You can make a lot if your bachelor’s degree is in petroleum engineering ($146,000) or pharmaceutical sciences or administration ($145,000) but a lot less if you earn a B.A. in counseling ($55,000) or early childhood education ($51,000), according to the the latest report by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce.

On the whole, having a bachelor鈥檚 degree leads on average, to earning 70% more than just having a high school diploma, reports the center, which has been a leader the last several years in researching which credentials employers are seeking and the return for students who earn them.

People with graduate degrees earn 29% more than those with just a bachelor鈥檚 degree.

But there are big differences between fields and degrees at each level.

鈥淐hoosing a major has long been one of the most consequential decisions that college students make 鈥� and this is particularly true now, when recent college graduates are facing an unusually rocky labor market. Students need to weigh their options carefully,鈥� wrote lead author Catherine Morris.

Speaking broadly, the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), business and communications, and healthcare degrees lead to the highest median earnings at their peak. Education, public service, humanities and the arts are as much as $40,000 a year lower.

The report 鈥� and the chart to search all 152 majors below 鈥� also shows the earning by degree for students right out of college, as well how much earnings increase when a student adds a graduate degree.

How much earnings should factor into a student鈥檚 choice of major is another debate. Some believe humanities degrees make people more informed citizens and happier adults. Advocates of some of the lower-paying fields argue that society doesn’t function well without them and that individuals can find meaning in other professions that outweigh paychecks.

Matt Hooper, vice president of communications and membership for the Council on Social Work Education, said the value of social workers to mental and behavioral health, often for children and the elderly, is hard to place a value on.

鈥淵ou often hear how that pursuit (of social work degrees) was driven by their desire to make a positive difference in their communities and in the world,鈥� Hooper said. 鈥淪ocial work offers inestimable value in that respect.鈥�

As college costs rise, college loan debt cripples some graduates and Georgetown and others provide more and more data on earning potential, students have been shying away from arts to STEM and other higher-paying majors. That鈥檚 and families to and pick pursuits with better returns instead.

Humanities degrees earned have fallen a third since 2009, the report shows, while more lucrative degrees in computers, statistics and mathematics have grown by 159%. Those findings are similar to , which has also tracked the growth of engineering, health and medical degrees and the declines in humanities and education degrees.

In the fall, the group won a National Science Foundation grant of nearly $1.5 million to teach elementary and middle-schoolers about climate-related issues in the U.S. Gulf Coast. The eagerly anticipated award came through NSF鈥檚 program.

But when she checked her NSF funding dashboard, the balance was $1.

Educators and researchers nationwide have been suffering similar shocks as the Trump administration raises a microscope 鈥� and in some cases an ax 鈥� to billions of dollars in federal research grants and contracts. On Monday, it said it had canceled dozens of Institute of Education Sciences contracts, worth an estimated $881 million and covering nearly the institute鈥檚 entire research portfolio, according to several sources. 

Last week, the NSF through billions of dollars in already-awarded grants in search of keywords that imply the researchers address gender ideology, diversity, equity and inclusion 鈥� all themes by the administration.

The moves 鈥� as well as a broader of all federal aid, which a judge has temporarily reversed 鈥� have spread uncertainty, fear and anger through the education research community. 

鈥淚t is incredibly exhausting,鈥� said the research director of a national nonprofit with several active NSF grants and contracts. She asked to remain anonymous in order to speak freely. 鈥淚t’s definitely absorbing all of our time right now.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Interviews with more than a dozen key stakeholders found that researchers with studies already in the field are being forced to suddenly pause their research, not knowing if or when it will resume. Nearly all spoke only on condition of anonymity, fearing that speaking out publicly could jeopardize future funding.

While the administration has said the moves are an attempt to rein in federal spending that doesn鈥檛 comport with its priorities and values, it has offered no explanation for cuts to bedrock, non-political research around topics like math, literacy, school attendance, school quality and student mental health.

鈥淚t鈥檚 hard to believe this administration is serious about stopping the alarming decline of U.S. student achievement and competitiveness when it puts the kibosh on federally funded research and access to data,鈥� said Robin Lake, director of the at Arizona State University. 鈥淗ow will policy makers and educators know the bright spots to replicate and what practices are harmful? How will parents make informed choices? How will teachers know the best ways to teach math and prepare students for the jobs of the future?鈥�

CRPE currently receives no federal funding, she said, so the recent moves won鈥檛 affect it immediately. But its ongoing work tracking pandemic recovery, studying the impact of social media, AI and school choice rely on 鈥渁 broad national infrastructure of data, subject experts, and rigorous field studies,鈥� Lake said. 鈥淭he broad-based destruction of this infrastructure will affect us all and will cripple our efforts to make American students competitive in the world economy.鈥�

Ulrich Boser, CEO of , a Washington, D.C.-based organization that works in education research, likened the recent moves to remodeling a house to make it more efficient. 鈥淲ould you just cancel all of your contracts with gas, water, electricity, and then just redo them? It’s not a logical way of doing things. It’s just haphazard.鈥�

An Education Department spokesperson did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The Learning Agency, which has contracts to, among other things, provide a that answers questions about IES鈥檚 What Works Clearinghouse, this week warning that GOP-backed plans to shut down the Education Department could mean the loss or delay of more than $70 billion in funding for students. 

Boser recalled that the recent debacle with college aid took place simply because the Education Department tried to . 鈥淚t caused massive delays, most harmful to the kids we care about most.鈥� Now take that dynamic, he said, and imagine what gutting an entire Cabinet-level agency could do. 

The recent NSF moves to review grant language are already having an effect: An academic dean at a leading graduate school of education said researchers at the institution are now reframing new funding proposals 鈥渋n ways that allow them to ask the questions that they want鈥� without being scrutinized 鈥� or eliminated altogether 鈥� 鈥渂ased on a 鈥楥trl-F review鈥� process.鈥� Ctrl-F is a keyboard combination used to quickly search a document for keywords.

鈥淚 don’t think there’s an upside to the chaos and uncertainty that is being experienced in real time,鈥� the dean said.

Likewise, the director of a research center that has long focused on K-12 education reform said the new administration has brought turmoil to a community that typically performs 鈥渘on-ideological, empirical鈥� research on issues like literacy and math.

 鈥淚 feel like every day there’s new confusion,鈥� he said, adding that restrictions on DEI could also chill a basic function of education research: studying the results of interventions on diverse student populations 鈥� students of different races, ethnic backgrounds, economic levels and geographic locations.

鈥淲hat 鈥楧EI鈥� means is really very ambiguous,鈥� he said. 鈥淪o if you are studying something and you look at differential outcomes between groups, is that DEI? I don’t know.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

A 鈥楳an-Made Disaster鈥�

The federal government funds billions of dollars in research each year for K-12 and higher education, but rarely has it scrutinized practitioners to this extent, said the leader of a nonprofit that advocates for better education research.聽

She described conversations with scholars who are operating via grants through NSF, IES and elsewhere who 鈥渏ust have no idea what’s going on 鈥� they can’t get through to program officers. Sometimes program officers have been put on administrative leave. It’s just a huge amount of chaos, and overall [it] just creates this chilling effect鈥� for both current grantees and future ones.

鈥淭his is a man-made disaster,鈥� she said.

Mike England, an NSF spokesman, said the agency 鈥渋s working expeditiously to conduct a comprehensive review of our projects, programs and activities to be compliant with the existing executive orders.鈥� He referred a journalist to an outlining recent executive orders 鈥渁nd their impact on the U.S. National Science Foundation community.鈥�

An Education Department official on Tuesday said any IES contracts required by law will be re-issued for new competition, but Mark Schneider, who served as the agency鈥檚 director in Trump鈥檚 first term, said in an interview that the current chaos represents an opportunity to 鈥渕ake something good鈥� in the research realm.

鈥淲hat we should really do is say, 鈥榃e’ve fallen into a rut for decades in the way we go about doing business,鈥欌�� he said. 鈥溾�榃e are not focused on the highest reward. We’re not focused on mission-critical work.鈥� 鈥� 

Now a nonresident senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Schneider has already suggested breaking the Education Department up and distributing its work to other agencies. He said the new administration has the opportunity to refocus to provide 鈥渄ata that the nation needs.鈥�

Schneider noted that the National Center for Education Research last year handed out 42 research grants worth well over $100 million. 鈥淚f we look at those grants, how many of those are really mission-critical?鈥� He predicted that few focus on improving literacy instruction, which recent NAEP results suggest is in crisis.

The department did not release a list of zeroed-out programs, but a document online indicates that they include research covering a wide range of topics including literacy but also math, science, mental health, attendance, English acquisition and others. Also on the chopping block: contracts for The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (), a test given to students every four years in 64 countries and a key indicator of U.S. competitiveness.

鈥業 just don鈥檛 want more asterisk years鈥�

The long-term impact of research pauses could be devastating, said the senior advisor to a research advocacy group 鈥� comparable to the interruption of the COVID epidemic, which shut many researchers out of schools for months, diluting the effectiveness of their research and, in some cases, requiring them to insert asterisks for the years when no data was available.

鈥淚 just don’t want more asterisk years,鈥� she said. 

Several researchers said an even bigger fear is the prospect of key education, labor and other data sets such as NAEP being made unavailable. While NAEP data collection was unaffected by the recent moves, contracts to analyze the data and report it publicly were canceled, to be offered to new bidders. So far, U.S. Education Department data haven鈥檛 been affected, but public health data 鈥� including guidance on contraception, a fact sheet about HIV and transgender people; and lessons on building supportive school environments for transgender and nonbinary students 鈥� have from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention鈥檚 website due to President Trump鈥檚 order to strip 鈥済ender ideology鈥� from websites and contracts.

Amy O’Hara, a research professor at Georgetown University鈥檚 McCourt School for Public Policy, cautioned that removing data from public websites would 鈥渉ave a chilling effect on what can be done, what can be measured, what services we deliver to our communities.鈥�

Even if some research funds are restored and researchers can go back to work, O鈥橦ara said, she worries about the uncertainty created at the collegiate graduate school level, as well as for researchers who are early in their careers. 鈥淚f their funding is disrupted and their access to data is disrupted, they have an incentive to walk away,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd if they walk away and find other work to do, what is going to be compelling to bring them back?鈥�

CRPE鈥檚 Lake put it more bluntly: 鈥淚鈥檓 a very pragmatic researcher and I believe the feds could do much better in how they fund and support research. But a wholesale end to federal investment in education research feels like a cop-out. The hard but necessary work is making smarter investments.鈥�

FEV Tutor, a chat-based, virtual tutoring firm with contracts in districts from California to Florida alerted staff on Saturday that efforts to raise more money or find a buyer had failed. CEO Reed Overfelt cited 鈥渨orse-than-expected company performance鈥� in his message to employees.

Some districts promptly alerted families about the interruption in services. The Henrico County Public Schools in Virginia referred parents to other tutors, including teachers, 鈥渢o minimize the impact of FEV鈥檚 closure.鈥� The Ector County Independent School District in Texas asked its other provider, Air Tutors, if it could take on the 2,000 students FEV left behind. 

鈥淲e found this all out on Sunday,鈥� said Ector spokesman Michael Adkins. 鈥淲e鈥檒l have to work very quickly to change things over, but as of today, we are expecting we will be able to find a virtual tutor for all of our kids.鈥�

鈥楾oo fast, too quickly鈥�

While districts and other tutoring providers might be able to cobble solutions together, FEV鈥檚 demise is one of the more visible early signs of what school finance experts warned would happen when nearly $190 billion in pandemic relief funds ran out. Districts have less money to spend on vendor contracts, leaving companies that were in high demand a year ago having to rethink their futures. Those that expanded at a rapid clip, like FEV Tutor, could be particularly vulnerable. 

