Leo’s wariness of Latin is understandable. When the “Habemus Papam” declaring him Pope was delivered in Latin, it encountered , reigniting debate about whether Latin is still useful in the modern era.

Rumors of Latin’s demise are greatly exaggerated, but school districts are planning its funeral. That needs to stop; the first step in planning for Latin’s continued life is to resist the elitist label that studying the language imparts. Latin is an equity tool, and we don’t acknowledge that enough. 

Latin programs across the country are being euthanized. In Needham, Massachusetts, a more than $2 million budget shortfall combined with declining enrollment led the public school district to eliminate its entire high school Latin program. Only 62 students were enrolled across four classes, compared to 945 in Spanish. Latin 1 had already been removed the prior year.

Over in Shaker Heights, Ohio, the district decided to Latin out of the middle school entirely — removing it grade by grade over three years — while technically keeping it at the high school for now. The high school Latin teacher warned it would be unsustainable: Without a middle school feeder, most students simply wouldn’t switch languages.

A t across Denver Public Schools put Latin at risk at Riverside High School, where the teacher noted that the lack of Latin in middle schools was already contributing to low high school enrollment. 

Cutting Latin off in middle school is the death knell for the language. Middle school Latin gets cut first due to low enrollment, which then makes high school Latin unsustainable, creating a self-reinforcing decline; about 80% of students who took Latin in middle school had been continuing it in high school.

That’s why the language is on life support. Only about 1,513 public high schools teach Latin, out of roughly 24,000 high schools total —  about of schools. That’s just public schools; private and Catholic schools push the number higher, but a comprehensive combined figure isn’t tracked precisely. Estimates put total K–12 Latin enrollment at around 210,000 students, which is about of all students studying a foreign language.

This decline is not new: High school Latin students dropped from around 700,000 in , largely due to the post-Sputnik push toward math and science. More recently, Advanced Placement Latin exam takers fell from 6,083 in 2019 to 4,336 in 2025,suggesting continued erosion at the advanced level.

That’s bad for English speakers, as Latin forms the root of nearly two thirds of English vocabulary, especially the advanced words used in science, law and literature. For school-related vocabulary, the figure is 90%. Studying Latin can strengthen reading comprehension, which is why some schools still offer the course. 

It’s time to address the real reason why Latin studies have been declining without many scholars becoming too concerned: the elitism debate. 

Classics always had an elite image — classical knowledge was historically the hallmark of gentility — and parochial and private schools maintained classical standards longer than most public ones.This difference in offerings is most stark in the U.K.: only of private schools.

In the U.S., Latin is especially concentrated in certain types of schools: elite independent prep schools — such as Exeter, Andover and Groton — and Catholic secondary schools where it’s often required. 

But a third type of school is breaking that loop: charter schools. They demonstrate how to keep Latin alive. Classical Charter Schools in the South Bronx offer a tuition-free education in one of the most underserved congressional districts in the U.S., with Latin as a core part of the curriculum. Latin instruction starts in , framed not as prestige-building but as a practical tool: improving English grammar, spelling, vocabulary and readiness to learn other languages.The idea is to flip the script: give low-income kids the same linguistic tools that elite schools have always hoarded.

Latin critics have pointed out that no one speaks the language but that’s not exactly true.  Linguists like Tim Pulju argue that Latin never truly stopped being spoken — it continued in Italy, Gaul, Spain and elsewhere, g into the Romance languages over centuries.There’s an important distinction:  Classical Latin of Cicero and Virgil became fixed and may have died conversationally but Vulgar Latin — what ordinary Romans actually spoke — kept evolving into what we now call Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian. 

For Latino students especially, Latin can be framed as the root of their own language, not a foreign elite artifact but something ancestral and relevant. 

Latin is very much alive but it’s limping. Presenting it as an equity tool rather than a classical tradition can change who sees themselves as a potential Latin student and can change curricula — and lives.

As immigration authorities carry out what President Donald Trump has promised will be the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, several states are passing laws to keep children out of foster care when their detained parents have no family or friends available to take temporary custody of them.

The federal government doesn’t track how many children have entered foster care because of immigration enforcement actions, leaving it unclear how often it happens. In Oregon, as of February two children had been placed in foster care after being separated from their parents in immigration detention cases, according to Jake Sunderland, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Human Services.

“Before fall 2025, this simply had never happened before,” Sunderland said.

As of mid-February, nearly by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The record 73,000 people in detention in January represented an compared with one year before. According to , parents of 11,000 children who are U.S. citizens were detained from the beginning of Trump’s term through August.

The news outlet NOTUS that at least 32 children of detained or deported parents had been placed in foster care in seven states.

Sandy Santana, executive director of Children’s Rights, a legal advocacy organization, said he thinks the actual number is much higher.

“That, to us, seems really, really low,” he said.

Separation from a parent is deeply traumatic for children and can lead to , including post-traumatic stress disorder. Prolonged, intense stress can lead to more-frequent infections in children and developmental issues. That “toxic stress” is also associated with damage to areas of the brain responsible for learning and memory, , a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

, and amended existing laws during Trump’s first term to allow guardians to be granted temporary parental rights for immigration enforcement reasons. Now the enforcement surge that began after Trump returned to office last year has prompted a new wave of state responses.

In New Jersey, lawmakers are considering to amend a state law that allows parents to nominate standby, or temporary, guardians in the cases of death, incapacity, or debilitation. The bill would add separation due to federal immigration enforcement as another allowable reason.

Nevada and California passed laws last year to protect families separated by immigration enforcement actions. California’s law, called the , allows parents to nominate guardians and share custodial rights, instead of having them suspended, while they’re detained. They regain their full parental rights if they are released and are able to reunite with their children.

There are significant legal barriers to reunification once a child is placed in state custody, said Juan Guzman, director of children’s court and guardianship at the Alliance for Children’s Rights, a legal advocacy organization in Los Angeles.

If a parent’s child is placed in foster care and the parent cannot participate in required court proceedings because they are in detention or have been deported, it’s less likely they will be able to reunite with their child, Guzman said.

are U.S. citizens who live with a parent or family member who does not have legal immigration status, according to research from the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Within that group, 2.6 million children have two parents lacking legal status.

Santana said he expects the number of family separation cases to grow as the Trump administration continues its immigration enforcement campaign, putting more children at risk of being placed in foster care.

the agency to make efforts to facilitate detained parents’ participation in family court, child welfare, or guardianship proceedings, but Santana said it’s uncertain whether ICE is complying with those rules.

ICE officials did not respond to requests for comment for this report.

Before the change in California’s law, the only way a parent could share custodial rights with another guardian was if the parent was terminally ill, Guzman said.

If parents create a preparedness plan and identify an individual to assume guardianship of their children, the state child welfare agency can begin the process of placing the children with that individual without opening a formal foster care case, he added.

While Nevada lawmakers expanded an existing guardianship law last year to include immigration enforcement, the measure requires the parents to file notarized paperwork with the secretary of state’s office, an administrative step that may be burdensome, said Cristian Gonzalez-Perez, an attorney at Make the Road Nevada, a nonprofit that provides resources to immigrant communities.

Gonzalez-Perez said some immigrants are still hesitant to fill out government forms, out of fear that ICE might access their information and target them. He reassures community members that the state forms are secure and can be accessed only by hospitals and courts.

The Trump administration has taken through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the IRS, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other entities.

Gonzalez-Perez and Guzman said that not enough immigrant parents know their rights. Nominating a temporary guardian and creating a plan for their families is one way they can prevent feelings of helplessness, Gonzalez-Perez said.

“Folks don’t want to talk about it, right?” Guzman said. “The parent having to speak to a child about the possibility of separation, it’s scary. It’s not something anybody wants to do.”

is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

This constriction did not emerge from a simple shortage, but from deliberate policy decisions made in the wake of . School closures, discriminatory placements and the mass dismissal and demotion of tens of thousands of Black educators occurred alongside formal compliance with desegregation mandates, all but dismantling the Black teacher pipeline. 

In the decades since these actions were taken, policymakers have enacted a range of initiatives — from grow-your-own teacher programs to financial incentives and certification reforms — to strengthen the Black educator workforce. However, because these efforts have largely taken a general approach, they have not been sufficient to repair the damage at scale. 

Rebuilding the Black teacher pipeline will require sustained, intentional investment in targeted pathways into the profession — particularly programs that provide early, hands-on teaching experience for Black students and aspiring educators.   

One example is the , a five-week summer program offered both virtually and in person at four elementary schools in Philadelphia. It brings together high school and college students who serve as apprentices in classroom- based teaching roles. College-aged Servant Leader Apprentices facilitate instruction, while high school students assist with small-group lessons and classroom activities as Junior Servant Leaders, all under the guidance of experienced educator-coaches who also provide professional development and structured feedback cycles. This builds instructional skill, leadership and a foundation in Black pedagogy. Together, participants gain hands-on experience while supporting students entering first through third grade.  

In 2025, 82 apprentices participated across the five sites. In Servant Leader Apprentice-led classrooms, apprentices delivered culturally responsive literacy instruction, academic enrichment and social–emotional support to approximately 10 elementary students. Through this work, the apprentices experienced the demands of  planning, leading and supporting a classroom — helping many begin to see teaching as both a craft and a viable career.  

This shift in how participants view teaching is reflected in survey data: By the end of the five weeks, interest in teaching among Servant Leader Apprentices rose from 89% to 95%, and 77% of all participants indicated they plan to return the following year. One Junior Servant Leader said, “I learned to be more confident … building bonds was my favorite part.” A Servant Leader Apprentice shared something similar: “My favorite part … was getting to know the scholars and building relationships in my classroom.” In these moments, teaching shifts from an abstract profession to a commitment rooted in trust, care and a growing sense of responsibility.  

Student outcomes improved as well. Nearly nine in 10 scholars in the program met or exceeded literacy growth goals. Students reported increased confidence and a stronger sense of self, and 90% of participating families plan to return. For many students, even if only for the summer, the classroom became a place where academic growth and cultural affirmation went hand in hand — demonstrating the kind of learning environment that attracts and retains future educators.

While not every apprentice enters the classroom immediately, the academy serves as an entryway to a longer pathway into the profession, connecting participants to structured that provide academic support, professional development, financial assistance and ongoing guidance as prospective educators progress toward the profession.  

Taken together, these outcomes point to a larger conclusion: Rebuilding the Black teacher pipeline will require more than initiatives aimed at strengthening the overall educator workforce. It will need investments in opportunities that allow young Black people to experience teaching and see themselves reflected in it. Programs like the academy create those opportunities, helping aspiring educators build confidence in their ability to influence the futures of the students they serve. 

For policymakers, this means investing in early, structured pathways — such as summer learning programs, and — as a core strategy for expanding entry points into the teaching profession. Investments in these programs allow young people to discover, through practice, that teaching is not simply a job, but a form of freedom work, a commitment to the communities that shaped them and to the students who will shape what comes next.    

At a time when Pennsylvania’s Black educator pipeline remains constrained, failing to invest in these emerging educators will only reinforce the conditions that produced the historic gap.  

The question is not whether talent or interest exists — it does. The question is whether  legislators, school systems and advocacy organizations will build and invest in targeted pathways that directly address the specific harm done to the Black teacher pipeline in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. 

More recently, though, the preschool decided to establish protocols for another kind of emergency: the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in the area. 

Ever since the start of the second Trump administration, when immigration enforcement activity across the country intensified, staff and families have experienced extreme stress and anxiety about the possibility of masked agents apprehending children at their own schools, said Leah Cates, executive director of Second Street Youth Center. (Previously, education settings like Second Street would’ve been protected from immigration raids under the so-called sensitive locations policy, but the administration that designation in January 2025.)  

Cates is glad she put that new lockdown protocol in place, she said, because they’ve had to activate it twice already. 

One of those times, a teacher heard a young boy at the school yell, “Pistola! Pistola!” — Spanish for “gun” — after he saw, through a window, an ICE agent with his weapon drawn, trying to detain someone on the street right outside the school.

“We had to pull our children off the playground, bring them in and immediately go into lockdown,” Cates said. 

Some children go on walks in the community with teachers throughout the day, she added. During lockdowns, the staff use radios to communicate about the presence of ICE and determine whether groups on walks should return to the school or go to a nearby church or the fire department to seek immediate shelter. 

Their fears are not unfounded. So far, five of the 210 children enrolled in the state-funded preschool, which serves ages 3 to 5, have experienced a parent or primary caregiver detained by ICE, said Cates, who is keeping track of the impact on her school community. Many other students have relatives who have been detained, deported or otherwise apprehended by the federal agents. More than 80% of the students are from immigrant families, she added, and most are from South and Central American countries. 

Second Street offers just one example of the terror echoing through homes and early childhood programs across the country, in red and blue states, in rural and urban communities, and in documented and undocumented families. 

Researchers at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a national, anti-poverty nonprofit, have been examining the impact this administration’s immigration agenda is having on young children and their caregivers.

Between June and December 2025, CLASP staff held focus groups with 56 “at-risk” immigrant parents and primary caregivers of 74 children ages 6 and under. They also interviewed nearly 70 individuals who provide services to these families — many of them as early care and education providers, but also some home visitors, health care workers and others. Their findings, which anonymize the participants, are detailed in a pair of reports — centered on the experiences of young children and their immigrant families, and focused on early care and education providers in their communities.

The interviews were conducted in seven states: Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Texas and Washington. In those states, immigrant families with young children range from 13% of the population in Michigan to 41% in New Jersey, according to from the Urban Institute, which combines from 2022 and 2023. Nationally, about 24% of children ages 5 and under have at least one immigrant parent. 

What emerged from the research is a clear picture of communities that are experiencing toxic stress and trauma, said Kaelin Rapport, policy analyst at CLASP and an author of both reports. 

“People are really scared, and they’re struggling immensely,” Rapport said. “Care providers are not feeling secure. Parents are struggling to feel safe themselves. Children are internalizing these stressors and these pressures.”

The concern that many immigrant adults feel, Rapport added, is preventing some of them from leaving their homes, whether it’s to go to the grocery store or to work. 

“It’s confining the entire family inside this emotional pressure cooker,” Rapport said.

Many parents attempt to shield their young children by avoiding conversations about immigration enforcement, yet their fears and anxieties still permeate the household.

“It was very clear that children are feeling the trickle-down effects of stress,” said Suma Setty, senior policy analyst for immigration and immigrant families at CLASP and an author of the two reports. 

During an interview, the director of a child care center near Dallas shared with Setty that, before 2025, children in the program used to be so curious about visitors who came to the center. Now, when they see new faces, they hide behind the teachers’ legs. “That’s been a marked change she has observed,” Setty said. 

Cates, who was interviewed for the CLASP reports and shared details about the experiences of her preschool community with ����Ӱ��, has seen the way information about immigration enforcement reaches children at Second Street — and how they respond. 

It’s a regular practice at the preschool for staff to ask children how they’re feeling each day, she shared. One day, a little girl said she was scared. Her teacher told her she is safe at Second Street. But the girl said, “No, ICE can get me,” then started to cry, Cates recalled. 

“The child knows,” she said. “They may not understand everything, but they know someone was taken in their families. They see the upset of parents, the upset of family members.”

Then, she added, they take what they learned and tell their friends. Cates and other staff have overheard children talking about ICE on the playground, she said. 

“We think we’re doing a great job of shielding children, but little children have big ears. They put their listening ears on, and they hear everything,” she said. “We’re not doing as good a job as we think. Those 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds are hearing, and being affected by, the trauma.”

In interviews for the CLASP report, Rapport said, several families and early care and education providers described children as “clingy” now. Some children who had been sleeping independently through the night are now insisting on sleeping in bed with their parents. Others, he heard, are less friendly, more emotionally reactive, more frightened of strangers and less adaptable to changes in routine. 

As for the caregiving staff he interviewed, Rapport said a word that comes to mind to describe their predicament is “desperation.” They are stressed and traumatized from the past 15 months too. They’re also depressed, burned out and dealing with compassion fatigue. 

“People who work in child care and early education do it because they love children and want children to succeed in life. They want children to have a healthy upbringing,” Rapport said. “They pour so much of themselves into that work. They’re pouring from that well, and sometimes that well runs dry … for themselves and their families.”

Most early care and education providers are underpaid, working in under-resourced programs, and in some cases are immigrants themselves or have immigrant family members to think of, the researchers said. Yet, as they write in the report focused on providers, “ECE service providers are being asked to do more than the work that they trained for; they are asked to be immigration law experts, administrative law experts, second parents, and even work for free.”

