When they first walk into Match Charter Public High School, students confront a purely physical challenge: its steep marble staircase.

Erected in 1917 as part of a three-story auto accessory and, it frames the main hall of Match, one of Boston’s — and the nation’s — longest-surviving charter high schools. With its wide, sweeping opening and challenging rise, it offers an implicit message, students and teachers say: “You must demonstrate a basic level of dedication simply to get to class on time. Come on in. This will be hard, but stick with it.”

“It’s just a thing that happens for everyone who comes into the school,” said senior Caleb Tolento. “You have to get used to the stairs eventually, because you have to go through all the different levels of the school.” 

But alongside the challenge is an unprecedented level of support, students say. 

Founded in 2000 as the uppercase MATCH: Media and Technology Charter High School, after 25 years it remains stubbornly small and intensely personalized, offering a stunning contrast to how many other charter organizations have developed: Each morning, just 266 students from all over Boston — many of whom ride the bus or subway for more than an hour — crowd into the trim three-story edifice.

Once inside, students enjoy a college-prep curriculum and four years of classes in a place that both pushes and nurtures them. 

“You grow up with this community of people that stay with you,” said alumnus Jeffrey Vittini, who graduated in 2023 and now attends Northeastern University. “You get to know everyone.”

In 25 years, Match, which also operates an elementary and middle school elsewhere in the city, has resisted expanding to other neighborhoods, let alone other cities. For the past 22 years, it has occupied the same space that until 2001 housed Ellis the Rim Man. The front corner of the building, facing bustling Commonwealth Avenue, once housed a mobile phone store — it’s now the school’s college counseling office, but everyone still calls it “the cell store.”

Match has kept itself intentionally small, even as a handful of innovations piloted there have spun off.

“We’re not a company,” said Jay Galbraith, the network’s managing director of academics, who offered something approaching Match’s credo: “If we have a good idea that works, share it.”

Since its founding, Match has seen its staffers found , a curriculum company, the coaching nonprofit and , a nonprofit tutoring provider. But it hasn’t expanded its schools portfolio, Galbraith said, “especially if that would come at the cost of not serving our kids as effectively.”

With just three schools, he said, “We can make faster moves,” changing curriculum, services or whatever needs tweaking. “We’re not trying to steer a ship of 100,000 kids.”

This fall, however, political realities are threatening Match’s model, which for a quarter-century has been built partly on intensive tutoring for nearly every student.

What comes after ‘no-excuses’?

Like many charter schools that serve predominantly low-income students of color, Match has spent the years since the outbreak of the COVID pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests searching for a balance between its no-excuses roots and what many consider a more humane pedagogical and disciplinary approach. 

That, several educators and students said, is a work in progress.

“What we’ve given up is high behavioral expectations that lead to exclusion,” said principal in residence Jermaine Hamilton. So while detention is back on the menu after administrators nixed it during the pandemic, out-of-school suspension isn’t coming back. “We don’t believe excluding our students sends the message that they are welcomed here, that we want them here, and that they are allowed to make mistakes and grow here.”

In the bargain, the school’s disciplinary team has grown from one “dean of school culture” to two.

In interviews, students welcomed the shift, which also meant the end of school uniforms in favor of a moderate dress code. 

Nearly all stressed that close-knit relationships make the school tick.

“They started to realize that the community they’re building up, that’s the biggest aspect of Match that makes it what it is,” said Tolento, 17. “And they’re kind of leaning more into that, especially in the high school.”

In the absence of no-excuses discipline, Match has doubled down on personal relationships and the importance of teachers simply getting to know students. 

“For a time, we replaced ‘no excuses’ with ‘all the excuses,’” said history teacher Andrew Jarboe. While that was challenging for teachers, he said, “Now I feel we’re in a place where we’re sort of correcting and finding the balance.” 

Among the interventions that remain: intensive therapy sessions, extensive academic tutoring and college counseling services that would make a private school headmaster blush.

Nearly half of Match students sit for one-on-one therapy sessions of up to 50 minutes weekly, said Kerry Sonia, one of the school’s four full-time counselors. That reality creates “a culture around counseling where students are super-comfortable with us,” she said. Match students “love talking about their feelings, which is nice.”

A Match alumna herself, Sonia attended both the middle and high school, where she was often the only white student in the building. She recalled that as a student, she often felt that adults, in their attempts to get students to sit up straight, track speakers’ eyes and not dawdle in the restrooms, were quietly offering a kind of implicit character education. But to students it often felt more like behavioral conditioning.

Years later, she sees that approach as dehumanizing. “If someone was trying to track how long it took me to go to the bathroom every day, that would also annoy me.”

The pivot, she said, should be more properly understood as going from “no excuses” to “high expectations and high supports,” emphasizing both more student accountability and self-advocacy.

So even as the school has followed the lead of many high schools in instituting a cell phone ban, seniors may keep phones this fall. It’s a bid to give them a measure of control before they take off for college and careers.

Jarboe, for his part, is delighted. “This is my first year in more than a decade where the cell phone is not ubiquitous,” he said. “My first week of teaching this year was actually quite remarkable. Students were laughing at my jokes again. They were paying attention again.”

He added, “It feels like I’ve got my students back.”

Tutoring takes a hit

One recent morning, tutor Saul Escorza, a recent University of Pennsylvania graduate, sat at a high-top table on the school’s open-concept third floor, as a series of students approached for extra help with geometry. In his first five weeks, he has noticed that many students struggle to keep up with classes that simply move too quickly. 

“If you’re in an environment where they give you a day or two for the concept and then move on, but you need more, you’ll start to fall behind,” he said. “So for me, it’s just trying to figure out where they started falling back.”

Many students are capable of learning math but struggle to recall the basics. “So it’s just making sure that their foundation is solid, and then hopefully from there it becomes much more easy for them to grasp the higher-level things.”