鈥淲e saw what you would expect with large government programs 鈥� a lot of folks rushing out with various models,鈥� said Adam Newman, founder and managing partner of Tyton Partners, a consulting firm. 鈥淎 lot of those organizations grew too fast, too quickly.鈥�

With district contracts in at least 30 states and an estimated value of over $40 million, FEV Tutor was an 鈥渆arly innovator in providing virtual tutoring services鈥� through an on-demand, chat-based platform, Newman said.  With customers including the , and school districts, the company gave tutors access to an AI coach and engaged in innovative contracts in which tutors earned higher rates when students showed greater improvement. 

They were 鈥渕assive players鈥� in the industry, and when districts started spending their  relief funds , FEV was 鈥渧ery well-positioned to win all these district [contracts],鈥� added John Failla, founder and CEO of Pearl, a company that helps districts manage tutoring programs. 鈥淭hey scaled up like crazy.鈥�

But while its closing was unexpected, the financial reality that caused it was not. 

A year ago, one expert noted that investments in ed tech had dropped back to pre-pandemic levels. Even in late 2022, 鈥渞ising inflation, interest rates, geopolitical crises and belt-tightening brought an end to the copious amounts of capital that defined the pandemic,鈥� Tony Wan, head of platform at Reach Capital. Districts were already 鈥減reparing the chopping block for tools and services鈥� that were nice to have but no longer necessary. 

Some districts also just prefer to manage their own tutoring programs. 

鈥淚f you look at the districts [that] have succeeded in scaling tutoring the most, all of those have owned a lot of the process internally,鈥� said Liz Cohen, policy director at FutureEd, a Georgetown University . She cited Baltimore City, Guilford County, North Carolina, and Nashville as examples. 鈥淒istricts are increasingly focused on the relational part of tutoring. It can be virtual or in person, but it’s someone who has a face and a name and that the kid knows.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

The surprise isn鈥檛 that FEV Tutor is a 鈥渃asualty鈥� of the fiscal cliff, she said. 鈥淏ut certainly, nobody expected them to shut down on a Saturday in the middle of the school year when they have active customers and employees.鈥�

FEV Tutor did not respond to an email requesting comment. A red banner at the top of its home page says the company 鈥渃eased operations鈥� on Jan. 25. 

The news clearly confused some parents. In response to an announcement on Facebook, some families in Harford County, Maryland, blamed the district and wondered if officials knew weeks ago that services would end so suddenly. Another wrote, 鈥淭here鈥檚 clearly a mismanagement of money somewhere.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

On the district鈥檚 , officials apologized for the disruption, saying they could not guarantee they would be able to 鈥渇ind or implement a comparable solution at this time.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Marguerite Roza, the director of Georgetown University鈥檚 Edunomics Lab, said she hasn鈥檛 seen other pandemic-era vendors face such a dramatic end, but predicted 鈥渢here will be more in the coming months.鈥�

Return on investment

Software industry veterans Anirudh Baheti and Ryan Patenaude founded FEV Tutor in 2008, well before the pandemic. According to GovSpend, a data company, annual sales didn鈥檛 top $1 million until 2018. By 2021, as districts began spending relief funds, sales jumped to over $6.3 million. 

In 2022, Alpine Investors, a private equity firm, acquired the company, and Patenaude said in a press release that he was excited about the 鈥渘ext stage of FEV鈥檚 growth.鈥� Jim Tormey, an executive with Alpine, stepped in as CEO until Overfelt took over in 2023. 

FEV鈥檚 work in Ector and Duval County, Florida, was also part of an innovative arrangement known as outcomes-based contracting. The company didn鈥檛 just deliver tutoring; it promised better results for more money, and offered to take a pay cut if students didn鈥檛 make progress. 

Such deals piqued the tutoring world鈥檚 interest in recent years as policymakers increasingly called for evidence that relief funds weren鈥檛 going to waste. Cohen, who featured FEV鈥檚 work last year in a FutureEd , wrote in a commentary that the concept could help ensure districts 鈥済et the best return on their investment and help build a culture of performance in public education.鈥�

FEV Tutor further evolved last year when it announced a new AI-enhanced platform, Tutor CoPilot. The tool makes tutors more effective by giving them guiding questions to ask students. In a , the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University, which studies tutoring models, found that when less-experienced tutors used the AI support, student math scores increased an average of 9 percentage points. 

But that breakthrough apparently wasn鈥檛 enough to turn business around.

In his note to the company, Overfelt said he and the board of directors had 鈥渆xplored every possible avenue to secure FEV Tutor鈥檚 future,鈥� but that talks with additional investors had 鈥渞eached their end.鈥�

Since FEV was on a pay-as-you-go contract, Adkins, in Ector, said the district wasn鈥檛 worried about losing money.

But FEV employees are suddenly out of a job. A customer service manager who once taught in the Las Vegas-area Clark County schools posted on LinkedIn that she was . And Jen Mendelsohn, CEO of Braintrust Tutors, said she spent Monday interviewing former FEV employees.

Many, she said, 鈥渉ave long-term district relationships nationwide and are looking for ways to ensure academic continuity for their students.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

The expiration of these funds in about 14 months could be the biggest jolt to school finances that districts have ever faced. But an analysis by 蜜桃影视 has found that the majority of states lack laws to protect districts from a fiscal emergency like this one 鈥� a fact that could leave school systems unprepared for the upheaval to come.

鈥淒eficits will creep up quickly and really destabilize a district,鈥� said Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University鈥檚 Edunomics Lab. 鈥淚n the end, the students will suffer if districts wait too long to rein in their spending.鈥�

School systems currently face compound pressures. Declining enrollment means less state funding, and they鈥檙e paying because of a tight labor market and more for supplies because of inflation. To better withstand the strain, experts like Roza advise districts to estimate their revenues and spending a few years in advance, taking into account enrollment trends, taxes and the potential for an economic downturn.

But only six states have such requirements. Experts also recommend setting aside money for fiscal emergencies, but just 10 states mandate the practice. 

Most states view district budgets as a local matter. Officials say they can offer little more than advice as the education system heads for what Roza calls a 鈥�.鈥�

鈥淔or these next few years, 鈥� state monitoring of finances is an absolute must,鈥� she said. Relief funds have 鈥渄istorted district finances. Many are overcommitting at a time when they should be downsizing.鈥�

She pointed to the San Diego school district as an example. In June, the board approved for teachers to avoid a strike, at a cost of $517 million. But projections show a nearly by the 2024-25 school year.

The end of relief funds could also in some states, further impacting what programs, like tutoring and summer school, districts will be able to sustain. In addition, Congress鈥檚 recent deal to prevent the government from hitting a debt ceiling and defaulting on its financial obligations could affect how districts wean themselves off pandemic money. 

between conservative Republicans and the White House wiped out the chance for an increase in federal K-12 spending next year 鈥� money that could have cushioned the blow once COVID money dries up. Now the House is proposing a in the education budget.

鈥淚f I鈥檓 a state budget director, the debt limit deal tells me I鈥檓 on my own to try to soften the cliff landing with added revenue,鈥� said Jonathan Travers, managing partner at Education Resource Strategies, a nonprofit that advises districts on financial matters. 鈥淚 might have been holding out hope for help from Title I, but that seems gone now.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Planning for Fiscal Emergencies: Three Maps

鈥楪rounded in the truth鈥�

Districts have been down this road before.

The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in the wake of the Great Recession, was at the time the federal government鈥檚 largest one-time investment in schools, providing districts close to $71 billion in extra funding. When those funds ran out, however, many districts were unprepared: They , imposed and increased .

A from the U.S. Department of Education鈥檚 Office of the Inspector General examined spending decisions in 22 districts, including the Wichita Public Schools in Kansas. 

Susan Willis, the district鈥檚 payroll director at the time, remembers a 鈥減retty ugly鈥� seven-to-eight year period with no raises for teachers. The district eliminated its grants department and several facilities and professional development positions. Enrollment was growing, so leaders 鈥渃ouldn鈥檛 be looking into the classroom for reductions,鈥� said Willis, now the district鈥檚 chief financial officer.

A decade later, Wichita鈥檚 enrollment is , and as pandemic aid expires, leaders are looking to eliminate positions they could have cut earlier, but didn鈥檛 鈥� particularly at the elementary level. The challenge, Willis said, is how to offer salaries high enough to compete against suburban districts while continuing to fund that she thinks have back above 80%.

The 2012 report said that a funding cliff doesn鈥檛 mean that districts didn鈥檛 make good use of temporary funds or that the relief funds weren鈥檛 the 鈥渞ight call.鈥� Leaders just need to be 鈥済rounded in the truth, no matter how brutal,鈥� Travers said.

Budget reserves

Whether the fiscal cliff turns out to be a gradual slope or a precipitous drop could hinge on how much federal money a district received. A from Education Resource Strategies identified 15 states where the expiration of those funds will hit harder because they received more federal aid and have a lot of districts with high poverty rates. 

Travers said it will be easier to identify which districts 鈥渉ave the potential for a painful landing鈥� later this summer when auditors review districts鈥� finances from the past year. It鈥檚 鈥渃ritical,鈥� he added, that states keep a close watch on districts where relief funds total more than a quarter of their annual budget. The more money districts received, the harder it could be to reduce spending once the funds disappear. That could include some of the nation鈥檚 , including New York City and Houston and those with high-poverty levels like Detroit and Philadelphia.

To prepare for lean years, Ohio, for example, requires districts  to estimate their budgets five years in advance. Washington mandates four years. But in some cases, school finance officials鈥� desire to plan ahead conflicts with budget timelines.  

鈥淲e can’t forecast because we never know what our state aid is going to be every year,鈥� said Susan Young, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Business Officials. 

The state doesn鈥檛 require districts to put aside funds for emergencies. But those that choose to could find themselves brushing up against a state cap that limits reserve funds to 2% of their budget. Young鈥檚 organization would like lawmakers to raise that limit, especially as relief funds expire. Some have already made and are asking voters to raise property taxes. 

Reserves can help school systems with a temporary shortfall, but can鈥檛 do much for a financially strapped district that has or failed to issue layoff notices in time for the next school year. Like COVID aid, reserves eventually dry up.

鈥淭here are no reserves that are going to buy you a whole school year,鈥� said Michael Fine, CEO of California鈥檚 Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team, which was created by a state law in 1991.

The California law also created an early warning system in which county education agencies must sign off on district budgets and, when a district is headed for insolvency, can wrest authority from a superintendent and school board.

Sixteen states have similar processes, some more extensive than others. , for example, grades districts on whether they pay their bills on time and post financial information. The Kentucky state board monitors any district that adopts a budget with less than 2% of its revenues set aside for reserves. 

In California, are now in serious financial trouble. Ten may not be able to meet their financial obligations in the next couple years, and three, Fine said, 鈥渁re running out of cash.鈥�

Given the pandemic windfall, he鈥檚 surprised any hit that point. But with the state鈥檚 , he expects more to find themselves on the list. 

鈥淭he news probably only gets worse for 2024-25, not better,鈥� he said.

In southern California鈥檚 San Bernardino County, where 33 districts are spread over 20,000 square miles, Thomas Cassida, director of business advisory services, expects the majority of them 鈥� 28 鈥� to have a budget deficit in 2024-25 or the year after.

They still have time to scale back. For example, some have spent relief funds to open health centers, but might have to cut positions for the counselors and other mental health professionals hired to run them. 