That certainly rings true at Second Street Youth Center. 

In addition to the new lockdown protocols, the preschool has made changes to other procedures. 

The program has implemented “very stringent rules” around access into the building. “If we don’t recognize who you are, we aren’t letting you into the first doorway,” Cates said. The maintenance staff, as part of their duties, now regularly walk a two-block radius around the building to scan for ICE activity. Families know to text school staff about any ICE activity they’ve seen or heard about in the area, and staff then distribute the message to all families so they can make alternative pick-up arrangements for their children. 

On top of that, Second Street has held events to educate parents about their rights. The school partnered with an immigration attorney who volunteered to help families make a plan for their children in the event something happens to them. 

The work is taking a toll on staff, she said, noting that staff are increasingly asking for a day off here and there because “it’s just all too much.” 

“But my staff … understand the No. 1 concern is the health, safety and well-being of children,” Cates emphasized. “Before we do anything else, our job is to keep children safe.”

He co-sponsored this year that would give parents an ed-tech “right of refusal.” A former English teacher, he was never a fan of the shift toward every student having their own laptop. Technology, he said, isn’t making students any smarter.

“In fact, we know it’s making them dumber,” he said, expressing a view shared by parents across the country, especially those with students in the elementary grades. 

When his fellow lawmaker Rep. Leanne Harple read the bill, she imagined how tough it might be for teachers to accommodate such requests. An English teacher herself, she also speaks from experience. Her students do research online, where the information is more up to date than in books and academic journals. A 2024 American Federation of Teachers showed 83% of teachers use technology in the classroom daily.

The bill “would create, in some cases, a lot more work,” she said. For every assignment, teachers would “have to create an alternative that’s completely analog.”

Their opposing views on the topic reflect a growing national debate. Parents who advocated for bell-to-bell cellphone bans are now targeting Chromebooks and other ed tech. Influenced by researchers like Jonathan Haidt and Jared Cooney Horvath, who argue that cellphones and classroom technology have harmed students’ development, they’ve mobilized in Facebook groups. They’re demanding pencil-and-paper assignments and asking teachers to excuse their kids from computer-based math and reading apps. Their pleas have sparked pushback from districts that for years have relied on technology for everything from curriculum to testing.

“In August, almost no one was talking about this, and now I’m having no other conversations,” said Kelly Clancy, a mom of three in South Brooklyn, New York, who also serves on her local community education council. “There’s a sea change in parents realizing that they don’t want their kids in front of screens.”

She’s among those challenging the New York City schools’ use of digital programs. She refused to let teachers enter her kids’ work into , an AI tool from the curriculum company HMH that generates feedback on student writing. But when she tried to opt her children out of i-Ready, a widely used testing program from the company Curriculum Associates, she met resistance. The tests are a “baseline component” of the district’s assessment system, David Pretto, superintendent of District 20, wrote in an email. Her school’s principal, he said, “is not in the position to exclude your child from universal screening.”

Clancy didn’t take no for an answer. 

“We will get legal advice if necessary, but my children will not complete these,” she wrote back.

In a statement, the district said any tool using student data “must undergo a rigorous … review process to meet strict privacy, security and compliance standards before it is approved for use.” Officials urged parents to contact local schools with their concerns.

Across the country, the Seattle Public Schools has advised staff that “families may not opt out of district-adopted digital curriculum,” but a spokesperson for the district told ����Ӱ�� that “this is an evolving landscape,” and “we will continue to review and update the guidance as needed.”

Parents in Pennsylvania’s Lower Merion School District are also determined to keep their students off Chromebooks at school. 

“They’re saying we can’t, but we’ll find a way,” Yair Lev, a parent of two, said after a last month in which Superintendent Frank Ranelli said opting out wasn’t possible because the curriculum is computer-based.

Teachers, Lev said, are caught in the middle. He collected from five teachers, who said students often access gaming sites and YouTube during class, and even make video calls to students in other classrooms.

“There should be clear districtwide policies and parameters for when laptops should and should not be used, rather than leaving major decisions to classroom-by-classroom discretion,” one wrote.

Not ‘our best moment’

Lev, a cardiologist and professor at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, said he’s not opposed to technology. He consults for cardiology startups using AI and has taken the lead on AI use in his division at the hospital. But he and his wife realized that “kids are being exposed to a lot of screens, and we decided to try to reduce it at home.”

In some ways, he represents many of the parents pushing for tech opt outs. His children are young, and they’re starting school at a time when Haidt, a social psychologist, that cellphones and social media have harmed children’s mental health. Lev’s kids are also beginning their education after the pandemic, when parents are demanding more say over what’s taking place in the classroom and data breaches have compromised student privacy.

“The image of technology in schools that’s seared into every parent’s mind is the lockdown version of technology. It wasn’t our best moment,” said Joseph South, chief innovation officer at the International Society for Technology in Education, which merged in 2023 with ASCD, a major curriculum organization. 

Until the pandemic, Elyssa East, a New York City mom, was raising her son screen-free. That became impossible during school closures. Around the same time, she learned that he had some learning difficulties and would “really fall apart when it came to any instruction on the screen.”

Online math programs like Zearn and IXL made him feel “defeated,” she said, because they were assigned for remediation. 

“Here is this technology that’s supposed to help him, but it makes him feel even worse than a human teacher would,” East said. 

She eventually switched him to a private school. She has opted him out of math apps and he writes on an old electric typewriter.

​​”He likes that a lot,” she said. Compared to a laptop, “it’s a totally different experience.”

‘Caught in the crossfire’

Some teachers have no problem with .

Dylan Kane, a seventh grade math teacher in Lake County, Colorado, near Aspen, went . Students, he wrote, are more focused, are completing more work and spend less time “fussing with logistics,” like connecting to the internet or forgetting their Chromebook at home.

Like many parents, he was influenced by Horvath’s . In his 2025 book, the cognitive neuroscientist argues that the widespread use of classroom technology has left students distracted and unable to retain information.  

But prior to January, Kane never had a parent request to opt their child out of using computers or specific software. Even during parent-teacher conferences this spring, his decision to ditch Chromebooks in class never came up.

“I work in a small, rural town that’s relatively low-income, not a lot of college-educated parents. I think much of the tech backlash from parents is coming from the more-online, higher-educated folks,” he said. He thinks trying to accommodate individual parents’ objections would be tricky. “Teachers could be caught in the crossfire because they have to deal with district-mandated online programs and then potentially parent opt-outs.” 

South at ISTE+ASCD said he’s heard plenty of “horror stories” about technology, like apps dominated by advertising and students spending class time “shooting aliens” on the screen. But those examples are often due to teachers using a program that was never vetted by their district or “some random kid who found a workaround,” he said.

He and Richard Culatta, the organization’s CEO, added that moving through state legislatures that limit screen time don’t necessarily address parents’ other concerns like cyberbullying, protecting student data or improving the overall quality of instruction. 

Many of the bills require paper worksheets to be used instead of technology, said Culatta, who quipped that he often feels like he’s in a “time warp.” 

“There’s no quality indicator,” he said. “You could literally take any garbage worksheet and it would be fine.”

‘Rapid innovation’

Opt-out requests have forced districts to be more thoughtful about how they use technology. 

The Worcester Public Schools in central Massachusetts is like a lot of districts. It went through “a period of rapid innovation and tech acquisition” prior to the pandemic to make sure “teachers and students had the tools needed to be future-ready,” said Sarah Kyriazis, director of the district’s Office of Innovation. 

Schools added even more ed tech tools during COVID lockdowns for remote and hybrid learning. Now some parents are questioning those decisions at a time of “national concern about data, privacy, security and screen time,” she said. 

The district’s school committee has so far to allow parents to opt out of ed tech programs. But Kyriazis is collecting feedback from teachers on the apps they feel are most important for instruction. The goal, she said, is to whittle down the amount of data sent through online platforms to third-party vendors. Principals and teachers, she said, should be able to “speak with parents about each app and its purpose in the classroom.” 

Further west, the Northampton, Massachusetts, district is accommodating opt-out requests from about 12 parents. To do so, teachers must come up with activities that allow students to learn from the same curriculum as their peers “without using the disputed programs,” said Superintendent Portia Bonner. 

Laura Carney Erny, who has a second grader in the district, hasn’t tried to opt her son out of tech yet, but she’s thinking about it for third grade. Even learning which programs the school used took “months of back-and-forth emails” with teachers and administrators, she said.

Parents say they don’t want to further complicate the lives of teachers, especially those who lack classroom aides. Northampton lost in 2024 who were paid with temporary COVID relief funds. 

“I don’t blame teachers for relying on tech because it’s an easy thing to do,” she said. “Some of these programs help keep the kids in their seats.”

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, former teacher Kate Brody is among those who have opted their children out of practice sessions on i-Ready, now the subject of a over student privacy. She decided the program was a problem when her first grader couldn’t tear himself away from the screen to use the bathroom and started having accidents. 

“I used to teach full time,” she said. “I definitely don’t want to create a world where we’re asking teachers to do multiple lesson plans and monitor half the class on the computer and do analog lessons for the other half.” 

It’s unfair to teachers to field opt-out requests every year, she said. That’s why, as a board member for Schools Beyond Screens, an advocacy group of parents and educators, she backs a that calls for limits on the use of technology for all students, especially in the early grades. The board will vote on the plan April 21.

“Right now,” she said, “it’s the Wild West.”

The Texas State Board of Education gave preliminary approval Friday to a mandatory list of books that all public schools will teach starting in 2030, paring down an earlier version students and educators had criticized for being too long, lacking diversity and emphasizing Christianity.

The majority-Republican board voted 9-5 to approve the reading list, which the group will have a chance to revise ahead of final approval set for June. All five Democrats on the board voted against the list.

The board had on the list in January to allow for more time to review the proposal.

A required the Texas Education Agency to design the list of reading materials for public K-12 students. The agency initially recommended roughly 300 books for consideration, far exceeding the requirement of at least one literary work in each grade.

The original list included childhood favorites across a range of genres — from Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat to S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders — while also incorporating biblical material such as The Parable of the Prodigal Son and The Road to Damascus. In addition to the lack of religious diversity, critics raised concerns about the underrepresentation of women as well as Hispanic and Black authors.

The revised list, proposed by Republican member Keven Ellis of Lufkin, cut about 100 readings — including Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Frederick Douglass’ What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? — though it still includes Bible texts.

“There are other states, many other states, who have recommended reading lists,” Ellis said. “To my knowledge, there is not one that will have a required reading list as robust as this, that will be common for every student across the state.”

The Texas Education Agency created the original proposal after reviewing books used by other states and organizations. The agency has also said it factored in survey responses from roughly 5,700 teachers, noting that the list contained fewer books than what educators said they currently use.

But during hours of public testimony this week, educators said they considered the survey insufficient because teachers did not review or revise the reading list before the education agency submitted it to the State Board of Education.

They pointed to a different survey of more than 2,600 educators conducted by the Texas Council of Teachers of English Language Arts. The survey concluded that in all but one grade, it would be “mathematically impossible” to read and teach the full list during the typical 36 instructional weeks in a school year.

“I believe that an acceptable list would be one that’s created with teacher expertise, leaning on the strengths of everyone involved in this work,” said Markesha Tisby, president of Texas Council of Teachers of English Language Arts. “There’s still time. There’s no prize for making this decision quickly. We have time to build something great for our Texas students, and they deserve it.”

The public has not yet weighed in on the revised list the board preliminarily approved Friday.

Member Julie Pickren, R-Pearland, said she was shocked to see writings from Douglass and Booker T. Washington removed. Republican Brandon Hall of Aledo said he views the list as a “starting place.” Members will have opportunities to suggest changes and offer feedback before the final vote in June.

Supporters of the list have said they believe the biblical material will help students better grasp the influence of Christianity in U.S. history. Meanwhile, at least one critic called the original list and its biblical material “a lawsuit waiting to happen,” while many stressed the importance of students needing to see themselves reflected in the books they read.

“As a recent graduate of the Texas public school system, I care deeply about the curriculum my friends and family will be taught,” said Sumya Paruchuri, a freshman at the University of North Texas.

“The best taught English classes that I had were when the teachers were passionate about the text they were teaching, whether they were fans of the work or understood the educational opportunities they presented for students,” Paruchuri added. “The required reading list’s attempt to standardize readings is unhelpful and counterproductive to the real needs of students and educators.”

This first appeared on .

Ironically, the announcement comes as the administration is aggressively inserting itself in state and local education decision-making through a little-known administrative process. 

A General Services Administration that would require almost all applicants for federal funds to certify compliance with federal laws, executive orders and regulations — including non-discrimination laws — would also mandate adherence to the administration’s interpretation of what is discriminatory. In doing so, the announcement suggests that the Trump administration is interested not just in enforcing the law, but in discouraging efforts to increase diversity in education and beyond. 

The document treats “diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility” initiatives as potentially discriminatory, including, for example, statements used by many employers to encourage applicants from various backgrounds. It rejects what the administration calls “cultural competence” requirements, potentially imperiling teaching practices that connect instruction to students’ backgrounds. And it would likely ban questions asking applicants to describe how they have overcome obstacles, as colleges are increasingly doing in the wake of the 2023 Supreme Court ruling striking down affirmative action in admissions. States and school districts found in violation of the proposed requirements would be subject to funding reductions, civil liability or even criminal prosecution — stark consequences for refusing to conform to administration policy. 

The GSA’s proposal flies in the face of studies showing that teacher diversity benefits all students.

demonstrates that student and teacher diversity in schools and colleges helps Black, Hispanic and other traditionally underserved students achieve in school and beyond. As FutureEd noted in a , when students of color have teachers of color, attendance, academic achievement and college enrollment increase and disciplinary infractions decline. 

The research has an important bearing on the performance of the nation’s schools, given that students of color comprise more than 50% of public-school enrollment nationally, while nearly 80% of teachers in the country’s schools are white.

White students also benefit from having teachers of color. In a of four East Coast school districts, white students who studied under a teacher of color reported working harder and being more confident in their abilities than those who did not. Among the potential reasons for the greater engagement: Teachers of color were more likely to believe that student intelligence is malleable rather than fixed and to address student misbehavior in ways that didn’t damage classroom climate.

For their part, teachers value diversity in their ranks. In a national survey of K-12 teachers conducted for by the RAND Corp., 81% of participants said it is “important or extremely important” for students of color to be taught by teachers of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, and 79% said it is “important or extremely important” to have colleagues of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Of course, subject matter expertise and effective teaching experience should be paramount in hiring decisions. And anyone who receives federal funds should comply with non-discrimination law. But the GSA announcement would put at risk diversity initiatives that are valuable in schools and would seemingly pass legal muster. 

It’s the latest administration move against diversity in education. Weeks into President Donald Trump’s second term, the Department of Education canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in grants awarded under the previous administration that had already been distributed and sought in part to increase educator diversity. 

Then, the department issued a that sought to eliminate DEI programs in school districts and institutions of higher education. It was subsequently struck down by the courts, and the department of Education dropped its appeal in January, only weeks before GSA’s proposal was released. This suggests that the administration is trying to achieve through administrative means what it failed to accomplish with last year’s letter. 

If the Trump administration wants to ensure appropriate enforcement of anti-discrimination laws in education, it has the tools to do so through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. Unfortunately, the administration last year downsized OCR dramatically, leading a federal court to the reinstatement of hundreds of staffers so the agency could fulfill its duties. And staffing levels at the EEOC are down more than since the end of fiscal year .

The resulting cutback in civil rights enforcement under the Trump administration has been dramatic. As of December, OCR had , compared with 16,500 at the end of the Biden administration. 

Rather than staffing the federal government to enforce civil rights laws, the administration seems to be trying to weaken diversity efforts in schools by intimidating state and local educators with the threat of lost funding, criminal prosecution or civil liability into preemptively complying with its priorities, as it with its Dear Colleague Letter last year. 

But that tactic not only contradicts research on the value of educator diversity; it takes authority over teaching and learning out of the hands of the very leaders McMahon says she wants to empower. 

As of last month, more than 2,400 claims were pending in the overseen by a judge in California. More than 10,000 individual cases and nearly 800 school district claims were pending across . And more than 40 have filed or joined lawsuits against the companies.

The lawsuits allege that the platforms were deliberately engineered to maximize addictive use among children and teenagers, and that the companies knowingly designed them to drive young people’s prolonged engagement, despite mounting evidence that they can be harmful.