If Match is known for anything, it’s this. It was one of the first charter schools to pilot intensive tutoring for nearly all students. The policy far predated the COVID-19 pandemic — a recent book on the topic called Match “patient zero for tutoring at scale.”

The program began as a partnership with MIT students, who earned federal work-study salaries to tutor Match students a few times a week. By 2003, offered every student two hours of tutoring daily.

But this fall, Escorza is lucky to be here. Federal funding cuts have forced the school to trim its tutoring — each fall, it typically opens its doors with an eye-watering 20-person, full-time tutoring staff. Due to the Trump administration’s nearly $400 million in cuts to the program, Match has had to scale back to just nine part-time tutors.

About 30 Match sophomores — somewhere between 40% and 50% of the class — now get geometry tutoring every day. A few tutors work on life skills for students who need them, while others help students catch up on missed classwork.

Devin Baker, who directs Match Corps, said she’s working on ways to bring it back to its former glory, perhaps by hiring local graduate students. Most years, virtually every freshman and sophomore sits with a personal tutor several times a week. That in particular has long helped Match stand out, since for many students it can mean the difference between taking basic coursework and tackling Advanced Placement courses.

Tutors attend meetings with students’ classroom teachers and special ed staff and are “uniquely positioned to get to know the kids and advocate for the kids on a level that classroom teachers just can’t get to in the same way,” said Baker, herself a tutor as a member of City Year, the AmeriCorps program that until this fall underwrote Match’s tutoring.

Several teachers said the loss of funding carries bigger stakes than just a smaller tutoring corps. It’s “the foundation and the fabric that weave this place together,” said Kyle Winslow Smith, Match’s director of curriculum and instruction for the humanities.

He and colleagues have relied on tutors not just for boosting kids’ math skills but for helping students with executive functioning and planning. It’s also a key pipeline for Match teachers — more than a dozen current teachers started as tutors.

The AmeriCorps funding cuts, Smith said, are devastating to a community like Match. “Because Title I charter schools and AmeriCorps serve communities of color, it is a systematically racist policy that they’re imposing upon these schools,” he said. “And it seems like it’s an intentional move to deconstruct a system that is helping communities of color.”

‘It’s so easy to get help’ 

Asked what they like most about the school, virtually all students say some variation of this: The place is crawling with adults offering assistance.

“The school being so small, it’s so easy to get help,” said senior Brianny Pimentel, 17, who prefers to be called by her nickname: “Zero.”

“If you really need help with homework, or if you really need time to finish a test or a quiz, it’s so easy to look for that help,” she said. “There’s so many teachers and tutors around that can help you.”

Between classes, virtually the entire staff emerges from classrooms to shoo students to their next period. After the last bell, many students stay to socialize, get extra help and chat with teachers, said Devon Burroughs, the school’s vice principal. “They’re just hanging out with each other in the lobby, or they’re sitting with a teacher and just talking about life — not necessarily academics, but just to be around a person. Sometimes we have to [say], ‘O.K., it’s 5:40.’” Even then, he said, students linger in the park near the school, reluctant to go home.

Once they get to junior year, Match students gain access to a five-person college counseling staff that rivals those of elite private schools. Each counselor’s case load typically ranges from just 15 to 20 students, and counselors often help families, tax returns in hand, fill out the federal Free Application for Federal Student Aid. 

Over four years at Match, the typical student receives about 400 hours of college counseling, the school says. Most end up visiting more than 20 colleges.

That support typically pays off: 92% of the class of 2025 attend college, with 83% enrolled in four-year institutions. About 50% of alumni who attend college complete a degree within six years. That’s high compared to other charter organizations such as KIPP, which boasts a . 

Senior Tolento, who first attended Match in sixth grade, has his eyes on “a lot of high-end schools,” including Cornell University. Match, he said, is “advocating for me to keep pushing myself upward.”

This spring, his classmate Pimentel will be the third in her family to graduate from Match. Though admission is by random lottery, students with siblings already attending get a leg up. She’s looking at studying business or early childhood education, possibly at Framingham State University.

“Since Day One, since you’re a freshman, they immediately are like, ‘Put in all your effort,’” she said. “They’re really adamant about you trying the hardest you can to accelerate every year, and this year specifically they’re really putting in the work to help us.”

Growing up in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, as one of seven kids of divorced parents, “I found school to be this place of stability, while some other parts of my life were in transition and in changes,” Crosson told ����Ӱ�� in a recent interview. 

“I was a pretty natural student most of the time,” she added, “but it was mostly because I had incredible teachers who invested in their students so far beyond what is expected of the job.”

She said she can remember all the way back to a kindergarten teacher who wrote her letters over the summer because she’d be her teacher again in first grade. “I think I looked at that and said, ‘This is an incredibly rewarding way to spend a life.’”

It became a 14-year career that rewarded Crosson back — and on the national stage. The AP English teacher and high school journalism advisor was named the 2025 April 29 by the . The award, which follows her earning the Pennsylvania Teacher of the Year title, allows Crosson to spend the next year traveling across the country as an ambassador to fellow educators.

She’ll step away from her hometown high school five years after she went back there to answer “this higher calling to return to the place that made me into a successful adult and into somebody who had found joy and happiness in their adult life.”

Crosson, a first-generation college graduate, was selected from a pool of 56 local winners who were narrowed down to three other finalists: American Samoa’s Mikaela Saelua, an English language teacher who is the first finalist from the seven islands in the program’s history; Washington, D.C.’s Jazzmyne Townsend, an elementary school special education teacher and children’s book author; and Colorado’s Janet Renee Damon, a high school history teacher at a transfer school who runs a school-based podcast program focused on mental health disparities.