He鈥檚 most worried about districts that were in bad financial shape before the pandemic. When the relief funds are gone, they could find themselves in the same place.

鈥淓very county has at least one district that is a problem child,鈥� he said.

In Ventura County, it was the Ojai Unified School District, where Fine said leaders ignored multiple warnings about the need to cut roughly $3 million. About 30 minutes from the coast, Ojai is known for boutique hotels and wellness retreats. But tensions ran high at a  Feb. 21 school board meeting where Fine showed up unannounced to deliver a sobering message.

鈥淵ou are beyond financial trouble, and you are in fiscal distress,鈥� he and superintendent. 鈥淚f you were a private business, you would now be out of business.鈥�

Less than a month later, the board and . 

鈥淧arents were extremely frustrated and upset by the news of the budget deficit,鈥� said Sherrill Knox, an Ojai native and former assistant superintendent who took over as the district鈥檚 new chief this month. The crisis, she added, was 鈥渘estled in an ongoing, long-term issue of the need to downsize our district.鈥�

While Ojai was an extreme case, Fine said is affecting districts statewide, and smaller school systems can quickly downgrade from financial difficulty to fiscal distress. He largely blames 鈥渋nadequately trained鈥� school board members. 

鈥淚n most cases, it’s stupid governance and leadership that got them into this spot,鈥� he said, 鈥渁nd it will be good governance that gets them out.鈥�

That鈥檚 the question confronting university administrators, faculty, applicants and their families in the wake of in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The 6-3 ruling by the Court鈥檚 conservative majority at both Harvard and the University of North Carolina, overturning the decades-old model of affirmative action in higher education.

That system 鈥� in the 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case 鈥� allowed schools to include race as a consideration in offering university acceptance, but only as a means of cultivating the benefits of a diverse student body. But after a series of failed legal challenges over the past 20 years appealing to the bench鈥檚 increasingly rightward tilt, a group of Asian plaintiffs prevailed in arguing that they were unconstitutionally disadvantaged by affirmative action as currently practiced. 

鈥淢any universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual鈥檚 identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation鈥檚 constitutional history does not tolerate that choice,鈥� wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority opinion. 

But if the status quo of college admissions has been cast aside, a replacement hasn鈥檛 yet been offered. According to Georgetown University鈥檚 Anthony Carnevale, the future remains murky.

Carnevale is the longtime director of Georgetown鈥檚 Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) and one of America鈥檚 most-cited economists on the intersection of schools and the labor market. A former member of multiple federal panels on employment and technology, and a passionate advocate for additional K鈥�12 funding and policy experimentation, he has long pondered the question of what might follow an abrupt end to affirmative action.

His observations and proposals fill published in June, which may help shape colleges鈥� and policymakers鈥� response to a new landscape of socioeconomic mobility. If elite schools can no longer act as an access point for historically disadvantaged groups to enter the middle and upper classes, he and his co-authors argue, the logic of broad-based education reform 鈥� including both dramatically boosted resources and an overhauled approach to college and career counseling 鈥� becomes inescapable.

In an interview with 蜜桃影视鈥檚 Kevin Mahnken, Carnevale discussed the legacy of the Bakke case and multiple generations of racial preferences; the plausibility of class-based selection metrics replacing the vanished system; and the future of a higher education sector that could increasingly come to be seen as elitist. While lamenting the end of affirmative action as we knew it, he argues that colleges should step up efforts to become truly egalitarian.

鈥淥ne of the problems for elite colleges is that they’re going to become unpopular because everyone is going to see them as what they are: institutions that preserve elites,鈥� he said. 鈥淚f you’re an elite college president, that’s a problem you have to deal with.鈥�

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

蜜桃影视: What’s your perspective on this ruling and the legacy of race-conscious admissions?

Basically, affirmative action has been a Band-Aid that’s been used by politicians and the rest of us, so that we have a little racial access to elite colleges. And it’s stopped us from truly reforming education. Now the Band-Aid has been ripped off, and race is a gushing wound in America.

In the end, what disgusts me most about this outcome is that they’re demanding that minority applicants humiliate themselves. The best way for a minority to get into Harvard now 鈥� it’s allowed in this opinion 鈥� is to write an essay about the hardship you’ve suffered; that your parents abused you, that your neighborhood abused you, that you got beaten up going to school every day, and that was good for your character. I find that humiliating, to turn on everyone you know and care about so that you can get into Harvard. Telling your story in this way is kind of like racial porn: “Let’s see who’s got the sorriest story to tell, and we’ll let them in!”聽

There are definitely going to be fewer African American, Latino, and Native American people on campus, no doubt about it. That’s what’s going to happen here. The question is, how does everybody respond?

How do you think they’ll respond? Are college admissions officers freaking out right now?

I’m not sure about “freaking out.” I go to meetings of college officials where this topic is the center of the discussion, and people basically don’t know what they’re going to do. In one of those meetings, a lawyer opened the conversation by saying, “The first question you have to answer is, do you want to get sued?” I thought, “Boy, that’s a good question.”

If you want to make your name in higher education, you can disobey this ruling and let them sue you. If you’re Harvard or Georgetown, and slaves helped build the buildings, maybe you should do that and make a point. But I don’t see any way out of this because the anti-preferences side is committed, and not all of them are racists 鈥� a lot of them are just idealists. They’re well-funded, they’re well-organized and they’re always three steps ahead. They’re already changes to Gifted and Talented programs, and if anyone’s wondering whether they’ll persist [in those challenges], I think the answer is yes.

If I were as rich as Harvard, I might simply disobey the ruling. What are they going to do? They’re like the pope 鈥� they have no army. Maybe they’ll sue you.

Deliberately contravening a Supreme Court order seems incredibly risky, though. I wonder if universities are entering a particularly dangerous period with respect to the law and public opinion.

It is risky because people’s feelings are easily aroused on this issue. One of the things that will happen is that the ACE [the American Council on Education, a nonprofit advocacy group representing 1,700 institutions of higher education] will take a beating. 

I think the [legislation re-introduced this spring, which aims to modernize data collection from universities and give families a fuller picture of schools’ enrollment, completion, and post-completion earnings statistics] will pass when there’s an opening for it. It has strong, bipartisan support, and one of the things you can do to whack higher education is to make them more transparent in terms of their employment and earnings effects. There’s also a push for expanding funding for workforce training, so we’re going to get transparency on degrees and accountability on training. All of that stuff will move now.

I worked on the Hill a long time, and higher education annoys politicians because they think it’s arrogant and ungrateful. Higher education leadership tried to stop the GI Bill, and they lost. They tried to stop student aid because they wanted that money to go to institutions, and they lost again. They lose at every turn when it comes to issues going beyond higher education. Whacking the elites is a common American sport that appeals to both parties for different reasons. 

So if I’m a lobbyist for higher education, I’m looking for another job.

What has been the final legacy of race-conscious standards of college admission since the Bakke case?

The importance of Bakke was that it saved race-conscious affirmative action just in time. There were questions even then about whether it could survive, and it’s . 

If you ask the American public straight-up, “Do you agree that we should give racial preferences in admissions to selective colleges,” a majority will say no 鈥� and that includes a majority of African Americans, Latinos, etc. If you ask them, “Do you think there are fundamental problems in the American system that are racist and need attention,” they’ll say yes. But if you give them anything specific, they’ll reject it.

So Bakke saved the day by deferring to the expertise of educators, the notion being that educators understood higher education better than judges do. What has now happened is that the deference is over, and they’re no longer going to defer to American education institutions on race. The argument is that race is too much; even if diversity is a good thing, we can’t base admissions decisions on it because that would be racist. 

Could there be any replacement measures for racial preferences? 

The courts have been chipping away at preferences in admissions for a long time, and we’re now at the point where they’re saying it’s the end. But it’s not clear that it is. In many people’s judgment 鈥� lawyers and others 鈥� courts will begin to defer to class instead. Many decent people argue that the real issue of concern here, across all our diverse peoples, is class. We believe strongly in striving and Horatio Alger, and we want to reward that. The polls make clear that the public still believes that, and it’s part of our culture. 

The classic story is Poor Kid Makes Good. Everybody likes that, you want to give that kid a break. But for some reason, we don’t recognize the connection of race to American history and the disadvantages that are still there. It’s a failure to deal with American racism, and it has been since Bakke. The hope among some people is that we’ll use class as a proxy for race, but class and race are not the same thing. They are two very different forces in disadvantaging people’s lives, though a lot of people notice that they often go together. 

We’ve done a over the years and discovered that, no, you don’t also get race when you screen for class. You can claw back a bit of the racial diversity you had before affirmative action was banned, but not much of it.

Nevertheless, a lot of people are celebrating a potential switch to class-based affirmative action, saying, “Finally, going to Harvard isn’t just going to be for rich minority kids anymore.” The truth is, it never was. Most of the African Americans and Latinos who go to the top 193 schools are from the bottom half of the income distribution. A lot of them aren’t poor in the classic sense, but they’re not a bunch of rich kids. 

The thing people don’t talk about when it comes to class-based admissions is this: A basic problem for people who are poor is, obviously, that they don’t have money. And with the exception of places that are filthy rich, like Harvard and Yale 鈥� they can do whatever they want, and their concern is prestige rather than money 鈥� colleges just can’t afford class-conscious affirmative action. There have been efforts, but what people forget about colleges, whether they’re selective or not, is that they’re businesses. What they’re always trying to do is find as many kids who can pay full tuition as possible, and if they’re lucky, more than 50 percent of your families will do that.

There’s a bargaining process that every middle-class family is familiar with, where families visit eight colleges and strike the best bargain they can within their kids’ preferences. The colleges will give them “merit aid,” but what it is is a bargain. You get all the full-pay parents you can get, and you haggle with the parents you have to haggle with. Then, whatever you’ve got left over, you can use it for athletes, legacies, the trombone player you need in the band. But you really don’t have room for many poor kids. 

You might say to these schools, “You’ve got an endowment of something like $2 billion. How the hell can you not afford it?” Well, if a college president takes money out of the endowment, the alumni are going to get him fired. 

How did this whole focus on diversity get started?

As a practical matter, this has always been about white kids. James Conant, who was the president of Harvard after World War II, determined that we needed 5 percent of kids to go to college. He that we should build a certain kind of high school nationwide, the “comprehensive” high school. It was comprehensive because it offered a college pathway to a small share of the kids; it offered vocational education, mostly for boys; and it offered home economics and typing for women. 

But one of the big moments in the history of education came in 1983. After A Nation at Risk, we decided to do away with the comprehensive high school and provide every American child a full academic education through high school. And the real political reason behind that reform was the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, the disability movement. Basically, anti-tracking sentiment killed the comprehensive high school and, in the end, created an academic curriculum that assumed everyone would go to college. Since Obama, the battle cry has been to make every kid college- and career-ready, but of course, high schools don’t. A lot more kids are graduating high school and going to college, a lot of them are dropping out, and a lot of the kids who don’t make it are the ones you’d figure wouldn’t make it. 

Underneath all this, there’s a fundamental shift in the relationship between education and the economy. We needed an elite to run our military, our businesses, every institution in American life, and most of these people were going to be white males. We realized that if you’re going to run a diverse economy and be the global leader in a diverse world, you need to have some understanding of demographic diversity. The reason we did affirmative action was for them 鈥� they needed it! If you’re going to run a company in America, you need to have a diverse workforce, or Reverend Al’s going to show up. 