Their recommendation algorithms amplify harmful material, the lawsuits allege. And weak age-verification systems have allowed underaged users broad access. The companies that run the platforms knew about these risks, they say, but failed to warn users and families about the mental health risks, often revealed by their own research. 

The companies have disputed these claims, maintaining that their platforms include safety tools. But one of them, Meta, which runs Facebook, acknowledged that the lawsuits could be costly, this year with the Securities and Exchange Commission warning investors that the lawsuits and mass arbitration demands could “significantly impact” its finances.

That could happen soon. In late March, two landmark verdicts came down within 24 hours of each other: On March 25, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube liable for designing that harmed a 20-year-old woman who started using them as a child. The jury awarded her $6 million. The companies that run Snapchat and TikTok were also named as defendants, but reached undisclosed settlements before trial.

A day earlier, a New Mexico jury for failing to protect kids from child exploitation and ordered it to pay $375 million for consumer-protection violations. “You add it all up and it could be hundreds of billions of dollars,” social psychologist Jonathan Haidt recently.

As with the tobacco and opioid lawsuits, one major question is emerging: Where will the money go? Will the proceeds benefit children, or will they end up simply padding states’ and school districts’ budgetary bottom lines?

To answer this, ����Ӱ�� turned to Elizabeth Gaines, founder and CEO of the , a nonprofit focused on helping governments and communities figure out how to pay for programs and services that support children and youth. The organization doesn’t run the actual programs, but helps leaders and policymakers build sustainable funding systems to establish and keep these programs going, such as early childhood education, afterschool programs and mental health services.

It specializes in so-called “strategic public financing,” which pushes communities to examine how much they spend on children, how much they actually need and where they can find or generate more funding for, in Gaines’s words, “deeper investments” for kids. 

A lifelong child advocate, Gaines has worked in the field for 30 years, from think tanks to state-level advocacy. She founded the funding project eight years ago. “I looked around and realized that no one at the national level was really focusing on the public financing of child and youth development and programs and services writ large,” she said.

The project now tracks more than 300 federal, state and local funding streams that support children and youth from cradle to career.

Gaines began her career in her home state of Missouri, where she worked on ensuring one key goal: that proceeds from the 1998 benefited children. 

Spoiler alert: They didn’t. A budget shortfall prompted lawmakers to redirect millions from the settlement into the state’s general fund. Gaines now admits, “We did not get involved early enough in that process to really be able to shape the outcome of those dollars.”

Nearly 30 years later, with thousands of cases focused squarely on the harms of social media, she is working to build a coalition of groups that can persuade governors, lawmakers, educators and attorneys general to keep the focus on uplifting kids, not filling budget holes. The coming legal settlements, she said, are payback for that harm. “And [when] they pay back in, it needs to go back into the public good.”

����Ӱ��’s Greg Toppo recently sat down with Gaines for a wide-ranging conversation on her work and the “game-changing” potential of the social media payouts.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. 

First let’s talk about the tobacco payouts. You were in Missouri at the time. As you look back on that now, what were the mistakes?

The tobacco settlement was the Wild West. I remember we had $20 million that the governor and the legislature had committed, and they were like, “Yes, we’re going to put that towards positive youth development — and it’s going to be huge!” Back then, that was big dollars for Missouri. And then there was a little budget crisis, and the governor withheld those dollars. It was like, “Oh, sorry.” But that was happening all over the country at that time. There are some states that did a good job of setting tobacco settlement dollars aside and having a real method to how they dispersed them, but for the most part, those dollars went into the general fund and never really tracked in any significant way. 

What about the opioid settlements?

They’ve gotten better, and I think we’ve been really guided by in the opioid settlement, which was like, “Here are the 10 things that these dollars are intended to be used for.” And so states have taken that, some of them more seriously than others, as the funds roll out. 

So let’s assign a number, a score of one through 10 to the tobacco settlements in terms of where the money went. 

Writ large, that’s so hard. I mean, anecdotally, because I haven’t done a full research study, my sense is probably three out of 10. States weren’t putting funds towards something that was prevention-oriented or reinvesting in the community. 

I want to make sure I understand what the Children’s Funding Project does. I know what your objective is. I wonder: Do you have any leverage, or is this all just advisory? Are you on the outside looking in, saying, “Hey, governors, you should do this”? Or do you have power to make these things happen?

We have no real hard power in this. What we are attempting to do is go around and get regulations in place. And what we really need is to then replace that with deep investments in young people. We’re narrowing in on the attorneys general who are going to be at the table, because they’re leads among the states in the suits, making sure that they understand that it’s not just a settlement to punish the companies and then wherever those dollars go, so be it. There’s a safety aspect that they’re working on: Protect young people, change the platforms, make sure we’re not having faulty products like we’ve had. 

But then there’s a youth justice component to this too.  And people just haven’t gotten there yet. So I think we’re just ahead, honestly, of where zeitgeist is on this, and when we do get it in front of people, they’re like, “Yes, that’s where the money needs to go.” We’ve got a former attorney general who’s advising us on how the A.G. world works because it’s new to our field.

So no, we are not involved in the suits directly, and that’s intentional. That’s somebody else’s job. Our job, as the people who care about funding for kids, is to focus on making sure that money goes to the right place.

So let’s talk about that. What are the things we should be buying with it?

Spokane, Washington, has this thing that they started out of their schools called . Basically what this buys is some joy and some curiosity and some investment in things for a group of young people that have kind of had a rough decade. It’s not been awesome to be a young person. And so this is to say, “You want to learn to play the trumpet? You want to learn to code? You want to learn to build trails out in the woods? Whatever it is that’s speaking to you as a young person, we want to put an infrastructure in place that actually allows you to go and explore that.” And so they’re doing it in Spokane, which is great. 

You talk about a “rough decade” for young people. It sounds like you want to offer them opportunities that maybe even their predecessors, their parents, didn’t have. 

I will just say this: There are special cases where young people have gotten to do it. I ran youth programs 30 years ago. The program that I ran became one of the very first . And there are people who I hired that work there to this day who are incredibly talented youth workers, who now for generations have been saving young people and really helping them find their calling. And to have young people in relationships with talented adults who know how to do that — and other talented young people, what we call “near peers,” who can provide that kind of guidance — is something we’ve never had.

21st Century Community Learning Centers have basically been since years ago. It’s kind of crazy to think that we’ve never invested more than a billion dollars in that as a country.

If you went to an attorney general, and they said, “Just lay it all out for me,” what are the possibilities? Obviously there is a constituency that will say, “Just give the schools more money.” Just make classes smaller, improve buildings, put in HVAC, and on and on and on. Pump money into the system. Do you find yourselves in opposition to that?

They should, just as a matter of course, pay for HVAC systems for our schools, and so using this special pot of money to do that is not going to have the intended impact that we want to have. And given the direct link between the harms related to youth mental health and what we know about investing in prevention and upstream opportunities,  this is a chance to really make a significant investment in those kinds of things. So the coalition that we’re building is really trying to bring together the people not only that are in the comprehensive afterschool funding community, but into sports and play, outdoor education, arts, civic engagement leadership, youth in service types of activities. There’s a bunch of stuff that’s always been underfunded. This is a chance to quadruple down on it.

Quadruple down? 

Well, I’ll just go ahead and admit it’s going to be more than that. 

You’re talking about the harms of social media, and obviously thinking of ways to to remedy that. Who are the people you would work with to make some of these things happen?  

Let me be clear: We are really trying to coalesce any organization. Largely they’re community based organizations. There’s the names that people know: the Boys and Girls Clubs and the Y’s, but there’s also really organically grown, community based organizations that, in many cases, are the most effective at reaching young people that are hard to reach in the places where they are. And those folks have always just done that work and found ways to do it, but have been deeply underfunded. And so if I was the boss of social media litigation, I would say investing in those homegrown, local organizations would be a really powerful thing to do. We’re trying to bring all of those folks to one table, and then there’s going to have to be state-by-state approaches. 

Could you envision a landscape where offering funding to public schools is in opposition to the Girl Scouts or the Campfire Girls or Boys and Girls Clubs?  

Certainly that could happen. But our intent is to make this like what they’ve done in Spokane. That’s superintendent-led. I think the schools are going to have to get that this is an opportunity to really do some things that they get pressured to focus on, when really they have a job to do already and they can’t seem to layer the social-emotional well-being of young people on top of what they’re trying to do. 

I was talking to somebody today about something totally unrelated, and they used the term “human flourishing.” That sounds kind of like what you’re talking about.

Yeah. I mean, listen: With the onset of AI and the way that the world is shifting, I think there’s going to be a huge need that becomes so clear for folks about just the value of being human and how we raise good humans. It’s going to become increasingly important.

You talked about attorneys general. Are there any who you feel are leading the way?

You probably saw [New Mexico Attorney General] , the New Mexico case, which is not actually part of the larger case, . [A jury in March found that Meta had failed to protect young users from child predators on Instagram and Facebook.] It was the first one at the state level out of the gate that has gotten an early verdict. And it was pretty powerful. He was only looking at one set of harms related to child exploitation. So just on that one harm alone, they said was owed. And then if you extrapolate that to all the other harms, it’s significant. Certainly Kentucky’s, A.G., Colorado’s, California’s. But it’s a truly bipartisan group of A.G.s that are leading on this. 

These strike me as not just life-changing numbers but just system-changing numbers. I mean this has a potential to really just change how we even consider what’s possible. 

That’s the point, and that’s, I think, why people get very excited about this as a solution, as a chance to really dream and to get young people excited and engaged. “Game-changing” is how we’ve been describing it to the field. And we’ve got to stop thinking about just like, “Let’s fight for those little afterschool dollars that we’ve had all this time.” No, this is about a bigger play.

This bill would grant student members of the right to vote on the decisions the councils take. If passed, out of the 13 votes per council, students would hold two of them. 

CECs consist of elected community members who evaluate the efficacy of educational programs, recommend improvements, approve zoning lines and weigh in on all things related to public education. State law currently requires that two students, serving in student government and nominated by their superintendents, serve on each of the 32 councils and one on each of the four citywide councils.  

Students on these councils attend the meetings, offer feedback and consultation, share informed perspectives — perspectives that carry unique weight because of their lived experience — yet when the time comes to decide, they have no voting power. 

This dichotomy reveals how  deeply shapes our civic relationship with young people. For decades, institutions have them from the democratic process or included them only in token ways.  

Ironically, CECs themselves perpetuate this pattern. Not only do they deny students voting power, but they have also failed to comply with state law requiring student representation. As of 2024, only 14 student seats were filled, leaving at least two-thirds vacant. An honest reflection of the law makes that not surprising. Would you sit on a council if you were the only non-voting member? 

This bill addresses both problems. It increases the number of students on each council and ensures that students not only inform decisions about policies affecting their daily lives but can cast votes on those decisions. It also broadens access by removing a requirement that the student members serve in student government.

When considering the utilitarianism of this bill, it is easy to understand why it hasn’t generated a lot of attention — it seems like an obvious ‘Yes.’ But pragmatism alone doesn’t guarantee success. Lawmakers introduced this bill in 2023 and three years later, it has yet to pass.  

This is particularly concerning as the new mayor and chancellor vow to improve our current governance model that gives the mayor control over our system. CECs are contingent on mayoral control and are expected to provide vital input to both the mayor and chancellor. Giving students a real seat at the table is a simple but important first step they could advocate for. 

The lack of traction likely stems from limited awareness, paired with to fully embrace the burgeoning movement for youth voice and enfranchisement.   

Fortunately, young people deserve the right to inform and influence the policies and practices that affect their daily lives.  

For those of us working in the youth civic and democratic ecosystem, we’ve witnessed young people’s perspectives and impact on policy from communities to the . We trust their judgment and benefit when we listen. This bill asks lawmakers in Albany to extend that trust.  

Research on adolescent development reinforces this need. By their early teens, young people’s brains are developing in ways that heighten their focus on . 

Evidence from the field and research alone will not secure this bill’s passage. Advocates must also demonstrate what this looks like in practice. , the original author of this bill, demonstrates that reality better than anybody in the city. 

For three decades, BroSis has in New York City. These efforts show how capable young people are and how essential their voices remain in galvanizing change. Young leaders bring insight into systematic challenges in ways that very few decision-makers can fathom, such as longstanding racial disparities in education as well as emerging challenges like artificial intelligence. 

EdTrust-New York has seen the same impact. Through the developed in partnership with BroSis and Adelante Student Voices, students have shaped policy conversations on school discipline, suspension rates and equity across the state. Their contributions have improved both the quality and urgency of those discussions. 

Together we view this bill as a catalyst for better informed education policy and a mechanism to ensure direct student representation. It will also help build civic ownership among young people. 

The bill will ensure the education reflects what students actually need. It also signals to young people, who are growing from the lack of access to the democratic process, that New York City is committed to engaging them and elevating their civic power.  

The strength of this bill lies in its practicality, but we should not mistake simplicity for insignificance. As advocates and policymakers consider how to improve mayoral control, they should take this simple and meaningful first step. This bill deserves full-throated support from anyone in New York City who values young people’s perspectives and believes they must play a meaningful role in the civic process. Let’s give high school students, not just a seat at the table, but a vote.

But before you crack open the champagne, you should know that only a small fraction of those students can do high school-level math. Those graduates may struggle if they try to go to college, qualify for military service or pursue other technical training. 

How big is this problem? And how does it vary across the country? In a recent project for , I set out to quantify the disparity between a state’s high school graduation and math proficiency rates. We dubbed this the .

Because states define high school math proficiency differently, the precise gaps are not perfectly comparable across states. But in many places, the disparities are shockingly large. In California, for example, 86% of high school students are graduating within four years, yet just 30% of 11^th graders pass the state math test. Florida reports a 90% graduation rate while 44% of students reached only level 3 out of 5 on end-of-course exams in algebra and geometry. The state warns that students performing at this level “may need additional support for the next grade/course.”

These are not isolated examples. Across the country, the percentage of high schoolers who earn diplomas far exceeds the percentage who can demonstrate mastery in math, often by 30, 40 or even 50 percentage points.

We focused on math for a few reasons. One is that the gaps tend to be larger in math than they are in reading. For example, 51% of Minnesota’s 10^th graders were proficient in reading, compared with 35% in math.

Two, as the collaborative’s director Jim Cowen in a recent Forbes piece, these types of gaps suggest that students are leaving high school unprepared for college coursework, workforce training or apprenticeships that require foundational math skills. At a macro level, lower math skills are likely to lead to lower earnings growth. 

Our analysis also found that states that use some externally validated exams, like the SAT or ACT, tended to have lower math proficiency rates than states that created their own tests. In Nevada, for instance, just 21% of students met ACT’s college-ready benchmark in math, and in New Hampshire, only 31% of 11^th graders met the SAT benchmark  in math.

In contrast, states with their own exams, like New Jersey (59%), Ohio (59%), Iowa (67%) and especially Texas (78%) and Virginia (81%), all reported much higher proficiency rates. Given that students in these states are not doing much better on nationally comparable exams among eighth graders, it’s likely that these reflect lower standards rather than any real superiority in math performance. 

The gaps were also larger for certain subgroups. For example, in Indiana, 25% of students overall met the SAT’s benchmark in math, but the rates were even lower for low-income students (12%), those with disabilities (5%) and English learners (3%).

What can be done about these problems? The answer can’t be to simply lower graduation rates until they match the proficiency levels, or to discard diplomas entirely, even if their signaling value has been degraded over time. For example, analyzed rising graduation rates through 2018 and concluded that the gains were likely the result of students actually learning academic or other social skills. Similarly, it would also be a mistake for states to lower the bar for math proficiency any further than they already have by getting rid of consequences for low performance or by reducing or grading standards.

A better place to start would be to pay more attention to children who struggle with math early in their schooling. If students have trouble with addition and multiplication, they’re likely going to have difficulty with fractions, too. And if they struggle with fractions, they’re likely to have problems in algebra.

Indeed, math proficiency as students advance up the grades. It’s not that they know less, but they fall further and further behind. That demands more urgency and attention to basic skills well before kids get to high school.  

But once students do reach the high school level, states need to strike a better balance in how they use their math exams. In 2002, more than half of all states to earn a diploma. But that led to a watering-down of standards and the creation of workaround pathways. All but six states have rolled those mandates back. 