“Ashlie is an authentic, self-reflective leader who uses her experiences to help elevate her students into successful careers and life after high school,” the National Teacher of the Year Selection Committee said in a “She is also a strong and passionate representative for educators, using her voice to help people understand the weight of the teaching profession and the gravity of what teachers do.” 

Crosson said she grounds the bulk of her classroom work in real-world connections and projects, which allow her students to explore English from a careers-based perspective, while also building understanding and empathy for people of diverse backgrounds across the world.

This is perhaps most apparent in her 10th-grade elective course called Survival Stories, which she began designing as a Fulbright Teachers for Global Classrooms fellow. In it, she wants her students to consider sweeping questions like, “What problems are we trying to solve and in what ways do we need to communicate across borders?” 

To keep the course accessible and age appropriate, all the material —from non-fiction texts and memoirs, to podcasts and films — come from the voices of teens and adolescents. This allows her students, Crosson said, to have, “really authentic and approachable conversations about things that can feel really big and really unapproachable.”

In today’s political climate, traversing some of these charged topics in rural Mifflin — an almost exclusively white town of just over , where almost of the vote went to President Donald Trump in 2024 — might seem daunting. Crosson’s approach is to begin with texts that take place as far from central Philadelphia as possible, so that by the time students reach stories from their own community — some of which they may have otherwise met with preconceived notions — they are able to analyze them with more nuance, greater empathy and a stronger text-based knowledge. 

“We are all here, going through our own human experience,” Crosson said. She wants her students to ask, “ ‘How do I relate to these people? How do I better understand these people?’ Because at the end of the day, my students also want to be better understood. So there’s a reciprocity there.”

When her students come to her with challenging political questions — for example about Trump’s recent executive orders looking to eradicate any focus on diversity, equity and inclusion in schools — she encourages them to return to the facts, asking, “What are the actual details?”

“I’m able to keep my opinions out of things because I’m also first asking my students to put their opinions on pause,” she said, “so that we have a chance to become more informed about things and have a better, more well-rounded understanding of what’s going on before we start trying to figure out our feelings about it.”

In addition to Survival Stories, Crosson teaches AP English Language and Composition and 10th-grade English, while also running the school’s journalism elective. At the newspaper and district magazine, called the Pawprint, she functions more as a boss and editor than teacher, she said, a position she cherishes, especially since a number of the high schoolers end up going into journalism.

“If students are basically getting simulations of future careers, I love that. And I love facilitating that.”

Crosson’s classroom is covered with colorful student artwork from floor to ceiling and ”where students place the word that will most motivate and inspire them throughout the year. 

In a video for , her students were asked to choose five words to describe Crosson: joyful, funny, caring, energetic (but not too much), passionate and dedicated were among their picks.

One student said she sees Crosson as “a safe space.” Another said that whenever she spots students struggling, “She’ll try to make you better as a student and [in] doing that you also learn lessons in how to take help and help others. So I think it makes students better people.”

Along with her teaching responsibilities, Crosson serves as the communications chair for her union’s negotiating team, assists with the school’s programming, leads the district’s international student trips and co-hosts “,” a podcast dedicated to teachers’ professional learning.

When asked her favorite book to teach, Crosson laughed and said, “I honestly think that every book becomes my favorite book.”

“There are some books that I’ve taught for 10 years,” she continued “and so now there’s so many different colored pens [on the pages]. The book is the timeline of my teaching career. And there’s something really beautiful about that.”

Consider the Grinch, agonizing over what to wear to the Whoville Christmas Party while masking deep-seated anxiety about socializing with those who once rejected him. Or Bruce Banner, the Hulk, whose green skin manifests his rage and pain, transforming him into a destructive force that mirrors the internal battles many of us face. These common tales with ostracized beings encourage us to hold hands and dance metaphorically with what we do not understand.

It is for everyone’s benefit when students bear witness to tales of resilience in the face of ignorance. Students need to understand what it means to be… green. 

I teach Frankenstein, a novel about a creature abandoned and misunderstood. Over time, popular culture has leaned into “greenifying” the monster, a color choice that raises an interesting question: Does the green hue signify his villainy, marking him as an unnatural horror? Or does it symbolize his status as an outcast, someone more misunderstood than monstrous? Who is the real monster: the creature, a grotesque replica of man, or the creator who neglects his own Adam, ashamed of what he has made? 

My high school students discuss the complexity of true villainy and examine the ripple effects of both empathy and neglect. Through this lens, the creature exists as a symbolic “other” in society upon his rejection, his green skin becoming a visual cue for alienation. My students begin to consider the ripple effect of compassion — or lack thereof.

I want my students to remember these tales and see the “green” as an opportunity — not to vilify those who are different, but to understand them. The state standards for my Arkansas high schoolers require us to examine characterization, the impact of setting on a character’s development, and the thematic lessons found in these struggles. These are common ELA standards across most states, and they naturally lend themselves to discussions about character flaws and the ability to overcome adversity regardless of one’s background or setbacks. 

I relish this task, often prompting students to reflect on their own trials — times they have felt misunderstood or out of place — so they can connect more deeply with the characters’ turmoil and triumphs. Every day in my classroom, I must remember this too: Uniqueness is to be cherished. A world filled with people who look, think, and live differently is not just a good world, it’s a better one, despite all attempts to stifle the humanity hidden beneath. 

The misunderstood characters in history and literature, green or otherwise, are often the change-makers, pushing forward social progress and widening the acceptable use instructions for being human. My teachers praised the Susan B. Anthonys, the Rosa Parks, the Elie Wiesels for existing in spaces of “different” and pushing against the status quo. 

These figures weren’t just rebels; they were visionaries whose very existence challenged the world to be better. While their skin doesn’t shine emerald in the sun, their differences make them stand out in their respective stories, forcing society to confront its own limitations, expanding our collective capacity for empathy. 