The way this will work out is that employers will need to have diversity in their leadership. They’ve got to “look like America,” as Bill Clinton used to say. So irrespective of what the court’s done, they’ll go to UMass instead of Harvard to recruit, and they’ll find plenty of talented minorities there. They’re serious about this, and they have no choice 鈥� you can’t run a company with an all-white leadership team. 

What about the political consequences?

It will be hell for the Democratic Party. The Supreme Court has effectively put a Band-Aid on racism for years, and now we’re ripping it off. If minorities are a core part of your coalition, you’ve got to come up with something for them. 

Joe Biden’s answer is: We’re going to go back and do what we should have done in the first place. We’re going to have preschool for everyone, we’re going to increase spending for Title I, we’re going to increase funding for low-income schools, and we’re going to make community college free. In other words, now that you can’t just mess around with the elite schools, you’ve got to focus on the whole damn system. That’s not very satisfying because you’re talking about 40 years of work. There’s going to be much more focus on making the education system produce minority elites who aren’t from rich families. 

This changes the conversation on education reform, which has run out of gas at the K鈥�12 level. That discussion is about to get revived because there’s nothing else to do except go back to the beginning and get it right.

That sounds refreshing, but also potentially impossible.

In the end, K鈥�12 has caused this problem, so we’ve got to go back to court cases in the states. There have been a lot of those, and they’ve been reasonably successful over the last few decades. But it’s a big, big deal. Politically, it’s going to be awful because what you’re talking about, in part, is screwing around with the local control of schools. 

The education system is now the primary pathway to a good job in America. That wasn’t true back when I was young. If you had an uncle working at Chrysler, he could get you in. 

You didn’t need to go to college; truthfully, you should drop out of high school instead of waiting. But in all the research 鈥� OECD [the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] was the first organization to start saying this, in the ’90s 鈥� the education system is now the primary institution that ensures the reproduction of advantage from one generation to the next. It’s a machine where you go to a good grade school, a good high school, a good college, and you get work-based learning and internships. Then you marry a college graduate, move to a neighborhood with good schools and the whole thing starts right over again. 

The thing is, it’s hard to argue with. And if we weren’t a diverse nation, it would be an ideal system. But we are a diverse nation, and diversity clearly matters in terms of who wins. Both Republicans and Democrats have tried to reform the K鈥�12 system, and they did good things, but it wasn’t nearly enough. 

What I’m hearing is that this change to college admissions is occurring in an economy with an increasingly ossified relationship between higher education and success in life.

The endgame now is much clearer than it used to be. According to , which run out to 2031, we’re going to have 171 million jobs. Forty percent will require a B.A. or more, and about three-quarters of those jobs will be good jobs. Meanwhile, 30 percent of all jobs will be middle-skilled, and maybe 40 percent of those jobs will be high-paying and secure. And then there’ll be jobs for high schoolers, only about 20 percent of which will be good jobs 鈥� largely . 

That said, there’s still quite a bit of variability. That’s why, in the United States, 40 percent of people with B.A.s make more than people with graduate degrees, and 30 percent of people with A.A.s make more than people with B.A.s. It’s a system, more and more, where what you study really matters. If you go to a community college and learn about HVAC, you’re going to get a good job. There’s movement here.

Why wasn’t affirmative action ever popular? You mentioned the fact that polling around it is terrible, but it was also striking that a ballot measure to bring back race-conscious admissions failed 鈥� in , of all places 鈥� a few years back.

Think about it: Every family has that guy 鈥� in my family, it’s a couple of immigrants 鈥� who came over and worked hard with a pick and shovel, and by the third generation, we all went to college. Everybody’s got that story about themselves and their families, and we’re almost neurotically tied to hard work and individual success. The idea that somebody who worked less hard or was less qualified could get the job over my grandfather, which they did, was anathema. The striving, the upward mobility, is what we reward.

Now, if you recognize racism in America, you ought to question that perspective somewhat. That is, in America, there were people who weren’t allowed to strive. But it’s a tough American problem because it creates the cultural contradiction of rewarding people based on the color of their skin. You put that to the average guy in a bar, he’ll say, “Hell no! Whoever works the hardest and does his homework should get the job.” To my mind, it’s a very superficial understanding of the United States and its history, but we are who we are. 

If I’m a Republican, I’m standing up to make a righteous speech about how the people who deserve advantages are now going to get them. Even if you look at Democrats, they tend to agree with that, so you’ve got to find a Plan B. I’ve worked for a lot of politicians, and boy were they happy that the Supreme Court handled abortion and affirmative action. Now it’s falling into their laps.

If you’re a Democrat, the abortion ruling last year was very advantageous. On affirmative action, not so great.

Is it possible that colleges will effectively ignore this ruling? They can just jettison the use of admissions exams, which were a big part of the evidence in this case, and admit whomever they like, right?

If you look at the data, test-optional [admissions] has increased the recruitment of high-income kids. White kids. If you take the test away, colleges and universities can admit more legacies, the quantity of whom is growing all the time. After this decision, they can admit anyone 鈥� except African Americans and Latinos. 

In an ideal world, if you’re talking to a student who wants to go to your college, you should be talking about the whole kid, not just their grades. There’s something to holistic admissions. But it also frees up colleges to do whatever they want, and what they want is not to admit poor kids. The flip side is that in American politics, elitism is not a good look. Americans don’t like elites, even if they themselves are elites. There are in Congress that would prevent colleges from admitting legacies. That won’t go anywhere, but we’ll get transparency on legacies; they’re going to have to report to the Department of Education how many legacies and donor kids are in their freshman classes. You can call it grievance, or revenge politics, but it’s going to happen. 

One of the problems for elite colleges is that they’re going to become unpopular because everyone is going to see them as what they are: institutions that preserve elites. If you’re an elite college president, that’s a problem you have to deal with. If you don’t have any African American or Latino students on campus, people aren’t going to like it. Resentment politics might become stronger in higher education because the class differences and race differences will get even more real.

Class has always been real 鈥� elite colleges have always done better with race than with class. If you walk around on a college campus, you can’t tell what a poor kid looks like. But you’ve got a much better chance of bumping into an African American or Latino kid than a poor kid on an elite college campus. They just don’t go there.

Combined with the decision to overturn the Biden administration’s student debt forgiveness program, we’ve now seen big reversals for universities as engines of social and racial equality. It seems like higher education will increasingly come under some skepticism from the political realm.

Yeah. We’re going to get a big emphasis on training and career education because it’s a program that can reach the working class in a way that Harvard and a lot of four-year schools never could. The Democrats need it to shore up their working-class voters, and the Republicans need it to retain white working-class voters as well.

So higher education is going to get some competition from training. That’s good for two-year institutions, but not four-year institutions. now allow you to get bachelor’s degrees at community colleges. Higher education is being rebuilt, in other words. Pretty soon we’ll have a mandate to force higher education institutions to tell their applicants what happened to all the other students who took the program they’re in, whether they got a job, and how much money they made. The data is there for that.

Transparency and accountability is about to come to higher education. You can鈥檛 stop it now.

Is it possible this judgment will affect a school like Harvard much more than one like UNC? My guess would be that the types of students who are currently benefiting from racial preferences at the most selective institutions will just apply, and gain acceptance to, slightly less selective institutions. But the more elite the institution, the more challenging it could be to find top nonwhite students.

Yeah, it’s not a choice for these kids between Yale and jail. It’s a choice between Yale and Dartmouth, or Colby, or Bates. But it should change the demographics at the top, say, 40 institutions, and people will be pissed off about it. The newspapers will write headlines about the shrinking number of minorities enrolled at their local colleges, and that will get noticed politically. The decline in the number and shares of minorities at elite colleges will be a constant topic. The people who fund me already want me to get in and start tracking this.

Did affirmative action save America from racism? No, that’s pretty clear. But it allowed elites to operate in a way that made them seem like they were progressive and honoring America’s racial history. So the reputational effects are real. Parents are going to want their kids to go to diverse schools, and there might not be many.

Released Tuesday by researchers at Georgetown University, the results show that young adults who attended a universal pre-K program in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as 4-year-olds were more likely to graduate from high school on time and enroll in college than peers who didn鈥檛 attend.

They鈥檙e also more civically engaged. The percentage of former pre-K students who registered to vote and actually cast ballots was 4.5 points higher than for those who started kindergarten without pre-K.

鈥淢iddle class kids benefit from a strong program,鈥� said William Gormley, a professor and co-director of the Center for Research on Children in the U.S. 鈥淒isadvantaged kids benefit even more.鈥�

Presented at Georgetown, the findings, based on a sample of over 4,000 students, build on more than two decades of work from Gormley and colleagues to determine the lasting benefits of state-funded preschool programs. The researchers also discussed new results from a second study that shed light on whether the benefits of pre-K withstood the pandemic.

At a time when schools are under pressure to reverse learning loss and increase performance beyond pre-pandemic levels, Gormley stressed that classroom quality and connections to the K-12 system matter. 

In an interview, he acknowledged recent disappointing showing worse results for those who attended that state鈥檚 program. Tennessee’s program primarily serves those from low-income families. The Vanderbilt University study concluded that improving the quality of the elementary schools those students later attend could boost results, and the state has since . Gormley said that because Oklahoma鈥檚 program has always been open to all 4-year-olds, not just poor children, there鈥檚 a stronger effect on the K-12 system.

Oklahoma launched its program in 1998 as essentially a new grade level. of the state鈥檚 4-year-olds participated in 2020, but enrollment dropped to 64% during the pandemic. Teachers are fully credentialed and receive additional early-childhood training. Originally, classes were primarily in elementary schools. In Tulsa, many are also in 鈥渨ell-staffed鈥� Head Start centers, which, Gormley said, likely contributed to stronger results.

While President Joe Biden campaigned on adding two years of free preschool to the public education system, he failed to get the proposal through Congress. For now, states wanting to emulate Oklahoma鈥檚 model are on their own

鈥淚 would love to see the federal government step up and do more in early childhood,鈥� said Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. He joined the event virtually to discuss the 2020 state ballot measure establishing a nicotine tax to pay for preschool for all 4-year-olds. 鈥淚f it can pass in a purple state like Colorado with 67% of the vote, there ought to be a package that gets 65 or 70 votes in the U.S. Senate.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Colorado became the eighth state with universal pre-K. Polis, who championed the effort, in May creating the program. While the law guarantees children 10 hours of pre-K per week, starting in the fall of 2023, he said he hopes most districts will push beyond that to at least 12 hours.

But he said many policymakers are reluctant to consider benefits that won鈥檛 emerge until children are in high school. 

鈥淚n the short term, I think one of the appeals to the business community, to many Republicans, is the workforce benefit,鈥� he said. 鈥淭his empowers a second parent returning to work, helps a single mom struggling to get by.鈥�

A frequent argument against public funding for pre-K is that any boost in achievement in the early grades fades by the time children reach third grade and beyond. Anna Johnson, an associate professor of psychology at Georgetown who is leading a second Tulsa pre-K study, noted that the gains for former pre-K students don鈥檛 disappear. Children who did not attend catch up after entering school.

Gormley鈥檚 research shows that some advantages of attending pre-K persist well beyond the early grades, while there are little to no positive effects in other areas.

For example, earlier from the Tulsa study showed that in high school, former pre-K students were less likely to fail classes and repeat a grade, and were more likely to take advanced courses. But they didn鈥檛 have higher test scores or grades than those who weren鈥檛 in the program. 

When researchers examined student performance in middle school, they saw no impact of pre-K on students鈥� attitudes toward school and their likelihood of risky behavior, including smoking, drug use or early sexual activity. But those who attended pre-K were more likely to take honors courses and have better attendance. 