An alternative model comes from states like Georgia, Virginia, and North and South Carolina, which administer end-of-course exams in algebra, English, science and social studies. The tests are directly aligned to content that students were taught over the course of the school year, and the results count for 10% to 20% of a student’s final course grade. Using tests in this way may be a better approach to making students care about how much they learn without preventing them from earning a diploma.

Most importantly, states need to be honest about what a high school diploma actually means. It should signal that a graduate is ready for what comes next — college, career training, military service or the workforce.

When states continue awarding diplomas while large shares of students remain far below grade level in math, that signal weakens. Families assume a high school diploma reflects readiness. Employers and colleges often do too. But the Graduation Gap data show that assumption is shaky.

In other words, state leaders need to strike a better balance between attainment measures like graduation rates and achievement measures like math scores. To do that, states need to pay more attention to gaps in foundational skills , measure learning more honestly and ensure that the diplomas students receive actually means what the public believes it means.

The Los Angeles Unified School District and Service Employees International Union Local 99 reached a tentative agreement around 2 a.m. Tuesday Pacific Time. 

United Teachers Los Angeles and Associated Administrators of Los Angeles agreed to tentative contracts Sunday night. If SEIU had not reached an agreement, all three unions would have for the first time in the nation’s second-largest district.

“We are pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement in principle with SEIU Local 99 that will allow schools to be open,” the district said in a . “Los Angeles Unified and SEIU Local 99 teams will continue to work together to finalize the details of a tentative agreement.”

The union, which represents more than 30,000 bus drivers, teachers’ assistants, custodians and cafeteria workers, had of bad-faith bargaining and retaliation. The teachers union and its 37,000 members had planned to walk out with the SEIU local in solidarity, as it did when the union an unfair labor charge strike in 2023. This time, the administrators union, which represents more than 3,000 principals and assistant principals, had planned to strike in support as well.

“Because of our members’ unity and readiness to take action, we secured major wins — including significant improvements to wages and hours; stronger protections against subcontracting; increased staffing; and we successfully stopped layoffs for (information technology) workers,” Local 99 said in a Tuesday . “This is what collective power looks like.”

The union and the district have been bargaining for two years, said Blanca Gallegos, the union’s communications director.

“Currently, the average wage in (our union) is about $35,000, which is below poverty for a family of four,” she said before the agreement was reached. “We’re also looking to increase hours — because the district relies on a lot of part-time work — so about 80% of Local 99 members are working less than eight hours a day.”

The district previously a 13% raise, but the union it wasn’t enough to provide a livable salary for its members. The union also wanted staff to be able to work more hours. Gallegos said many employees were restricted to a number of hours that’s just under the threshold needed to qualify for health benefits — a reason why picketing would have been classified as an . The district didn’t respond to a request for comment about the unfair labor charge.

“During these two years of negotiations, the district has taken a lot of actions that are retaliatory. One of them is they reduce the hours of thousands of members so that they’re not eligible for health care benefits — I mean, like 15 minutes short of being eligible,” Gallegos said. “We see that as undermining the contract.”

�ճܱ���岹��’s includes a 24% pay increase over three years and minimum work hour schedules for specific positions. 

The district had told all three unions it can’t afford huge raises, but bargaining leaders pointed to a $5 billion reserve fund. Los Angeles Unified has the account is dwindling amid a projected . 

United Teachers Los Angeles Sunday that it agreed to a tentative two-year contract that increases the average salary by 13.86%, with a minimum raise of 8%. The union had rejected an April 1 that included a 10% raise over three years with a one-time 3% bonus for this school year.

The new contract, which will expire in 2027, also includes four weeks of paid parental leave; more psychologists, psychiatric social workers and counselors; lower class sizes; and stipends for teachers if class sizes exceed the limit.

“The flexing of our collective power forced LAUSD to direct significant funding into critical priorities identified by UTLA members in the Win Our Future contract demands,” the union said in a .

United Teachers Los Angeles has been a key player in a statewide effort to improve pay and working conditions during contract negotiations this year. The , coordinated by the California Teachers Association, asked union locals in 32 districts to focus demands around wages, staffing, fewer layoffs and school closures. It also aims to pressure the state to increase school funding.

Associated Administrators of Los Angeles was 12% raises over two years, with a chance to renegotiate in the third year of its next contract. The district to an 11.65% salary increase. Union members stipends if they work in a high-needs school or are a school’s single administrator, and 40 hours a year of professional training.

“This moment did not happen by accident. It happened because 90% of you voted yes to authorize a strike,” union President Maria Nichols said to her members in a . “It happened because you trusted our union. It happened because you stood firm, you stood together and you refused to be overlooked. Your courage at that vote changed the tone at the bargaining table. Your unity shifted the balance of power. Your perseverance made this moment possible.”

The unions haven’t announced a timetable for ratifying the contracts. 

In case of a strike, the district had planned to at community food sites and offer classroom lesson packets. But some parents said loss of learning and other resources would have lasting negative impacts on their children.

Maria Palma, founder of the parent advocacy group , said the pandemic combined with other local school interruptions, such as immigration enforcement raids, have caused students to miss multiple days of school.

“Many parents are very concerned about the learning loss that has happened,” she said. “Most recently, we had a protest where teachers were telling students that they should walk out of schools and protest against ICE. The loss of so many school days for some kids that are now, for example, in high school, over all these years, has been considerable.”

A strike would have been especially devastating for Indigenous and immigrant families, said Evelyn Aleman, founder of , a local parent advocacy nonprofit. The district serves roughly 30,000 immigrant students, and 25% of them are undocumented, according to the .

Aleman said language barriers had made it difficult for immigrant parents to keep up with district updates about the strike. 

Undocumented parents don’t feel safe enough to pick up materials or food distributed by the district because of fears of deportation, she said. Many parents involved with Our Voice also work as street vendors and are the single guardians of multiple children, making it impossible to find child care.

“When LAUSD says there’s going to be food centers, some parents don’t have vehicles. It’s very frustrating,” Aleman said. “Some children will remain unwatched, because some of the parents will leave the children in the home and sometimes leave cameras. That’s how they monitor the children — that’s what is happening when these situations arise.”

The child care closure at UNO is reflective of a concerning trend: Across the country, universities, school districts and hospitals are shutting down affiliated child care programs at an alarming rate as the cracks in America’s child care system begin to widen into fissures.

Since the beginning of 2025, a growing number of institutions have closed or put forth plans to close on-site child care programs that serve employees and, in the case of universities, student parents. These include universities such as , , and the , along in Washington, Arizona, and Kentucky. During the same time, public K-12 districts — including in Michigan, in Missouri and in Colorado — have announced similar closures, as have hospital systems in , and .

In almost every case, administrators are pointing to rising costs as a key culprit. Indeed, absent public funding, large institutions cannot run a sustainable child care business, particularly as most institutionally-affiliated programs offer tuition discounts to employees. In the case of Baptist Health, a nonprofit health care organization in Arkansas, the system said it $2 million a year operating two of its child care centers.

While there may have been a time when such losses were manageable, these institutions are being buffeted by other headwinds. Many colleges, universities and school districts are dealing with declining enrollment numbers that have . A key federal funding program that helps colleges and universities subsidize child care for student parents — Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) — has been held flat, which is a functional decrease in the face of inflation and rapidly rising child care costs.

Meanwhile, hospital systems are struggling with Medicaid cuts, rising labor costs, and tariffs increasing the costs of imported medicines and supplies; The American Hospital Association a “perfect storm of financial pressures.” 

The rash of institutional closures should be a stark warning about the future of employer-sponsored child care. That term usually conjures the concept of private companies offering on-site centers or subsidies for child care as a workplace perk. But in practice, these institutions function similarly: They operate on-site child care for their community members, such as staff, students or patients — and in many cases, the programs have been around for decades. In a sense, we might consider institutionally-affiliated child care programs the best-case version of employer-supported care. The institutions are often anchored in public missions, subject to greater accountability and backed by generally reliable funding streams. Yet, even these programs are disappearing.

If institutions designed to serve the public can’t sustain employer-linked child care, it raises a larger question about how realistic it is to . 

It seems clear that, reluctant as the decision may be, child care quickly finds itself on the chopping block when budgets tighten. Often, it is viewed as a nice-to-have for institutions, even while it’s a must-have for families. When programs close and families lose subsidized care, they’re often forced into a wild scramble for a spot among scarce options. With the aforementioned headwinds only projected to worsen, more closures are, unfortunately, likely on the way. 

To be clear, the closures don’t signal that on-site child care is inherently flawed. In fact, the passionate reaction of families and providers show just how valued these programs are. The question is, how should such programs be funded? A model that relies on institutions themselves bearing the cost seems to be breaking down. Similarly, depending on a single funding stream, like CCAMPIS, is clearly risky, as it keeps programs in a constant state of vulnerability — just one unfavorable grant cycle away from collapse.

What’s needed, instead, is a way to wrap institutionally-affiliated child care into a broader publicly-funded system, as is done in nations like and . 

The child care sector may well be entering a phase where Band-Aids like incentivizing employers to offer child care benefits like on-site programs or stipends can no longer hold back the bleeding. If universities and hospital systems — to say nothing of Fortune 500 companies like and — are increasingly unable or unwilling to maintain their child care programs despite evidence of their positive impacts, then a course correction is needed. 

Policymakers are rushing to incentivize employer-sponsored child care at a moment when the American economy is slowing down and financial headwinds are picking up. If there’s any good news, it’s that about five thousand years ago humans invented a way to pool individual resources and redistribute them for collective benefit. In other words, the antidote to institutional child care closures is the same as the antidote to mom and pop child care closures: tax dollars. 

Applications are expected to open in 2027 for the Khan TED Institute, a joint project of Khan Academy, TED — the purveyors of the popular TED Talks — and the Educational Testing Service.

“I think there’s always been, frankly, some need for a program like this,” said Khan Academy founder Sal Khan. Many people, he said, can’t afford a college degree or can’t take the time out of their work lives to attend four years of classes. “It could be that they have pursued a degree, but it’s not giving the signal that would give them the opportunities that they would want.”

Another founder, Amit Sevak, who leads ETS, acknowledged that they are still working out many of the details, but that the new institution could someday enroll “tens of thousands” of students, rivaling flagship state universities. Sevak said he’s “100%” anticipating that its instructors will be humans, most likely a large network of adjuncts.

“We still believe in the value of a human teacher,” he said. “We think that there’s so much socialization and collaboration that takes place [in the classroom]. There’s also the classic need for classroom management and some pedagogical oversight over the assessments.”

Here are five things you need to know about the new enterprise:

1. It’ll offer a bachelor’s degree in applied AI in various fields such as business, marketing, human resources, healthcare and more.��

The college will offer a full undergraduate bachelor’s degree organized around three pillars: core academic knowledge — math, statistics, economics, computer science, science, history and writing — applied AI skills and “durable” human skills such as communication, leadership, collaboration, peer tutoring and public speaking. 

Early employer partners include Microsoft, Google and , an AI app development site.

2. It’s expected to be competency-based, cost less than $10,000 and take as little as half the time of a traditional bachelor’s degree.

The college’s founding partners say its total cost will likely be under $10,000, a fraction of the of a four-year degree.

Rather than requiring four years of seat time, Sevak said, the institute is built around a competency-based model, offering students the opportunity to advance when they demonstrate mastery. That means students could potentially complete the degree in two to three years, he said, depending on how quickly they demonstrate required competencies.

That opens it up to many different kinds of students, he said, including motivated high schoolers who want to earn undergraduate credits quickly before graduation, working adults seeking advancement in their jobs and students already enrolled in traditional colleges who want to stack an AI credential on top of their existing undergraduate credits.

Khan said the new college “is something I’ve thought about doing in some way, shape or form, for many years, and the changes within the job market, because of AI, only accelerated that.”

He said the idea came out of conversations with TED chairman about a year and a half ago. “We started saying, ‘It feels like there’s something powerful between Khan Academy and TED. We’re both learning organizations. Khan Academy is known for academic learning from K-through-14. TED is known as [embodying] lifelong learning. And it’s about human connection. And it feels like we both have fairly unique brands in the not-for-profit space and the education space.’”

Khan later spoke at an ETS trustees dinner and got to know Sevak.

“They’ve been looking at the same things,” he said, “and they’ve also come up with a framework on durable skills and thinking about ways to assess them. And we realized, ‘Look, the world needs this. And if the three of us come together, this will be very credible and hopefully has a high chance of helping a lot of people.’”

3. It’s an “AI-first” institution, weaving artificial intelligence into how courses are designed, taught and assessed.

Sivak said courses will be shaped by AI and teaching will be supported by AI agents, software systems that can tutor students, answer questions and provide feedback. And students will be prepared for work in “AI-native” environments.

Instruction will likely be 100% online at the college’s launch, with an emphasis on asynchronous coursework to accommodate students in different time zones and life circumstances. Over time, Sevak said, they’ll likely explore a hybrid format.

4. Khan Academy will provide the college’s learning platform and pedagogical infrastructure, despite its founder’s tempered enthusiasm about AI and learning.

TED, the conference organization best known for its short, , will incorporate its content into the curriculum, giving students access to live talks, Q&A sessions and community-based learning with TED speakers.

And ETS, the testing and measurement organization that produces the GRE and TOEFL tests, will contribute its assessment expertise, said Sevak.

Khan Academy, the popular free tutoring website, which has about and operates its own , will offer its technology to deliver the college’s coursework, organizers said. Khan, who founded it in 2008, will hold the title of “TED Vision Steward” in the new partnership.

The announcement comes just a few days after Khan told Chalkbeat that the learning revolution he predicted in 2023, upon Khanmigo’s release, .

In September 2022, Khan and Kristen DiCerbo, the organization’s chief learning officer, were among the first people outside of Open AI to get access to GPT-4, the large language model that at the time powered ChatGPT. Their experiments gave rise to a revolution in Khan’s thinking: In 2023, he delivered a TED Talk in which he predicted “the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen,” saying we’d soon be able to give “every student on the planet an artificially intelligent but amazing personal tutor.”

In 2024, Khan’s book, , bore the subtitle “How AI Will Revolutionize Education.” 

But more than three years after Khanmigo’s launch, Khan admitted, “For a lot of students, it was a non-event. They just didn’t use it much.”

A few students, he said, have used the AI chatbot readily, while others haven’t. AI tutoring, he concluded, doesn’t necessarily motivate students to learn or fill in knowledge gaps they need to learn more. He’s still optimistic about AI in education, but also sees its limits. ”I just view it as part of the solution,” he said. “I don’t view it as the end-all and be-all.”

On Monday, Khan told ����Ӱ�� that AI is “just going to be part of our arsenal to help make more engaging tools. Maybe we’ll be able to give more rich assessment practice. Instead of having multiple-choice questions, you can start to have ‘explain your thinking’ [questions]. So it starts to open up the aperture.”

5. It’s very much a work in progress.

Speaking four days before the launch, Sevak admitted that nearly everything about the venture “is still evolving,” and that the team is “workshopping the pedagogical design” of the new college.

Sevak said the institute is in talks with regional and national organizations that can offer “the highest form of accreditation,” a step that would set it apart from a growing number of online certificates, micro-credentials and boot camps. 

“We’re really in the early days, and it’s just going to take some time for us to adapt,” he said. 

The college’s curriculum isn’t yet finalized and applications are 12 to 18 months away. Likewise, the specific structure of its hybrid and asynchronous models, its faculty roster and the full range of majors are all still in development.

“Our intention is, over time, to have a whole range of specializations,” said Sevak. But the program’s core is designed to prepare students “to be really AI-centric” for a new reality. “We’re seeing [AI] as ripping through the economy,” creating a lot of uncertainty for young people. 

More to the point, said Khan, “Work is changing very fast. AI is changing everything.”

Traditional high-impact tutoring can cost upward of $2,000 per student a year, and staffing is the single biggest constraint. At the same time, shortages of qualified teachers persist, with districts struggling to recruit and retain the educators students need most.

These two crises, a tutoring access gap and a teacher pipeline shortage, are usually treated as separate problems, but they shouldn’t be. Among the full landscape of education interventions, high-impact tutoring is one of the most consistently effective, evidence-based strategies for accelerating student learning. The results are replicable, offering up a solution to both crises that is currently hiding in plain sight.

Each year, more than 600,000 aspiring teachers are enrolled in educator-preparation programs across the country. Another 600,000 college students are employed through as well as state programs, such as . We can, and must, activate these people as tutors for the students who need them most. To do that, policymakers should act on two fronts.