As a child, I loved stories like Charlotte’s Web, The Lorax, and Matilda, where characters overcome bleak societal adversity, their victories rooted not in brute strength but in the quiet, persistent force of understanding: Wilbur is spared because of Fern’s unwavering belief that his life has value. Matilda, dismissed as insignificant, finds empowerment through the kindness and intellect of a good teacher. These narratives teach that empathy isn’t just a virtue—it’s a catalyst for transformation. 

When my students read about Dr. Frankenstein’s creature or discuss real-world figures who were cast aside, they begin to see how otherness isn’t a curse but often a call to change the world — and empathy begins to bloom. Through these tales of the “other,” students learn how to embrace their differences.

Just as the “Wicked Witch” has a story worth hearing, teachers and students cannot shy away from narratives of otherness out of fear. Moving toward understanding the “green” in others helps dismantle the walls of misunderstanding and build a future rooted in compassion, not the harsh divisions that too often define our landscape. It is important now, more than ever, to work hard to see the goodness in others despite our differences. After all, what is truly “wicked” about being green?

From the story of Queen Esther — who convinced her husband, the Persian king, to spare the Jews — to the depiction of Christ’s last supper, the material is designed to draw connections between classroom content and religious texts.

“If you’re reading classic works of American literature, there are often religious allusions in that literature,” state education Commissioner Mike Morath told ����Ӱ��. “Any changes being made are to reinforce the kind of background knowledge on these seminal works of the American cultural experience.” 

With the potential to reach over 2 million K–5 students in the nation’s second-largest state, the update marks a big step in a movement embraced by conservatives to root young people’s education in what they consider traditional values. But it’s bound to raise questions about the potential for religious indoctrination in a state that has been a battleground for such disputes. Last year, for example, Texas passed a law allowing to work as school counselors.

“It is reasonable to devote some attention to [the Bible], and state education standards across the nation often require such attention,” said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “The problem, of course, is that sometimes the legitimate reason of cultural literacy is used as a smokescreen to hide religious and ideological agendas.”

In an interview with a Christian talk show, GOP , who describes himself as a “,” praised the curriculum changes, saying they will “get us back to teaching, not necessarily the Bible per se, but the stories from the Bible.”

The release comes four days after the state Republican party calling on the legislature and the state Board of Education to require instruction on the Bible. Texas education department officials declined to comment on the platform and have emphasized that the new curriculum includes material from other faiths.

While largely hidden from public view, the redesign sparked behind-the-scenes debate long before its release. When a leading curriculum publisher balked at the state’s request to infuse its offerings with biblical content, Texas officials turned to other vendors. They include conservative Christian in Michigan and the right-leaning Texas Public Policy Foundation, which an unsuccessful to require the 10 Commandments in every classroom, according to a list obtained by ����Ӱ��.

‘Great works of literature’

Going far beyond typical reading and writing fundamentals, the new lessons draw on history, science and the arts — “what many people call this classical model of education,” Morath said.

To understand “,” a book about a Jewish family hiding in Denmark during World War II, he said students should understand more about “Jewish cultural practices” and “the vilification of this ethnic minority.” 

A unit on “Fighting for a Cause,” one of several that officials shared with ����Ӱ��, includes the Old Testament story of Esther and how she and her cousin Mordecai “fought for what they knew was right and made a difference that not only affected the Jews of Persia but also Jewish people today.”

The mentions range in size from a page on Esther to a few paragraphs about Samuel Adams at the Continental Congress. His plea to fellow delegates to pray together, despite religious differences, is offered as a first-grade vocabulary lesson on the word “compromise.” 

Fifth graders are asked to read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “.” Written after his 1963 arrest for leading a , King compared his act of civil disobedience to the “refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar” in the Book of Daniel.

“If you don’t know who Nebuchadnezzar is, you don’t know what [King’s] talking about,” Morath said. “How do you make sure that you can unlock in the minds of our kids their ability to wrestle with … ideas that have surfaced in great works of literature?” 

Not just literature, but art. A lesson on “The Last Supper,” da Vinci’s Renaissance masterpiece, points fifth graders to the New Testament. 

“The Bible explains that Jesus knew that after this meal, he would be arrested, put on trial, and killed,” the text reads. “Let’s read the story in the book of Matthew to see for ourselves what unfolded during the supper.”

While drawing parallels to religious texts, Morath said the lessons would respect bright lines regarding the separation of church and state.

“This is still a curriculum for public school and we’ve designed it to be appropriate in that setting,” he said. 

New religious-related material in a proposed Texas elementary school reading program includes Old Testament references to the Liberty Bell, an exploration of the meaning of the Jewish holiday Purim and the story of Christ’s last supper. (Texas Education Agency)

The role of Amplify

The redesign builds on a $19 million m delivered during the pandemic by Amplify, a based in New York.

Roughly 400 districts have used their materials since 2021. Some teachers give them high marks for building students’ and comprehension. But not everyone has been pleased. Last year, Morath who decried its emphasis on and minimal attention to Christianity.

“There’s one mention of Jesus, that he was a teacher a couple thousand years ago,” said Jamie Haynes, who runs a on “concerning” curriculum and library books. “The only other time we can find God, our God — the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — is in the American unit.” 

The issue of how — and whether — to incorporate religious content was fraught long before the curriculum reached school districts.

State officials asked Amplify to provide a lesson on the story of Esther and suggested a unit on Exodus, said Alexandra Walsh, the company’s chief product officer.

While it had previously tweaked its curriculum for other states, Walsh said the company had never been asked to add biblical material. And when it suggested inserting content from other world religions, the state rejected the idea, said Amplify spokeswoman Kristine Frech.

“There was not much appetite for a variety of wisdom texts,” she said. “There was much more of an appetite for the tie to traditional Christian texts.”