鈥淩esearchers who study early-childhood should not put all their eggs in a standardized test basket,鈥� Gormley said. 鈥淭here are lots of other crazy, scary, but wonderful things happening to kids鈥� lives. It鈥檚 a mistake to avoid those other choices.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Pandemic-era data

Emerging results of focus on children only from low-income families who began Head Start at 3 and entered Tulsa鈥檚 pre-K program at 4. They were in first grade when the pandemic began.

The researchers, led by Johnson and Deborah Phillips of Georgetown, found and noted that children鈥檚 home lives before the pandemic predicted whether they were able to keep learning when schools closed. If there wasn鈥檛 enough to eat, parents were depressed or the environment was chaotic, children were less likely to participate in remote learning.

But despite school closures, they found that last school year, third graders who had two years of preschool still had more complex vocabularies and stronger math skills than those who did not . They were also better able to manage their behavior and emotions and had better working memories 鈥� what Johnson calls a 鈥渕ental desktop.鈥�

鈥淭hese are the skills that underlie success in school and in life,鈥� she said.

Phillips, a psychology professor at Georgetown who has worked with Gormley on the study from the beginning, said both studies reveal elements of high-quality programs, such as well-trained teachers and support for instruction, that contribute to strong results. 

Policymakers, she said, shouldn鈥檛 cut corners.

鈥淒on’t take anything away from it. Keep your [bachelor鈥檚]-level teachers. Keep the incredible professional development that you do,鈥� she said. 鈥淒on’t feel like 鈥榃e can start chipping away at it.鈥� That would be a really bad thing.鈥�

The average increase was 10.8% from 2020-21 to 2021-22 and 16.5% from 2020-21 to 2022-23, according to a late August of 118 large school system budgets published by Burbio, which has tracked K-12 policy through the pandemic.

Nearly 1 in 5 district budgets within that group had grown by more than 25% since 2021.

In many cases, those investments translate to direct benefits for students, said Chad Aldeman, policy director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. School systems have invested in tutoring programs and summer learning experiences to catch students up after many experienced significant delays in their learning due to COVID disruptions such as virtual learning and quarantines. Other districts have used the cash to make long-needed infrastructure improvements such as upgrading ventilation with or .

But with American Rescue Plan money set to expire in 2024, and with U.S. student enrollment projected to drop by due to slowed birth rates nationwide, the Georgetown K-12 finance expert warns that schools for a period of 鈥渂loodletting鈥� by 2024-25 when budgets must adjust back down.

鈥淵ou don鈥檛 have to look too far out to see pain coming,鈥� Aldeman said. 鈥淭hat could look like flat or stagnant salaries, that can look like layoffs, that could look like closing schools. The federal money has deferred some of those tough choices or even made it so people can ignore them for a little bit. But they will come and it’s just a matter of when and how hard they hit.鈥�

In Los Angeles, where enrollment has been , the school system released projections for total spending to drop nearly 20% from 2022-23 to 2024-25 鈥� from roughly $11 billion to about $9 billion. Much of the difference represents the ending of stimulus funds.

L.A. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has described that impending fiscal cliff, conjoined with enrollment drops, as a quickly approaching 鈥�Armageddon.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Most school leaders have worked to avoid a 2024-25 economic catastrophe in their stimulus spending, said Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators.

鈥淢any superintendents have been careful, anticipating the fiscal cliff, not to use the dollars in ways that would create a problem for them down the line. For example, teacher salaries or the hiring of significant staff that then will have to be let go.鈥�

For 20 years, Domenech worked as school superintendent in Long Island, New York over a period when the region lost 40% of its students.

鈥淔or all those years, I never built a school,鈥� he said. 鈥淎ll I did was close schools.鈥�

That鈥檚 a difficult task, the school leader acknowledged, because while families understand in the abstract the district must consolidate to prevent taxes from soaring, they usually want to see other schools close rather than their own. But cutting through the noise, school leaders can also understand the process of what Domenech calls 鈥渞ight-sizing鈥� schools as an opportunity to 鈥渂alance鈥� student populations, he said, desegregating schools racially and socioeconomically.

Aldeman advises superintendents looking at enrollment declines not to kick the consolidation can down the road. Though school closings will inevitably cause disruptions, he said, policymakers can ease the pain with investments like more guidance counselors or improved transportation.

鈥淣ow would be a good time to start thinking about [consolidating],鈥� Alderman said. 鈥淚f we delay it, then the money will run out.鈥�

Teacher turnover rates are actually about the same as they were before the pandemic, according to through the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. Flush with pandemic relief money and faced with the generational challenge of fostering learning recovery, school districts are hiring for more positions and leaving vacancies open for longer.

A wide-ranging analysis of employment trends from national and state-level sources, the brief does confirm that the K-12 workforce shrank significantly after the onset of COVID-19 and its disruptions to schooling. After roughly a half-decade of steady growth, total public school jobs decreased by roughly 9% through May 2020. The initial drop represented more than twice the number of positions erased during the financial crisis of 2008. 

But the data also suggested that those positions were disproportionately cut from non-teaching ranks. Occupational records from both national and state sources showed measured declines among nurses, administrative support staff, paraprofessionals and other predominantly non-instructional employees. Across all the states included in the study, there was actually generally less teacher turnover during the summer of 2020 鈥� likely the residue of that year鈥檚 severe economic slowdown, which discouraged many from leaving their jobs. (During the summer of 2021, seven of those states saw an average turnover increase of 1.2 percentage points, effectively bouncing back to pre-pandemic levels.)

Confusion about the state of the education field has emerged due to a lack of consistently reported data on millions of school employees, the authors argue. In fact, the report was only made possible by combining several overlapping federal data sets 鈥� each with its own liabilities 鈥� with additional findings from 16 states that publicly reported annual statistics on turnover through the first year of the pandemic.

Matthew Kraft, a Brown economist and the paper鈥檚 lead author, said he was 鈥渧ery concerned鈥� about the increased burnout teachers reported experiencing over the last few years. While a true mass exodus of educators hasn鈥檛 yet occurred, Kraft said that profession-wide exhaustion could someday trigger one. But he added that short-term instability in the education workforce has 鈥渙bfuscated鈥� longer-term issues of working conditions and public funding that demand more thorough examination.

鈥淭here’s no doubt that this story [of educator dissatisfaction and turnover] is catching our national attention, and it’s generating headlines,鈥� Kraft said. 鈥淭he problem is that most of those stories are asking a question for which there is a nuanced response, and nuance isn’t communicated effectively in our sound-bite world.鈥�

Kraft and his co-author, Joshua Bleiberg, culled figures from four surveys conducted by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, each collecting regular reports from tens or hundreds of thousands of employers in both the private and public sectors. That information allowed them to not only generate month-by-month estimates of the total number of elementary and secondary education jobs, but also form a clearer view of the large swings in hirings, resignations and layoffs between March 2020 and May 2022.

The pair supplemented that picture with files from 16 state education agencies 鈥� though these additions were complicated by the states鈥� differing definitions of turnover. For the purposes of their study, Kraft and Bleiberg described it as the percentage of teachers in one school year who did not return to the same school or district in the next year.

One possible explanation for the vacancies that did linger was a period of weak job growth after schools were closed in spring 2020. According to one federal survey, K-12 and higher education institutions collectively hired 32,000 fewer educators per month over the first six months of the pandemic. That belt-tightening was likely caused by worries that the austerity measures of the last global economic downturn would be repeated, Kraft remarked.

鈥淲e had lived through the lessons of the Great Recession, which substantially cut education funding over multiple years and led to hundreds of thousands of teachers being laid off,鈥� he said. 鈥淪o schools were cautious, and I think rightly so, about filling positions even from natural turnover.鈥�

After the slashed budgets of the 2010s, few if any observers predicted the federal government would allocate nearly $200 billion in pandemic relief to American schools. If that understandable misapprehension guided decisions during the early phases of the crisis, a general absence of accurate, real-time data has further clouded the picture ever since. 

The deficiencies of public data sources are several, Kraft and Bleiberg note. Some surveys don鈥檛 clearly differentiate among K-12 employees, such that job additions or attrition among non-instructional staff can be conflated with those affecting teachers. Others make it hard to differentiate between public K-12 schools and private institutions (or even colleges and universities). And as with virtually all data regularly collected by the government, figures are subject to serious revisions even months after their initial publication. 

Chad Aldeman is the policy director of Georgetown University鈥檚 Edunomics Lab, a research group that studies education finance. In an email to 蜜桃影视, Aldeman called national teacher employment data 鈥渁t best a patchwork quilt of federal, state and local databases, much of it several years old.鈥� That disorganization makes it difficult to answer even basic questions, such as how many job openings exist throughout the nation鈥檚 K-12 schools and which specific positions principals and superintendents are hiring.

In normal circumstances, that kind of opacity paves the way to misguided policy choices. But at a time of unprecedented tumult in the labor market, it might come at the cost of critical, one-time resources that could otherwise be spent helping students climb back from years of lost learning. Aldeman said he was aware of cases in which districts were poaching from their neighbors, or even cannibalizing their own workforce, to fill specialist roles.

鈥淚 don’t think state and federal policymakers are taking these data gaps seriously,鈥� he wrote. 鈥淚nstead, states seem to be spending their own money blindly, and I don’t see many thoughtful plans to track the spending alongside student outcomes to make sure the increased staffing levels actually translate into better services for students.鈥�

Kraft said that public confusion over the nature of teacher shortages is a serious concern, pointing to showing higher vacancy rates at high-poverty or predominantly minority schools. The difficulties those schools face in hiring, and the increased stress suffered by their staff, are persistent problems that call out redress through higher pay and better working conditions, he argued; misbegotten narratives based on incomplete information could only make them harder to solve.

鈥淲e are failing these communities by failing to understand the nature of the problem, Kraft said. 鈥淎nd by failing to understand the nature of the problem, we may well diagnose it incorrectly and prescribe remedies that fail to address the underlying, structural inequities.鈥�

, part of a series of studies conducted in the wake of high-profile litigation against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, shows that Hispanic and African American applicants to both colleges enjoy substantial advantages relative to whites and Asian Americans. Their chances of acceptance are drastically higher than they would be in the absence of affirmative action, but with a somewhat counterintuitive addendum: preferential treatment is relatively weaker for minority applicants from poor and working-class backgrounds than it is for their peers from more affluent families.

Those findings, and those of the preceding papers, are built on data that was made publicly available during the discovery phase of two lawsuits 鈥� Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina 鈥� that were before the court. Peter Arcidiacono, an economist at Duke University and the studies鈥� lead author, has provided expert testimony on behalf of the plaintiffs, who claim that the storied institutions have systematically discriminated against Asian applicants. In an interview with 蜜桃影视, he said he hoped his work would help clarify the public debate over one of the most divisive issues in American politics.

鈥淪o much of the debate about affirmative action is happening in this binary where you’re either for it or against it,鈥� Arcidiacono observed. 鈥淏ut there’s a large range of possibilities, from just [using] race as a tiebreaker to fully equal outcomes. So in order to get a sense for whether affirmative action has gone too far or has not gone far enough, you have to understand the role that race plays currently, and you can’t do that without the data.”

Those questions are becoming more concrete by the month. in the case, which will be heard in the 2022-23 term. With plaintiffs asking the nation鈥檚 highest court to bar the consideration of race and ethnicity as a factor in the college application process, and Republicans in Congress that would force colleges to publicize their use of non-academic characteristics in admissions, the stage is being set for a major rollback of affirmative action as it has been practiced for half a century. According to Arcidiacono鈥檚 latest study, a significant reversal could shrink the percentage of African American students admitted to Harvard by more than two-thirds.