First, unlock Federal Work-Study dollars for tutoring. The infrastructure already exists. Work-Study employs 600,000 college students annually in federally subsidized campus jobs. Redirecting even a fraction of these positions toward high-quality tutoring would create one of the largest, most cost-effective tutoring workforces in the country without requiring new appropriations.

This is already happening. Step Up Tutoring engages college students paid through Federal Work-Study or College Corps at 40 colleges and universities across 15 states, making it one of the fastest-growing Work-Study–powered tutoring programs in the country. Step Up delivers one-on-one virtual tutoring and mentorship to over 5,000 underserved students annually in more than 40 districts across four states. Its students are outperforming peers by wide margins; an independent evaluation found that students receiving tutoring with Step Up gained two to four additional months of learning in math compared to a control group.

Critically, this model both expands the tutoring workforce and strengthens the educator pipeline. This year, 73% of Step Up’s college and high school-aged tutors reported that they are somewhat to strongly interested in pursuing a career in education, and 82% said their Step Up experience increased that interest. As one tutor shared: “Step Up confirmed my desire to go into teaching. I wasn’t sure before, but working with my student has been the most fulfilling part of my week.”

Second, require tutoring experience as a core component of teacher preparation. Many aspiring teachers enrolled in prep programs don’t have an opportunity to regularly practice what they learn until a culminating student teaching experience or a year-long residency near the end of their program. Tutoring can be the lab where theory meets practice earlier in their preparation, allowing candidates to begin working directly with students to practice instructional skills and identify and use high-quality instructional materials in real time.

Deans for Impact’s partnerships with nearly 300 prep programs demonstrate that aspiring teachers grow more skilled, confident and effective when they have structured opportunities to engage in on-the-job learning early and often. Through a pilot designed to prepare aspiring-teacher tutors to identify and effectively use high quality materials, there was an average 20-plus percentage-point growth in instructional skills and knowledge among participants. Findings also showed an average overall increase of over 49% in tutors’ feelings of preparedness to teach.

When tutoring is embedded into preparation, and not treated as an add-on, aspiring educators build instructional skills earlier, with support, before stepping into the complexity of full-classroom teaching. Districts gain a steadier, stronger pipeline. And states produce teachers who know how to accelerate learning from day one.

There is another reason to be optimistic about the effectiveness of these novice tutors. Increasingly, AI-powered tools can provide real-time instructional guidance, helping tutors decide what to teach, how to explain concepts and how to respond when students struggle. This is not about replacing the human relationship at the center of effective tutoring; it is about ensuring that every willing tutor, regardless of prior experience, can deliver consistent, high-quality instruction.

If we act on these two priorities — unlocking Work-Study funding and embedding tutoring in teacher preparation — we can solve two critical problems at once. Students gain the academic support and human relationships they desperately need. And more young adults can build their confidence and skills in teaching from the start. In the process, they establish a habit of service that will shape the rest of their careers.

Despite the sunset of ESSER funds, the federal government has continued to foster momentum by elevating tutoring as a priority in existing and future grant competitions. In December 2025, the U.S. Department of Education awarded $256 million via the to scale tutoring and improve literacy. Also in December, a growing bipartisan, bicameral coalition of Congressional leaders re-introduced the PATHS to Tutor Act to scale local partnerships working to embed tutoring into teacher training. 

But the next step must be bolder: we need a comprehensive, national strategy that integrates tutoring into the fabric of teacher preparation and channels federal dollars toward improving academic outcomes while simultaneously cultivating the next generation of educators. 

It started 12 years ago when Emily Angiletta, Stephanie Timek and Emily Silluzio were first time teachers at the Meriden, Connecticut school, staying late to plan lessons — long after the custodians shuttered the building. 

The teachers were hired under the leadership of a new principal with a new vision of what student success would look like in a low-income school. The three educators were in their 20s, fresh out of college and trying to figure out what it meant to be effective in the classroom.

More than a decade later, their friendship is like a sisterhood or a sports team: They call each other only by their last names and can practically finish each other’s sentences with a smirk and a head nod that says “yeah, that’s what I was going to say.” 

Together, they’ve experienced getting married, losing a parent and having children. They have  also lived through the highs and lows of the classroom – some years “soaring through expectations” and others questioning if their teaching had worsened. 

“We were all learning together, struggling together, learning from our mistakes, growing together,” Silluzio said, “and I think that’s a huge part of what led to our unity. We were in the same boat.”

The Barry teachers’ close relationships show not only what a culture shift in one school has done for staff, but also students. The friendship and strong working collaboration are the results of a bold plan set in motion by their former principal Dan Crispino, who helped transform the school from 5% proficiency to a in 2019. 

Now, Crispino has been tasked with scaling Barry’s academic success across the district. 

The Meriden school district, in many ways, is similar to Angilleta, Timek and Silluzio – learning, struggling and growing together. 

An almost decade-long overhaul of the district has been a systematic transformation – rooted in consistency across classrooms and campuses, accountability, hands-on oversight, relationship and trust.

It’s about finding ways to put their students “in a position to do things that people don’t believe are possible,” said Crispino, now the district’s director of school leadership. “Their backgrounds – all these things – are tough and you can’t control everything. But, what you can control is when they’re ours and that we’re giving them every single freaking thing possible to help them be successful and to get ahead of whatever challenges.”

While there’s often an expectation that students in urban districts won’t perform well because of , which affect school funding levels and supporting high student needs, Meriden is Connecticut’s and is beating the odds in how successful it’s been at teaching kids to read.

Despite being made up of nearly – more than three quarters of whom are from low-income families –  kids in seven of the district’s eight elementary schools are reading at higher levels than expected, according to a data project focused on Bright Spot schools launched by ����Ӱ��.

The data analysis highlighted schools that were among the top 5% of their state in outscoring their expected reading proficiency based on the percentage of children who qualified for free or reduced priced lunch. 

Connecticut was home to 25 exceptional schools. And of the state’s top five Bright Spot schools – three were in Meriden, including its highest need campus, Pulaski Elementary School, which has a poverty rate of 87.7% and expected just 16.4% of students reading on grade level but instead had nearly 54%.

In the last seven years, the school system has reworked its master schedule and implemented a rigorously supervised accountability model from district and school leaders who are in classrooms daily. Staff across the district have meticulously tracked student progress and have improved collaboration to make data more accessible among one another. 

The district has also incorporated instructional coaches, who are assigned by grade and travel between campuses. Their role, beyond meeting with educators several times a week, is bearing the weight of lesson planning every unit by outlining curriculum and other resources. 

The initiatives are part of an underlying mission: Alignment. 

No matter the school building or the classroom, all third grade classes across the district are learning the same material on the same schedule – even if it looks a little different teacher by teacher. They’re meeting with the same coaches and district leadership. 

System alignment through relationship building

Whether it’s children who have lost a parent, are experiencing homelessness, learning English or have a disability, Meriden staff have successfully worked with many such students — including Enzo, a third grade student at Pulaski Elementary School.

He doesn’t know what he wants to be once he gets older, but he knows he enjoys math and science. Enzo knows all about the Fibonacci Sequence, he said, explaining how “one plus one is two, and two plus one is three, and three plus two is five, and five plus three is eight,” going all the way up to 13 plus eight.

He admitted he thought reading was boring, but he couldn’t sit still when he talked about a book he’s reading at home.

“It’s called ‘What Cats Want,’” said Enzo, 8. “I’m on page 102.”

He’s more than halfway through the book and he likes to read “two or four” pages before he goes to sleep. His favorite tidbit of information from the book is to be careful when you let your cat outside.

“Number one, they can get run over. Number two, they can get lost. And number three, a stranger cat can attack them,” Enzo said, holding up three green marker stained fingers. But, “I remember [everything] from page one.”

Earlier this school year, Enzo lost his father. But through services at his school, including an individualized schedule that allows him to work for 30 minutes, then take a two minute break, he’s been able to stay on track in the classroom.

But before a student like Enzo can be successful, the needs of educators must be met.

Before taking on his central office job in 2020, Crispino spent more than 20 years as a first grade teacher and as a principal at Barry for a handful of years. When he began working as a district administrator, and was asked to mirror his success at Barry across campuses, union relationships were among his top priorities.

“I would never ask anyone to do anything that I wouldn’t do or have done myself,” Crispino said. “You don’t want surprises. They’re your human resource. They’re delivering what you’re trying to put forth. If you don’t have their support, then it’s never gonna work.”

Time and expectations were the biggest concerns from educators, both in Meriden and across the country, with surveys showing staff often feel like they’re in a school day.

Step one, in Meriden, was overhauling its master schedule, which originally “was not, physically, mathematically, possible,” Crispino said. Teachers were being asked to start reading at 12:30, the same time recess was supposed to end, so everyone’s transitional time looked different and there was no uniformity when students were actually supposed to be back in the classroom and at work. 

“That had to go away,” Crispino said. 

Though it seemed simple, just taking the first step in building in five minute transitions made the schedule “viable, conducive and real,” Crispino said, which helped align schools and teachers on expectations. They also built in a reteach day at the end of every unit for concepts that had students struggling.

Next was making oversight a norm. 

Crispino and his building principals spend most of their time in classrooms, at least four times a day. It began as a practice that at first “wasn’t pretty,” Crispino said, with many complaints from union leaders who said administrators spent too much time in the classroom, but has since shifted to educators stopping them when they walk by to see if they want to check their recent data collection.

“We’re not there to get you, there’s a difference,” Crispino said. “For support and accountability, we’re going to be there.”

Coaches that changed, and streamlined, the game

With administrators who better understand what’s going on in the classroom, it means resources can be allocated better. In Meriden, Crispino has spearheaded bringing in instructional coaches who are assigned by grade levels and rotate among campuses.

“When I was a first year teacher, … I had to go home and write all my little lessons. I had no one to help me. I was on my own. Your admin would come in doing observations and you’d either have it or you don’t,” Crispino said, “and that’s different now.”

Veronica Germe recalled being a teacher in the state capital’s public school system. In Hartford, a district home to more than 15,000 students, she remembered how she only saw her principal in her kindergarten classroom once during the entire school year and how “visibility is the biggest difference” between the two districts.

Germe, now a K-3 grade English language arts and math coach in Meriden, is part of a team of about a dozen other elementary instructional coaches who are responsible for supporting both new and veteran teachers by managing lesson planning and acting as a resource for implementation.

“We’ve almost become a catch all in the district for all the questions K-5,” she said. 

In many districts, instructional coaches may be brushed off by educators, but in Meriden, the group has worked hard to develop a relationship where they’re “almost like a teammate,” Germe said. “We’re not evaluating them. We’re there in it with them. We’re helping and we want to get to know the students too. … Their scores are our scores.”

The coaches organize curriculum into bite-sized emails that are delivered before a unit. The emails give an overview of the lessons for that unit, with breakdowns of assessments, test questions to pay attention to, review slides, videos and pacing guides. The emails also explicitly outline state standards, which allows teachers to better target their instruction.

They meet with teachers every week for at least one planning session for upcoming lessons, and observe and offer advice during classroom time. The group of coaches are also able to provide pacing calendars and resources to help teachers differentiate instruction based on class needs.

Last year, Connecticut implemented a that limited the curricula elementary schools could use to teach reading. When the district fully shifted its K-3 curriculum, it was painless – “phenomenal”even – Crispino said, thanks to a rollout supported by union leaders and the instructional coaches that gave educators “everything they would need.”

Despite budget constraints, the district has committed to leaving their elementary instructional coaches untouched, and funded by Title I, a federal grant for schools with high-concentrations of low-income students.

Investing in these coaches for early grades gives all teachers and children “equal footing,” Crispino said, where everyone gets the same emails and meetings, then gets to decide what they’re doing with the resources. 

In mid-March, if you walked into Meriden’s Pulaski, Nathan Hale, or Thomas Hooker elementary schools during its rotational reading blocks, you would’ve seen almost the same snapshot in the three campuses.

While teachers have autonomy on the use of laptops, printed worksheets or using dry erase boards, the 60-minute period across a dozen classrooms generally looked the same.

During the reading rotation block, a small group of students, usually six or less, would be sitting in one corner of the room working on answering questions about a text with their teacher. In another corner, you’d see a paraeducator, tutor or reading coach with another small group.

Scattered across the classroom, students would be working alone with a loose leaf piece of paper, called “evidence paper” and taking notes and analyzing stories about komodragons, the galaxy or Harriet Tubman. Pairs also worked on poster boards or white boards figuring out vocabulary, grammar, main ideas or comparing and contrasting two texts.

After 20 minutes, it was time to rotate, and every student knew what to do without being asked twice.

The scenes were a direct mirror of how everyone’s “speaking the same language,” as Crispino would say, in every elementary building across the district. 

“The coaching, the admin, the feedback, the curriculum that’s easily accessible, these emails, … eliminated a lot of excuses, and when we did that, we created this high standard of excellence,” Crispino said. The alignment “built independence. It built accountability. It built engagement. It built a vibrant learning environment.”

Innovation and scalability

Last year, Angilleta, Timek and Silluzio came into a meeting with administrators rehearsed and prepared to propose a departmentalized approach to third grade, where every student would rotate among the three educators for different subjects, similar to a middle and high school model. 

The presentation wasn’t even needed, Crispino and the school’s principal Kimberly Goldbach said, laughing. It was an automatic yes.

“Part of me was like ‘You’d be an idiot to change what’s working,’ but then I said, ‘You’d be an idiot to not be innovative and creative enough to know when there’s a time to think outside the box,’” Crispino said. 

It’s paying off. Their third grade class “had the highest scores they ever had,” Crispino said. “I think our scores are going to get even better because we’re being creative and innovative at the elementary level with departmentalizing.”

Beyond the academic piece, Timek also said she’s hopeful the approach will give children, particularly those with high-needs, more resources.

“It gives these kids another chance to have a teacher that they’re not stuck with all day long. You might have a closer relationship with one kid versus the other, but the other kid can go to another class and be closer with that teacher,” she said. “They have more adults in their corner that they trust and they know that’s providing them a good education and that they can go to if they have a problem.”

The district is working to add nearly two dozen more educators into the departmentalized approach.

When asked about the scalability of Meriden’s success in other schools across the state and country, Crispino, the district superintendent Mark Benigni and various principals said it was possible, but with a few caveats.

“Can districts have a schedule like we do? Yes, but you have to make sure you’re consistent with it. Can you have instructional coaches do the work we’re doing? Yes. Should admin be in rooms? Yes. Should the central office support and understand the work happening in the trenches? Yes,” Crispino said. “You have to push [your staff and kids] to an uncomfortable place, … to challenge each other, have professional dialog and have high expectations, but then give them the resources to be successful.”

Frederick Douglass’ advice is a blueprint for a brighter future for men in America. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer men are volunteering in the lives of young men, and the number of male educators has been dropping consistently over the past 30 years. According to the American Institute for Boys and Men, only 27% of men volunteered in 2023, five points lower than women. At the same time, the share of male teachers has dropped from 30% in 1988 to 23% in 2022. 

According to professor and author Scott Galloway, “The single greatest point of failure when a young boy comes off the tracks is when he loses a male role model.” With boys falling behind in schools while struggling with anxiety and depression at home, we are reaping the effects of the lack of male volunteers in our communities and schools. 

April is National Volunteer Month, an opportunity to celebrate the men and women who sacrifice their time to support a worthy cause. And as the world celebrates the 50th Anniversary of National Volunteer Month, we not only recognize the impact volunteers have on others, but we also appreciate the lasting benefit giving one’s time has on the volunteer. 

Americans increasingly support mandatory national service, with more than two-thirds of Americans backing it for 18-22 year-olds. Surprisingly, that support is even higher among young people ages 18-24, three-quarters of whom back mandatory national service. Parents support requiring their children to serve with such programs as the Big Brothers Big Brothers of America, AmeriCorps, Teacher For America, City Year or the United States Peace Corps. The largest group of parents with children expected to serve (ages 38 to 44) endorse mandatory national service at a rate of 62%. 

Volunteering also benefits the volunteers, especially for men who are reporting to be more lonely and less connected to their communities. The data is clear, volunteering will give men more social connection, positive health outcomes, and better mental health. The irony is that while young boys need male mentors and teachers, programs that offer volunteer opportunities are reporting less and less participation by men. 

