it would also offer an important push for states to change the policies that create inequity in state and local funding.”

For the last two decades, federal K-12 education policy has mostly focused on improving the schools built on an uneven financial foundation by establishing consistent academic standards and holding schools accountable for student test scores. Those policies have fallen far short of their goal of closing the gap in test scores between white upper-income students and their peers. The Biden plan could be the first serious effort in more than a generation to repair the foundation itself.

In the past, critics have questioned whether equitable school funding would actually improve educational results. But a strong academic research consensus has emerged in recent years that more school funding really does improve education .

Making the program work won’t be easy. It takes a lot of pressure to get state lawmakers to change the status quo. A sum of $20 billion does not, by itself, buy a great deal of leverage to move a system that generates $750 billion in state and local funding every year. States with more equitable funding systems than Virginia’s limit the ability of rich districts to self-fund with local revenue while providing generous subsidies to districts with fewer local resources. Minnesota, for example, is far less reliant on local property taxes and provides more state funding to districts with large numbers of low-income and minority students.

Such redistributive policies often provoke sharp resistance, and in many states have advanced only under the threat of judicial decree. The citizens of Arlington County may have voted overwhelmingly for President Biden, but they would probably balk at limitations on their ability to spend local funds on schools.

Hampton City also voted heavily for Mr. Biden. As the Democratic political coalition adds more affluent college-educated white suburbanites to a base of minority voters, school funding reform could become an intraparty fight for resources.

The administration has not specifically said how the new funding formula would work. The initiative is billed as part of the long-established federal Title I program that is meant to support high-poverty schools. But it’s actually an entirely new program.

Title I, a complex mix of funding programs totaling $16 billion, already has a $4 billion formula called the Education Finance Incentive Grant. That program provides more money to states that distribute funding equitably and doubles the percentage of federal aid to poor school districts in states that don’t.

Michael Dannenberg, vice president of the nonprofit advocacy group Education Reform Now, helped write the incentive grant formula when he worked as a staffer for Senator Ted Kennedy in the early 2000s. “They should either pump all the new money through the current Education Finance Incentive Grant formula or come up with an entirely new formula that is more targeted to the highest-poverty school districts and includes even stronger incentives to create equitable state funding systems,” Mr. Dannenberg said.

Mr. Dannenberg notes that during the presidential campaign President Biden promised to triple Title I funding, and that connecting the new $20 billion with the existing $16 billion would go a long way toward fulfilling that pledge.

Many federal programs, including Medicaid, provide proportionately larger subsidies to states with lower per-capita income. Title I does the opposite, giving around 50 percent more money to districts in the wealthiest states compared with the poorest.

Why? The Title I formula authors wanted to acknowledge that education costs more in some regions than others. They decided that the more a state spent per student, the more dollars each of its districts would receive. The formula assumes that states that spend more on education have higher costs. In reality, states spend more mostly because they have more wealth. That’s why most national variance in school district funding is between states, not within states.

This is a potential blind spot in the Biden plan. If Mississippi and Connecticut distributed their own school funding with perfect equity, districts in wealthier Connecticut would still far outspend districts in Mississippi. Instead of helping poor districts in Mississippi, the current Title I formula makes those disparities worse.

Fixing all this would be consistent with the goals of the Biden plan.

If Congress enacts the plan, the most lasting effect may not be the funding it provides but the precedent it sets. Many successful policy movements, like the growing adoption of a $15 minimum wage, began with a forceful declaration of principle and practice. The first step toward a more equitable funding system may be declaring that it’s possible.

Kevin Carey directs the education policy program at New America. You can follow him on Twitter at @kevincarey1.

Maxwell School Ranks #1 for Public Affairs in 2024-25

April 9, 2024

Colleen Heflin

David M. Van Slyke

Departments

Public Administration & International Affairs Department

Awards & Honors

Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs ranked #1 overall in the latest U.S. News & World Report Best Public Affairs Schools rankings. Maxwell has received this top honor in all but one of the years the rankings have been determined, which are based on a survey of the school’s peer institutions. In addition, the school remains highly ranked in ten subspecialties.