Georgetown economist Harry Holzer finds those projections plausible. A proponent of race-based affirmative action, he signed (alongside multiple Nobel laureates) defending Harvard鈥檚 policies that was filed in a lower-court iteration of the suit. Arcidiacono鈥檚 line of research 鈥渕akes reasonable points,鈥� Holzer said, while arguing that it does not invalidate the use of racial considerations by admissions officers. 

鈥淚t doesn’t change my support for affirmative action to see his numbers, though I certainly don’t disagree with the research findings. It shows that when very elite schools practice affirmative action in admissions, which they do, it does effectively raise the admission rate for people of color 鈥� especially African Americans 鈥� by a lot.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Race & class

Arcidiacono and his coauthors dug into admissions records for over 300,000 domestic applicants to the admissions classes of 2014鈥�2019, of which roughly 142,000 applied to Harvard, 57,000 applied to UNC as in-state candidates, and 105,000 applied to the same college from out of state. Applicant-level information included demographic attributes such as race and socioeconomic status, as well as richly detailed academic records covering high school grades, standardized test scores, and individual ratings from admissions officers across a range of academic and non-academic indicators. 

Combining high school GPA, SAT scores, and scores on SAT II subject tests, the research team created academic ratings for each applicant and ranked them by decile (a statistical measurement dividing data into 10 equal parts). The lowest-performing students were grouped into the bottom 10 percent and the strongest performers grouped into the top 10 percent. Most African Americans fell into the bottom 20 percent of all applicants to both Harvard and UNC, but they were admitted at the highest rate for almost every performance decile, followed by Hispanic, white, and Asian applicants.

The acceptance gaps between categories are largest around the middle of the spectrum for academic qualifications, with African Americans applying to Harvard being accepted at a rate double that of Hispanics 鈥� and 12 times greater than Asian Americans 鈥� at the fifth decile (i.e., between the 41st and 50th percentile of qualifications). For out-of-state applicants to UNC, African Americans at the fifth decile were almost 33 times more likely to be accepted than Asian Americans and 14 times more likely than whites. 

Overall, Harvard鈥檚 policies roughly quadrupled the likelihood that an African American applicant would be accepted relative to a white student with similar academic qualifications, while multiplying the likelihood of admissions 2.4 times for Hispanics. For out-of-state applicants to UNC, the force of racial preferences multiplied African Americans from 1.5 percent of admitted students to 15.6 percent, a tenfold increase. Black applicants applying in-state to Chapel Hill gained a smaller advantage from affirmative action, becoming 70 percent likelier to win admission.

Beyond these general calculations, the authors noticed a peculiar interaction between race and class. While white applicants from lower-income families appear to receive an advantage in admissions relative to wealthier whites with similar academic profiles, disadvantaged African Americans and Hispanics do not. Affluent applicants of color therefore receive a comparatively larger boost over affluent white applicants than poor and working-class students of color enjoy over poor and working-class whites. 

Holzer said the substantive arguments in favor of affirmative action 鈥� particularly the educational value of maintaining a racially diverse campus 鈥� 鈥渄on’t require that the specific recipient face bias or barriers in the past.鈥� Still, he asserted that low-income students of color deserve 鈥渆xtra credit鈥� not only for their race but also their class background.

鈥淚f the bump for just being African American is really large, you could imagine that maybe [admissions officers] think, ‘We’re already taking care of that problem,’鈥� Holzer said. 鈥淏ut for someone like me, who thinks that class really matters a lot, you want to make sure that lower-income students of color get consideration.”

Arcidiacono argued that the large edge claimed by some wealthy students, even if they come from historically excluded groups, risks eroding public faith in the fairness of admissions altogether. Disillusionment already exists not only due to long-running patterns of underrepresentation, he added, but also newer blots such as the Varsity Blues scandal, which saw moneyed parents conniving with college employees and private admissions counselors to game the system.

鈥淭his is in the context of a system that completely favors people who come from richer backgrounds,鈥� Arcidiacono said, listing the factors already favoring upper-class applicants: ready access to college counselors, special weight placed on extracurricular activities, and recruitment for sports like sailing and golf.

鈥淭o me, one of the arguments for affirmative action would be that you’re trying to build trust in the system for a group that has been traditionally disenfranchised. But the way you do that matters, and it’s not really hitting the poorer African Americans 鈥� they’re not the ones benefiting the most.” 

The 鈥榥arrowly tailored鈥� standard

The Supreme Court will consider Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard this fall, eight years after it was first filed in federal district court. When a decision is finally reached, the case could fundamentally alter the practice of affirmative action in college admissions and, with it, the racial composition of some of the country鈥檚 most prestigious schools.

Existing Court precedent was set in the 2003 Grutter vs. Bollinger case, in which a plaintiff alleged that preference systems at public graduate schools 鈥� in that instance, the University of Michigan Law School 鈥� illegally disadvantaged white students on racial grounds. A majority led by Justice Sandra Day O鈥機onnor found instead that 鈥渢he narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions鈥� was constitutionally permissible, while adding that the issue would be ripe for reexamination within 25 years. That deadline has nearly elapsed, and the Harvard litigants seek to reopen the question of whether affirmative action has been 鈥渘arrowly tailored鈥� to begin with.

The case, along with the corresponding UNC suit, centers on the accusation by a group of Asian American students that Harvard鈥檚 policies unfairly disfavored them relative to applicants from every other racial group. Although the admissions candidates with the highest GPAs and test scores are disproportionately Asian American 鈥� showed that about one-quarter of Asian high school graduates scored above a 1400 on the SAT, compared with 8 percent of whites, 2 percent of Hispanics, and 1 percent of African Americans 鈥� they were consistently graded lower according to Harvard鈥檚 personality scores. A released by Arcidiacono and his colleagues suggested that, absent the subjective penalty that Asian applicants face, they would be admitted at a rate 19 percent higher than currently prevails.

The findings instantiated a theory that first gained widespread attention a decade ago, when one right-wing commentator that Asian Americans were tacitly being held back by admissions quotas lest they grow to dominate Ivy League campuses. Although Asian high schoolers were routinely among the top-performing students in the United States, their numeric presence on elite campuses peaked around 1990 and remained roughly the same over the next 20 years.

Trends in Asian American college enrollment were the focus of by the Manhattan Institute. Author Robert VerBruggen, a journalist and fellow at the conservative think tank, noted that the unmistakable stagnation in representation 鈥� which occurred even as Asians were continually growing as a percentage of all college aspirants 鈥� began to lift about about a decade ago. Whether that was connected to the growing focus on apparent discrimination is unclear.

鈥淚t’s an interesting question why that’s happened, but it’s certainly consistent with the narrative that everybody started making a stink about it, lawsuits were filed, and schools got a lot more careful about what they were doing,” Verbruggen said.

The release of the schools鈥� data allowed researchers to investigate trends in admissions beyond purported anti-Asian bias. In a widely covered , Arcidiacono and his co-authors calculated that 43 percent of white students admitted to Harvard between 2014 and 2019 were either legacies, recruited athletes, children of university faculty and staff, or on the dean鈥檚 interest list (i.e., relatives of potential high-dollar donors). Another postulated that the school, which has its efforts to diversify, may African American students who stand virtually no chance of gaining admission. 

鈥淚n some sense, there’s this uneasy compromise that works to the detriment of Asian Americans and poor whites,鈥� Arcidiacono said. 鈥淵ou’ve got the racial preferences helping underrepresented minorities get into certain colleges, and you’ve got the legacy and athlete preferences helping rich, disproportionately white kids get into college.鈥�

A Supreme Court ruling favorable to the plaintiffs could leave that system profoundly changed, upsetting the demographic mix that elite schools have worked hard to cultivate. By Arcidiacono鈥檚 accounting, the proportion of African Americans admitted to Harvard over the period he studied would have been less than 1 percent if acceptance was offered on the basis of academic qualifications alone; those admitted to UNC in-state or out-of-state would sink to 4.3 percent and less than 2 percent, respectively. At the same time, the percentage of Asian Americans would have risen substantially 鈥� to over 50 percent of all admitted students, in Harvard鈥檚 case.

While oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard won鈥檛 come for months, the recently announced recusal of soon-to-be Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is a promising sign for the plaintiffs. With the departure of Anthony Kennedy and the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court has lost two members who had previously ruled in favor of race-based affirmative action in postsecondary education.

Whatever the legal outcome, VerBruggen said that Arcidiacono鈥檚 work offered considerable value simply by shining a light on the internal admissions processes in two highly competitive universities.

鈥淪chools are so tight-lipped about their affirmative action policies that we don’t have a lot of data on them,鈥� he remarked. 鈥淚f you want to know what’s going on in a school, you basically have to sue them.鈥�

In my day job as an education researcher, I know that too many kids never learn to read well. Kids who don鈥檛 learn to read fluently by 3^rd grade as the material gets more complex. 

That fact hit home this spring when I noticed my 8-year-old son had picked up a bad reading habit at school. When he came to a word he didn鈥檛 recognize, he would guess. 

Rather than sounding out the word and breaking it down into parts, he looks at the first letter or considers other context clues and then tries to guess. Sometimes he looks to me for confirmation and takes his eyes off the page. If I step in to tell him he got it wrong he鈥檒l just try again, without even looking back down. 

As a parent, this process drives me crazy. You can鈥檛 read without looking at the words! I also know this guessing strategy is not going to serve him well as he encounters more challenging texts. 

My wife and I are working with my son to slow down, sound out unfamiliar words and use his finger to track his reading. He鈥檚 getting better. 

But these problems are not unique to my kid or his neighborhood school in suburban Virginia. Many schools continue to rely on literacy programs that encourage these practices. Meanwhile, reading scores were declining even before COVID-19 hit, and school closures only made things . 

All this led me to start a new initiative to help parents establish positive reading habits from the beginning鈥攂efore bad habits have time to take root. I鈥檓 calling it . 

Read Not Guess will start with a 30-day challenge to help parents get their kids ready to start the next school year strong. It鈥檚 free and open to all, and parents who sign up will receive a daily email with a short lesson. The lessons, which run from July 18 to Aug. 19, are meant for busy families and should take only five to 10 minutes to work through. 

I designed the Read Not Guess summer learning challenge to serve parents who want to help their kids but don’t know how or who just need some extra guidance. It will combine the best of a good phonics instruction book plus friendly nudges and regular encouragement, delivered in bite-sized lessons over email. 

By the end of the challenge, children will understand that English is read left to right, be able to identify and sound out the most common phonemes (letter sounds), begin blending those sounds into words, and start reading complete sentences. Parents will gain a deeper understanding of phonics; practice talking to their child about reading; and learn tools, games and assessments to monitor their child’s reading progress going forward.

Why should parents do all this work? Can鈥檛 they just rely on the schools to teach their kids to read? It鈥檚 been hard to be a parent through the pandemic, and it might be tempting for parents to take it easy this summer. 

But with many schools still in various stages of upgrading their reading curriculum, some classrooms may still be teaching legacy programs that encourage guessing, even though the good readers can sound out difficult words. Parents do not need to shoulder the full burden, but they can play an active role in building good habits and monitoring their child鈥檚 progress. Even relatively  parent interventions can lead to big literacy gains for children, especially the most disadvantaged. 鈥� like what Read Not Guess will offer 鈥� have even more promising results. 

Summer is a time for barbecues and swimming pools. But while school is out and the kids are at home, summer also presents an opportunity for parents to step in and help their children learn to read 鈥斅爊ot guess. It鈥檚 too important to leave to chance.