In March, I celebrated Peace Corps Week and my time as an education volunteer in South Africa. Peace Corps Week honors how the service opportunity fosters connections and contributes to meaningful change — in the United States and around the world. Since 1961, over 240,000 American men and women have dedicated over two years of their life to serving in more than 60 developing countries around the world. Today more than 3,000 Peace Corps volunteers are serving: 56% of them are female, while about 44% are male. 

The shortage of men volunteering is not limited to international work; women are outpacing men at home too. Big Brother Big Sisters of America reports that more than 70% of children on their waitlist are boys because of a lack of Big Brothers. Similarly, only 32% of AmeriCorps volunteers, 34% of Teach For America members, and 39% of City Year volunteers are men. 

My time as a Peace Corps volunteer over 25 years ago sparked my career in education. My own experience makes me believe that targeting male volunteers could be the answer to closing the gap of male teachers in America. Nearly 40% of all Peace Corps volunteers are focused on the education sector in their host country, the largest group among all the programs. Men who serve as education volunteers are trained to teach subjects like English as a foreign language , math, science and special education in a foreign country. 

The experience these men gain serving in their host communities is often brought home and applied locally when they return. Nearly two-thirds of volunteers who serve as teachers in the Peace Corps work in the education section in America upon completion of their service. Similarly, more than half of the men and women who complete their City Year service work in education. 

States are already leading. Maryland requires 75 hours of community service for students to qualify for graduation and has just launched a “Young Men and Boys Initiative” to increase mentor recruitment and create pathways for young men. 

Other states have worked to promote volunteering as well, including: 

• California launched a statewide initiative seeking 10,000 men to serve as mentors, tutors and coaches to combat rising suicide rates, social disconnection and declining college attendance among young men.��
• Washington enacted a National Mentoring Month campaign to address the need for male mentors.
• Virginia created a Boys to Men Mentoring Network with local chapters focusing on young men.
• Arizona partnered with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America to launch a statewide campaign to recruit male mentors.
• Wisconsin organized events to help recruit Black male mentors for young boys.

Nonprofits and male membership organizations have begun taking the lead as well. Big Brothers Big Sisters of America are partnering with greek letter membership organizations like Alpha Phi Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi and Omega Psi Phi to increase the number of African-American male mentors.

In Georgia, the National Parents Union celebrates their NPU Parent Week of Action by encouraging men to volunteer in local schools. Through NPU and Black Male Educators, fathers and father-figures serve as bus monitors and crossing guards. The program has been a tremendous success leading to volunteers even becoming bus drivers. In other instances, these organizations are connecting fathers with opportunities to volunteer in classrooms reading to students. Introducing fathers into their children’s schools as volunteers could be the first step to them becoming teachers. 

We can do this, we can connect men with volunteer opportunities that give them meaning and purpose. For men who volunteer and find passion in mentoring young men and boys, opportunities to transition into teaching should be easier and less expensive. We need more male teachers; being laser focused on partnering with volunteer programs could be a silver bullet.

Sergio Garcia is quick to the scene. He puts on a scuffed firefighter jacket, grabs an oxygen mask and crouches down on hot concrete to start chest compressions on a dummy body. 

At the Los Angeles Unified School District’s career technical education showcase, under an outdoor canopy in blistering Southern California heat, the fire academy student demonstrates CPR to other students who might also be interested in joining. 

Sergio represents one of 23 high schools and six middle schools that showcased a range of career technical education at L.A. Unified, including 15 comprehensive three- or four-year programs that prepare students for industries through real-world experience. The showcase, held last month at the , a private health equity foundation, featured student projects, live demonstrations and skill-based challenges, is part of the district’s “Dream It, Achieve It!” initiative that pairs students with local industry leaders.

“With my degree, I’d rather know I’m going to help people,” said Sergio, a senior and fourth-year deputy chief at the fire academy at Banning High School who is on track to earn a fire science degree at a technical college. “Although it is very physically demanding, the fact that you’re doing good in this world is a bigger gift than anyone could ever ask for.”

Building technical and team-building skills 

At another canopy at the showcase, students cheered a remote-controlled battle of two robots, vying for the prize of a 3D-printed bot, while Madelynne Arevalo helped set up a mini flight simulator. Madelynne, a senior at Fremont High School in Los Angeles, is in the robotics program and is designing a rocket launch for her aerospace engineering project.

“We also compete with other high schools, and the competitions are really fun,” Madelynne said. “I’m really proud of all the models (we made), even if they’re not the final ones we end up using.”

Madelynne remembers designing an elevator system in a robot she worked on for a competition. Although she and her team chose a more time-efficient robot for the event, she said she learned how to develop new technical and team-building skills in a high-stakes environment. 

“It was a lot of our own ideas and a lot of collaboration,” Madelynne said, “and I thought that even if it doesn’t work, at least the process was nice.”

In recent years, L.A. Unified has significantly expanded career technical education to about 435 pathways, from engineering and technology to business and construction, serving nearly 40,000 students. About 1,000 students completed internships in the 2024-2025 school year, and CTE programs have about a 97% graduation rate. 

“CTE careers are the fastest growing careers in the United States, more than students going to a four-year university,” said Jaime Medina, a firefighter and teacher in L.A. Unified’s firefighting program. 

Israel Urbina, a junior at Washington Preparatory High School in Los Angeles, is a third-year student in the photojournalism program. At the showcase, he displayed a photo in which he manipulated light to create different designs, objects and shapes, including one that spelled out his name. 

“Right now, my thing in photography is light painting,” Israel said. “I did a video about it in my photography class, and it’s about all my light paintings and the different ones I’ve done and the different people I’ve done it with.”

Ken Kerbs, a photojournalism teacher at the school, described Israel as nearly an “expert” on light painting. Through years of honing techniques related to perspective, reflections, texture, light and shadow, Kerbs said most of his students leave the program with greater curiosity about the world and a sharper eye for detail. 

“What that says to me is that teaching them the basics is to be sensitive and have a different sensibility about their environment,” Kerbs said. “That’s what makes me come to school in the morning.”

Blessed Thomas-Hill, a senior at Washington Prep, worked with Israel on a film about light painting and wrote poetry for the film’s narrative. She said she chose the photojournalism program because of Kerbs, who helped teach her to be more comfortable expressing herself.  

“I’m an introvert, and talking with people, I really struggle with that a lot,” Blessed said. “I got to know a lot of great friends this year. I’ve got to get closer to more people. It’s made me more sociable.” 

Students ‘rise to the occasion’ 

Blessed said she wants to be an artist and plans to incorporate photography in her personal art. She remembers a field trip to Cal State Northridge, where she learned about a photographer’s protest of immigration raids through his photos of L.A. communities, which inspired her to commit to art. 

“It’s really inspiring in a way because it shows that you’re not just alone in your community,” Blessed said. 

Madelynne said she plans to continue studying robotics and will pursue a college degree in biomedical engineering. Because she had not committed to robotics until her senior year, she felt she was behind many students who had started coding in middle school. 

“At first, I didn’t believe in myself. I didn’t think I was smart enough to do something as complicated as engineering,” Madelynne said, adding that the robotics program led her to Girls Build, a club where girls learn to code and build machines together. 

“Spreading the positivity around has helped me believe more in myself,” she said. 

Sergio, the Banning High fire academy student, said he initially struggled with how physically demanding his training was, but that he learned to build speed and strength with each simulated fire alarm drill. 

“I’ve also learned that when it comes to rising to an occasion, I rise to that occasion. Whether it be someone’s in trouble, I help protect people,”  he said. “This academy has brought out leadership in me, the discipline, the social skills that I wouldn’t have learned any other way.” 

Sergio said he also plans to become certified as a diesel mechanic, because the firefighting program has allowed him to combine two of his interests.  

“I love the whole firefighting part, but I’ve also always loved working on cars. I figured if I’m going to be a mechanic, I might as well do it for a better cause,” Sergio said. “Working on fire engines, so when those firefighters go out and save those lives, I can say I helped with that.”

This story was originally published on EdSource.

We’ve suffered through the creep of a dynamic known as “,” where conspiracy theories, falsehoods and wildly distorted views of reality become easier for some Americans to embrace than the demonstrable facts of our present moment. 

Recently, a House subcommittee hearing offered a new flavor of the problem, as Republicans and their conservative witnesses tried to win political turf by substituting facts about one group of students — English learners — with beliefs about children in undocumented families, a very different group of students. 

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government’s March 11 hearing was titled, “.” That struck down a Texas law that would have blocked districts from using state education funding to teach undocumented children. In a 5-4 decision, the court held that children are covered by the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, and could not be denied a public education based on their families’ legal status. 

Writing for the majority, , “The Equal Protection Clause was intended to work nothing less than the abolition of all caste-based and invidious class-based legislation. That objective is fundamentally at odds with the power (Texas) asserts here to classify persons subject to its laws as nonetheless excepted from its protection.”

The congressional hearing was a culmination of years of work by organizations like , who seek to overturn that decision. After nearly 44 years, they’re getting closer. This spring, Republicans in the Tennessee legislature passed a to erode the Plyler ruling. 

The Tennessee House of Representatives adopted a bill that would require schools to gather data on students’ citizenship and immigration status, while the state Senate approved a measure that would allow public school districts to to students who lack legal documentation. , as time is running out in the state’s legislative calendar, and lawmakers are jockeying over how to reconcile the two bills. 

This was Tennessee’s second push to restrict immigrant children’s access to public schools — it’s unlikely that it will be its last. Other states, like and , have made similar efforts. It seems inevitable that conservative state legislators will eventually succeed in enacting a bill along these lines, which will then face a legal challenge from advocates for immigrant families, civil liberties, and/or children’s data privacy. Ultimately, this may open the door for the court’s current conservative 6-3 majority to erode or remove Plyler’s civil rights protections. 

Why would anyone want to keep kids out of school? What could possibly be gained by punishing children for their families’ decisions to migrate? 

In the congressional hearing, conservatives’ main answer to these questions was financial. Republican Subcommittee chair Rep. Chip Roy of Texas and his fellow conservatives claimed that undocumented children represent a large drain on public education budgets. Critically, the evidence they provided for this relied heavily on confusing undocumented immigrant children with all immigrant children and/or with English learners. 

As a prelude to his questions, Roy claimed, the national debt is “now cracking $39 trillion, and I would note that there are a lot of reasons why, and this is one of them … we continue to have this fanciful notion that we can just say, ‘Anybody can come into the United States and it doesn’t have an impact on our overall budget.'”

that Texas schools enroll roughly without legal documentation, adding, “for every English learner, Texas schools receive $616 or $950 for those enrolled in a dual language program.” He then asked the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Mandy Drogin, one of the witnesses called by Roy and his Republican colleagues, “How much does that cost?” Drogin estimated that this cost Texas around $830 million per year.��

, this is wildly irresponsible data use. That $830 million isn’t being spent on the estimated 100,000 undocumented children in Texas. It’s being spent on the state’s . 

Meanwhile, those 100,000 undocumented children are a diverse group, with some who are likely currently classified as English learners, others who have already become proficient in English and have moved out of that group and some who spoke English well enough upon their arrival in U.S. schools that they were never classified as English learners in the first place.

Data on English learners that are . In other words, conflating spending on English learners with spending on undocumented children is a bit like claiming that a public library is wasting money on foreigners just because international tourists sometimes come in to use the public WiFi network. 

What’s more, because the overwhelming majority of English learners are U.S. citizens, if Plyler were reversed and undocumented children were blocked from school, major budget savings. Texas schools would still enroll well over a million English learners with citizenship and/or legal residency documentation. The state would still — hopefully — want to maintain these U.S.-born students’ linguistic and academic success.

That last bit is key. Texas schools are with linguistically diverse kids — regardless of their citizenship status or their families’ immigration statuses. In the Lone Star State — and the  — data show these do well. That academic success produces better prepared graduates who go on to contribute more to the economy than they would have if blocked from school — earning more, paying more taxes and spending more in their local communities.

 This is why of immigration nearly always find that newcomer families — — grow the economy and than they cost to public service programs.

These recent assaults on kids’ access to public schools exacerbate a concerning conservative trend — policy research organization KFF studied during the 2024 election and found widespread public confusion. Their researchers polled the public and found that Republicans were significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to agree with false, negative claims about immigrants. 

When presented with the false statement that “Immigrants are causing an increase in violent crime in the U.S.,” fully 45% of Republicans responded that this was definitely true and 36% said it was probably true. By contrast, 39% of Democrats believed that the statement was definitely false — and another 39% believed that it was probably true. 

Look: Research is not ambiguous on this question — immigrants are to commit violent than U.S.-born adults. As a National Policing Institute summary of the evidence , “political scapegoating and hyperbole are no substitute for scientific evidence.” 

For leaders serious about improving schools for all kids, that’s obviously true. But the subcommittee’s attacks on Plyler show that a perverse inversion of that line may also be true: When it comes to ambitious demagogues, evidence is no match for the allure of xenophobic, hyperbolic scapegoating. 

The views expressed here are Conor P. Williams’s alone, and do not reflect those of his employer or any other affiliated organizations. 

Teachers from certain other states could start working in South Carolina classrooms more quickly under a House committee advanced Thursday.

The bill, which passed out of the Education and Public Works Committee 14-4, would make South Carolina the to join a compact agreeing not to make teachers reapply for the certification they need before starting instruction.

“We’re doing our best to fill vacancies in our classrooms with safe, sound, well-educated people, not very, very kind but untrained substitutes who are filling our classrooms,” said Rep. Shannon Erickson, a Beaufort Republican who leads the committee and sponsored the bill.

Under existing law, anyone licensed to teach in another state must when they move. Approval from the state education department depends on how well their home state’s requirements align with those in South Carolina.

Automatically accepting out-of-state licenses could speed up the process and make things easier for teachers coming into the state, teachers’ advocates and supporting legislators said.

Educators who went through the process of getting a teaching license in another state shouldn’t have to start over just because they’ve moved, said Dena Crews, president of the South Carolina Education Association.

“They’ve done the work already,” Crews said. “That needs to count for something.”

The compact initially started in 2023 with the goal of helping military families, who often need to move with little notice.

For teachers married to military members, moving to a state with an agreement that accepts their licensure could reduce some of the stresses of relocating, said Patrick Kelly, a teachers’ advocate with Palmetto State Teachers Association. He gave Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, home of House Speaker Murrell Smith, as an example.

Moving is already a difficult process, and attempting to get the paperwork together to apply for certification can make it even harder, Kelly said.

“Anything we can do to diminish the burden on those families that are already serving our nation through uniform service, I think that’s just commonsense policy,” Kelly said.

The agreement would go beyond military families. Anyone moving into the state would be able to start teaching as soon as they found a job, potentially creating another avenue to fill the the state still had at the beginning of this school year.

That was a dramatic drop from the record-high number of vacancies schools reported after the COVID-19 pandemic, but anything the state can do to get more teachers is a good thing, Kelly said.

Plus, the state could then harness its recent influx of residents, said Ryan Dellinger, director of education policy for conservative think tank Palmetto Promise Institute. Many of those moving are retirees , but others might be certified teachers looking for a new job, he said.

And even more might decide to move into the state with the agreement in place, Dellinger said.

Neighboring states North Carolina and Georgia have not yet joined the compact, so a teacher looking to move to the Southeast without a specific location in mind might choose South Carolina because they know they’ll have an easier time transferring their certification, Dellinger said.

Under the agreement, “South Carolina is suddenly a very competitive place to live,” Dellinger said.

If North Carolina and Georgia did decide to sign agreements of their own, that could also help the state’s recruitment efforts, Kelly said. Teachers just over the South Carolina border might decide to start teaching in the state if they didn’t have to get another certification, he said.

“I’d love to make it even easier for their certified educators to come to South Carolina and work with our students,” Kelly said.

That could cut both ways.

Other states would recognize South Carolina’s certification in turn, potentially drawing some teachers away. But with the state’s growth and recent improvements in teacher salaries and working conditions, that’s not likely to make a major difference, Kelly said.

Last year, the Legislature passed the which, among other things, made renewals of teacher certificates easier, guaranteed planning time, and required districts to tell teachers their expected salaries before they sign contracts.

As for pay, the state’s minimum salary for first-year teachers has risen from $30,113 in 2017 to $48,500 this school year.

Following the governor’s recommendation, the House’s first draft of the state budget would increase state-paid minimums by $2,000 across the , which pays teachers by years of experience and college degree. That means no first-year teacher could make less than $50,500 next school year. Many districts pay above the minimums.