“As the Maxwell School celebrates its 100-year anniversary, we remain as focused as ever on preparing students to be public servants, leaders and scholars who will have a positive impact on their communities and the world around them,” says David M. Van Slyke, dean of the Maxwell School. “We are honored that our peers again recognized this work. We are also thankful to be counted among so many schools, colleges and universities preparing students to make a positive impact on democratic institutions and governance. And we share this honor with our students, faculty, staff and the vast network of Maxwell alumni who seek evidence-based solutions, encourage civil discourse, and ever strive to leave the world better than they found it.”

The Best Public Affairs Schools rankings are based solely on surveys of deans, directors and department chairs representing 271 master’s programs in public affairs and administration. Each school is numerically ranked by peer school leadership on a 5-point scale, with the average score determining the school’s overall rank. Additionally, survey respondents can nominate up to 15 schools for excellence in 12 subspecialties, with the number of nominations determining each school’s position in the ranking.

U.S. News began ranking graduate programs in public affairs in 1995. Since then, the Maxwell School has been ranked #1 in every survey but one.

This year, the Maxwell School is highly ranked in ten subspecialty categories:

• Environmental Policy and Management
• Health Policy and Management
• International Global Policy and Administration
• Information and Technology Management
• Local Government Management
• Non-Profit Management
• Public Finance and Budgeting
• Public Management and Leadership
• Public Policy Analysis
• Social Policy

“We are thankful for this recognition from our peers and for the students who, throughout the years, put their trust in us,” says Colleen Heflin, associate dean, chair and professor of public administration and international affairs. “I think our greatest attribute is our ability to foster creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and leadership for the common good. Students come here to learn tools for change, and leave as leaders ready to tackle complex problems, with the courage to challenge the status quo and the preparation to succeed in leading at all levels of government and in the private and non-profit sectors across the United States and around the world.”

The Maxwell School was founded in 1924, thanks to the support of George Holmes Maxwell and his vision to establish a "School of American Citizenship." As the world has changed and faced new challenges, the Maxwell School too has evolved to meet those challenges in its storied history. Today, Maxwell is home to 15 research centers and institutes, where students and scholars grapple with a range of issues, including environmental sustainability, autonomous systems policy, population health and aging, law and security, conflict resolution, democracy and journalism, global affairs, and regional studies. And the school continues to evolve to meet the challenges of tomorrow.

Just this year, the Maxwell School launched the new Master of Science in Sustainable Organizations and Policy , a joint degree program in coordination with the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. It is co-directed by Maxwell’s Jay S. Golden, Pontarelli Professor of Environmental Sustainability and Finance and founding director of the Dynamic Sustainability Lab, and leverages the strengths of both schools to prepare students to be versatile, multidisciplinary, forward-looking leaders ready to take on the important challenges across the globe related to sustainability.

“Our strength, over the last 100 years and today, lies in Maxwell’s continuing ability to evolve as we leverage an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to address the greatest challenges faced by humanity,” says Van Slyke. “Today that list of issues and challenges includes environmental sustainability, artificial intelligence, international security, conflict resolution, poverty and health equity, to name a few. Within the walls of Maxwell and across the globe, our students, faculty, staff and alumni do that work on a daily basis. That is the greatest reward we can receive.”

About the Maxwell School

The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University offers highly regarded professional programs in public administration and international affairs as well as undergraduate and graduate degrees across the social sciences, and signature interdisciplinary undergraduate programs in policy, civic engagement, environmental sustainability and international relations. It is home to 15 interdisciplinary research centers focused on topical areas within public affairs. With campuses in Syracuse, New York, and Washington, D.C., and academic partnerships around the globe, the Maxwell network provides access to a world of opportunity.

About Syracuse University

Syracuse University is a private research university that advances knowledge across disciplines to drive breakthrough discoveries and breakout leadership. Our collection of 13 schools and colleges with over 200 customizable majors close the gap between education and action, so students can take on the world. In and beyond the classroom, we connect people, perspectives and practices to solve interconnected challenges with interdisciplinary approaches. Together, we’re a powerful community that moves ideas, individuals and impact beyond what’s possible.

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