This article was written and published while the author was with Edunomics Lab at McCourt聽School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.

Social distancing, masks and confining students to their classrooms caused an 鈥渆xplosive amount of mental health needs,鈥� from lack of focus to outright aggression, said Heather Long, a former counselor in the Orange East Supervisory Union district.

鈥淚 started to watch as more and more restrictions were being placed on kids,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 felt like I couldn鈥檛 reach the needs.鈥�

That feeling of helplessness is one reason Long left her job in December 鈥� joining others who鈥檝e stepped away from traditional schools and transitioned to alternative education models during the pandemic. Now she鈥檚 running a microschool out of her New Hampshire home as part of Prenda, a network of tuition-free, small-group programs in six states. Teachers making the leap into such programs are finding parents willing to join them. 

鈥淔or the first time in their lives, they have options,鈥� said Jennifer Carolan, a former teacher in the Chicago area and now a partner with Reach Capital. The investment firm supports online programs and ed tech ventures, such as , with thousands of online classes, and , a tutoring platform that states and districts have adopted using federal relief funds.

Traditional schools, Carolan said, haven鈥檛 kept pace with what teachers want in the workplace, particularly flexible schedules. And after a 鈥渉ellish two years,鈥� some are gravitating toward positions that personalize learning for students while offering a better work-life balance.

Prior to the pandemic, schools lost about 16% of their teachers each year, according to . This year, point to scores of burned-out teachers who say they are planning to leave the field and anecdotal reports of mid-year departures. Rand Corp. data from last year showed that long hours, child care responsibilities and COVID-related health concerns were the main factors.

Traditionally, about two-thirds of teachers have moved into other jobs in K-12. Staying at home to care for a child or other family member is the second most common reason. But since the pandemic, many are also finding positions 鈥� often related to education.

With no hard national data yet available on teacher departures this year, experts say there鈥檚 no evidence of a mass exodus.

But there are signs in some states and districts that predictions of increased turnover are well-grounded. , for example, turnover rates were 17% higher in the fall of 2021 than in 2020, and in the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, of teachers and other licensed staff are well above pre-pandemic levels. 

The question is whether microschools and similar models will continue to be a viable alternative for those leaving district schools. Chad Alderman, a policy director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University who follows trends in the teacher workforce, is skeptical they are sustainable. 

鈥淚f even a few kids age out or move or just opt for a different placement, that would put the microschool at risk,鈥� he said. 鈥淎bsent some sort of consistent funding stream, they would face economic pressure to either grow into a more traditional school or else cease operations.鈥�&苍产蝉辫;

Data last year from , a consulting organization, showed that many families who left districts for pods and microschools were sticking with the model. At the start of the pandemic, some experts warned that pods and microschools would only , drawing well-off families who could afford the cost. States such as Arizona and New Hampshire have since provided public funding to increase equity. And some networks focus on diversity, such as 鈥� a platform that matches families with microschool teachers and attracted $8 million from investors last year.

鈥楢 second shot鈥�

Some teachers searching for new options have applied for jobs with Sora Schools, a private, online program now in its third year and serving 150 students, mostly on the East Coast. The school鈥檚 founders plan to expand in the fall of 2023 and eventually add in-person sites.

鈥淭he ground is fertile,鈥� said Garrett Smiley, the company鈥檚 co-founder. 

Several of the school鈥檚 teachers 鈥� called 鈥渆xperts鈥� 鈥� joined the program during the pandemic and he gets a few hundred applications for each open position. The application of Angela Anskis, who learned about Sora on LinkedIn last summer, stood out. 

She was teaching in a Philadelphia charter school, Boys Latin, when she began weighing a move. The school 鈥� and other public schools where she worked 鈥� didn鈥檛 offer students the choice to study what interested them, she said. After the school reopened, she found herself writing the same lesson plans for history, civics and geography that she always had.

鈥淥nce you鈥檙e teaching the same thing over and over and over again it’s hard to be passionate,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 would dread going into school. I thought that was part of being an adult.鈥�

Anskis always wanted to be a teacher. As a kindergartner, she drew pictures of her future classroom. But returning to school after remote learning, she felt boxed in and considered leaving education completely. Sora, she said, gave her a 鈥渟econd shot.鈥�

Sora educators are allowed to either focus full time on curriculum design or work directly with students 鈥� one difference that attracts teachers tired of spending nights and weekends on lesson plans, Smiley said. Experts teach six-week 鈥渆xpeditions鈥� 鈥� deep dives into topics in multiple subject areas. 

A humanities expert, Anskis has taught a unit on fashion history and blended English and current events into an expedition on . Class discussions focused on 鈥淎nd Tango Makes Three,鈥� about two male penguins raising a chick, and 鈥淢aus,鈥� a graphic novel on the Holocast that was recently . Students researched why some groups might be opposed to the books and read the banned titles with their parents鈥� permission. 

Class sizes are small 鈥� 10 to 12 students 鈥� and Anskis said she can take a walk when she wants. 

鈥淚 have so much more control over my life,鈥� she said.

But not every teacher who has left the classroom during the pandemic set out to pursue new opportunities. Some felt pushed out.

Shatera Weaver was the dean of culture at Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School, a New York City public school in Queens, where worked as an adviser for middle and high school students.

Originally granted an exemption from the city鈥檚 vaccine mandate because she has sickle cell anemia, Weaver learned in October that her accommodation would not be renewed. She was among the 1,400 New York City employees without pay because they were unvaccinated. 

Now she鈥檚 designing curriculum for EL Education, a nonprofit that provides English language arts materials and teacher training. She also teaches yoga for a nonprofit, and strangely finds herself leading movement classes for young children in a public school. 

鈥淚 have been quite unhappy. I miss my purpose-fulfilling job, and feel guilt for leaving 鈥� though it was out of my control,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 do not enjoy working from home. I miss the in-person connection and collaboration.鈥�

Weaver hopes to join those who have launched new schools and wants to design either a public or private program for Black students 鈥� 鈥渕uch like an HBCU, but the grade school version.鈥�

Teachers in alternative models said they appreciate the freedom to bring their own interests and personality to instruction. Long, in New Hampshire, took her six students 鈥� including her own two children 鈥� on a ski trip during the winter. Her program includes outdoor excursions for science and nature writing.

鈥淚 feel passionate about the ability to try new things and not be shot down,鈥� she said. 

This fall, she鈥檚 joining a former middle school science teacher to expand the program to 15 children. And she refers other teachers to informational sessions on Prenda, which the state supports through . 

鈥淚 don鈥檛 want to turn families away,鈥� she said, 鈥渁nd I don鈥檛 want to be the Prenda monopoly in town.鈥�

Join 蜜桃影视 and VELA Education Fund for a virtual conversation about why teachers leave the classroom to launch nontraditional education programs Wednesday, June 15, at 1 p.m. ET. .

Disclosure: The Walton Family Foundation provides funding to the 74 and the VELA Education Fund, which has supported Prenda.

Seriously, don鈥檛 relocate across state lines, K-12 finance experts warn. Along with changing careers, it鈥檚 one of the easiest ways to lose out on your retirement savings. In all, only about one out of five teachers receive their full pensions, while roughly 50 percent don鈥檛 remain in a single pension system long enough to qualify for minimum benefits at the end of their service.

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Those dreary findings come from on teacher retirement systems released last month by Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit research and consulting group. Ranking each state retirement system on an A-F scale, the authors find that only a handful can claim to serve both teachers and taxpayers well: Twenty states received F grades, while none received an A.

Andrew Rotherham, one of Bellwether鈥檚 founders and a co-author of the paper, noted that a wide variety of states earned spots near the top and bottom of the list, with both Democratic- and Republican-leaning political environments scattered throughout. But across the board, he observed, the status quo in too many states punishes a wide swathe of educators.

“One of the ways this system is sustainable is that it creates millions of small losers and a much smaller number of big winners,鈥� said Rotherham.

Chad Aldeman, a former Bellwether analyst who now serves as policy director of Georgetown University鈥檚 , said that there had been some 鈥渟low movement鈥� in a few states to offer public employees more choice and portability in their retirement benefits, but that the intertwined issues of back-loaded pensions and colossal debts owed by states were generally going in the wrong direction.

“I would say, in broad strokes, the financial problems keep getting worse,鈥� said Aldeman, who worked on a previous version of Bellwether鈥檚 rankings and consulted on this publication. 鈥淎nd the related problem about the way the benefits are structured 鈥� it’s moving in fits and starts, but it’s also getting worse.鈥�

Bellwether鈥檚 newest report evaluates states on a 鈥渃omprehensive鈥� basis that rates how each system performs for four separate constituencies: short-term teachers (those who teach in the system for less than 10 years), medium-term teachers (those who remain within the system for 10 years but leave before retirement), long-term teachers (those who spend their entire careers in the system), and taxpayers within each state. Retirement systems in all 50 states and the District of Columbia were ranked in terms of their performance for each category, and they all received an overall score.

Grades were determined through the use of 15 separate variables, including overall funding levels, the length of the vesting period, whether teachers in the state are eligible for Social Security, required teacher contribution rates, and investment returns averaged over 10 years.

South Dakota earned the top score, 88.4 percent, while Tennessee and Washington were the only two other states to notch even B grades. Among the lowest-rated jurisdictions were a litany of red, blue, and purple enclaves: California, Texas, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Louisiana, the District of Columbia, and Massachusetts, and more than a dozen others.

Those summative scores can conceal significant variation within systems, however. West Virginia, for instance, earns an overall grade of D, partly because it is one of the worst states in the country for short-term teachers (its 10-year vesting period means that huge numbers of educators won鈥檛 stay in the job long enough to earn benefits). But it lands just outside the top ten systems for taxpayers because it participates in Social Security, nets fairly high investment returns, and makes relatively high state contributions.

Among all four constituencies, short-term teachers clearly make out the worst, with 33 states and the District of Columbia earning F grades in the category. Of the rest, only five (South Dakota, Oregon, Washington, Florida, and Michigan) even rated a C or higher.

Aldeman said that the policy moves that have contributed to that reality 鈥� lengthening vesting periods, slashing benefits for newer teachers, and raising teacher contributions 鈥� can sometimes improve a given state鈥檚 budgetary picture, but they also tend to disadvantage younger employees and those who don鈥檛 stay their whole careers.

鈥嬧�嬧�漌hen states historically have seen a big-budget bill for pension obligations, they have tended to cut benefits for new workers,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he cuts mean that newly hired workers have to stay longer to qualify for any benefit at all, have to contribute more of their own salary toward the benefits, and have to wait longer to retire and receive a lower benefit.鈥�

Citing from the right-leaning Illinois Policy Institute, which found that 39 percent of the education funding disbursed by Illinois for the coming school year will be used to pay down the state鈥檚 huge debt obligations, Aldeman professed himself 鈥渁mazed.鈥�

“I mean, you can see the trend; it just keeps going up and up. At some point, will leaders say, ‘That’s enough, we need to do something else about this’?”

鈥楲ife happens鈥�

Teachers in 36 states and the District of Columbia are enrolled in defined benefit pensions programs, through which they make regular contributions to their plan and receive guaranteed payments in retirement. Fourteen states have created 鈥渄efined contribution鈥� systems, often resembling 401(k) plans, which tend to vest over a shorter period of time and offer greater portability across state lines.

Rotherham argued that education policymakers should not focus exclusively on plan type in debates over how to improve their systems. Defined benefit packages 鈥� often caricatured as 鈥済old-plated鈥� vestiges of the mid-20th century, when many employees could expect to retire early with enviable financial security 鈥� are not necessarily financially irresponsible for states, he said, and alternative systems can sometimes fail the test of adequacy for the retirees who depend on them.