“This is a place where educators want to come work,” Kelly said. “Let’s make it to where they can come and do it.”

How much time and trouble the proposal would save teachers moving from a state within the compact would vary.

Under the existing process, the timeline depends on how quickly teachers can get together the information needed for the application. Kelly likened it to the process of getting a passport.

“How quickly you can do that is dependent on how quickly you can put your hands on the paperwork that you need,” he said.

Teachers with less than three years of experience must pass tests to gain additional certificates required. And all newly arriving teachers, regardless of their experience, must complete an evaluation of their skills before they can receive a long-term state certificate that renews with professional development, according to the Department of Education.

The proposal would erase those steps for teachers coming from a state within the compact.

‘Simply an option’

Most of the pushback on the bill Thursday came from several of the House’s most conservative members, who worried about the state giving too much of its authority to other states, especially those with Democratic majorities.

Teachers in Washington, for instance, are required to undergo training on diversity, equity and inclusion to earn their teaching certifications, which could influence their teaching, said Rep. Stephen Frank, a member of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus. Or, the commission overseeing the compact might try to pressure South Carolina into accepting similar requirements, he said.

“While on day one I don’t see that posing a great threat to us, in this compact, it sets up this commission, which will then promulgate rules, and we have no idea what those rules may be or may become,” the Greenville Republican said.

While the bill makes it easier for out-of-state teachers to hunt for jobs, schools don’t have to hire them, Erickson said. And South Carolina keeps control of its licensing process, meaning the commission would have no control over how it certifies teachers, she said.

“It simply allows an open door in one piece — literally one piece — of their qualification to not have to wait,” Erickson said. “It’s not saying that they have to be hired. It’s simply an option.”

South Carolina has agreements to recognize out-of-state licenses for other professions, including nursing, physical therapy, mental health therapy, social work and corrections officers, Erickson said. Boating licenses also apply between states.

Teachers should get the same treatment, Erickson said.

“I think these partnerships are really important,” Erickson said. “They’re a good way of making sure that if you do have someone who’s saying, ‘Oh, well, I might want to move in this area of the country right now, we’re going to stand out.’”

“That’s really never a bad thing,” she added.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com.

In February, the telehealth company , including clinicians who worked directly with students and families, leaving about 500 employees. 

The company lost one of its biggest customers, the Los Angeles County Office of Education, last year. It shortened its contract with the Chicago Public Schools because of “challenges securing funding,” a spokeswoman said. And several districts across the country have also either ended their business with Hazel or have contracts that expire later this year. 

they are “restructuring” the company to put it in a better position as it pursues more stable sources of funding, like billing Medicaid and private insurance, now that the federal relief funds some districts used have expired. Company spokeswoman Emilie Fetterley said no additional layoffs are expected “at this time” and that many states and districts plan to renew their contracts. 

But according to internal memos, by a news outlet covering mental health, CEO Iyah Romm said the company was losing “too much money” to meet its goals. Since the expiration of the Los Angeles contract, the company has even, at times, absorbed the cost of services, Fetterley said. 

Some say the company faces a difficult road ahead.

There is a “massive need” to address student mental health and behavior issues, said Adam Newman, co-founder of Tyton Partners, a consulting firm focused on the education sector. Until the relief funds ran out, “there were enough dollars in the system for schools and districts to find ways to underwrite these types of programs. But the risk has always been: What’s the durable funding model?”

In Missouri, the Ferguson-Florissant district, outside St. Louis, ended its business with Hazel last year.

“They were great to work with,” said spokeswoman Onye Hollomon. Hazel served about 2,000 students in the district, which used COVID relief funds to pay for the program. “Once that phased out, we had to make that cut.”

Los Angeles spent more than $28 million in one year to make Hazel available to the county’s 80 districts, according to GovSpend, a data company tracking payments to government agencies. It funded its deal with the company by tapping a $389 million . Between March 2022 and May 2024, 804 schools in the county referred 9,337 students for services, according to data Hazel provided to the county. Of those, 4,162 students received at least one visit, with students participating in an average of six visits. Fetterley said once a student is referred to Hazel, parents don’t always follow through with a visit or may seek help elsewhere.

In addition to taking a loss on services for some students since last year, Hazel has relied on billing insurance, including Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, and contracts with individual districts. Leaders are currently negotiating contracts with districts for next school year. 

Hazel is also one of eight providers approved for a new program that allows 700 districts throughout California to be reimbursed for services by Medi-Cal or private insurers. It participates in a similar in Iowa, and in Nevada, the Clark County School District uses Medicaid funds to pay for Hazel services, but that ends in June. A spokesperson said the board has not yet decided whether to renew it.

‘Made their mark’

Telehealth programs, delivered through schools, were expanding long before the pandemic. They offer families convenient access to a remote doctor or therapist while preventing students from missing school for appointments that often turn into full-day absences. Hazel Health, founded in 2015 by health care executive Josh Golomb, was part of that growth. 

“Telehealth providers have made their mark in school-based health care,” said Nirmita Panchal, a senior policy manager at KFF, a nonprofit focusing on health policy. “They eliminate transportation barriers, where students may not be able to physically get to a provider.”

During the pandemic, when learning and work suddenly went virtual, telehealth programs for schools . of school-based health centers showed that during the 2020-21 school year, more than 80% of respondents offered telehealth services, up from 19% in 2016-17. 

The financial landscape has since changed. A lot of districts are now cutting budgets to close deficits. GovSpend, which doesn’t capture all district spending, shows a decline in payments to , a similar company, since 2023, while , another virtual mental health provider, saw a more stable influx of funds from 2024 to 2025. 

Among providers, however, Hazel Health stands out. The company, which serves 6,000 schools in 21 states, initially focused on primary health care, with physicians prescribing over-the-counter medications for routine symptoms like stomach pain or headaches. In 2021, the company broadened its model to provide mental health services and respond to “rising unmet student needs and limited access to care,” Fetterley said. 

In Florida’s Duval County schools, Brittany Beimourtusting reached out to Hazel last school year when she was going through a divorce. Her middle child, she said, was having trouble adjusting.

“It was a single-parent household all of a sudden, and I thought, ‘How am I supposed to get him to get help because I think he could use therapy,’ ” she said. The provider, she said, met with him about five times and helped him open up about what he was feeling. “It was definitely worth it.”

But when Superintendent Christopher Bernier looked for ways to save the district some money last year, a $1.4 million payment to Hazel was on the list.

‘A connected system’ 

Four years ago, the startup’s future looked bright.

It attracted over $50 million from investors, including Fiore Ventures, founded by Walton family heiress Carrie Walton Penner. As recently as last year, Hazel was still eyeing growth. It made two acquisitions, including , which offers family therapy, to further expand mental health services. 

“Together, we are building a connected system that supports children from their classrooms to their kitchen tables,” wrote Andrew Post, then �Ჹ�����’s president, in October. But he has since resigned, writing this month that it was time to turn to the “next chapter” in his career.

�Ჹ�����’s was supposed to run through the end of 2027. Now it will end on June 30. Still, district officials said the layoffs have had no impact on the services students receive. In a pilot program that began in March 2025, the district made mental health services available to 84 high schools. As of January, 420 students had taken advantage of the program, the district said.

In December, Destiny Singleton, the honorary student member of the Chicago Board of Education, told members that students don’t always feel comfortable talking to school counselors about personal issues because those staff members are often focused on academic performance and preparing for college. That’s why talking to an outsider can be helpful. But she added that students at the district’s larger high schools are often unaware that Hazel is even an option.

Some Chicago parents, however, are wary of Hazel and say families don’t always know what they’ve agreed to when they consent to allowing their child to meet with a Hazel provider. In to Chicago district leaders last year, student privacy advocates said they were concerned about whether Hazel properly secures students’ private information. 

The company’s acquisition of Little Otter, , raises red flags because Rebecca Egger, its CEO, formerly worked for Palantir, a federal contractor known for using AI to assist the Department of Homeland Security in its . 

In a response to Chicago officials, Romm, the CEO, wrote that Hazel does not “sell, share, or use student data for any commercial purpose,” and that it “does not have any relationship with Palantir, commercial or strategic.”

Fetterley, the company spokeswoman, also said Hazel is in the early stages of rolling out chatbots to “simplify administrative tasks like scheduling for parents and clinicians,” but that AI will never be a “substitute for our human providers.”

Even so, some districts see a much higher demand for in-person rather than virtual clinicians. In Broward County, Florida, where Hazel provides medical services, but not mental health support, 179 students completed a telehealth visit between August and December last year, according to district data. Over that same time period, more than 134,000 students visited a school clinic.

“Parents want nurses,” Cynthia Dominique, chair of the District Advisory Council and a parent in the district, told the school board in March. As a nurse practitioner, she questioned how a provider working remotely can diagnose and treat most common symptoms, like congestion or a sore throat.

“I can’t ask the registrar from the front desk, ‘Can you look in the kid’s mouth and tell me what you see?’ ” she told ����Ӱ��. “They don’t know what they’re looking for.”

For district leaders, however, �Ჹ�����’s ability to keep kids from missing school provided an effective selling point.

During a 2023 meeting, Duval County School Board Member Darryl Willie said the program had saved the district 4,000 “classroom hours” during the 2021-22 school year.

“We’re talking about making sure we’re focused on reading, writing and math,” he said. “The only way we can do that is if students are in school, in classrooms, sitting in seats.”

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation provides financial support to ����Ӱ��.

State officials, activists and educators have largely shaped public dialogue about Texas’ social studies overhaul, but young people added their voices to the conversation Tuesday, calling for instruction that includes diverse perspectives and challenges them to think critically.

The majority-Republican education board began last year to redesign Texas’ social studies standards, which outline what students need to learn by the time they graduate. The board plans to finalize the standards this summer, with classroom implementation expected in 2030.

Up to this point, a majority of the board has to center Texas and U.S. history in social studies while deemphasizing world cultures, world history and geography. A has helped guide the process, almost all of whom have no K-12 classroom experience in Texas and several of whom have ties to . Critics say the panel has assumed full control of Texas’ social studies rewrite, undermining teacher expertise. of the social studies changes, critics argue, prioritize memorization over critical thinking and simplification over accuracy.

The students who testified before the State Board of Education on Tuesday, the first of four days of meetings in Austin, expressed disappointment in the overhaul — saying it focuses too heavily on Western civilization at the expense of other cultures, lacks historical perspective of people of color, and prioritizes Christianity over other major world religions.

They want to learn the good, bad and ugly aspects of history. They want to understand why things happened and how they connect to other events. They want the board to give parents and teachers more opportunities for input. They want the board to slow down and take more time to develop the standards. They want to eliminate political agendas. They want to feel seen.

“We know when something is being left out,” said Caiden Davis, a high school junior from Humble. “What we need from our schools isn’t a watered-down version of history. We need the truth even when it’s uncomfortable, even when it challenges us.”

Instead of omitting perspectives, said Houston student Zayra Espinoza, Texas should “focus on supporting teachers, investing in students and ensuring classrooms remain spaces for learning, not political control.”

And students need to see their perspectives reflected in social studies, because “everyone deserves to be represented,” said sixth-grader Jomeyra Sharif.

“Schools should do more to promote equality, respect different cultures, and making all students feel included,” Sharif said, “so they can be proud to be American.”

The board will finalize the standards in June. Meetings have only grown more contentious as the deadline moves closer.

Democrats have sought honest depictions of slavery and the historical contributions of people of color. Republicans want to prioritize American exceptionalism and Christianity, criticizing Muslim Texans who testify in favor of Islam being depicted in lessons accurately and fairly. Teachers feel excluded, calling the process rushed and early proposals inadequate. Many feel political actors have assumed control of a process that should instead focus on educating students.

Students who spoke Tuesday, during a meeting that stretched beyond 12 hours, said they want social studies instruction to include more women, Hispanic and Black perspectives. They want to learn about African kingdoms. They want to know more about the Middle East.

When students are not challenged to do more than just identify and describe historical events, “that means less analyzing, less questioning, and less discussion,” said Gannon Davis Keener, a seventh-grader in Humble.

“I want to learn history in a way that challenges me to think, not just remember,” Keener said. “I respectfully ask that you slow down and allow teachers and parents a greater role in revising these standards to keep the level of thinking high so students can truly learn, understand and enjoy history.”

This first appeared on .

What gets discussed far less often is that this pattern rarely begins in third or fifth grade, when participation gaps become easier to see. It begins in children’s first classroom experiences, where they learn whether speaking feels safe, whether mistakes are survivable and whether the classroom has room for the way they enter language.

The problem is not simply that some children talk more than others. It is that schools often mistake fast, public participation for understanding and then build opportunity around that mistake. A child who speaks quickly and often is usually read as engaged, confident and capable. A child who hesitates, watches or offers little is more likely to be read as uncertain, underprepared or less able.

Yet speaking in front of others is not a simple measure of understanding. It requires children to process a question, organize language quickly, tolerate public attention and respond while everyone is listening. For multilingual learners, it may also mean searching across languages while monitoring pronunciation and trying not to make a visible mistake.

What can look like “just talking” is often thinking under pressure.

When schools confuse reduced public response with reduced competence, they begin shaping a trajectory. That trajectory is rarely built through cruelty or obvious exclusion. More often, it emerges through small instructional decisions that seem reasonable on the surface. When participation in whole-group discussion decreases, teachers—often out of care—may call on certain students less, simplify questions or stop asking for elaboration. Meanwhile, other students are invited to explain, justify, extend and defend their thinking.

Each decision appears minor, but over time they accumulate. Opportunities to demonstrate complexity expand for some students and quietly contract for others. This is how underestimation takes root in schools — not through overt exclusion, but through a subtle redistribution of opportunity.

The problem deepens when educators collapse many different experiences into the single category of “quiet.” From the outside, quiet students can look similar, but the reasons beneath the silence are not. Some are fluent and expressive in low-pressure settings but constricted in public ones. Others understand directions in two languages and still shut down the moment speaking becomes public.

In everyday classroom moments — during snack, in play, or beside one trusted peer — these same children often become animated and engaged. Expression can expand quickly when pressure is lowered, home language is welcomed, or an adult creates space for response.

In one kindergarten classroom, a child who rarely spoke during group instruction began, almost invisibly, by moving his chair a few inches closer to the circle each day. The teacher noticed and named the shift without demanding more than he was ready to offer. “You came closer today,” she told him, and later, “I see you’re staying with us.”

Within days, he began whispering answers to a partner, and within weeks he was participating in small-group discussion. His language had not suddenly changed. The environment had. That is the point schools too often miss: Participation begins before speech.

In early classrooms, many children participate long before they do so in polished verbal form. They move closer to the group, track the teacher’s face, point instead of answering, imitate actions, sort materials, whisper to peers or respond through gesture and gaze. These are not lesser forms of participation. They are participation in its earliest form.

Yet schools often reward only the most visible and verbally fluent version of engagement, while everything that comes before it is treated as secondary. For multilingual learners and other cautious children, this creates a profound mismatch: their bodies are already engaged while the classroom waits for a kind of public speech they are not yet ready to produce.

If schools want to turn this around, they do not need an expensive new program. They need to stop treating the fastest and most exposed form of response as the clearest proof of understanding.

That shift begins with classroom routines. Before asking for a public answer, teachers can build in real “think time” —10 or 15 seconds that give students a chance to process before the quickest voices take over. They can let students rehearse with a partner before whole-group discussion, so the first public response is not also the first act of language formation.

They can ask students to point to evidence, sketch an idea, jot a sentence or sort materials before speaking aloud. They can return to a child after another voice has entered the conversation, instead of treating one missed moment as closure. And they can widen what counts as participation so that gesture, writing, peer explanation, and home-language processing are recognized as evidence of thought.

Teachers can also lower the social risk built into participation by slowing the pace when questions become more demanding, avoiding rapid-fire questioning that rewards only the quickest responders, and making hesitation less punishing. “Take a second and think” invites participation differently than “Come on, you know this.” “Show me first” opens a door that “Use your words” can close.

Just as important, teachers can look for patterns instead of drawing conclusions from isolated moments. A student who is silent in whole-group discussion but expressive in play, writing, small groups or in another language is not showing an absence of understanding. That variability is information: It shows that expression is conditional, not fixed, and that classroom conditions shape what becomes visible.

These moves do not lower rigor — they make it more accurate. Rigor is not how fast a child can speak in front of others. It is whether a classroom can recognize thought before it arrives in its most polished, public form.