The company opted against bidding on a contract to provide additional revisions. In a statement, Texas education officials dismissed Amplify’s charge that they turned down material from other religions as “completely false” and stressed that the finished product “includes representation from multiple faiths.” But the state declined to specify how many of the new lessons have religious themes or derive from Judeo-Christian sources.

In an interview with ����Ӱ��, Morath pointed to a World War II lesson that focuses on J. Robert Oppenheimer’s upon witnessing the explosion of the first atomic bomb in Los Alamos: “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” The words, featured prominently in the recent Oscar-winning film, derive from the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture.   

Kindergarteners studying the Golden Rule would learn that the idea comes from the “Christian Bible,” according to the text, but that similar principles can be found in the “ancient books” of Islam and Hinduism. Another section on the Renaissance highlights Muslim settlers in Spain and their contributions to philosophy, poetry and astronomy.

‘Biblical literacy’

After Amplify bowed out, the state an $84 million contract to the Boston-based Public Consulting Group to revise the curriculum.

For the reading program, the company worked closely with several authors who specialize in , including its role in westward expansion and launching the national space program, according to a list of vendors provided by the state.

But it also leaned on conservative organizations steeped in the culture wars. Contracts went to two officials at the Texas Public Policy Foundation: Courtnie Bagley, the think tank’s education director, and Thomas Lindsay, a higher education director and vocal opponent of . The foundation, which called the 10 Commandments bill an “important step in bringing faith-based values back to the forefront of our society,” declined to comment on their contributions. Public Consulting Group officials also did not respond to questions. 

Hillsdale, another vendor, is a major player in advancing classical education. It authored the , a civics and history model that emphasizes American exceptionalism and is a favorite of conservatives opposed to lessons on institutional racism. When the Florida Department of Education dozens of math textbooks in 2020, citing content influenced by critical race theory, a analysis showed two Hillsdale representatives objected to the proposed materials.

The state did not respond to questions on the role Hilldale and the Texas Public Policy Foundation played in the new curriculum. Hillsdale officials said they provided their feedback free of charge. 

“Hillsdale never profits from its work in K-12, nor does it accept one penny from federal, state or local taxpayers,” said spokeswoman Emily Davis. She added, “Religion is taught for the sake of cultural literacy, not to promote a particular religion.” 

Originally the province of well-heeled private or parochial schools, classical education has blossomed in recent years both as a response to pandemic lockdowns and what some parents view as progressive trends in traditional public schools. The philosophy is rooted in the liberal arts and historical texts, with a sharp focus on the Greek and Roman foundations of Western civilization.

The movement entertains healthy debate about the role of religion, but most practitioners agree that giving students a strong body of knowledge requires the use of primary sources, including the Bible.

“They’re going to need to have some biblical literacy, if only to interpret John Milton, or Dante or Shakespeare,” said Robert Jackson, a senior research fellow with the at Florida’s Flagler College.

‘Devotional in nature’

In Texas, the proposed changes would go far beyond any previous attempt to inject biblical content into its classrooms.

A allows school districts to offer high school electives on the Bible. Demand has been extremely low, however. According to the Texas Education Agency, just over 1,200 of the state’s 1.7 million took the course this year.

But even with their limited scope and popularity, the courses offer ample fodder for skeptics. Writing for the Texas Freedom Network, a religious liberty and civil rights organization, Chancey, the Southern Methodist professor, the courses to be “explicitly devotional in nature.” Despite requirements for teachers to complete special training and maintain “religious neutrality,” Chancey wrote that the Protestant Bible was the preferred text in these courses, while Catholic, Hebrew and Eastern Orthodox Bibles were “presented as deviations from the norm.” In several districts, the courses were taught by local ministers.

The state is now working with a much larger canvas: not a mere elective, but an entire elementary reading curriculum, with a potential audience of millions of students.

Officials are quick to point out that adoption of the new program is voluntary. But a potential $60 per-student it is offering for participation may make it difficult for school systems to refuse.

The updated materials are now open for public review and are scheduled to go before the state Board of Education for approval this fall. Aicha Davis, a Democrat on the Republican-led board, predicted “they would totally support something like that.”

“It doesn’t surprise me that this is happening,” she said.

Arizona’s public schools chief is taking the governor and attorney general to court in an over how English Language Learner students should be taught.

On Wednesday, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, a Republican, filed a lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court asking the judge to settle a disagreement over the interpretation of state law between his office and Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes.

At the heart of the disagreement is whether a teaching model authorized by the State Board of Education and used in as many as across the state complies with a law approved by Arizona voters more than 20 years ago. The 50-50 Dual-Language Immersion model is one of four methods used to teach students who aren’t yet proficient in English, known as English Language Learners. Under the model, students are taught half the day in English and the other half in another language, often their native language.

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Horne, long an opponent of bilingual education, argues that the 50-50 model violates Proposition 203. The measure, which voters approved in 2000, mandates that all students be taught only in English until they’ve achieved proficiency. Acting on that interpretation, Horne from schools using the 50-50 model.

Democrats Hobbs and Mayes disagree with Horne’s stance and strongly support dual language models. In a issued just a month after Horne’s warnings, Mayes said his office has no ability to withhold funding and assured schools that the 50-50 model is protected by the authority of the State Board of Education, to which Horne can, at most, report violations of board rules. She pointed out that a , passed by legislators concerned with the academic struggles of English Language Learners, ordered the board to develop alternative, research-based teaching methods.

That directive ultimately paved the way for the adoption of the 50-50 model and gave the board sole authority over how to teach English Language Learners.

The State Board of Education affirmed shortly after Mayes’ opinion that it had no plans to make any changes to its adopted teaching models or punish schools for using the 50-50 model.

The question of whether the 50-50 model falls afoul of the provisions in Prop. 203 was not discussed in Mayes’ opinion, however. And Horne returned to the conflict in his lawsuit. The Arizona Constitution protects voter-approved initiatives from being amended by lawmakers unless the changes are made in the spirit of the original initiative, and neither the State Board of Education nor the legislature has the power to override the will of the voters, Horne said.

“No governmental body can override a voter-protected initiative,” reads his lawsuit. “The voter protected initiative specifically requires that instruction be in English until the student tests as proficient in English, or a parental waiver is obtained.”

The only exception baked into Prop. 203 is for parents to waive the requirement of an English-only education annually, in writing and in person. While the State Board of Education has said it won’t require waivers, it has also stated that it is within Horne’s power to begin doing so. And, according to Horne, schools that employ the 50-50 model without asking for written waivers are doing so illegally.

“The voter-protected initiative specifically requires that English-language learners be taught English by being taught in English, and that they be placed in English-language classrooms,” Horne’s attorneys wrote. “Dual language classrooms, in the absence of a statutory waiver, are therefore prohibited by the voter-protected initiative.”

In a declaration added to the lawsuit, Margaret Garcia Dugan, Horne’s deputy superintendent who has served under him for two terms and helped draft the language of Prop. 203, said the inclusion of a waiver requirement underscores the English-only aspect of the initiative.

“Had the intended purpose of the initiative been to allow students to be taught in a language other than English throughout the school day, then there would have been no need for the waiver provision,” she said.

Clearly, Dugan said, Prop. 203 was never meant to promote bilingual education, and the efforts from lawmakers to allow the State Board of Education to adopt the waiver-free 50-50 model are nullified as a result.

“Some have interpreted legislation passed by the legislature in 2019 as authorizing dual language classrooms. If that is true, the legislation is invalid as a violation of the Voter Protection Act,” Dugan said. “That is because it does not further the purpose of the initiative, which was to make sure that students are taught English through the school day so that they can learn English quickly and then go on to academic success.”

A common refrain from opponents of dual language models is that it hinders the progress of students learning English, and that argument is present in Horne’s lawsuit, which was also filed against Creighton Elementary School District.

Horne said that the English proficiency rate of Creighton’s English Learner students is dismal, at 5.1% last year, compared to elementary schools in other districts, like Catalina Foothills Unified District, with 33.03% proficient, or Scottsdale Unified District. which saw 23.87% of students become proficient.

But both of those districts are significantly different from Creighton, which has a student body that is , and poor — about in 2022. The demographic makeup of Catalina Foothills Unified, which is similarly sized, is and only 11% of the district’s students qualified for free and reduced meals last year. Scottsdale Unified, which is three times larger than the two other districts, has a . About 22% of Scottsdale Unified students qualified for the free and reduced meal program in 2022.

Research indicates that the dual language models are , albeit at a slower pace than fully immersive methods. Importantly, studies show that full immersion models can for English learners, including depression and anxiety.

Horne requested that the court declare the 2019 law unconstitutional if its purpose was to permit dual language instruction. He also asked the judge to settle the disagreement between his office and those of other state leaders by dismissing Mayes’ opinion as incorrect and declaring that the currently approved 50-50 model is contrary to the provisions of Prop. 203 if there are no waivers being required.

A spokesperson for Mayes declined to comment, saying her office is still reviewing the lawsuit.

Christian Slater, a spokesman for Hobbs, said she will continue to back the 50-50 teaching model as a critical support for students across the state and Arizona’s future workforce.

“Dual language programs are critical for training the workforce of the future and providing a rich learning environment for Arizona’s children,” Slater said. “Governor Hobbs is proud to stand by dual language programs that help ensure the next generation of Arizonans have an opportunity to thrive. She will not back down in the face of the superintendent’s lawsuit.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arizona Mirror maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jim Small for questions: info@azmirror.com. Follow Arizona Mirror on and .

O.K., you’ve probably figured out by now that ChatGPT wrote that self-congratulatory opening. But it raises a question: If AI can produce a journalistic lede on command, what mischief could it unleash in high school English?

Actually, the chatbot, by the San Francisco-based R&D company Open AI, is not intended to make high school English teachers obsolete. Instead, it is designed to assist teachers in their work and help them to provide better instruction and support to their students.

O.K., ChatGPT wrote most of that too. But you see the problem here, right?

English teachers, whose job is to get young students to read and think deeply and write clearly, are this winter coming up against a formidable, free-to-use foe that can do it all: With just a short prompt, it , , , song lyrics, short stories, , , even outlines and analyses of other writings. 

One user asked it to explaining that “Santa isn’t real and we make up stories out of love.” In five trim paragraphs, it broke the bad news from Santa himself and told the boy, “I want you to know that the love and care that your parents have for you is real. They have created special memories and traditions for you out of love and a desire to make your childhood special.”

One TikToker noted recently that users can upload a podcast, lecture, or YouTube video transcript and ask ChatGPT to take complete notes.

ChatGPT Taking Notes From YouTube

Many educators are alarmed. One high school computer science teacher last week, “I am having an existential crisis.” Many of those who have played with the tool over the past few weeks fear it could tempt millions of students to outsource their assignments and basically give up on learning to listen, think, read, or write.

Others, however, see potential in the new tool. Upon ChatGPT’s release, ����Ӱ�� queried high school teachers and other educators, as well as thinkers in the tech and AI fields, to help us make sense of this development.

Here are seven ideas, only one of which was written by ChatGPT itself:

1. By its own admission, it messes up.

When we asked ChatGPT, “What’s the most important thing teachers need to know about you?” it offered that it’s “not a tool for teaching or providing educational content, and should not be used as a substitute for a teacher or educational resource.” It also admitted that it’s “not perfect and may generate responses that are inappropriate or incorrect. It is important to use ChatGPT with caution and to always fact-check any information it provides.”

2. It’s going to force teachers to rethink their practice — whether they like it or not. 

Josh Thompson, a former Virginia high school English teacher working on these issues for the National Council of Teachers of English, said it’s naïve to think that students won’t find ChatGPT very, very soon, and start using it for assignments. “Students have probably already seen that it’s out there,” he said. “So we kind of have to just think, ‘O.K., well, how is this going to affect us?’”

In a word, Thompson said, it’s going to upend conventional wisdom about what’s important in the classroom, putting more emphasis on the writing process than the product. Teachers will need to refocus, perhaps even using ChatGPT to help students draft and revise. Students “might turn in this robotic draft, and then we have a conference about it and we talk,” he said.

The tool will force a painful conversation, Thompson and others said, about the utility of teaching the standard five-paragraph essay, which he joked “should be thrown out the window anyway.” While it’s a good template for developing ideas, it’s really just a starting point. Even now, Thompson tells students to think of each of the paragraphs not as complete writing, but as the starting point for sections of a larger essay that only they can write.

3. It’s going to refocus teachers on helping students find their authentic voice.

In that sense, said Sawsan Jaber, a longtime English teacher at East Leyden High School in Franklin Park, Ill., this may be a positive development. “I really think that a key to education in general is we’re missing authenticity.”

Technology like ChatGPT may force teachers to focus less on standard forms and more on student voice and identity. It may also force students to think more deeply about the audience for their writing, which an AI likely will never be able to do effectively.

“I think education in general just needs a facelift,” she said, one that helps teachers focus more closely on students’ needs. Actually, Jaber said, the benefits of a free tool like ChatGPT might most readily benefit students like hers from low-income households in areas like Franklin Park, near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. “The world is changing, and instead of fighting it, we have to ask ourselves: ‘Are the skills that we’ve historically taught kids the skills that they still need in order to be successful in the current context? And I’m not sure that they are.”

Jaber noted that universities are asking students to do more project-based and “unconventional” work that requires imagination. “So why are we so stuck on getting kids to write the five-paragraph essay and worrying if they’re using an AI generator or something else to really come up with it?”

4. It could upend more than just classroom practice, calling into question everything from Advanced Placement assignments to college essays.

Shelley Rodrigo, senior director of the Writing Program at the University of Arizona, said the need for writing instruction won’t go away. But what may soon disappear is the “simplistic display of knowledge” schools have valued for decades.

“If it’s, ‘Compare and contrast these two novels,’ O.K., that’s a really generic assignment that AI can pull stuff from the Internet really easily,” she said. But if an assignment asks students to bring their life experience to the discussion of a novel, students can’t rely on AI for help.

“If you don’t want generic answers,” she said, “don’t ask generic questions.”

In looking at coverage of the kinds of writing uploaded from ChatGPT, Rodrigo, also present-elect of NCTE, said it’s easy to see a pattern that others have commented on: Most of it looks like something that would score well on an AP exam. “Part of me is like, ‘O.K., so that potentially is a sign that that system is broken.’”

5. Students: Your teachers may already be able to spot AI-assisted writing.

While one of the advantages of relying on ChatGPT may be that it’s not technically plagiarism or even the product of an essay mill, that doesn’t mean it’s 100% foolproof.

Eric Wang, a statistician and vice president of AI at Turnitin.com, the plagiarism-detection firm, noted that engineers there can already detect writing created by large-language “fill-in-the-next-word” processes, which is what most AI models use.

How? It tends to follow predictable patterns. For one thing, it uses fewer sophisticated words than humans do: “Words that are less frequent, maybe a little more esoteric — like the word ‘esoteric,’” he said. “Our use of rare words is more common.”

AI applications tend to use more high-probability words in expected places and “favor those more probable words,” Wang said. “So we can detect it.”

Kids: Your untraceable essay may in fact be untraceable — but it’s not undetectable. 

6. Like most technological breakthroughs, ChatGPT should be understood, not limited or banned — but that takes commitment.

L.M. Sacasas, a writer who publishes, a newsletter on technology and culture, likened the response to ChatGPT to the early days of Wikipedia: While many teachers saw that research tool as radioactive, a few tried to help students understand “what it did well, what its limitations were, what might be some good ways of using Wikipedia in their research.”

In 2022, most educators — as well as most students — now see that Wikipedia has its place. A well-constructed page not only helps orient a reader; it’s also “kind of a launching pad to other sources,” Sacasas said. “So you know both what it can do for you and what it can’t. And you treat it accordingly.” 

Sacasas hopes teachers use the same logic with ChatGPT.

More broadly, he said, teachers must do a better job helping students see how what they’re learning has value. So far, “I think we haven’t done a very good job of that, so that it’s easier for students to just take the shortcut” and ask software to fill in rather meaningless blanks.

If even competent students are simply going through the motions, he said, “that will encourage students to make the worst use of these tools. And so the real project for us, I’m convinced, is just to instill a sense of the value of learning, the value of engaging texts deeply, the value of aesthetic pleasure that cannot be instrumentalized. That’s very hard work.”

7. Underestimate it at your peril.

Open AI’s Sam Altman earlier this month tried to lower expectations, that the tool “is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness.”

Ask ChatGPT to write a , for example, and … well, it’s not very good or very Dylanesque at the moment. The chorus:

Baltimore, Baltimore

My home away from home

The people are friendly

And the crab cakes are to die for.

Altman added, “It’s a mistake to be relying on it for anything important right now.” 

The tool’s capabilities in many ways may not be very sophisticated now, said , an English teacher in northern California. “But we’re fooling ourselves if we think something like ChatGPT isn’t only going to get better.”

Carr asked the tool to write a short story about “kids who ride flying narwhals” and got a rudimentary “Golden Books” sort of tale. But then he got an idea: Could it produce an outline of such a story using Joseph Campbell’s “” template?

It could and it did, producing “a pretty darn good outline” that used all of the storytelling elements typically present in popular fiction and screenplays.

He also cut-and-pasted several of his students’ essay drafts into the tool and asked it to grade each one based on a rubric he provided.

Revolutionizing the English classroom with AI—how can we use technology to enhance student learning and engagement?

“I tell you what: It’s not bad,” he said. The tool even isolated each essay’s thesis statement.

Carr, who frequently posts TikToks about tech, admitted that ChatGPT is scary for many teachers, but that they should play with it and consider how it forces them to think more deeply about their work. “If we don’t talk about it, if we don’t begin the conversation, it’s going to happen anyways and we just won’t get to be part of the conversation,” he said. “We just have to be forward thinking and not fear change.”

But perhaps we shouldn’t be too sanguine. Asked to write a haiku about is own potential for mayhem, ChatGPT didn’t mince words:

Artificial intelligence

Powerful and dangerous

Beware, for I am here

If you went to high school in the United States anytime since the 1960s, you were likely assigned some of the following books: Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” “Julius Caesar” and “Macbeth”; John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”; Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird”; and William Golding’s “The Lord of the Flies.”

For many former students, these books and other so-called “classics” represent high school English. But despite the efforts of reformers, both and , the most frequently assigned titles have never represented America’s diverse student body.

Why did these books become classics in the U.S.? How have they withstood challenges to their status? And will they continue to dominate high school reading lists? Or will they be replaced by a different set of books that will become classics for students in the 21st century?

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The high school canon

The set of books that is taught again and again, broadly across the country, is referred to by literature scholars and English teachers as “the canon.”

The high school canon has been shaped by many factors. Shakespeare’s plays, especially “Macbeth” and “Julius Caesar,” have been taught consistently , when the curriculum was determined by college entrance requirements. Others, like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” winner of the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, were ushered into the classroom by current events – in the case of Lee’s book, . Some books just seem especially suited for classroom teaching: “Of Mice and Men” has a straightforward plot, easily identifiable themes and is under 100 pages long.

Titles become “traditional” when they are passed down through generations. As the education historian Jonna Perrillo observes, of having their children study the same books that they once did.

The last period of significant change to the canon was during the 1960s and 1970s, when the largest generation of the 20th century, the baby boomers, went to high school. For instance, in 1963, at Evanston Township High School in Illinois revealed that “To Kill a Mockingbird,” first published in 1960, was by far the “most enjoyed book,” followed by two books that had been published in the 1950s, J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” and Golding’s “The Lord of the Flies.” None of these books were yet traditional, yet they became so for the next generation.

A comparison of national surveys conducted in 1963 and 1988 shows how several books that were introduced to the classroom when the boomers were students had become classics when boomers were teachers.

During the 1960s and 1970s, teachers even reframed “Romeo and Juliet” as a contemporary work. Lesson plans from the era referred to its adaptations into “” – a musical that – and Franco Zefferelli’s of Shakespeare’s story of star-crossed lovers. It became the perfect hook for ninth graders in a study of Shakespeare that would conclude in 12th grade with “Macbeth.”

Efforts to diversify

English education professor that, since the 1960s, “leaders in the profession of English teaching have tried to broaden the curriculum to include more selections by women and minority authors.” But in the late 1980s, according to his findings, the high school “top ten” still included only one book by a woman – Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” – and none by minority authors.

At that time, a was underway about whether America was a “melting pot” in which many cultures became one, or a colorful “mosaic” in which many cultures coexisted. Proponents of the latter view argued for a multicultural canon, but they were ultimately unable to establish one. A 2011 survey of Southern schools by Joyce Stallworth and Louel C. Gibbons, published in “English Leadership Quarterly,” found that the five most frequently taught books were all traditional selections: “The Great Gatsby,” “Romeo and Juliet,” Homer’s “The Odyssey,” Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

One explanation for this persistence is that the canon is not simply a list: It takes form as stacks of copies on shelves in the storage area known as the “book room.” Changes to the inventory require time, money and effort. Depending on the district, replacing a classic . And it would create more work for teachers who are already maxed out.

“Too many teachers, probably myself included, teach from the traditional canon,” a teacher told Stallworth and Gibbons. “We are overworked and underpaid and struggle to find the time to develop quality lessons for new books.”

The end of an era?

Esau McCauley, the author of “Reading While Black,” describes the list of classics by white authors as the “.” At least two factors suggest that its dominance over the curriculum is coming to an end.

First, the battles over which books should be taught have become more intense than ever. On the one hand, progressives like the teachers of the growing call for the inclusion of books by – and they question the status of the classics. On the other hand, conservatives have challenged or successfully banned the teaching of many new books that deal with gender and sexuality or race.

PEN America, a nonprofit organization that fights for free expression for writers, reports “” in book bans. The outcome might be a literature curriculum that more resembles the political divisions in this country. Much more than in the past, students in conservative and progressive districts might read very different books.

Second, English Language Arts education itself is changing. State standards, such as those , no longer make the teaching of literature the primary focus of English class. Instead, there is a new emphasis on “.” And while preceding generations of teachers voiced concerns about the distractions of and then , books may have an even smaller share of students’ attention in .

“We no longer live in a print-dominant, text-only world,” the National Council of Teachers of English proclaims in . The group calls for English teachers to put less emphasis on books in order to train students to use and analyze a variety of media. Accordingly, students across the country may not only have fewer books in common, but they also may be reading fewer books altogether.

Why teach literature?

Over generations, English teachers have voiced many reasons to teach books, and the canon in particular: to instill a , foster , build and cultivate . These goals have little to do with the skills emphasized by contemporary academic standards. But if literature is going to continue to be an important part of American education, it is important to talk not only about what books to teach, but the reasons why.

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