鈥淭his debate has often become very reductionist, and it’s become a debate over what should be the form of the plan 鈥� is it defined benefit or defined contribution? 鈥� rather than which elements would make it good or bad,鈥� Rotherham said. 鈥淎nd that’s what we need to be talking about because for the plan participants, it’s those elements that affect their lives, not these ideological debates between 401(k)s and pensions.”

Whatever specific structure a state commits to, he said, leaders can no longer condition their retirement benefits on career-long tenures within a given system; any expectation that employees will stay in place for decades is 鈥渘ot a match for our labor market,鈥� Rotherham added.

“If you know you’re going to teach in one place for 30 years, the pension plan works for you, and you should do that. The problem is that people decide they don’t like teaching. They get sick, they have to move, they fall in love with someone whose job requires relocation, they need to be a caregiver. Life happens, people make plans that don’t work out, so these structures have to have some flexibility.鈥�

Disclosure: Andrew Rotherham is co-founder of Bellwether Education Partners and serves on the board of directors of 蜜桃影视.

Students learning remotely missed the most days of school this year, according to from Connecticut. And students who were chronically absent in the fall were far more likely to keep missing school during the winter months.

The analysis, from the Connecticut Department of Education and advocacy group Attendance Works, shows that rates of chronic absence 鈥� defined as missing at least 10 percent of the school year 鈥� were highest among students in low-income communities, English learners and students with disabilities. And the rates of poor attendance among Black and Hispanic students were two to three times higher than those of their white peers.

鈥淚t鈥檚 very likely that the trends they are seeing are similar in other states,鈥� said Hedy Chang, the director of Attendance Works. Whether other states see those trends in their data, however, depends on how they decided to count attendance for students learning at home.

Connecticut, which implemented a new process for tracking absenteeism across in-person, hybrid and remote settings, required students to attend school for at least half a day to be marked present. If they were at home, they were responsible for participating in at least half of the virtual class time and the other offline work scheduled for that day. New Jersey adopted the same definition, but many states left the decision up to local districts or allowed a mix of criteria, sometimes nothing more than daily check-in call or a simple log-into a remote class. As of January, 19 states weren鈥檛 even requiring districts to take attendance, according to the report.

As officials debate whether they鈥檒l allow some remote learning this fall, the Connecticut data shows chronic absenteeism among remote learners was at its worst in kindergarten and ninth grade 鈥� key transition points when in-person learning for students might be especially critical. The findings, Chang said, point to the need for leaders to track daily attendance, set consistent definitions for when a student is counted absent and build stronger connections with families so educators can intervene if a student misses too many days of school. With leaders beginning to craft plans for using federal relief funds, the report also highlights the ways Connecticut is spending last year鈥檚 federal money to target districts serving high-need students.

The state was among the first to ensure all students had devices and an , when U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona was still commissioner. But stories of families鈥� remote school experiences have shown that digital access doesn鈥檛 always translate into real learning.

鈥淵ou’re at home. You have three kids all online and there’s one room,鈥� Chang said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 not a solution.鈥�

鈥楻e-establishing relationships鈥�

The Connecticut report adds to the findings of of attendance trends from FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University. Summarizing data from five unnamed districts serving roughly 450,000 students, the report concluded that severe absenteeism has worsened during the pandemic. In one district, 7 percent of students missed as much as half of the school year, compared to none who were absent that often before school closures.

The report draws on data from , a company that works with districts to improve attendance. The company noticed an increase in perfect attendance rates across the five districts, which points to the lower bar that some states and districts set for students.

Phyllis Jordan, editorial director at FutureEd and author of the report, said it鈥檚 clear that students missing half the school year need a lot of support. But if a student who just logs in briefly is counted present, that 鈥渕akes it hard to figure out who鈥檚 in trouble,鈥� she said.

To improve attendance among those most at risk of disconnecting from school, Connecticut spent almost $11 million from last year鈥檚 relief packages to create the 鈥� or LEAP 鈥� which includes home visits, summer learning programs, housing assistance and mental health support in 15 districts. State leaders also meet weekly with district representatives to discuss attendance issues among homeless students, English learners and other groups of students with higher than average absenteeism.

鈥淲e know the reasons for chronic absence are as many as there are kids,鈥� said John Frassinelli, director of the department鈥檚 division of school health, nutrition, family services and adult education. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really about establishing and re-establishing relationships with families.鈥�

The East Haven Public Schools, south of Hartford, isn鈥檛 part of LEAP, but educators still routinely tracked attendance data to identify which students needed additional support. And when the district held standardized testing, Chris Brown, principal of Tuttle School, invited remote students to sit at desks outside the building to take the assessment. The practice spread to other schools.

鈥淚t was how we could draw parents in and get them on campus just to talk to them a little bit,鈥� said Superintendent Erica Forti.

In a FutureEd webinar Tuesday, Charlene Russell-Tucker, Connecticut鈥檚 acting education commissioner , discussed the importance of working with health, child welfare and other state agencies when addressing attendance challenges.

鈥淲e all have responsibility for the same group of children, so why not collaborate and share resources?鈥� she asked, adding that this approach has been especially helpful when families are hard to reach. 鈥淪omebody knows where they are, so it鈥檚 really important for us to connect.鈥�

鈥楢ll over the map鈥�

Connecticut began capturing attendance for students learning in-person, in a hybrid model and fully remote and then reported it monthly 鈥� instead of at the end of the school year, which is more common. The change allowed district officials to respond more quickly when they saw patterns of poor attendance or participation in remote learning.

Chang added that if states or districts have outdated software programs that don鈥檛 allow them to track and report attendance for both in-person and remote students, they should consider using relief funds for an upgrade.

Connecticut鈥檚 process allowed educators to notice which students struggled the most with attendance and identify trends they might not have seen otherwise.

While districts nationally saw sharp declines in kindergarten enrollment, for example, the Connecticut data shows that those who did enroll still missed a lot of school. The data suggests 鈥渒ids are going to be all over the map of where they are with learning鈥� this fall, Chang said.

In ninth grade, there was a spike in chronic absence rates to almost 30 percent for students learning remotely, which Chang said likely points to the challenges students faced starting high school without in-person interaction with teachers and peers.

鈥淎ll the things we typically would have done to ensure a smooth transition to high school did not happen for these kids,鈥� Chang said. 鈥淚f you start missing a lot of ninth grade and getting D鈥檚 and F鈥檚, you are not on track for graduation.鈥�

Another trend at the high school level was more positive. In both fall and winter, there was little difference in chronic absence rates for students learning in person and in hybrid models.

To Chang, that suggests the flexibility of a hybrid schedule could benefit older students, especially those who need to work. 鈥淭here are some things that we were forced to do by COVID that we might not want to give up,鈥� she said.

States have until Monday to distribute $81 billion in federal relief funds to districts 鈥� two-thirds of the total for K-12 schools in the American Rescue Plan. And while the law requires districts to put aside 20 percent of their funding to address learning loss, an early review of spending plans shows most aren鈥檛 adding tutoring programs, extending the school year or adopting other programs expected to help students catch up.

Instead, they are largely using the money to fill budget gaps, hire staff and issue 鈥渢hank you鈥� bonuses to teachers, Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University鈥檚 Edunomics Lab, said during a Tuesday webinar. Her team has consulted with district finance officials and reviewed school board documents and media reports.

鈥淭hat surprised us because tutoring is sort of the darling … for how to spend federal funds,鈥� Roza said Tuesday, referring to multiple studies in recent months about the effectiveness of 鈥渉igh-dosage鈥� tutoring programs.

Chad Aldeman, policy director at Edunomics Lab, added there鈥檚 little evidence so far of efforts to focus on the needs of the most vulnerable students. 鈥淭he pandemic has affected different students differently, and we鈥檙e seeing a lot of one-size-fits-all,鈥� he said. Facility improvements, he added, might be a smart use of one-time funds, but they don鈥檛 really help students most impacted by the pandemic.

The relief bill, passed in March, represents the largest-ever, one-time influx of federal funds for K-12, setting up a 鈥渇ast and furious鈥� planning process for districts over the next few months, Roza said. According to the law, districts have to submit spending plans to their states in August and provide updates or revisions every six months. They have until the end of September 2023 to spend the money. Meanwhile, leaders are facing heightened scrutiny from parents and advocacy groups looking to hold leaders accountable for helping students recover from months of remote learning. District spending plans must demonstrate that officials made extensive efforts to involve parents, educators and students.

鈥淭hat means districts can鈥檛 go into a dark, smoke-filled room and make a plan,鈥� she said, urging officials to be more transparent than usual about hiring staff, launching new programs and issuing contracts for services. Some superintendents, she said, are still operating under emergency powers, allowing them to sign off on expenditures without school board approval.

鈥楾hey can do better鈥�

The National Center for Youth Law, a nonprofit law firm based in Oakland, California, is among those closely tracking whether districts are spending the funds on students with the greatest need. On Tuesday, the organization joined with three other California groups to release of how 48 districts in the state planned to use relief funds from last year.

While there were some bright spots, the analysis showed plans often lacked detail, especially on how schools intended to respond to students with limited internet access, seek parent and community input, and target support to English learners, students in foster care and others likely to face the most earning disruption.

Vague descriptions of goals make it 鈥渉ard for folks to follow up, so at the end of the school year, they can ask, 鈥楬ow did it go?鈥欌�� said Atasi Uppal, an attorney focusing on juvenile justice and education at the firm. 鈥淲e want to give some grace to districts that were planning last September, but we also just think they can do better.鈥�

As districts in the state begin to develop plans for a combined $55 billion in state and one-time federal funds, the groups are calling for greater input from the public and offer a list of questions parents and others can use to seek details on programs and expenditures.

Roza and other school finance experts warn districts against using time-limited funds on raises, new staff and other recurring costs. But Ted Lempert, president of Children Now, one of the other California groups, added that schools in the state already have such large shortages of school counselors and nurses that it might be wise to increase staff. 鈥淭here is a need for a lot of extra support now,鈥� he said.

However, districts planning to hire may struggle to find enough qualified applicants, Aldeman said, based on labor market data showing districts have more job openings than they鈥檙e able to fill.

In Colorado, the Denver Public Schools tried to get a jump on the planning process by meeting with a budget advisory committee in December, even before the Biden administration took office and the relief bill passed. Those meetings 鈥� involving students, parents and union representatives 鈥� inspired a new $3 million to provide on-site mental health professionals at schools.

Chuck Carpenter, the district鈥檚 chief financial officer, said schools want to have 鈥渢he most welcoming and ready environments鈥� when students return in the fall. But the challenge is to avoid committing to new programs they won鈥檛 be able to sustain financially in the future. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a grant and you have to treat it like that,鈥� he said. 鈥淭here will be a time when it鈥檚 not there.鈥�

Meanwhile, not all states will meet the deadline to allocate funds to the local level. One possible complication is that they are holding onto the money at the state level as part of their annual budget process. And in some states, the legislature doesn鈥檛 approve the budget until the end of June. 鈥淚f that鈥檚 the case, then generally those funds can鈥檛 leave the state treasury to be liquidated 鈥� until the state鈥檚 budget has been enacted,鈥� explained Austin Reid, education committee director at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, some states have alerted the department that they will miss Monday鈥檚 deadline as well as the June 7 deadline to submit a state plan for using relief funds. A department spokesperson did not offer specifics, but said, 鈥渟tates are providing updates on a regular basis.鈥