When silence is misinterpreted early, the consequences extend far beyond one discussion. Expectations drift downward. Opportunities narrow. Referrals increase. Children acquire identities they did not choose: hesitant, low, disengaged, behind. What begins as a participation gap becomes an opportunity gap, and over time the system names what it helped create.

The student who lowers her hand is not always unsure, unmotivated or disengaged. She may be calculating whether the room is safe enough for the way she speaks, whether there is time to find language without being rushed, and whether what she is about to say will be met with patience or correction. If schools want more students to participate, they should stop treating voice as something children either have or do not.

Participation is not a trait — it is a condition. Quiet students do not need louder prompts. They need safer entry points. If schools understood that earlier, they might stop asking why some students do not raise their hands and start asking the more important question: What have we taught them participation will cost?

Every child who starts at Lemay Child and Family Center in St. Louis County receives a developmental screening during their first month of attendance.

Based on these screenings, kids can receive speech or occupational therapy at the center, and staff can connect families with community support like help sourcing healthy food.

“The economy right now is just really challenging,” said Denise Wiese, the center’s executive director. “So we feel that those extra supports we give parents and children are really critical.”

More than 60% of the children the center serves qualify for a state subsidy program that helps cover the cost of day care for low-income and foster children.

But if lawmakers approve a proposed $51.5 million cut to that program, Wiese told The Independent, the center could be forced to roll back services or reduce scholarships that make child care more affordable.

The cuts are part of a laid out by Republican state Rep. Dirk Deaton of Seneca, chairman of the House Budget Committee, that would eliminate incentives the state currently pays on top of the basic child care subsidy rate.

Deaton told the committee the enhancements were created before the state started paying market-rate costs for child care.

“When those were put in place, the rates weren’t, in some cases,100% of market rate,” he said. “In a lot of cases, we’re already paying the market rate. So why would we be paying more than the market rate?”

For child care providers, Wiese said, losing these payments will be “devastating.”

“That increase for us over the standard daily rate is critical because we welcome any child, regardless of the family’s income level or the child’s developmental level,” Wiese said. “…If those enhancements get cut, we will have no choice but to reduce some of the services that we provide for these children.”

Casey Hanson, deputy director at Kids Win Missouri, told The Independent the proposed cuts would have an outsized effect on the state’s most vulnerable children.

The funding enables providers to cover losses if foster families need short-term or irregular child care. It also helps train staff to work with kids who have experienced trauma.

“Some people think, ‘Okay, that funding just gets cut, and so they still get paid the market rate. They don’t get this extra bit,’” Hanson said. “But it’s not an extra bit to be able to provide that additional therapy or additional support.”

With the cut to their bottom line, child care providers may have to turn families away.

“What decisions do they have to make?” Hanson asked. “Do they have to lay off staff? Do they have to close?… Do they just quit taking foster families?”

Some facilities already hesitate to take on those families, Hanson said, and the proposed cuts would “de-incentivize that even more.”

The cuts come during a period of instability for the program. At the end of 2023, the state changed software providers to manage the subsidy payments, and technical difficulties led to a backlog of missed payments that .

Some day care providers closed under the pressure, and the stress continues today.

Demand for child care subsidies has , exceeding the amount of money appropriated to the program this fiscal year.

With available funds shrinking, the state’s education department launched a waitlist for the program at the beginning of March. Children under state care, like foster children, are exempted from the waitlist. Those who qualify based on their income, though, will have to wait until funds are available.

“Our system is already at or over capacity,” Hanson said. “We don’t have enough resources to serve the children and families that are qualified with this current [funding] structure.”

Despite mounting pressure, providers are expected to see a long-awaited change in the way subsidies are paid that state officials promise will be initiated by this summer.

Currently, child care providers submit attendance logs and are reimbursed based on the number of days subsidy children are in their care. In May, the department plans to pay subsidies at the beginning of the month based on enrollment, not attendance.

Gov. Mike Kehoe championed the switch in his inaugural State of the State address last year.

“We will not allow late payments, or technology issues to put these small businesses at risk of not being able to provide for families in need of child care,” he said.

The governor is still supportive of paying providers based on enrollment, but Deaton’s proposed budget could prevent this change.

Deaton’s budget plan includes instructions to pay “solely on a child’s actual attendance and shall not be made prospectively, on authorization, enrollment, contracted slots or any other non-attendance-based methodology.”

State Budget Director Dan Haug told the House Budget Committee Monday that the state would hold off on paying by enrollment in May if Deaton’s suggestion is signed into law for next fiscal year, which begins in July.

“I don’t think it would make sense to make a change in May and then go back on July 1,” he said. “That would not be good for the providers, moving them around with how they’re being paid.”

Paying on enrollment gives flexibility to providers, Wiese said. A family may need to miss 10 days in a month, but the center can only get paid for five absences.

“If a family wants to spend their day with their child, that’s the best thing for the child,” she said. “If [the state is] paying us based on authorization, that slot is paid for whether that child is here or not.”

With budget amendments forthcoming, Hanson hopes to see edits to benefit child care providers.

“We know that (lawmakers) care about children and families,” she said. “But sometimes these decisions don’t reflect that these [cuts] are going to be really painful for children and families in our state.”

The Independent’s Rudi Keller contributed to this report.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com.

Two recent stories by reporters here at ����Ӱ�� demonstrate the ongoing ripple effects of the Trump administration’s massive deportation campaign. One deals with money, the other with home. 

My colleague Linda Jacobson detailed how empty desks are adding up, whether it’s students who are absent from school, families who have been detained or others who’ve left their districts — or fled the country — on their own.

States fund districts based on per-pupil enrollment, and in California, that dollar figure comes from daily average attendance. In Minnesota, where immigration enforcement actions��, the state requires districts to drop students from the rolls if they’ve been absent for 15 straight days. Unless an emergency exemption to the rule is granted, one district outside Minneapolis is facing a $1 million hit to its $51 million budget.

“I remember walking in the hallways going, ‘Holy God, where are all the kids?’ ” an employee in another Minnesota district told Linda. “It was eerie.”

Meanwhile, Jo Napolitano looked at what happens when the parents go missing, specifically after being detained or deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Jo reports that for their children, thousands of whom are U.S. citizens, this abrupt upheaval often means removal from home and��school.

Some can find themselves, brand-new passports in hand, being sent to their parents’ birth country, which may be totally unfamiliar, or to live with family or friends —��unless those adults’ citizenship status is also precarious and they may be too afraid to take them in. An unlucky number are placed in foster care and some are just left alone.

“We’ve heard about 15- and 16-year-olds living by themselves for several weeks because their parents were detained and they had no idea where they were,” one advocate said. “ICE was not checking to make sure they were OK. These are U.S. citizen kids.”
��
Click����and����to read the full stories.

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The battle over homeschooling regulations in Connecticut has intensified after the stepfather of a homeschooled 12-year-old was charged with sexual assault this month in connection with her death. It was the second death of a homeschooled student in the state in the last five months and followed the 2025 discovery of an adult man who told authorities that his stepmother had held him captive for decades under the guise of homeschooling. |

Suspensions are down markedly in the country’s largest��school��district, but New York City��school��officials are not sure why. From July to December 2025,��schools��handed out nearly 9,200 suspensions, 8% fewer than in the same period in 2024. The decline included a nearly 22% drop in long-term superintendent suspensions. |��

And you thought human drivers were hard to train.��The National Transportation Safety Board has launched an investigation into a driverless car that passed a stopped Texas��school��bus last month, just the latest of many such incidents. As of January, Austin Independent��School��District confirmed that Waymo vehicles had committed 24 violations, prompting the district to ask the company��to cease all operations on��school��day mornings and afternoons. |��

A 2021 opera by a groundbreaking Finnish composer about the most American of tragedies —��a��school��shooting —��has come to New York City’s Metropolitan Opera. Populated by 13 characters,��Innocence��captures multiple aspects of the horrific event and its aftermath “with brutal honesty and abundant compassion,” making it “an early contender for one of this century’s great operas.” |��

The Education Department announced Monday that it was rescinding Obama- and Biden-era agreements with five��school��districts and one college that were meant to advance LGBTQ+ student inclusion. The administration said the agreements “impermissibly expanded the scope of Title IX to enforce discrimination based on ‘gender identity,’ not biological sex.” |

ChatGPT reportedly assisted��school��shooter.��The state attorney general is investigating the AI chatbot’s alleged role in last year’s Florida State University shooting. The tool developed by OpenAI reportedly told the shooter how to take the safety off of his shotgun three minutes before he opened fire outside and inside FSU’s busy Student Union, killing two and wounding five. |��

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Emotional Support

Finn, a border collie/Australian shepherd mix, contemplates his California existence — or perhaps just whether it’s time for ����Ӱ��’s Phyllis Jordan to feed him dinner.

Why the Classic Learning Test, which embraces Aristotle but spurns calculators, has caught Indiana’s eye

A test that relies on classic Western texts and bans calculators for math will soon play a role in assessing how well Indiana students and schools are doing.

Since February, Indiana has expanded the use of the Classic Learning Test in two key ways. First, a new law requires state colleges and universities to consider CLT scores to the same extent that they would consider SAT or ACT scores for admission.

Second, under a new state accountability model that gives schools an A-F grade based on points students earn for proficiency, the Classic Learning Test is one way high school students can earn bonus points for their schools’ grades. The Indiana State Board of Education approved the use of the test at the last minute when adopting the new A-F model in March. It was not part of previous drafts of the model.

The Classic Learning Test’s expansion is part of a in Indiana and by conservatives to counter what they see as an education system that leans too progressive by providing alternatives they believe are more rigorous and in line with Western tradition.

The elevation of the CLT follows state leaders’ decision in 2024 to in Indiana higher education, a move seen by many as a boon to conservatives on campuses, as well as previous years’ efforts to that could make students feel guilt or . This year, lawmakers also required higher education leaders to explore — in line with .

Supporters of the CLT say they like the test because it assesses students’ reading skills with texts that are foundational to the country’s history. That also aligns with a to foster “a shared understanding of America’s founding principles” on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

But there’s also practical reason to welcome the CLT, supporters say: It shakes up a long-standing testing establishment that gave students just two options for college readiness testing — the SAT or the ACT. That reflects the school choice environment that includes a growing number of classical schools.

“The CLT is the first newcomer since Eisenhower was president,” said Michael Torres, director of legislative strategy for the CLT. “We offer an opportunity for our students to prove they’re ready for college based on the curriculum they use.”

But critics counter that there is not enough evidence to say a CLT score is on par with a score on the SAT or the ACT — especially when the scores are used for high-stakes decisions about school accountability and college admissions.

“It especially matters to make sure that kind of mathematical relationship between the scores is stable and well-founded when there are any consequences in how these tests are used,” said Priscilla Rodriguez, senior vice president for College Readiness Assessments at the College Board, which administers the SAT.

Indiana could eventually decide to let students using vouchers to attend private schools take the CLT instead of the ILEARN state exam that voucher students must now take. A private school leader raised that idea during the legislative session, and CLT officials would support it, Torres said.

But that could make it harder to compare how private school students are performing compared with their peers in public schools. Indiana officials have not discussed this idea publicly.

As Indiana expands the use of the CLT, the state should want to ensure the test it’s well-suited to its academic content standards, measures for school quality, and its goals for students, said Chris Domaleski, executive director of the Center for Assessment. The state advisory committee that focuses on required assessments did not weigh in on including the CLT for school accountability because it’s an optional test, Indiana Department of Education officials said.

“The more it’s used, the more we need to seek evidence that it’s useful, that it has reliability, validity, and fairness, for all student groups, including students with disabilities and multilingual learners,” Domaleski said. “All those kinds of questions we’d ask for any assessment used in a consequential way.”

How do Classic Learning Test scores stack up?

The CLT for juniors and seniors is a two-hour, 120-question test developed in 2015 by founder Jeremy Tate, who “saw there might be interest in a third option that proved students are ready to go to college but didn’t force schools to embrace the Common Core,” Torres said, referring to the state standards that some conservatives came to distrust. Classic Learning Initiatives, the company behind the test, also offers a CLT for grades 3-8 and a 10th grade test.

The CLT uses passages by a bank of Western writers from the ancient to the late modern times — the most recent listed is author Toni Morrison — as well as contemporary nonfiction texts.

Sample questions on “The Epic of Gilgamesh,” for example, ask students to determine based on the passage the reason that caused the gods to flood the land, and determine which lines in the poem support the argument.

Critics say this focus promotes of culture and society — and that the test offers an advantage to students familiar with the pieces. Still, classical schools and educators say these works are fundamental to all students’ understanding of history.

“When we talk about college readiness, what are we talking about? Is it the use of AI? Is it being able to critically think, look at passages, look at historical text?” said Kylene Varner of the Indiana Association of Home Educators, who supported the bill to require colleges to consider CLT results like SAT and ACT results. “If we can’t understand the culture and history … and the writing of our Constitution, how do we learn?”

There are also differences on the math portion of the test, where the CLT does not allow calculators; Torres said that means students must show they are “independently numerate.”

And around 15% to 20% of test-takers utilize a remote option not available on the SAT or ACT, Torres said. This option is important to home-schoolers who may not have access to other tests, Varner said.

But what makes the CLT stand out has in turn raised questions about whether comparing scores from the test to results from other exams can be misleading.

The CLT has published between CLT scores and SAT and ACT scores. Torres said the study behind that table relied on a sample of about 4,500 students and produced reliable results. He noted that in addition to self-reported scores, the company received some scores from the colleges that accept CLT, SAT, and ACT scores.

But representatives from the ACT and SAT . To establish that one score on the SAT reliably correlated to a score on the ACT, the College Board and the ACT jointly examined the scores of more than 500,000 students who had taken both exams, said Colin Dingler, ACT’s chief policy analyst.

In addition to a smaller, less-representative sample size, there are two other key issues with CLT’s score comparison, Rodriguez said: The students’ SAT scores were self-reported, and that sometimes years had passed between the two tests.

Ultimately, it would be unfair if two tests had different passing scores, and one was easier to pass than the other, but some students only had access to the harder test, Dingler said.

“It’s very important from an equity standpoint to have some scientifically established tool to go from the scores of one assessment to another assessment,” he said.

How the CLT factors into school quality, college readiness

One of the primary uses of test scores is to indicate that a student is ready for college.

A handful of private colleges in Indiana — along with around 300 nationwide — already accept the CLT scores, and the .

But few K-12 schools offer the test right now, state education officials said, and most public universities in Indiana don’t require any test scores for admission, although Purdue University is a notable exception.

Supporters of the CLT, including leaders of private classical K-12 schools in Indiana who testified in support of it earlier this year, said the test is for measuring students’ college readiness — or .

Not everyone agrees. Iowa in 2024 recommended against the use of the CLT for admission to its public universities, about the academic performance of the students who took it.

A key question for assessing college readiness is whether a test based on a prescribed curriculum is gauging students’ knowledge of that curriculum, rather than their general readiness for college-level classes. Even in subjects like science, the ACT is written so that students without a familiarity with a specific scientific concept can figure out the question, Dingler said.

“I don’t think that philosophically, there’s something wrong with assessments that are anchored in content or a specific reading list,” Dingler said. “But I do think that using the results of that test to generalize that any student is ready to succeed or to do well … that’s a really different matter.”

Torres said that while classical schools have embraced the test, familiarity with the texts is not a prerequisite for success on the CLT.

“It merely uses those texts to test reading comprehension and grammar,” Torres said. “We find that to be a rigorous measure of college readiness.”

Test scores also play a role in assessing Indiana school quality.

Students’ SAT proficiency will make up 10% of a high school’s letter grade on the state’s new A-F accountability model. But the state’s decision to let schools earn accountability bonus points through student scores on the ACT or CLT might lead schools to push students to take the CLT, “where it may be easy to get a score that looks high compared to the ACT or the SAT but maybe actually isn’t,” Rodriguez said.

In a statement, the state education department said the school accountability system approach to the CLT balances “personalized pathways” with elevating “real opportunities for students.”

The test’s supporters like that flexible approach, which could play a role if Indiana considers letting students using private school vouchers take the CLT instead of the state’s standardized test.

“Allowing schools to use nationally normed assessments like the CLT that are also rigorous … objective, and publicly reportable, this respects both accountability and also educational diversity,” said Rachel Oren, head of school at the Classic Academy in Indianapolis.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .